A biking experiment in progress
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Ruth Larkin, a Poultney resident and senior at Green Mountain College, hopes for no snow before the end of the semester, when she will finish her experiment in commuting by bike as part of her senior course in sustainability. Paul Dahm |
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By RUTH LARKIN Herald Correspondent - Published: December 6, 2009
A Green Mountain College student, as part of her senior project, asks "Can you really live in rural Vermont without driving a car?" I live with my husband, Tim, and our one-year-old son Zeb about five miles outside the small college town of Poultney. We own a car, a 2000 Mazda Protege, but we stopped using it at the end of August and don't plan to use it again until mid-December.
As part of my project for Delicate Balance, the senior capstone course at Green Mountain College, I've decided to take my education in ecology and sustainability into personal practice by not driving or riding in personal vehicles for 15 weeks. My exceptions to this rule are medical emergencies and class field trips.
Where's the snow?
I started this experiment in August, and I've had studded snow tires on my bike for a month and a half now. So far we haven't had any snow. I've seen a small patch of ice on the road on two chilly mornings. Otherwise it's been a mild autumn. We've had some rain and some cold days, but really not much of either.
The end of the semester is only 18 days away. We might finish our official experiment in living car-free without ever riding through snow. Not that I'm complaining — I tried commuting by bike a couple times last winter. It is significantly harder to ride on snowy roads, even with the snow tires. If the snow is more than a few inches deep, walking is almost easier. Snow also increases the hazards from cars.
Tim and I talk some about where we want to be in the future. Living car-free year round probably makes a lot more sense in a warmer climate. If we were to stay in Vermont, I think I'd want to drive the car through the winter months. As I write about it, though, I wonder if some of that is my fear about the looming possibility of riding in snow soon. Things tend to get larger than life the longer I dwell on them. Once we actually do ride in snow, it probably won't be so bad.
The car/bike balance
As I learn more about car-free living and transportation in general this semester, I am starting to think that the ideal balance is to use cars when necessary, but bike when the distances are short and the weather is good. This approach can bring large benefits without the hardships or inconvenience of never using a car.
A 1980 study from Great Britain concluded that if 10 percent of car trips of 10 miles or less were made by bicycle instead, 14 million barrels of oil would be saved each year. That is equal to 2 percent of the country's total oil consumption. That's not huge, but it is significant. In addition, engines don't burn gasoline efficiently when they are cold, so minimizing the amount of short distance car trips can have a disproportionate impact on reducing air pollution.
Bicycles require less space than cars, both while moving and when parked. A switch to using bikes for shorter trips would mean that less space would be needed for parking. This would open up area for green space and could make it easier for people to walk in more developed areas. The extra exercise from biking and walking would reduce medical issues like coronary heart disease, hypertension, obesity, and diabetes, to name a few.
With all those benefits, why aren't more of us pursuing a healthy balance between bikes and cars? With small adjustments in our transportation patterns, we could change the world for the better. We don't all need to park our cars permanently. But we should park them more. What if you rode a bike to get groceries? Or to visit friends this weekend? What if instead of driving your car to work and then later going to the gym, you just rode your bike to work — getting the commute and the exercise at the same time? If we all replaced the car with the bike even once a week, collectively we'd make a huge difference!
Other car-free people
Browsing the Internet, I have found Web sites, forums, and blogs devoted to car-free living or bicycle commuting. Between the 2000 Census and the 2008 Census, the number of people commuting to work by bicycle jumped by 43 percent. Granted, bicycle commuters still only constitute about a mere 0.5 percent of all commuters nationwide. But that's an average. In Stanford, Calif., bicycles account for 45 percent of the transportation options taken by commuters. Surprisingly, in Missoula, Mont., where the winters are fierce, bicyclists account for almost 6 percent of commuters.
The "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008" — better known as the Wall Street Bailout — includes provisions allowing employers to take a tax credit for reimbursing bicycle commuters for reasonable expenses associated with their commute. The program is similar to existing ones that offer benefits to employees who commute via mass transit or carpooling. The bicycle commuter benefits are limited to $20 a month, or $240 per year, while the carpooling benefits can be as high as $115 per month, a whopping $1,380 per year. So while bicycle commuting is receiving some notice, it's still playing second-fiddle to the car and other internal-combustion-engine vehicles.
But not everyone is enthralled with cars, and not everyone can afford to own and maintain one. Internet forums are packed with stories about people who use bikes rather than cars. Reading stories like this make me feel a little bit more confident about the coming winter. They also challenge me with the question of what I'll do after the semester is over. Start driving the car again? Stick to the bike? Some combination of the two? Zeb has started commenting on our biking lifestyle. He seems to think it's newfangled — three times now when we've tried to put him in his bike seat, he's said "No. Zeb walk!" and taken off down the road toward town. Maybe someday he'll be the one to start an experiment in commuting by foot for a semester.
Ruth Larkin lives in Poultney and can be contacted at RMLarkin@gmail.com. This article is the second in a series about her project. To read more, visit her blog at http://carfreesemester. blogspot.com/200-9/10/cars-buses-and-cold-toes.html
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