Did I invent commuting?

[TrevorM]

Just wondering who the oldest first commuters here are.
Don't just mean the occasional cycle to work but where cycling was your usual mode of transport most days.
1979 for me - 11 miles each way, most days for about 4 years.

 

[corshamjim]

I don't think I'd quite yet started cycling the 3 miles or so to school in 1979. I guess it might have been more like 1981. I often took the same time as the car which took my sisters to school.

 

[Borbus]

Well I wasn't yet born in 1979, but I did start commuting quite early in my life, I think. I did 7 miles each way to school when I was 16. I did it every day except when it was raining hard forcing me to take the bus instead.

It involved a short but really nasty stretch of 60mph main road and, thinking back, I just did not have a clue how to take the lane in order to turn right back then! I sometimes had to wait for ages to get into the central reservation. There was an incomplete off road cycle path parallel to the road, but the part that was missing was the only part that was actually necessary! Long after I left school they finished the cycle path and put a 40mph limit on the road due to the high number of accidents...

 

[BenM]

I don't think I'd quite yet started cycling the 3 miles or so to school in 1979. I guess it might have been more like 1981

If riding to primary school counts.... 3 miles each way in 1977... so in reply to the OP, no I don't think you did invent commuting!

B.

 

[funnymummy]

The earliset I can claim to have commuted for work purposes is 1983..My paper-round - but was riding to school from 1977
I forget how old I am some days - Only when think of things like this I realise i'm the wrong side of 40

 

[gb155]

Just wondering who the oldest first commuters here are.
Don't just mean the occasional cycle to work but where cycling was your usual mode of transport most days.
1979 for me - 11 miles each way, most days for about 4 years.

Wasn't even born :-)

 

[corshamjim]

If riding to primary school counts.... 3 miles each way in 1977... so in reply to the OP, no I don't think you did invent commuting!

B.

Ah, now you're talking! I remember cycling to school about a mile or two (with my mum walking/jogging alongside!) when I was 6 so that would have been circa 1972. That was only for a few weeks after we moved house and before I started at the new school which was closer to home.

 

[Melonfish]

i started cycling to school in the 80's, in fact spent most of my childhood on a bmx of some sort. did my paper round on one too.
also i was born in 79

 

[MrHappyCyclist]

did my paper round on one too.
also i was born in 79

Oh, well, if we're counting paper rounds, then 1968!

 

[upsidedown]

1978 10 miles each way to school, but only a couple of times a week to save my bus money for cigs

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

1968/69 to school. Only a couple of miles but there was a hill involved. The bus money went more on Mars bars than cigs.

1973 for work commuting. Fairly local but around 1980 I started commuting up to the city.

And then, sometime around the end of the 80s, I decided that the main roads and driving behaviour were no longer bike-tolerant enough to continue cycling. I think it was probably the appearance of bus lanes that made commuting attractive again, at least in London.

 

[kedab]

i commuted 2 miles to and from my secondary school back in the day 1987-1990 - i've just looked up the distance, i thought it was much much more than 2 miles!

 

[Deleted member 1258]

Came back to cycling about 1979 and have been commuting ever since. In the early 1960's I was cycling to and from school, in the mid 1960's I was cycling to and from work, in the late 1960's I stopped cycling.

 

[trsleigh]

Cycled to school fom 1964 to 1965.
Then in London on & off since 1975.

 

[summerdays]

Hmm... I only took it up about 4 years ago ... so I'm not going to win this one am I. However I wish I had started much earlier.