Cycling is faster than the train?

[[XAP]Bob]

Are we comparing like with like here. I don't think so. Unless there is a direct train from A to B then you can't compare it to a bike being ridden from A to B unless it follows the same route as the train, i.e. via the same places as the three train journeys.

No - you are going from A to B, not racing a train along it's path.

To take the train from here to my old place of work would have taken >7 hours if I wanted to get there before 9 am, but a minimum of 5 hours a day on the train -add that onto an 8 hour working day and 8 hours sleep and there isn't much left to get to and from the station.

[axel_knutt]

When I worked in Chelmsford it used to take me about 40 mins to drive the 13m home. If I used the train it was about a 10 min walk to the station, by which time I had just missed the 17.05, so I had to wait for the 17.55. That got in about 18.30, so by the time I had walked the 10 min home that was about an hour later than by car. If I'd cycled I could have done it in less than 1h40m, but not 40m.

[ChrisButch]

Mind you, I took a rather hilly route! Grief!
One bit of road - B3227 - had a 25% downhill immediately followed by a 20% uphill.
Followed by another one, all in the space of less than two miles!
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Atheri ... 36.03,,0,0

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Atheri ... 27,,0,0.32

Screen shot 2014-09-22 at 10.03.02.png

Ah, the Torrington-Umberleigh Road. That brought back a vivid memory of that stretch from 30 years ago. I'd just moved down from Yorkshire to a new job in the South West, with the optimistic intention of using train+bike as much as possible, rather than the car, when visiting clients in a big regional patch. One of my first visits was in Torrington, and I had to get back to Umberleigh to pick up the train home. It was a freezing November night, with ice in bottom the dips between those 25% switchbacks....

Quite soon after that, I became rather less ambitious about the amount of work miles I'd be able to do on the bike....