To Bike or Not To Bike?

Biking has not only become a popular fad here in Portland, OR, with the rate tripled since 2001 but also in many states across the U.S.  According to USA Cycling, participation in cycling has been growing steadily over the last decades. We are constantly being told to bike but when it comes to asking people what makes biking beneficial, their answers are often very simple and uninformative like because it saves gas or simply just fun. It was due to this realization that our group became curious to learn more about biking, to find out why one should or shouldn’t consider biking in his/her daily routine.



Through our research, we’ve found that there are both pros and cons about biking. It explains why some people bike and some don’t. Perhaps, many are still weighing the risks and the benefits of biking and therefore undecided. Before we boast about the positives, let’s us go over some negatives that biking might unintentionally creates:

• Accidents: Have you ever felt like the road isn’t big enough to fit everyone? Increasing bikers and unchanged numbers of bike lanes and lack of awareness lead to unwanted injuries and sometimes deaths.
• Thieves: Cars are hard to move but breaking a bike locks and disappears with the two might sound relatively easy to thieves
• Can’t carry much: Imagine biking back from a grocery store with five bags of goods plus the purse/backpack and a fragile item. Sounds like a struggle? 
• Unfriendly attitudes from pedestrians: Yes, pedestrians give car drivers a hard time too but they don’t seem to like sharing the road with cyclists, especially places where there is no bike lanes.

Despite all the cons about biking described above, bikers still continue to bike. These bikers are probably already aware of the benefits of biking that we list below:

• Fitness: Biking away is a great substitute for the time spending in the gym. Daily biking can help you maintain a healthy body weight.
• Healthy hearts: Bike riding has the same cardiovascular benefits as any other aerobic exercise.
• Muscle strength: Bike riding strengthens your thighs, hips and rear end. Cycling also helps preserve cartilage in joints.
• Save money and go green: Not only you’re saving money on gas, parking, insurance, maintenance, etc. but you also help creates a greener and cleaner environment.

Obviously, there are more pros and cons of biking. We choose to  focus only on a few important ones that we believe could help people in deciding whether or not to bike. Ultimately, it’s a personal choice. We hope, however, that everyone realizes how the positives outweigh the negatives so that when asked to bike or not to bike, the answer would be: Bike!