In today’s modern world, our options for transportation are often very many and very varied. From the train to the bus, systems of public transportation abound, making even the carless easily able to get from point a to point b. In addition to this, cars themselves are hugely popular, as too is car ownership. Owning a car is a necessity, after all, in many parts of the country on the whole, especially in more rural parts where public transportation is not particularly present, if it is even present in any way at all.

But for many people, biking has become an alternative to driving a car or other such motor vehicle. Of course, many bicyclists still own cars for longer trips, but the benefits of biking are so immense that they cannot be ignored. And nowadays, there are, with up to one billion of them, double the amount of bikes on the planet than there are cars. In the United States and throughout the world as a whole, many people now view riding their bike whenever possible as their ideal form of transportation. In just the spring of 2017 alone, more than 66 million people living here in the United States said that they had ridden their bike (or any bike, for that matter) at least once over the course of the past year.

After all, the benefits of riding a bike are incredibly vast. For one thing, it’s hugely beneficial to the environment to ride a bike instead of drive a car. In just one year, people riding bikes instead of taking their cars can save a total of 238 million gallons of gas. And with more and more people choose to switch to riding their bikes, this number is only likely to increase as time passes on. In just the cities of Milwaukee and Madison (both in Wisconsin) alone, replacing around one fifth of all car trips with bike trips would actually end up saving as much as 57,000 or so tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the air, something that would have a profoundly positive effect on the overall state of our environment.

Biking is also something that can be hugely beneficial from a health standpoint as well. Just biking to and from work every day of the working week will burn as much fat as if you had gone to the gym for nearly an hour every same day that you biked. For those who are looking to lose a little or a lot of weight, biking is therefore ideal. In addition to this, biking regularly has actually been found to reduce your risk of prematurely mortality by a full 30% – and your risk of every developing a cardiorespiratory disease by a full 40% or so.

Of course, you’ll need the right bike for you – as well as all the right bike accessories, of which there are likely far more available than you currently realize. The steel track frame, for instance, is quite common, a this steel track frame is incredibly resilient. This means your bike with a steel track frame will last you for quite a good deal of time – and the steel track frame will likely hold up better than other frames to any biking accidents that you might get into. Therefore, investing in something like a steel track frame is very much worth it for many people taking up biking.

In addition to the steel track frame, special pedals for bikes are also sought after, as quality pedals can make a big difference in your biking experience. You might even consider clips for your toes, which will help you to feel more secure on your bike. If you’re outside of the average height of an adult person, you might choose to get longer reaching brakes as well, such as long reach caliper brakes. At the end of the day, there are so many different options when it comes to customizing your bike, and you don’t have to make every single decision surrounding this at the time that you first purchase your bike.