Cycling is good for your health, easy on the wallet, prefect for the last mile and it saves the planet.
Cycling is a great sport enjoyed by many people all over the world. Cycling is an affordable, eco-friendly way to travel, explore and can be used to get about on a variety of terrains in many different weather conditions.
Whatever your reason is for cycling, be it to commute to work, to partake in an adrenaline filled adventure or for a brisk weekend ride, there are many facts about cycling that we wanted to share with you.
1) You can fit up to 15 bicycles in the same space a car would occupy
Our first fact highlights multiple benefits of cycling. Firstly, cycling is a great way to reduce traffic, this helps to make journeys faster for all. The reason why cycling reduces traffic is because bikes take up a lot less space on the road than what a car does. Secondly, and more importantly, cycling is a great way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To put into perspective, riding a bicycle accounts for only 21g of CO2 emissions, which is ten times less than a car produces. This means that the more people who switch from using a car to a bicycle, the less CO2 is released into the atmosphere.
2) it is 20 times cheaper to maintain a bicycle than a car
You heard it here first, it’s pretty obvious, we all know cars can be a money pit. It doesn’t matter whether you buy a new car or an old car, either way you are more or less going to have to spend money on it again for one reason or another. Although a bike does need to be maintained and things can go wrong, a bicycle is much cheaper to maintain and what’s more is that you can maintain it yourself fairly easily.
There are amazing resources out there nowadays meaning within minutes you can find a how to guide, a video or an affordable course to teach you everything you need to know to fix or maintain your bike. One company who provides useful cycling maintenance tips, tricks and step by step guides is Cycle Maintenance Academy.
3) The same energy that is expended for walking can be used when cycling to go three times faster.
Many people assume that cycling requires a lot more effort than walking, however, research indicates that the same amount of energy that is expended for walking can be used in cycling. What people don’t know is that for the same energy required to walk, you can cycle and significantly travel 3x faster.
4) 40% of all Amsterdam’s commutes are made on a bike
If you have ever been lucky enough to visit the stunning city of Amsterdam, its hard to miss the mounds of bicycles all over the city, stored in ‘car park’ style areas dedicated to parking up and securing your bicycle. It’s a well known fact that in Amsterdam you have to look out for Bikes probably more so than cars when crossing the road because they’re so agile they can seem to appear from nowhere. Remember to listen out for the ringing of a bicycle bell approaching warning you to stay or move out of their way. Interestingly, Amsterdam is a particularly clean city, which makes us wonder if that 40% of commuters who travel by bike are really making a difference and the impact it could have if 40% of the global population were to commute via bicycle instead of by car.
5) The energy and resources used to create one single car can be used for the creation of up to 100 bicycles.
Most of the facts that we’ve discussed so far have demonstrated that cycling is most definitely an environmentally friendly alternative that more of us should consider. Even more significantly is the resources used in the production process of a car and how using that same amount of energy could be utilized to make 100 bicycles.
Overview of cycling facts
We hope this article has helped give you a better insight into cycling and the huge difference it can make to our carbon footprint. Maybe you may now consider the benefits of choosing to commute to work via bicycle instead of by car. Hopefully, as cities work hard to integrate better cycle routes, the cars on the road will decrease along with the pollution we create.
