Champion Cyclist Tells How to Tour de Office
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 4:03 PM
For the past two years, Hao Le has traded four wheels for two to get to work four days out of five. It's a 90-minute, 20-mile ride, but for this passionate biker, the commute is pure bliss.
Le, a METRO senior attorney, is a competitive racer who says he bikes from his home in the Memorial City area in west Houston to downtown as "training for races, stress relief, getting to work quickly and overall enjoyment of getting to work."
May is National Bike Month and this week is Bike-to-Work-Week, promoted by the League of American Bicyclists.
For commuters like Le, biking to work is extremely doable, despite Houston's year-round humidity. "When I get to work, I use baby wipes and the bathroom to wash my hair. I towel dry it," says Le. "I have a change of clothes in my office."
Le says he used city of Houston maps to find dedicated bike lanes - and 60 to70 percent of his ride occurs on those lanes.
He said drivers tend to immediately change lanes, giving cyclists the entire lane, or they brush up against the cyclist. Instead, Le advises: "Don't freak out when you see a cyclist riding in your lane. Take your time, slow down a little bit, and go through. You don't need to change lanes," he says.
This low-cost, environmentally friendly way to commute isn't as daunting as it may seem, says Le. "It's just not as hard as you think it is logistically. You're just giving yourself excuses. If you really want to ride to work - when there's a will, there's a way."
If you can't bike all the way to work, try a bi-modal solution. Ride your bike and ride METRO. Many of our riders are already doing that.
Take a look at the numbers.
Since we launched our bikes-on-buses program in April 2007, we have had 56,092 bike boardings.
The numbers of bikers using our buses has mushroomed.
From October 2008 to April 2009, we had 29,014 bikes on buses compared to 6,420 buses the same period a year ago. That's a 352 percent increase in bikes.
If you have commuted to work using a combination of bike and bus - or bike and train - let us know what your experience has been like.
We'd love to hear from you.