Mistakes with Time and Money - Bicycling Dependability

LA is known for flakiness because of transportation. The unpredictable driving conditions make people less dependable. You might set a time/date to meet up a week in advance, but when the day comes, if traffic is bad, you're tempted to cancel rather than struggle through bumper-to-bumper. Do it enough, and you become an Angelino. After flakiness, the next worse scheduling faux pas is being late.  

 

When I lived in LA, friends and acquaintances would assume I'd be late because I rode a bike. To be clear, I was almost never late. But the truth was backwards to non-bicyclist understanding: BECAUSE I rode a bike, I was hardly ever late. Biking in LA traffic means....No Traffic! Bicycling is usually a predictable trip duration.* It might take longer to get places, but if I plan ahead and give myself enough time, I know I'll reach my destination comfortably and punctually. Merely planning to go somewhere via bike added the intention to show up on time.

 

How does transportation identity affect interpretation of transportation cost?

 

We measure transportation cost the way we measure most costs--with time and money. How long will it take? What's the price? There are more exact and objective ways to measure things--like by distance, weight, or energy, but economic frameworks begin with minutes and dollars. If you look up directions online, it gives you estimated time and fare.

This guides policy. For transportation modeling, we convert travel time into an individual's hourly wage--minutes into dollars--the assumption being that rational behavior will do the thing that maximizes income. This is not morally or ethically "rational," just profit-driven. It regressively assumes that the time of someone-paid-a-lot is more valuable than the time of someone-paid-a-little. This is intuitively wrong. People who get paid more need less time to work. People who get paid less per hour need more time to work, and often desire more time with family.

 

These approaches are myopic. Focus on time and money is a clear mistake with an expanded view including variable trip duration and perception of time. These ideas can also be combined when trip duration feels variable with perception of time. Bicycling can constructively align the two.

 

Variable Trip Duration

We typically imagine bicycling as slower than driving or transit. This may be true under controlled circumstances, and it leads to thinking that trip duration is fixed. Sure, over a certain distance, motorized speed is faster than non-motorized. However, in the wild, traffic is irregular and dynamic. Delay factors make trip duration variable. Motorized travel is complicated by chemical, electrical, mechanical, and human systems. Have you ever been in a car, bus, or train, and something delays you from reaching your destination? It could be....traffic congestion, fuel deficiency, machine malfunction, passenger interruption, law enforcement, operator error, vehicle collisions, road construction, mistimed transfers, parking competition, etc.

 

Trip duration variability abounds on transit networks depending on how they're designed. It almost seems silly to consider all the things that can go wrong on a bus or train without grade separation, or exclusive right of way. Potential delays include all the things that could go wrong with a transit vehicle PLUS all the things that could happen to delay cars in the way.

 

 

 

Neglecting to thinking of trip duration as variable biases us towards motorized vehicles because we imagine they go faster even though they're more subject to delay. We even start to tune transportation systems in attempt to maintain speeds and reduce their trip duration variance, like progressive signal timing, or mandating minimal parking requirements. Bicycling and walking are more dependable since there are fewer external factors. Sure, you might catch a flat tire, or get distracted by an eye-catching window display. But those are still less variable and certainly lower risk. Additionally, the pleasant distractions for bicycling and walking can affect perception of time.

Perception of Time

This one is self explanatory. But I'll reference a famous physicist regarding how time warps depending on what you're doing.

 

 

We perceive time depending on what we're doing. When you're driving fast, that probably feels good, until it gets too fast. When you're in traffic, it feels like losing time. On transit. Sit next to a pretty person, the trip goes by too fast. Sit next to someone unhygenic or impolite, it feels like forever.

 

Bicycling becomes predictably enjoyable as you get used to it. Ask a bicyclist. Is it always fun? No. We have to ride on streets with traffic and crazy drivers all upset they aren't going faster. But then why do we still do it? Well, because once you get good at it and learn to predict how dumb drivers behave, you're cautious enough to go slower without having to worry. You learn to buffer enough time and space to safely react to other road users even when they behave badly.

 

Temporal Alignment

Bicycling reduces trip duration variability, and the more you do it, the more comfortable and enjoyable it becomes.It helps answer the question "How much time is enough?" You know how long it should always take. You know how much you'll enjoy it. The more you do it, the more you slow down time to enjoy it. 

Bicycling is cheaper, takes a more consistent amount of time and makes life more predictably enjoyable. It makes life and people more dependable.**

 

*on rare occasions I may've been waylaid by a flat tire, but even then, it was an opportunity to practice speedy tube repair skills, which was affirming. even better, use bikeshare.

**bikeshare augments this fruther by eliminating other variables for bicycling, like maintenance, storage, or theft--assuming the service operates as intended.