BEG Bicycles is a British company with a superbly charming website. The biking images used in this post are pure joy; unfiltered happiness for our hearts. Of course biking is nostalgic but it’s also a high-priority mode of transportation in some of the world’s happiest (translated wellbeing) countries like the Netherlands and Denmark.

Some American cities promote biking, making safety and ease of getting around town a high priority. Yet, inspite of all we know about the health benefits of biking and fast walking, we Americans are getting fatter and remain generally unwilling to get on a bike, compared to other countries.

Ride With Sophie

Biking in America Good News

The vision of bikers as rugged, lycra-wearing guys has given way to women riding in dresses and pumps, along with casual attire. In New York City, bicycling was up 66% from 2007-2009, and injuries are down 50% with more bike lanes and respect for bikers among auto drivers.

New York has encouraged biking around town with new bike lanes and safety measures. In four American cities — Eugene-Springfield, OR; Fort Collins-Loveland, CO; Missoula, MT and Boulder, CO about 5% of people bike to work. Here in Philadelphia, the 2009 percent was 2.16 with an unusually high mix of female riders. Bicycle commuting increased 151 percent from 2000 to 2009 in Philadelphia.

Biking in America Reality Check

In new research from Dr. John Pucher, a professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey,suggests that overall walking and cycling are stagnating in America. The majority of increases have been among men, the employed, well-educated and people without a car.

Pucher says that 25 percent of all trips in American cities are a mile or shorter, and 40 percent are two miles or shorter. These statistics make bicycling around town the way to go for health and wellbeing. But women especially take long detours to avoid biking on a busy arterial street.

In northern Europe, many more people are biking — including many seniors — because the governments have made safety and stressless biking a priority. This Dutch blog shares details of why bicycles are so popular in the Netherlands including the ‘fact’ that there are more bikes than inhabitants in the country.

Dutch researchers have quantified the net benefits of switching from cars to bikes in the Netherlands.

“For individuals who shift from car to bicycle, we estimated that beneficial effects of increased physical activity are substantially larger (3–14 months gained) than the potential mortality effect of increased inhaled air pollution doses (0.8–40 days lost) and the increase in traffic accidents (5–9 days lost). Societal benefits are even larger because of a modest reduction in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and traffic accidents.”

US Bicycling and Walking Benchmarking Project

This on-going study from the Alliance for Biking & Walking tracks bicycling and walking in America’s 50 states and our 50 most-populated cities.

The first report was published in 2007, another in 2010, with a third scheduled for January 2012, based on surveys collected between Oct 2010 and Jan 2011.

In the current report, America’s 10 Best Bike Cities are Minneapolis; Portland, OR; Boulder, CO; Seattle, WA; Eugene, OR; San Francisco; Madison, WI; New York City; Tucson, AZ; and Chicago. (See Top 50)

Google Trends tracks search queries and story activity about biking by state and city. Their state lineup top 10 includes Utah, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Vermont, Oregon, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Washington. Note that Google Trends would include people searching about biking trails and other vacation-related biking activities by people living out of state.

Google Trends tracks biking by country with an international lineup of New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, Australia, India, Netherlands, Germany.

Biking and Health Benefits

The Harvard Nurses’ Health Study, which is tracking 116,608 female nurses since 1989, when they were 25 to 42 years old, finds that bicycling and brisk walking — not slow walking — are effective in fighting obesity.

Women who biked or walked briskly 30 minutes a day over the 16-year-period maintained or even lost weight, in contrast to the slow walkers. Women who decreased their bicycling time from more than 15 minutes a day to less than 15 minutes gained about four-and-a-half pounds on average.

Healthier Communities via Active Travel

A study published August 19, 2010 in the American Journal of Public Health, concluded that communities with more walkers and cyclists are healthier than those where people travel by car.

The researchers analyzed city- and state-level data from the United States and international data from 15 countries to study the relationship between “active travel” — bicycling or walking rather than driving — and physical activity, obesity and diabetes.

More than 50 percent of the differences in obesity rates among countries is linked to how many people walk and bicycle. Here in America 30 percent of the difference in obesity rates is associated with biking and walking, rather than driving, to our destinations.

Biking and Dementia

New research suggests that walking at least six miles per week helps protect our brains and preserves memory in old age. The correlation between exercise and lowered risk of dementia is well documented.

While the new findings on lowered dementia risk are focused on fast-walking — note that we mean a brisk pace, where one is barely able to carry on a conversation — we can assume that they transfer to biking, too.

The reasons for biking are overwhelmingly positive for body and soul — as long as riding lanes are generally safe from car driving road warriors. We’ll be tracking life on two wheels when Lisa moves into her new loft in a couple weeks.

In a massive life makeover, Lisa and her husband Colon are creating a new life for themselves — loving everyone around them but also deciding to carve out a lifestyle space for THEM, on their terms. The move comes in just two weeks, and Lisa will be hitting the road on her new bike as part of her new life.

If you are an AOC friend anywhere in the world, and you who ride bike to work or around your town, I would love to hear from you. Photos please. Drop me a note in Contact Anne and we’ll get going on your story. Love, Anne