To bike or not to bike
Featuring climate action and some maths
To say that I chose the bike life is a bit of an exaggeration - really the bike life was chosen for me. Back in 2019, while I was campaigning for mayor and a Hamiton West seat on Hamilton City Council, my mum was borrowing my car and got into a car accident at a roundabout and long story short, my 1999 Mazda Demio that I’d owned for ten years was written off.
The micro-mobility life
At that time I was living near the lake in Hamilton, and working two blocks over in Frankton. It was a five-minute walk to work, or a two-minute e-scooter ride. If my partner and I wanted to go to the movies in town, instead of driving and having to park, we would simply double on the e-scooter and take the Western Rail Trail straight into the CBD or we would double the other way on the Western Rail Trail and go to Volare bakery off Kahikatea Drive for Saturday brunch. The whole reason my mum was borrowing my car in the first place was that my car was more fuel-efficient than hers, and I hardly used mine at all.
I got a whole $1,200~ from my insurance for my car which went straight into paying for our rent, groceries and moving house costs. I took unpaid leave to campaign for Council and it hit my personal finances hard - not to mention that the house we were renting was put up for sale during the campaign and our lease wasn’t renewed, so we were moving and decided to buy a house on top of that (an expensive endeavour at the best of times and we had a lot of help to do so). There was no way I could buy a car on top of that. I also knew that as a city, the biggest contributor to Hamilton’s carbon emissions is road transport - specifically individual car ownership. Not owning a car fit into the kaupapa of why I was running for Council in the first place.
Out in the burbs
We moved from Frankton to the very north of the city and I lasted about four months before taking the bus drove me up the wall - it takes about fifty minutes to an hour to commute into the city while only 15-20 minutes to drive. I had committed, when we bought our house, that taking the bus wasn’t going to be a big deal but all the closest bus stops near our house are up or down small hills and don’t have shelters or seats - making it a hot and sweaty walk and wait in the sun over summer or a wet walk and wait in the cold during winter. I think I’d be more partial to the bus if it was easier to store our e-scooter onboard (it doesn’t quite fit in the footwell) and if there were a more direct route into town. Getting motion sick and having chronic back pain also don’t endear the bus to me either, no matter how much I want to like it.
Finding the right bike
I tried a couple times to bike from our new house into town on my old pushbike - a super-light road bike that my mum had bought me also 10 years ago to bike a triathlon on. It had gotten a few rides during my teen years, and a little bit more use when I was at university but was mostly put off due to one too many near misses with cars and buses on Knighton, Clyde and Hillcrest Road. Google Maps thought it should take me about 30-40 minutes to bike from our new house to Go Eco, in Frankton Village - it took me about an hour and a half. I was definitely nowhere near fit enough to tackle the ups and downs of the Te Awa River Ride (and was not in a safe-to-be-around-other-people-without-a-shower state at the end) but it did show me a new route that didn’t involve dodging cars and buses for the majority of the trip. Biking seemed - in theory - doable, I liked biking, I wanted to bike - it was just a matter of how to do it safely and comfortably.
Enter my mum’s e-bike. While my pushbike wasn’t a goer, my mum’s e-bike made it a doable 30-40 minute commute and I had the extra advantage of not being a stinky, smelly mess when I arrived at the other end. However, my mum has this giant mountain e-bike with a huge high bar in the middle (a similar model to this one). I am 5ft 2 on a good day and my short little legs struggle to get on and off the bike - a problem when the safest route to and from the Te Awa River Ride is littered with chicanes so tight I have to get off the bike. I scraped my legs on the pedals or simply just fell off the bike too many times. I had to accept that this bike was not the right bike for me - but an e-bike definitely was what I needed.
I had tried out e-bikes put on by Mercury Energy at the Hamilton Domain a year or so before, so I knew you could get different kinds of electric assist and they came in different styles. Over the summer of 2019, I tried out a beautiful step-through bike that fit all my needs:
It had a basket so I didn’t have to wear a backpack - exactly what I needed for my back pain
It had a giant, loud bell - perfect for the Te Awa River Ride, where I would be sharing the path with pedestrians and other bike users
It was the step-through style, so had no high bar for me to swing my leg over
It had a throttle - which allowed me to use short bursts of the highest electric assist, particularly good for when you’re getting going from standing still at traffic lights or roundabouts with cars, or navigating the wee hills of the Te Awa River Ride
Plus it was the right size for me after some small adjustments to the seat and handlebars
The math
It may sound silly, but I wanted a bike that I was going to be excited to ride - one that I felt confident on and that I felt good about. This bike ticked all the boxes - but there was one setback. A new e-bike was basically the cost of a small secondhand car, which was the very thing that I didn’t have the money for in the first place. So I did what any over-thinker in my position would do - I made a list to work out the difference between the upfront cost vs the true cost, and to see if saving up would be worth it:1
While the upfront costs were very similar, the known ongoing five-yearly costs of having a car were 56x more than having an e-bike - not to mention the added benefits of transitioning to lower-carbon transport. The downsides of it taking longer to get into town as well as the convenience of it don’t balance when you consider it incorporates incidental exercise into my life (it’s a 10km commute each way for me), and spending time in green space (the Te Awa River Ride is through a lot of replanted native bush next to the river). I saved up and used a chunk of my COVID-19 income relief payment to make up the difference - which seemed like a good use of government-gifted money (if they won’t invest in climate action, I will).
I didn’t include the maintenance or insurance costs, since they can be quite variable and might not be as comparable for other people. I could have picked up an absolute lemon of a car that constantly needed work or I could have gotten a great car that always passed its WOF (RIP my 1999 Mazda Demio). I was paying an additional $400/year for my car insurance (and it had an excess of $400 on it as well) but my bike was just added to our total contents insurance.
I know it cost me exactly $4,231 for my bike + helmet2 + waterproof basket cover + bike seat cover + bike lock3. In the time since, I also bought some extra things like a rear rack (which I got painted the same colour as my bike - shoutout to Chartwell Panel & Paint), a pannier bag for the rack, a sensor added to help my gears and motor collaborate (since my bike is actually a pushbike convert). I also got a flat tyre that needed fixing. In total, that’s cost me $340 across the past two years - so definitely more than my base $350 over five years but most of that has been investing in accessories to make commuting and picking up groceries easier, rather than unplanned maintenance or reoccurring costs.
But the e-scooter!
Now, you might be thinking, “yeah yeah exercise, yeah yeah climate change, but what about the e-scooter! You already owned e-transport that worked perfectly fine!” Good point. When we lived in Frankton, it was 1.8km from our house to the movies, 1.6km to Volare and it was a beautiful smooth concrete path - no lumps or bumps. Now it’s a 10km commute each way, our e-scooter has no suspension and the river path is filled with lots of missing pavers, lumpy bits from tree roots underneath, and I would have to walk it up the hilly parts. The distance and the terrain make the bike by far the best option, while the e-scooter has no storage and is more dangerous to use in the rain.
But the bus!
“Okay but what about the weather! That’s what you didn’t like about the bus!”. Another good point. Somehow, the cold and wet is much more bearable when you’re moving - it doesn’t seep into your bones the same and you’re always getting closer to where you’re going. I made some rainpants to match my raincoat, a little merino headband to wear under my helmet and a matching scarf to pull up around my face.
It’s great in summer too because you create a little breeze around yourself and I’ve invested in some great linen shirts to keep the sun off me while I’m out and about.
A happy-somewhat ending
And on the whole, it’s worked out for me - since buying my bike in June 2020, my odometer is sitting at 1,800km. It probably took about a year to make it a normal part of my life, from working on my balance while waiting at traffic lights to simply adjusting to that much exercise all the time (🥴). There are always lulls when we go into lockdowns and for a little while I was commuting into Te Rapa, rather than the CBD (which is a bit closer) but there’s also weekend rides to make up for it. I do still bus occasionally if it’s really raining cats and dogs and also carpool with my partner or mum.
I don’t think I would have chosen cycling if not for the river path - and it does make me sad thinking about all the other parts of our city which don’t have safe infrastructure nearby or going to where they need to go. It also makes me consider I could have been cycling 10 years ago when I first moved to Hamilton if I’d had fewer negative experiences cycling on the road. Financially, it makes sense. It’s better for me as a disabled person than the bus. It’s climate action, and it forces me to do exercise and go outside. And if I’m honest, it’s fun. The other option, of course, is to move closer to the CBD to relive my micro-transport dreams again but the state of our housing market is a topic for another blog.
If you’re considering buying an e-bike, this Consumer NZ article is a great place to start.
The math:
Take the average of the parking because I am not reliable enough to get early bird every day + I work from home occasionally and we have lockdowns so ($10.5 x 4 days per week) x 47 for how many weeks in my contract = $1,974
(+ $1,800 fuel + $69 WOF + $100 rego = $3,943 per year) x 5 years = $19,715
My bike has a 0.45kwh battery and we pay $0.21 per kwh and I need to charge it approximately twice a week = $0.19 per week x 47 for how many weeks in my contract = $8.93 per year (this assumes it’s a from-empty charge each time, which it isn’t but for the sake of easy math, we’ll round it to that)
$8.93 x 5 years = $44.65 + $300 for two helmets over that period = $344.65
A note on helmets: You should also replace your helmet if you have an accident, if it’s got any physical damage, and there’s an ongoing internet discussion about replacing your bike helmet somewhere between every 3-10 years depending on the helmet and how often it gets used. I have the light grey version of this helmet because MIPS seemed pretty flash, it fits well, it was the closest helmet I could get to match the cream of my bike (😅) and I can take off the visor when I don’t need it.
A note on bike locks: Seven Sharp - Think your lock's good enough to stop thieves from stealing your bike? and the Consumer NZ article is also very good. I have a $49 steel-o-chain from Abus with a number lock because I always forget my keys.