How to plan a bike route for your commute to work: Seven tips and tools you need to know about
You probably know your route to work by heart. If you usually use public transport, you probably know all the roads around your workplace, while by car you know the fastest roads. You’re also probably familiar with the bottlenecks, and maybe hoping to steal a jump from motorists by sneaking around them while they’re being held up at them.
But you can almost certainly make your commute easier and less stressful by finding some alternative routes that bypass them entirely. You’ll likely find that they’re faster, that you can keep going smoothly instead of stopping and starting at traffic lights and intersections, and that you don’t drive through traffic fumes either.
Here are seven suggestions to make your commute easier, nicer, more comfortable and more enjoyable so you can continue to enjoy the many benefits of commuting by bike. Trying out a few different route options will help keep your commute more interesting as well.
Our top tips for planning a bike route to work
1. Use route planning tools for cyclists
The best route for a driver is probably not the best for a cyclist. Google Maps (opens in new tab) has the ability to plan a route specifically for cycling, so it’s worth seeing the suggested options and whether they’re faster or quieter than driving the route suggested for a car.
More and more cities and towns have separate bike lanes along the streets. These often let you move faster than merging with traffic, so it may be worth a small detour to drive one.
There are many planning tools to help you find a route to your workplace
(Image credit: Future)
You may find a B or C street parallel to an A that is shorter and has less traffic or fewer stops at traffic lights. Once you get into urban areas there may be a network of quiet residential streets you can take to avoid busy main roads into town. Because they often have traffic calming measures, you may be able to travel faster than a car can be driven.
In addition to Google Maps, there are other resources for cycle commuters such as Sustrans’ National Cycle Network maps (opens in new tab). There may be traffic-free bike lanes that go where you need to go. CycleStreets (opens in new tab) is another way to plan a commute route. It gives you three options: quietest, fastest, and balanced, allowing you to choose between routes or mix them up on different days.
2. Avoid hills
Climbs: ideal for leisure rides, not so good for commuting
(Image credit: Helium Media)
Cyclists love climbs, but they might not be the best option if you’re commuting to work with a bike backpack and a bunch of gear you need for work, or if there’s a lot of traffic trying to pass you. You may find that a slightly longer route that avoids a climb is faster and more beautiful than a more direct route that requires you to climb a steep incline only to have to take it carefully on the other side to keep up with the flow of traffic Keep up.
One of the reasons an electric bike is a perfect bike for commuting is that you don’t have to worry about your route being full of hills as the motor assist makes things a little easier.
3. Check bike heatmaps
Cyclists are adept at finding nifty routes that are quieter and faster than main roads. You can use heatmaps to find out where cyclists are most often on the road.
A heat map helps you to find alternative, bike-friendly routes
(Image credit: Strava)
Millions of ride miles are logged on Garmin devices, so Garmin Connect offers some of the most complete heatmaps available. It’s free to set up an account and you don’t need to own a Garmin device to use the route planner.
Strava has just as much heatmap data. You have to pay for the route planning feature, although you can get a free trial period. Other bike computer brands like Hammerhead also offer heatmaps to help you plan a route.
4. Look for breakthroughs
If you study heatmaps, you’ll likely see some routes taken by drivers that look impossible on a standard map. There are often alleys, paths or just bollard roads that a car cannot traverse, but which can certainly be cycled or pushed and will take you quickly from one area to another, perhaps between back roads or across an open area or park .
You may be able to spot options yourself by using Google Street View and checking both ends of a possible link. Google’s satellite imagery can also help. Even if you can’t do a cut-through, you might still save some time.
5. Go into the terrain
As you take it further, you might find that you can get an off-road track to work faster than an on-road. You may find that it’s tarmac or paved with hard, compacted rock, so it’s relatively dry and fast to ride. Even if this is not the case, it can remain relatively dry throughout the winter.
Canal towpaths can provide quick, quiet routes into town
(Image credit: Future)
Canal Paths are another great option for getting you where you want to go. They often lead right into the center of a city and can be metalized and easy to drive. You can return to a road at a bridge closer to your destination.
A gravel bike with chunky tires is ideal for this type of riding, but many hybrid bikes have room for chunky tires with plenty of grip, and you can even ride a bridle path on a road bike, as more and more of them will fit tires of 28mm plus width.
6. Change moves strategically
Thanks to the vagaries of railroad construction in the 19th century, you’ll often find stations on different lines within a few minutes’ bike ride of each other. If you get off at one station and go to a different line, you may be able to board a train that is closer to your destination than if you had to catch a train and travel from a station farther from your destination.
Switch strategically and you can make your commute faster, easier and quieter
(Image credit: Future)
You may also find that a bike ride from home leads to quieter roads and puts you on a line that gets you closer to work, rather than going to the nearest train station and having a busier ride around town.
7. Keep it fresh
Cycling offers you many opportunities to make your cycling sport more varied. Besides varying your route, there’s nothing quite like recording how far and how fast you’ve ridden to stay motivated. So having a bike computer or just a bike app on your smartphone is a great tool and will usually automatically feed your data into an app like Strava so you have a running total of your rides.
Strava also lets you set up segments on your ride so you can see how fast you’ve been riding parts of your commute and challenge yourself. Ride a few segments at both fast and slow intervals and you can add some workout to your ride.
If you’re looking for an easy effort to break up your commute, try this “big equipment minute” bike workout that improves your fitness by specifically working to increase your pedaling power.
Komoot and Strava allow you to embed photos and other media to record your rides. Take a photo each week and you can see how things change throughout the year.