The single worst part about being an adult is the commute to work, and this is a hill I’m willing to die on. For years, I have been but a mere pawn in the games of TFL, South Eastern rail, and other villainous transport powers. Putting up your prices again? Very good, my liege. Train cancelled at the slightest sight of wind, rain, sun or snow? Naturally. Squished into the furthestmost corner of the carriage like a runt sardine that slipped past quality control? Cosy.
When I moved to Zone 2 Brixton and finally escaped the clutches of rail services, I thought my miserable commuting days were behind me. Think again. Relying solely on tubes is a fresh kind of hell. If it’s not the overcrowded platforms, sweltering carriages, omnipresent smog or lingering COVID super spreaders that grind my gears, it’s the daily £8.60 TFL Apple Pay notifications that remind me I’m paying for the pleasure.
So, I was primed and prepped for a change in my travel habits when an email came past my inbox with the subject line “Would you like to trial an e-bike this summer?”. Auto Trader had a huge range of e-bikes to choose from, and I decided on the gold Modus Tour because it was described as safe, ‘perfect for city cycling’, and it’d match all of my gold jewellery.
I was particularly excited to find an alternative to my little run-around car that had almost become redundant now that I was living in central London, except for the odd big food shop, of course. When I do venture past popping down to Lidl, I’m a magnet to fines. I park in the wrong places, find myself driving through traffic quieting zones and turning down one-way roads more frequently than I care to admit. Driving in London is not for the faint-hearted or the broke. Nearly half of car owners, (47%), believe e-bikes could replace shorter car journeys and, spoiler alert, I am now a part of that stat.
I’m one month into my e-bike odyssey, and I’m a fully-fledged convert. The improvements to my life have been countless, but I’ll give it a go.
The number one thing that has been the best part of my time with this e-bike has to be the money it’s saved me. Now I understand I’m in a very privileged position not to have had to front the initial cost of purchasing a bike, which is one of the main reasons that only 9% of UK consumers have yet to own an e-bike. But for me, it has taken a lot of pressure off of my debit account, and that is easiest explained with a little girl maths.
So, as I already said, the daily TFL travel cap for Zone 2 is £8.60 a day. I was commuting to the office three days a week, totalling £25.80, meaning that every month, I was spending £103.20 just for the pleasure of travelling to and from work. This means that this month, my £70 maximalist manicure, one of my bi-weekly £25 food shops, my cheeky £5 McDonald’s breakfast wrap the day after our Women of The Year Awards and one of the very many £2.80 chilled Starbucks caramel macchiatos that I buy at lunch – all FREE, with 50p to spare. So not only am I saving money, I’m making money.