Does Why You Ride Depend on Where You Live? The Results Might Surprise You…

The month of September 2018 was a career highlight for me as we brought the inaugural Love to Ride challenge to Brisbane, my birth town. I had no doubt that a city as progressive as Brisbane (no bias here!) would embrace the challenge and do me proud. Of course, I was right! (When am I not?)

A roaring success, this workplace based cycling challenge saw 2,327 participants take part from over 220 organisations. One of the key features of the Love to Ride platform is the ability for our partners to access crucial data which helps them understand the drivers and barriers of people living in their city, ultimately culminating in better planning and communications.

Let’s jump in and take a look at some of the key results for Brisbane:

Headline Results Brisbane 2018
Organisations

221

Participants

2,327

  • New riders

244

  • Occasional riders

487

  • Regular riders

1,569

Distances (KM) 603,854
Total trips 31,818
% trips for transport purposes 49%
CO2 saved (kg) 34,459

Great to see over 49% of people logging using their bikes for commuting!

A MAFIL* if you will?

We often hear about the MAMIL* but the data consistently shows us that increasingly women love to be on their bikes too. Over 40% of registrants in Brisbane were female.

Age and gender registrants

A closer look as to how that breaks down into rider level…

gender by rider type

Public transport was the most frequent method of travel amongst new riders (43%) followed closely by driving alone (36%). The opposite was true for occasional riders, with driving alone at 38% and public transport close behind at 34%.

modes of travel

3 WEEK SURVEY FINDINGS

After we run a challenge, we look at how people’s attitudes and behaviours have shifted when compared to the baseline survey they completed at sign up.

3 week survey findings

72% of new riders and 46% of occasional riders reported an intention to increase how often they ride compared to 12 months before the challenge. These ‘interested by concerned’ people had experienced a definite shift in behaviour.

Did Love to Ride help you ride more

85% of new riders and 66% of occasional riders noted that the Love to Ride Brisbane challenge encouraged them to ride more often.

WHAT MOTIVATES BRISBANE FOLKS TO RIDE? Is it the Jacarandas?

Motivations for riding Brisbane

Not just the Jacarandas! Those Brisbanites sure are a healthy bunch!

WHAT ABOUT THE BARRIERS PEOPLE FACE? Does it differ by city?

New rider barriers by City

Giving new riders the confidence and knowledge they need to get out on  a bike is crucial and universal to Aussie cities.

Occ rider barriers by CIty

Certainly the type of rider influences the perceived barriers, however, weather is consistently the biggest factor for regular riders.

Regular rider barriers by City

DO BARRIERS DIFFER GLOBALLY?

In fact, regardless of rider type, weather is a huge factor right across the globe too. Just check it out!

Barriers by Country

Amazing huh?

Our partners can access all this information and communicate with both existing and new riders in their area. Targeting in this way ensures the message is specific and relevant. So, all the good stuff our partners are doing to get more people riding… bike courses, infrastructure building, route planning services… is being received by the right audience segment making it more useful and effective to recipients.

Want to take the temperature of your city and get more people on bikes? Send me a message and let’s chat.

– Christina Sorbello

Love to Ride, Australia Country Manager

Love to Ride works in 13 countries around the world to get more people cycling, more often. If you’re interested in finding out how you can encourage cycling and collect useful data on cycling in your area, then please get in touch. We’re always happy to hear from people like yourself. Contact: hello@lovetoride.net

Anyone Can Cycle the World

Intro

Tim Moss recently spent 16 months cycling 13,000 miles around the world with his wife, Laura.

Despite riding across deserts, over mountains and through jungles they experienced far more kindness and hospitality on their journey than they did hardships.

In this extract from Tim’s new book – With the Sun on Our Right – he discusses how little planning they did for the trip, how cheaply they travelled and how little experience is required for undertaking a long bicycle journey. Which leads him to the inevitable conclusion that perhaps anyone can cycle the world…

Another bedroom

Anyone Can Cycle the World

When we left home, we had not even worked out how to get to the south coast of England, let alone mapped out what roads we would take across Italy, Albania or Vietnam. Once we got going, we just looked at what country we were aiming for next and planned a few days ahead. Similarly, we did not arrange a single visa before leaving home. In fact, of the 26 countries we visited, only two required visas to be arranged in advance.

Cylcing on Pag

Part of this could be attributed to our laissez-faire approach to life, preferring to take things as they come rather than map them out in detail. But mostly it is a testament to the ease and simplicity of cycle touring. You carry everything you need to be self-sufficient so it does not really matter where you end up at the end of a day.

You could plot an entire route around the world on a GPS device if you really wanted, but we just set off with enough maps to get us across Europe and then picked up free ones from tourist information offices as we went. Everywhere has road signs and people can usually point you in the right direction if the worst comes to it. Besides, navigating is rarely as hard as it is in the UK, with its dense network of intertwining roads. In lots of countries, we would follow one road for several days without making a single turn. Whenever we struggled in big cities, we used Google Maps on our phones. Cycling around the world is not complicated.

Ferry across the Mekong

As with the practical preparations for the trip, very little physical preparation was required. We didn’t do any training. We cycled around London a lot, but never went out of our way to get in shape for the trip; we just got fit as we went. There are those who set off around the world at record speeds, pushing their bodies as hard as they can, but it was not like that for us. Sometimes it was hard work, but we would often cruise all day and simply enjoy the scenery. Cycling around the world need not be a gruelling experience.

The trip did not cost a lot of money either. We were away for almost a year and a half, and during that time our total expenditure was £6,500 each. That is still a reasonable sum of money, but I know people who have spent more on a two week holiday. Averaged out, we each spent £406 a month, which is far less than the monthly rent we had been paying on our London flat. That amount includes all of the food we bought from supermarkets, cafes and restaurants. It includes every visa fee we paid, multiple repairs to our bikes, campsite fees, hotel bills, several international flights, a few bits of medical attention, travel insurance for America, replacement clothes, local SIM cards, cups of tea, cups of coffee, toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap and more. Every penny that left our bank accounts while we were away is included in that sum of £406 per month. It was the cheapest we have ever lived and probably ever will. Cycling is cheap.

Tim Moss in Slovenia

We were very lucky to be given some top quality touring bicycles for our trip by Ridgeback. Having previously only ridden bikes that were either second-hand or very cheap (or both), it was a real luxury to have good quality bikes that ran smoothly and reliably. However, a fancy bike is not a prerequisite for doing a big trip. All of my previous touring was done on a £180 bike from Decathlon, and hundreds of people have ridden across the globe on old mountain bikes. Others have used Brompton folding bikes, penny farthings and even unicycles. Ann Wilson, a friend who cycled around the world aged 59, only got as far as Bulgaria before her custom-built touring bike was stolen. Undeterred, she bought a cheap replacement from the local bike shop and carried on regardless. Another friend, Tom Allen, cycled from Lands End to John O’Groats using a bicycle he found at the local tip. You can cycle around the world without a fancy bike.

Near the top of the pass

Although Laura and I had expedition and travel experience before we rode around the world, we had never undertaken an adventure on this scale before. We were reassured however, by knowing that experience is not a prerequisite for such a trip. Loads of people set off into the unknown on two wheels, without any cycling pedigree. While riding through China, veteran adventurer Sarah Outen bumped into a guy who asked if he could come with her. He had never cycled beyond his hometown before and did not own a bike, but he joined her anyway and cycled across China. The only experience Ann Wilson had when she decided to take early retirement and head east was riding her bike from Carlisle to Ipswich. There are even round-the-world cycling veterans who still do not know how to change a tyre. You do not need a lot of experience to cycle the world.

In short, our trip did not take much planning, require any training or cost a lot of money. It could have been done without a flash bike and it did not require any experience. Cycling around the world is not as hard as you think.

In fact, although our adventure was remarkable to us in so many wonderful ways, going on a big bike trip is not remarkable in itself. Anyone can do it and thousands have. Students fresh out of college have done it, as have those in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Men go on their own, as do women. Dervla Murphy cycled solo to India in the 1960s. Families do it too. Nancy Sathre-Vogel, for example, completed a 27,000 mile trip with her eight-year-old twins in tow. Even serious disabilities need not necessarily rule it out: Karen Darke crossed the mountains of Central Asia on a bike, and she is paralysed from the waist down; and despite being legally blind, Christi Bruchok and Tauru Chaw pedalled from Alaska to Ushuaia.

Anyone can cycle around the world.

You can cycle around the world.

I did not know that when I set off, but I know it now.

Check out Tim’s site, where he helps people go on adventures: thenextchallenge.org.

the slow lane