Bike vs Car in Rome: the morning that opened my eyes

Monday morning. Alarm at 6:40. Shower, quick breakfast, car keys on the table. I leave the house at 7:15.

I live in the Appio Latino neighbourhood. The office is on Via Crescenzio, in Prati. Eight kilometres as the crow flies. Should take fifteen minutes. In Rome, it’s a different story.

🚗 The morning by car #

Via Appia Nuova is already a car park. Porta San Giovanni, a funnel. Lungotevere, a funeral procession with horns.

Fifty minutes to cover eight kilometres. Fifty minutes of clutch, traffic lights, double-parking, scooters cutting in and buses stopping in the second lane.

But the best part is yet to come.

I arrive in Prati and the parking hunt begins. Via Crescenzio, full. Via Tacito, full. The side streets, full. I circle for an hour and a half. An hour and a half. Crawling through Prati’s streets with the engine running and my patience dropping below zero.

In the end, exhausted, I surrender. Piazza Cavour multi-storey car park. “At least I’ll find a spot here,” I think.

I find a spot. I also find the bill: that evening, when I leave, the receipt says €35.

Thirty-five euros for the privilege of leaving my car sitting still all day.

Let’s take stock of that morning:

Two hours and twenty minutes. To travel eight kilometres. And €35 lighter.

That evening I go home thinking: “There must be another way.”

🚲 The following week: the electric Brompton #

The next Monday I change everything.

I leave the house at 7:30 — fifteen minutes later than the week before. I go downstairs with my electric Brompton. I unfold it in ten seconds on the pavement. Helmet, backpack, off I go.

Same route. Appio Latino → San Giovanni → Celio → Lungotevere → Prati.

But this time everything is different.

While cars are stuck in queues, I ride past. While scooters slalom between bumpers, I pedal calmly in the cycle lane. I don’t sweat — it’s an electric bike, the pedal assist does its job. I don’t stress — nobody’s honking at me. I don’t look for parking — I fold the Brompton and carry it into the office.

Eighteen minutes. Door to door.

At 7:50 I was sitting at my desk. Fresh. Alert. Coffee in hand and my head already on the first task of the day.

One hour and forty-five minutes earlier than the previous week.
Thirty-five euros saved.
And above all: zero stress.

📊 The numbers over a full year #

Let’s do the real maths. Over 220 working days:

455 hours saved. That’s 57 working days. Two and a half months of life given back.

And those €5,450 saved? That’s a holiday. A pension contribution. The cost of the Brompton itself, paid off in less than a year.

💪 The benefits you can’t measure in euros #

But the financial numbers are only part of the story. The ones that truly matter are the others.

Cardiovascular health #

Cycling 36 minutes a day, even with pedal assist, counts as moderate physical activity. The World Health Organisation recommends at least 150 minutes of aerobic activity per week. By cycling to work, you get 180 without even thinking about it.

Studies published in the British Medical Journal show that cycle commuters have:

• 41% lower risk of death from all causes
• 52% lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease
• 45% lower risk of developing cancer

These aren’t my numbers. They’re science’s numbers, based on a sample of over 250,000 British commuters tracked over five years.

Mental health #

Rome’s traffic isn’t just boring. It’s toxic for the mind. Chronic commuting stress is linked to:

• elevated cortisol levels
• sleep disorders
• increased irritability and anxiety
• reduced ability to concentrate

Cycling, on the other hand, releases endorphins. You arrive at work with an oxygenated brain, a good mood, and a sense of autonomy that a car seat in traffic will never give you.

Air quality #

A car stuck in Rome’s traffic produces on average 120–150 g of CO₂ per kilometre. In congested traffic, even more — because the engine idles, consuming fuel without moving.

A bike produces zero emissions.

If just 10% of Roman commuters switched to daily cycling, it would save around 150,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year. That’s the equivalent of planting 7 million trees.

It’s not idealism. It’s arithmetic.

🤔 “But it rains, it’s hot, it’s dangerous…” #

I know. I’ve heard every objection. I’ve made them all myself.

“What about when it rains?”
It rains about 75 days a year in Rome. On heavy rain days, I take the metro from San Giovanni to Lepanto. Fifteen minutes. No car even in a downpour. The Brompton folds up and rides the metro with me.

“In summer it’s too hot.”
With pedal assist you don’t sweat. And even if you did slightly, 18 minutes of open air beats 50 minutes in a scorching cabin with air conditioning drying out your throat.

“Rome’s roads aren’t safe.”
This is true, and I don’t minimise it. Rome needs more cycling infrastructure. But my route — Appio Latino, Celio, Lungotevere — is reasonably safe, especially during rush hour when traffic is so slow that cars move slower than bikes.

“I can’t bring a bike into the office.”
The Brompton folds in 20 seconds and becomes luggage you can slide under your desk. That’s its superpower: it completely eliminates the parking problem.

🌍 It’s not just a personal choice #

Every person who leaves the car at home and takes the bike:

• frees up a parking space for someone who truly needs it
• reduces traffic for those who must drive
• improves air quality for everyone
• reduces noise pollution in the neighbourhood
• proves that another model is possible

I’m not asking anyone to sell their car. I’m saying that for many urban journeys — those under 10 km — the bike is objectively superior to the car. Faster, cheaper, healthier, more sustainable.

And with a folding electric bike, the last excuses fall one by one.

🇪🇺 They’re already doing it in Europe — and it works #

While in Rome we debate whether cycling to work is even possible, half of Europe has been doing it for decades.

Amsterdam has more bicycles than inhabitants — 881,000 bikes for 872,000 residents. The problem isn’t convincing people to cycle, but where to park all those bikes. At Central Station they built the world’s largest bicycle parking facility: 12,500 spaces across three underground levels. Twelve thousand five hundred. Not car spaces. Bike spaces.

Copenhagen has reached a historic milestone: over 60% of residents cycle to work. Not out of ideology, but practicality. The average commute takes 13 minutes. Try doing the same by car.

Munich, Berlin, Vienna — cities with far harsher winters than Rome — have comprehensive cycling networks and urban cyclist rates that Rome can only dream of.

And you don’t need to look beyond the Alps. Milan, Bologna, Ferrara, Padua — in northern Italy, cycling to work is normal. It’s not heroism. It’s not eccentricity. It’s common sense.

The seven hills? With an e-bike, they’re no longer an excuse #

I know what you’re thinking. “Yes, but those are flat cities. Rome has seven hills.”

It’s true. Rome has climbs. The Celio, the Aventine, the Janiculum — they’re not exactly the Po Valley.

But that objection made sense ten years ago. Today, with an electric bike, the seven hills no longer exist. The motor assists you uphill, you reach the top without gasping, without sweating, without missing the car.

My electric Brompton tackles the Celio climb as if it were a gentle bump. The Lungotevere is flat. And the final stretch to Prati is downhill.

Rome has 300 sunny days a year, a mild climate even in winter, and compact urban distances. It is — paradoxically — one of the Italian cities most suited to cycling. All we lack is the infrastructure. And the courage to change habits.

🏠 Bike and smart working: the perfect combination #

There’s a deep connection between choosing the bike and the smart working philosophy. Both start from the same question: “Does what I’m doing make sense, or am I doing it just because it’s always been done this way?”

Smart working eliminates the commute on days when you don’t need to be in the office. The bike makes the commute smart on the days when you do.

The ideal model? 3 days remote, 2 in the office — by bike.

From 13 hours to 1 hour and 12 minutes. From €110 to zero.

It’s not utopia. It’s organisation.
It’s not laziness. It’s intelligence.

If companies combined smart working with sustainable mobility incentives, the result would be threefold: healthier employees, higher productivity, and more liveable cities. But to get there, we need to stop thinking that “working” means “sitting in an office from 9 to 6 after an hour in the car.”

🎯 My personal balance sheet #

Since I made the switch, my morning looks like this:

No stress. No costs. No €35 surprises.

And in the evening, same thing in reverse: 18 minutes and I’m home. Not an hour. Not “depends on traffic.” Eighteen minutes, every time.

I’ve reclaimed time. I’ve reclaimed money. I’ve reclaimed mental energy.
But above all, I’ve reclaimed the pleasure of moving through the city instead of enduring it.

💬 To those still stuck in traffic #

If every morning you spend an hour in the car for a journey that would take twenty minutes by bike.
If every evening you come home drained, not from work, but from getting there.
If you’ve ever calculated how much you spend on fuel, parking, and mental health.

Try it. Even just for a week.
Get a bike — folding, electric, whatever you prefer — and ride the same route.

Check your watch when you arrive. Check how you feel. Check your wallet at the end of the month.

The numbers speak for themselves.
But the smile on your face when you reach your desk — that’s priceless.

Glossary #

Brompton — British folding bicycle considered the world reference for build quality, folded compactness and practicality in urban commuting.

Pedal Assist — Electric propulsion system that amplifies the cyclist’s pedaling force, eliminating the problem of hills and sweat on urban commutes.

Folding Bike — Bicycle that folds in 10-20 seconds becoming a portable package for the office, metro or train.

Commuting — Daily home-to-work travel and back, which in large cities can absorb 2-4 hours per day and hundreds of euros per month.

Carbon Footprint — Total amount of greenhouse gases emitted by an activity — a car in Roman traffic produces 120-150 g of CO₂ per km, a bike zero.

Sustainable Mobility — Approach to urban transport that favors low environmental impact means, reducing emissions, traffic and costs.