My sustainable travel journey

Four years ago, we decided as a family to sell our second car and I committed to cycling to work every day. I wanted to reduce my impact on the planet and support low carbon living. Although cycling the 30km round trip to the office was within my capabilities, I found cycling five days in a row to be tough. Especially when the wind was against me. I realised that if I was to continue my sustainable travel goal, I needed to either get fitter or find a low/zero-cost backup solution, other than public transport which was rapidly becoming as expensive as driving my car.

I stumbled across a free electric bike trial at a local shop and ended up buying an ex-display bike with only 150 miles on the clock. For those who are new to electric bikes, they offer pedalling assistance up to a speed of 15 mph to take the effort out of hills and wind. I now have nearly 4,000 miles on the clock and arrive at work far less stressed than I would be if I were sitting in my car bumper to bumper. While the travel time is almost identical by bike or by car, the physical benefits are in favour of the bike every time.

I mix commuting between my electric bike and normal bike for windy/non-windy days and have developed a real dislike of driving to work in traffic. As a result, my fitness has improved, I’m happier when I arrive at work and I have even used my bike to attend site visits within the local area. The electric bike allows me to travel dressed for meetings without arriving sweaty from the ride.

As a family, we use the car only once or twice a week when we cannot all ride our bikes or walk. I like to think that we have considerably reduced our carbon footprint and our impact on the environment. By the changing how I commute to work, conservative estimates put the reduction in carbon at approximately 1 tonne per year. We have also made changes to our daily family life to further reduce our carbon footprint. At home we eat a plant-based diet, shop locally for our groceries, compost our food waste and try to only buy things in recyclable packages.

Long term, I would like to convert my house to run on renewable energy with solar panels and heat pumps to combat the rising energy cost. Unless I re-mortgage the house, I will have to be satisfied with choosing a renewable energy tariff from my supplier for now.