Pinkbike Poll: How Far Do You Drive to Ride?
Ah, the great outdoors. We mountain bikers do love nature, but we aren't always especially kind to it.
A couple of years ago a poll by Mike Levy revealed that the vast majority of us drive to the trails at least sometimes. Personally, I moved house so I have loads of great trails on my doorstep, but I still often drive for about 15 minutes to where there are more downhill-focussed tracks, and occasionally drive much further afield for a change of scene.
That got me thinking. Recently there's been a lot of talk about the sustainability of bike manufacturers - and rightly so - but from an individual rider's point of view, all this driving could be a much bigger deal environmentally speaking.
According to Trek's own figures, the brand is responsible for 300,000 tons of CO2 emissions each year; that's equivalent to a fleet of 65,000 passenger vehicles. And just because Trek is the only company so far to have published such numbers, that does not mean other similarly sized manufacturers aren't doing just as much damage, or maybe more. So bike manufacturers have a significant impact on the environment and a responsibility to reduce that impact.
But from a rider's point of view, driving to the trails just a few times could produce more emissions than buying a brand new bike. According to Trek's report, building a typical full-suspension trail bike results in about 150 Kg of CO2 emissions. But according to this awesome Carboncounter infographic, a 2.5L Subaru Outback AWD (which is about average for a modern internal combustion car) will burn through 150 Kg of CO2 in about 375 miles. So if you drive just a few hundred miles to ride your bike over its lifetime, that's having a bigger climate impact than the bike itself.
Bike racks mean even small cars can carry multiple bikes.
A van is super convenient for mountain bikers, whether moving bikes or getting changed after a ride, but they burn a lot more fuel.
And as we discussed in a recent podcast, many of us buy a car that makes it easier to transport bikes. For some, that means a pickup truck or a van. Even adding a bike rack to a car will increase its fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, but at least a rack can be removed when you're not using it. According to the same Carboncounter chart, a 2WD Toyota Tundra truck will emit 150 Kg of CO2 in just 187 miles. That's about the distance I drove to ride just last weekend.
I realize that not everybody gives two hoots about this stuff, but according to another poll, most of you care at least a bit about the environmental impact of bike manufacturing. I'm also not trying to shame anybody for driving to where they ride - not everyone is lucky enough to have good trails close to home. I just think it's interesting that what you drive and how often you drive it probably has a much bigger impact than what you ride, even if you only consider driving to the trails.
So how do you drive to get your tyres on dirt?
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Those with an unusual abundance of time and/or fitness will sometimes ride long distances to and from the trailhead, but if you have a fixed amount of time to ride, most would rather spend it on the trail than on getting to the trail.
An e-bike also isn’t going to make the difference. For example, the most popular areas to ride in the seattle area are 20+ miles from the city core. Good luck finding an ebike that can do a 15 mile trail ride with 2500 ft of vert while also doing a 40 mile round trip on pavement.
If you live close to trails and have to commute further to work daily, you're polluting a lot more than if you live close to work and drive to trails.
I do live where i recreate, because I’m fortunate to have the ability to work remotely most of the time and privileged enough to afford it. The choice you and i have made doesn’t scale. There are too many people. Either all mountain sports become a 1% activity based on housing costs, or a better transportation solution is needed.
Mountain towns don’t have adequate housing to absorb all the people interested in mountain sports, or the space for the industries they work in. Full stop.
Also, I doubt people from neighboring cities, like Ferndale for example, are going to biking to and from Galbraith. At least on weekends, I would say most of the parking problems in Bellingham stem from out of towners visiting.
It's gotten to the point that scheduling rides at odd day/times is the better ROI.
40% in a car - up to 10 km in one direction
Weekend bike parks - I have 3 within maybe 80 km
Couple of times a year - Swiss Alps (lets say to Lenzerheide is a little bit over 200 km away)
Once a year a week of Morzine / Avoriaz - less than 300 km
Since I'm Croatian and spending part of Summer in my hometown on the Adriatic coast, I ride there as well - 800 km in one direction (but actually those are family holidays so I don't count that as mtb trip)
Also, how are the trails on the adriatic coast? Some lovely terrain out that way.
In Croatia I ride mostly around Istrian peninsula. I'm from Opatija so we have a 1401 meters high mountain Ucka just behind the city. You can start from the beach, pedal to the summit and then choose one of 10 different single tracks back down.
Like this one:
youtu.be/p34BQ2_X1zA
In Istria, places like Rabac, Groznjan, Pula or north Istria have some beautiful trails
My sister in law has a house in lovran. Was there this summer and went to ucka
Slovenia isn’t too far away (2 hours)
Done nice riding there as well
Miles driven to "weekend bike park in summer" = 2.25hrs or ~136mi(218KM)
CNC = 220 km return
That's easily 580 km/week from late May to early October for after work or local weekend rides.
It's 600km return to Fernie/Pano/KHMR, which is possible to do in a day with enough caffeine.
You'd think it would be simpler to blaze your own trail, pun intended, but guessing which roads are better to ride take a lot of guess work, even with the bike paths as defined by the city and on google maps. Some are fine, some are being used as improvised housing and some are sketchy and poorly maintained for more than the later reason.
All that before we even touch on traffic and it's very polar response to riders. Purely anecdotal, but it often seems to be either people will be overly cautious, putting themselves in harms way by stopping abruptly to give right of way, or be overly aggressive accelerating to overtake riders at speed and too close for comfort, both as a rider and as a driver behind them.
As it becomes increasingly safe and as people become less wary of strangers, I do hope to be proven wrong as I make new friends that ride more regularly.
Still 45-75min to access Rocky Point, Cold Creek, Sandy Ridge, Post Canyon, Tillamook/Browns, Stub Stewart, Syncline, Growlers, etc makes us pretty ridiculously spoiled with both the quality and diversity of trail networks close by.
However, shops like FTF, Cyclepath, RiverCity, etc. should be at the least trying to package NWTA/Evergreen memberships with all mountain bike purchases (this is just smart business sense since a larger mountain bike scene=more sales and maintenance). With a much larger active membership base, NWTA and Evergreen would represent a broader constituency that is harder for metro area recreation planning to ignore and for the small but vocal minority of elitists that want to exclude everyone from their nature parks under false pretenses of environmental protection to malign (Ahem Palatine Hill and Forrest park misanthropes).
I honestly dont think the margins are in it for LBS to sell memberships. But its a good idea and one they SHOULD be doing. But for a major brand, 100K isnt a lot of money. Assume Specialized revenue line at 450M and mktg spend at 4% of rev, they are putting out around 18M of marketing funds globally. So why they arent looking at establishing and owning part of the community is beyond me. They talk about inclusion and getting people into the sport but show very little effort to support the community where it lives.
But as everything is pretty flat around here the trails are really boring, and the nearest bikepark is 100mls away. So it ends up with driving the car only for holidays and bikepark visits, about 5000mls/year.
A: As far as my parents will take me XD
A: As far as my wife will let me.
Also, I'm fairly sure that there are significant "environmental" benefits to people living In dense urban regions. I'm not even going to attempt such a calculus, but it could be overall better if more people lived urban and drove to ride rather than everybody living near trails in large dwellings, over some threshold number of people.
Such a complex issue that often gets reduced and condensed into near religious factions.
But I make sure I have a #renewable and post heaps about considering the environment, #offsets and
blame "industry" and energy and "oil" companies because they are the real problem with our world.
@sebstott - it would be really good to include distance in miles/km to trail locations.
To ride every time the same sucks too ..
Personally I see myself be more of a Sheffield kinda guy, but I've never been there either
Look, I do believe there sure must be places where you can indeed live, work and be close to the fun hilly bits. But I strongly doubt I'd be using less fuel there than I'm using here, even if I occasionally ride my 5l/100km car to some trails further away. Just as it was mentioned that choosing a bigger/stronger car for mountainbiking/outdoor purposes comes with increased emissions, I think the same goes for living in a more outdoorsy place. And even if you stick in the same place for everything (so that you rarely need your own car or motorcycle), the trucks still need to ride relatively large distances to supply the stores in all these remote places. But in that respect Vancouver is probably good again. It is big, it has a harbour, if you try you can probably live, work and recreate there without using your car.
TL;DR: Random ramblings, glad you didn't read it.
Lots of interesting trails MSA, Vallée bras du nord, Sentiers du Moulin, ...at 1hour or less by car.
"a 2.5L Subaru Outback AWD (which is about average for a modern internal combustion car) will burn through 150 Kg of CO2 in about 375 miles."
Assuming 25MPG (it will probably do better than that,) that's 15 gallons. Gas weighs about 6.3 pounds per gallon, or 2.8kg. Now, I don't know what the oxidation reaction of burning gasoline looks like, but I have a hard time believing that it creates 50 times as much mass in exhaust. The ideal stoichiometric ratio of air to fuel is about 15:1, so I could see 15 times as much mass converted to CO2.... if air were as massive as gasoline, which it clearly is not.
I'm calling BS. Somebody is lying to make cars sound more evil than they truly are.
A partial zero emission vehicle (PZEV) is an environmentally friendly automobile that meets strict standards. These vehicles have zero evaporative emissions, meet tailpipe emission standards, and have generous warranties on emission control parts.
Always always in a van, NON stickered up. I mean, for the sake of looking cool in a riding spot car park why in the hell you would advertise there’s bikes in your van is beyond me. Can’t remember the last time I put bikes on a bike rack regularly either. (Tied a few to the roof bitd)
Re driving similar. Not much riding local but windhill just less than an hour South Wales / for etc 2-2.5 HR 50% on back roads the drive is time intensive but still only a day trip. Pain in the arse and requires a full day off dad duties but not exactly the biggest amount of travel. Mainly ride bmx as I can do that local so win some lose some
I’d like to see how they are coming to this conclusion.
Are they accounting for the emissions produced for the raw materials harvested, including the heavy machinery needed, the transportation of the raw materials after harvest, the machining process of each individual component, the transportation of each individual component, the emissions produced from each employee while needed in this entire process. And the emissions from the giant ship used to transport it from the country that doesn’t give a shit about emissions all so they can save a few bucks.
This reminds me of the titanic actor who cries about vehicles but charters his twin Diesel engine yacht all over the ocean.
good luck trying to un-bake the bread...my lil family has like 10 bikes right now, all from taiwan and china and wherever else...but we only have one car, eat no meat, and I've been wearing the same shirt for a week. I always flush, even when yellow, but I'll reheat coffee for a week. Used furniture, new brake pads.
I dunno.
Remember when we found out that all our garbage was just getting shipped to China to get burned there? Find me burning my garbage while camping now, I really don't know. Woodsmoke is dirty as f*ck, but we like how the fireplace looks.
2022 is a sunuvabitch, we laugh to keep from crying...
If it's a good one it is also good cold
Otherwise I can do road/gravel/sand dune rides from my house, but next to no elevation or interesting routes.
Like others here I'm looking at moving closer to trail centres or decent public trails so as to lessen time taken or need to drive, which is helped by the whole covid related WFH approach that seems to be a long term thing for my job.
So, when I can, I load up the bike and drive between 20 and 60 miles one way to get to an enjoyable trail system. Most of my weekday rides are on those crappy local trails where I can feel the anti-bike hate as soon as I pull into the parking lot but as you can imagine that gets old really fast.
My subie sti sees the road 1-2 days a week and makes it feel that much sweeter. Personally couldn’t live somewhere where I’d have to drive to ride.
So, it's fairly easy to reach the 3000km/year mark, with diesel fuel going for € 1,67 per liter actually.
I’m not saying this is an elitist article, but good luck buying a house near the Lake District on a normal salary. The way I see it, I work hard, pay bills and earn enough to just about keep my head above the water. If I want to drive to a trail centre to do something I enjoy, I will.
The inclusion of "If you use a bike rack" precludes anyone who doesn't from answering.
we can all make choices to reduce our carbon footprint, myself included
Claws (@n@l) Swab?
Coming soon to your area: No trespassing in nature! Sincerely yours WEF.
You can't say that to everyone that's clear but it's a part of the US.
You guys are so doomed on so many levels. Last night I found out about your horrible zoning law's and it is apparent that this is one is the root of a big problem.
Less than 30 minutes
1 hour
2 hour
3+
Hahahaha yeah I’m from BC and moved here for work BUT I’m moving back to BC in a year or two
As for seeing them on the trail, I think it's pretty safe to say the bottle's owner is about as happy about it as you are (probably less so as they lost the bottle and didn't have water).
I lost 2 going from high to low altitude before I learned my lesson.
TL;DR: The bicycle rack manual says remove the bottle so just remove the bottle. Enter your reasons why you would ignore these directions down here in the comment section.