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‘‘To me, cycling is part of my DNA,’’ Mr. Bennett said from Tbilisi, Georgia, where he was overseeing investment in road construction. He travels with a bike that disassembles and fits in an average- size suitcase or uses bicycles he stores at hotels that he frequents. ‘‘Bellhops know when I’m coming and bring them to me,’’ he said.
The number of business travelers who bike is not tracked. But based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey data released last month, there was a 43 percent increase nationally from 2000 to 2008 in people who bike to work regularly. The numbers are still small: 786,098 last year compared with 488,497 in 2000.
Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists, said that health, being green and, more recently, economics were among the reasons that more people were bicycling to work and that many of them were continuing the habit on business trips.
‘‘They don’t want to miss a day in the saddle if they can help it,’’ Mr. Clarke said.
That was the case for Alison Chaiken, a software engineer in the San Francisco Bay area. ‘‘I usually bicycle-commute and thought it’d be fun to do it on a business trip,’’ said Ms. Chaiken, who traveled to England last autumn for her then-employer, Hewlett-Packard. And, she said, it made sense. With limited public transportation from her hotel in central Bristol to the company site in the English countryside, and her concerns about driving on the ‘‘wrong’’ side of the road, she biked the scenic Bristol and Bath Railway Path for the week. She estimated that she saved the company hundreds of dollars by not renting a car and avoiding the high price of gasoline overseas. And she skirted rush-hour traffic.
In recent years, there has been progress in making biking easier and safer.
Hotels often offer bicycle rentals, and many cities in the United States have created more bike paths and lanes, improved markings on streets and installed bicycle traffic lights. And publicprivate bicycle-sharing programs, based in large part on the success of European models, are beginning to crop up or are in development in more than a dozen of the largest U.S. cities, Mr.
Clarke said.
Most bicycle-sharing programs in Europe allow patrons to pay as they go and offer large fleets of sturdy bicycles at kiosks throughout a city, ideal for business travelers ‘‘for getting around town, from one meeting to another,’’Mr.
Clarke said. Montreal recently set up a similar system, and the first large-scale program in the United States, in Minneapolis, is expected to be up and running next year, he said.
Last year, Washington began a pilot program that offers 120 bikes in 10 locations and is expected to expand soon.
But Eric V. Swanson, program manager for the World Bank, said he had not had much luck renting a bicycle in Europe because the machines at the kiosks could not read his U.S. credit card, which lacked the microprocessor chip found on European cards. ‘‘I became frustrated on several occasions,’’ he said. He was in Paris during a transit strike two years ago and ‘‘there were bikes in stands all over the city, and I couldn’t do it.’’ He ended up walking the five kilometers, or three miles, to his meeting and back.
Joshua Gaughen, who travels frequently as a U.S. government contractor, said he had faced hurdles as well in keeping up his bicycle habit. He said he had stopped taking his full-size bicycle on airplanes because it was cumbersome and expensive. ‘‘It was just a nightmare,’’ he said. The bike case or disposable boxes he used had to be unpacked at the airport because they did not fit in the compact cars that the government required on business trips.
In March, for a business trip to Hawaii, Mr. Gaughen said it would have cost $450 to fly his bicycle with him from Virginia. He said he recently bought a folding bike that fits into a regular suitcase.
‘‘It’s really the only thing that allows me to keep riding,’’ he said.
Most airlines do not charge extra if a bike fits in a suitcase. But some travelers caution bicyclists to read fine print and avoid identifying stickers on luggage.
Airlines may charge extra if they know a bike is being transported, they say.
Some cyclists say that the bicycles available at hotels are often of poor quality and unsafe and that finding local bike shops that rent can be a challenge.
George Gill recalled trying unsuccessfully to rent a bike before a business meeting in Dallas several years ago. On the flight there, he remembers thinking, ‘‘There’s got to be a better way.’’ He wrote the beginnings of a business plan for a bicycle rental company on a cocktail napkin on the plane. The resulting company, RentaBikeNow.com, offers a large selection of bicycles through about 230 bike shops — fromcruisers to carbon fiber racing bikes — for about $40 a day, in 181 cities in the United States and Canada.
But even if a cycling enthusiast finds a good bicycle while on a business trip, safety is an issue when riding in an unfamiliar place.
Richard Masoner, a software engineer who works in Silicon Valley (and runs the blog Cyclelicio.us), said the first time he rented a bike on the road, in Austin, Texas, a few years ago, the route he initially took from the hotel to a conference was a narrow, high-speed road that was difficult to share. ‘‘People told me I was insane for riding it,’’ he said.
Jim Langley, an author and cycling expert, says bicycling ‘‘helps me feel more centered and sharper in meetings.
And the fastest way to get over jet lag quickly is a one-hour bike ride,’’ he said.
‘‘It just brings you back to life.’’
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