Cycle Commuter?
I've had to make some sacrifices to take this new job I start in 2 weeks. One of those is that I'll no longer have a 15-20 minute walk to work, but instead need to commute. Best case is about 35 minutes door to door, and involves either two buses or a 25 minute walk to Wynyard and then a bus over the Bridge (at least they're frequent - every 2 to 3 minutes).
My other option, which they actually mentioned that a lot of their staff do, is a bicycle commute. Read on for more gibberish, which is more of a brain dump than anything useful to the public.
This idea appeals to me. The journey by bike is approximately 8km and isn't too traffic infested - a little bit through Pyrmont, then a shared pedestrian/cycle over Pyrmont Bridge and the bike path to King Street, up Kent or Sussex St in traffic, then over the Harbour Bridge in a dedicated cycle lane, and then through the back streets of Neutral Bay to work (which is on the south side of Military Road, so no need to cross it). As far as I can work out I should be able to do this in the same 15-20 minutes I used to walk to work.
The other cool thing is that Sydney City Council is progressing with plans to put dedicated cycle lanes into Kent Street, thus making the ride from Pyrmont Bridge to Milsons Point entirely on bike paths (some shared with peds though). I emailed the contact and found out that work will likely start in the second half of this year.
Now the "cons" - I don't own a bike yet. I had a mountain bike when I was growing up but that got stolen out of my parent's shed years ago. The other con is I don't know what the facilites will be like at work to clean up, but the fact it's casual helps, and also being told most of them ride to work means they've likely got something. Either way, I'll obviously wait until I start before I commit to investing in a bike.
I've been doing some research and have picked out a bike that will be mine should I decide to ride to work. It's the Trek 7300, a hybrid bike that seems to get good reviews and will be durable enough to cope with my needs. I was initially thinking of just getting the cheapest bike I could, some $200 K-Mart special, but realised that if I'm going to depend on it I may as well get a decent one. Also given the cost of public transport, this bike will pay for itself in about 6 months.
Now of course Ella wants to get a bike too, but she can get a cheaper once since she won't be commuting, and we can go on rides on the weekend. With panniers etc we could even go shopping by bike, we could also visit our friends - a lot of whom live in the Inner West, within 5km by road (about 15 minutes on the bike, but over half an hour by foot/bus).
So even though I keep saying I'm going to wait until I start the job to see if it's going to be practical to ride, I've pretty much already convinced myself that it will be. I will see how the bus thing goes for a week or two before I dash off and buy the bike, but I can't really see any reason not to (except having to call my mummy every day when I get to work so she's not worried I've been run over).
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