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Despite vast improvements in cycling infrastructure in many towns and cities across the UK, the majority of Brits still don’t bike to work. While the benefits of cycling to work are nearly innumerable, here are our top 10 reasons to bike to work.

Reduce your Carbon Footprint

Considering the average road use of European car drivers, different fuel types, average occupation, and adding emissions from production, driving a car emits about 271g CO2 per passenger-kilometre.

Taking the bus will cut your emissions by more than half. But if you wanted to reduce your emissions even further, try a bicycle. Whilst bicycle production does have an impact, and while they are not fuel powered, they are food powered and producing food unfortunately creates CO2 emissions.

But the good news is that production of a bicycle sets you back only 5g per kilometre driven. When you add the CO2 emissions from the average European diet, which is around 16g per kilometre cycled, the total CO2 emissions per kilometre of riding your bike is about 21g – more than ten times less than a car.

Improve Fitness

It should be no surprise that cycling will improve your fitness. If you don’t currently exercise regularly, the improvements will be even more dramatic and the benefits greater, and cycling is a great low-impact, low to moderate intensity way to get more active. Perhaps you have a busy schedule and can’t spare any time for the gym – swapping your work commute to cycling Conwy means you could get in your exercise whilst doing something you needed to do anyway!

Explore Your Local Area

If you take public transport it is likely you have no choice, if you drive it’s probably habitual, but chances are you take the same journey day after day. By cycling to work you give yourself the opportunity to take a different route, to explore around you.

You might find a new beauty spot, or perhaps even a shortcut. Travelling by bike gives you far more opportunity to stop and take photos, turn and look back, or even disappear up an interesting side street.

Save Some Money

While there might be some expenses involved with cycling to work, the cost of bike maintenance and insurance is far lower than the equivalent costs of running a car each year. Swap over to cycling and you’ll save money each time you commute into and from work. It has been estimated that you could save around £3000 a year if you cycled to work every day.

Avoid Traffic Jams

Fed up sitting in queues of traffic? It’s not good for your stress levels, and it’s certainly not good for the environment. If you switch to commuting to work by bike, you won’t have to sit in traffic on congested streets and you’ll be helping the planet too by reducing the number of cars on the road. Save time, improve your mood, and benefit others too.  

Improved Sleep Quality

With modern-day stresses, high levels of screen time, disconnecting and falling asleep is a struggle for many people. A study of over 8000 people from the University of Georgia found a strong correlation between cardio-respiratory fitness and sleep patterns: a lower level of fitness was linked to both an inability to fall asleep and poor sleep quality. The answer could be cycling – regular moderate cardiovascular exercise like cycling boosts fitness and makes it easier to fall and stay asleep.