One thing that I love about my bike commute is that it takes 50 minutes by car, in good traffic...up to 90 minutes if traffic is bad. When I ride by bike, it's always 65 - 70 minutes. I might lose 30 minutes of my day, but the 2.5 hours of total fitness more than makes up for it, not to mention the boredom of sitting in a car idling on the highway...which has obvious environmental impacts.
I love that my bike ride is much more consistent in time than driving or taking the train. Heavy traffic just doesn't slow me down much. Conversely, open roads don't let me speed up much either.
