I wish I could report that “environmental reasons” were behind my decision to start commuting by bike. But the real motivation was much simpler: I’m a cheapskate and biking saves money.

Yet three years and some 24,000 kilometres after switching from the train to the bike, I’ve discovered a number of useful fringe benefits beyond being frugal and reducing greenhouse gas: the daily exercise from the 40-km round trip each day puts me in a good mood, makes me healthier, liberates me from the hassles of semi-reliable train timetables and makes me a bit lighter as well.

No matter how lousy or stressful or full of irritations the work day might have been, by the time I’ve arrived home on the western fringe of Berlin from the city centre after an almost always enjoyable 50-minute bike ride, I feel transformed back into a happy human being. It’s magic.

Rain is a pain. And strong headwinds can be annoying. But even if I get soaked I still usually arrive home with a smile on my face — unperturbed even if some @&%?”$! motorist nearly ran me off the road. In the morning on the way to work, the bike ride often transforms my sleepy head into one spinning with ideas.

I got the idea, for instance, for this feature (click here) on the way to work one morning while backed up behind more than 40 other bikers at a traffic light. Peter Kupisz, the friendly lawyer quoted in the story, told me he thrives on the feeling of the wind blowing in his face. “On some days it feels sort of like I’m galloping on a horse through the middle of the city,” he said. I know exactly what he means.

The only drawback to my cycling habit is that I usually have to switch to the train when roads and bike lanes turn icy or are covered with snow in January and February. Being locked up in packed train carriages is not exactly conducive to being in a good mood by dinner time — so my family looks forward to March even more than I do. “Why don’t you ride your bike to work?” is a comment I sometimes get from my wife during those winter months. What she actually means is: “You’re in a rotten mood, go away!”

What I’ve noticed over the last two years is that the number of bike commuters has been growing steadily, and not just during the summer months. The main boulevard through the centre of Berlin is sometimes packed, seriously packed, with hundreds of cyclists on their way to work. It’s an amazing sight and reminds me of scenes from the 1979 movie Americathon when everyone in Los Angeles is riding bikes on the freeways instead of cars because the world has run out of oil.

Admittedly, what makes this bike commuting in Berlin all a bit easier is the good fortune that we have a shower in our building. It would certainly be a bit more difficult without that.

This being the environmental blog, I decided to figure out how much CO2 saved by riding the bike about a total of 8,000 km per year. If I drove the car that distance instead it would be about 1,280 kg of CO2, according to this online carbon footprint calculator . If I took the train, it would be about 320 kg of CO2 per year. On bike, the calculator says it’s 0 kgs of CO2. But I’m not sure how to quantify any accidental emissions of methane.

Reducing CO2 is obviously a noble aim, but the more important saving is to my bottom line. If I were to drive the 8,000 km to and from work in a car each year, it would cost about 730 euros and use 560 litres of fuel. If I were to buy an annual pass on the train, it would cost 670 euros. Aside from the occasional flat tyre, biking doesn’t cost anything after the initial investment.

If any further arguments on behalf of bike commuting were need, I could mention the calories burned. This calculator estimates 880 calories burned per journey — or about 1,500 calories per day. One final advantage: in Germany, the tax laws allow you to write the distance of your commute off your taxes. So, incredible as it may seem, I actually get paid by the government, or more accurately by other taxpayers, for biking to work. It doesn’t matter if you drive, bike, walk or hitchhike to work. The annual tax writeoff for a 40-km commute is about 1,400 euros.

More and more people in many places around the world seem to agree that biking is the way to go, as my colleague Chang-Ran Kim noted in her blog (click here). As much as I liked the film Americathon, I just hope the bike lanes don’t get too crowded too soon. Getting stuck in a bike traffic jam might just wipe that smile off my face by the time I got home.

PHOTO: Erik Kirschbaum on his bike to work REUTERS/Claudia Roszak

By Peter Jebautzke

Getting caught speeding changed my life — for the better.

It inadvertently turned me into a devoted bike commuter, has saved me lots of money, aggravation — and even saved the world a little bit of carbon dioxide to boot. Since giving up the car for my daily commutes by bike to work in August, I’ve also lost about 2 kilos and now look forward to my daily 16 km journeys each way to and from the office.

Other colleagues who cycle to work had long tried to encourage me to try out commuting by bike. We’ve even got a little shower here where I work in the centre of Berlin. But it was always so much easier to jump into the car.

In April, I jumped into the car and stepped on the gas a bit too hard. I got a late-night call from the office and had to get there in a hurry. The motorway was clear so I got up to 117 kph. That was 37 kph over the 80 kph limit. The police caught me — and I lost my driver’s licence for a month.

I tried commuting via the underground for a few days but I didn’t like feeling like a sardine. So I bought a mountain bike and cycled the 16 km home one day. It was exhausting but somehow delightful as well. It took me 77 minutes. Within a few days I was down to 56 minutes and within two weeks I had cut my time to about 48 minutes. I got to work and home feeling
invigorated by the fresh air and cardio workout.

I’ve since cut my best commuting time to 35 minutes — when I push the pace. That’s even two minutes faster than my previous commuting time in the car. Even when I don’t push the pedals too hard I can make it under 40 minutes.

So the net result is: no CO2, better fitness, far lower commuting costs and less wear and tear on my car. The only thing that I wonder about is: Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

(Peter Jebautzke is a project engineer working for Reuters in Berlin)

City-dwelling, bike-riding recyclers are finally getting the recognition they deserve for their environmentally friendly lifestyles.
 
A researcher at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development argues in a journal article published on Friday that many city residents actually pollute less than families in rural areas.
 
“People who live in the suburbs or commute actually have much higher greenhouse gas emissions per person than people living in (the London district of) Chelsea for the same income level,” David Satterthwaite told Reuters.
 
That’s because country-dwellers tend to have larger homes that need to be heated or cooled and higher car use per household.
 
The study in the journal  Environment and Urbanization says cities are often blamed for producing most of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions but actually generate just two-fifths or less.
 
Satterthwaite argues that cities in wealthy nations can set an example for low carbon living by providing good public transport and energy-efficient buildings. He singles out Barcelona - which has a third of Spain’s average emissions per person - and other historic compact cities like Amsterdam which are easy to walk around. 
 
Culture is also an ally in the fight against climate change. “There’s so much in London or Paris that isn’t high greenhouse gas-emitting: the culture, the art, the buildings, the theatre, the music, the museums, the libraries,” Satterthwaite said.
 
But while cities are often unfairly blamed for producing 75 to 80 percent of the world’s greenhous gas emissions, their responsibility creeps back up when you look at it from a consumption perspective. 
 
Satterthwaite believes it would be fairer to allocate greenhouse gas emissions according to the location of the people who consume the goods and services responsible for the emissions rather than to the place they are produced. 

So if you live in Berlin and buy a Chinese-made T-shirt or digital camera, the emissions caused by the manufacturing process would go into your city’s pot, not Guangzhou’s.
  
On this measure, Satterthwaite estimates city emissions would account for between 60 and 70 percent of the global total. Breaking that down, richer cities would be the clear culprits.
 
Some parts of poor cities - like the inner-city settlement of Dharavi in Mumbai where 600,000 people live and work crammed into an area around 2 km square - might even have a negative tally, especially if they’re home to poor people who survive by reclaiming and recycling waste. 
 
“Allocating emissions to consumers rather than producers shows that the problem is not cities but a minority of the world’s population with high-consumption lifestyles,” Satterthwaite said.
 
“But I can see the huge - or probably impossible - political difficulties of getting that accepted, if suddenly the responsibility of the rich world goes up even further,” he admitted.
 
What do you think? How could your city cut its carbon emissions? Should we measure emissions from the perspective of production or consumption?

A recent trip to bicyle-peppered cities Copenhagen and Amsterdam got me thinking about the pedal possibilities in U.S. cities. Alas, New York, the country’s biggest city, has long way to go make biking easier, and that seems true in many other cities in the world’s largest motor fuel consumer.

As gasoline nears $4.00 a gallon throughout the country one might think that U.S. commuters would be jumping on their bikes. Evidently the prices aren’t high enough yet.

Here in New York, it’s Bike Month and though I live just 7 miles from my office in Times Square, I haven’t two-wheeled it in yet, though I did for years. Likely, I won’t any time soon because fighting traffic across the avenues isn’t appealing anymore.

Granted, NYC has made made biking improvements over the last decade, building and extending bicycle paths on Manhattan’s edges and keeping lanes open on most of its bridges, which offer spectacular river views. And New York City has plans to double the number of bike commuters by 2015 and add 200 miles of bike lanes by the end of the decade.

But bike lanes in the bustling parts of the island are probably used as much by darting cabs and other vehicles as much as people who pedal, which can make for a harrowing experience.

Sure, New York City streets will probably always be louder than those in Amsterdam where fenders banging against bike frames can sometimes be the loudest traffic noise one hears, or in Copenhagen, where bike lanes often have their own traffic lights.

But with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s traffic congestion plan defeated and few businesses offering bike parking space, things don’t look like they will improve much soon.

Or at least not enough so that New Yorkers will be biking their children around the city in droves like they do in Copenhagen.

What do you think, will New York and other U.S. cities catch up on biking as the price of oil rises?

Pic 1: Kid-moving bicycle in Copenhagen, a common sight. Pic 2: Bicycle parking in Amsterdam. Pic 3: Biking in New York. Photos, Tim Gardner.