Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Other indirect costs such as road maintenance, environmental mitigation, registration fees, fuel taxes, etc. are due to the damage that a heavy weight motor vehicle does to the infrastructure. Cyclists don't do that kind of damage so they don't really cost all that much to maintain. Look at an MUP, for example. Once in place, an MUP can exist for decades without pothole repair or repavement. If the MUP is concrete, the lifespan is longer than tarmac. The same can't be said of any roadway that is used by motor vehicles...even ones limited to lighter automobiles.
Originally Posted by
cyccommute
The cost of bicycle facilities is minimal also because of our lighter weight and smaller size. Roadways cost millions per mile to build. Bicycle facilities cost thousands per mile. Even if I use the roadways (which I do) for my bicycle, the infrastructure is overbuilt for my use. I do benefit from the roads built for the motoring public but the roads have to be built for them so those indirect costs are borne by automobiles. You could calculate the indirect construction costs on a per lb (vehicle) basis. A 20 lb bicycle's construction cost would be on the order of pennies while those of vehicles are on the order of dollars or hundreds of dollars.
Originally Posted by
cyccommute
I beg to differ. Cars have a huge impact on roadways. Their weight is 100 to 150 times the weight of a bicycle (you can't include the rider since the same rider is going to be in both vehicles). Their weight can...and does...cause damage to the roadways. To go back to the MUP example, we have a MUP along C470. It's built for bicycles and is concrete. At some point in the past a road crew drove a pickup down the path to do maintenance. They cracked the path right down the middle for miles and miles. Bicycles could have ridden that strip of concrete into the next century without damaging it but one vehicle destroyed it.
You are amalgamating several different things. First less address maintenance costs... Two thing cause the vast bulk of maintenance costs; the environment and large heavy vehicles (not cars or pickups, think delivery trucks and tractor trailers). A road that has no traffic will degrade at a fairly rapid pace.
Next, roads are built to serve commercial purposes (economic), to get people to work and to get goods to the people who buy them. That is what justifies the government funding of them. If you don't believe me, go to any community in the nation and compare the budgets for public works and the parks department. If you want to talk a bicycle only facility then you are talking a different world. In this country such facilities come from the fund I just mentioned, and until a bicycle can be used to deliver the goods to fill a grocery store cost effectively, they will never serve the primary reason for funding roads. Now since a bicycle can use the same roads as the vehicles for which those roads were designed, they share the same benefits.
The bottom line is the road costs are the same for bikes or cars... except for the case of bikeways, which will never have a funding level to rival roads in sheer numbers.
Originally Posted by
cyccommute
I currently have a fleet of 7 bicycles that cost me north of $15,000. Two of them are completely unsuitable for transportation...they are basically toys
...so the transportation fleet is closer to $9000. Even adding clothing and other equipment, the cost of the fleet doesn't rise to much over $11000. $9000 to $11000 wouldn't buy much of a car. $15000 wouldn't buy much of a car. You
could say that you could get a good used car for $9000 to $15000 but then I could get very good used bicycles for a fraction of the cost of new ones. To compare cheese to chalk, you have to compare new cars to new bikes or used cars to used bikes. Additionally, I certainly couldn't have more than one car and stay within that $15000 price tag...even if I went to used cars.
It is possible to find a far for $1000-$2000 that will easily provide for 10-20 thousand miles, with little beyond oil changes. But your missing my point, most of the folks who drive are not car enthusiasts and therefore don't spend more on their cars then they have to. It seems that most of those who ride are enthusiasts (the bike is not simply transportation) and therefore like spending money on the bike and accessories.
Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Bicyclists aren't subsidized in terms of insurance and liability because our ability to do the kind of damage that a car can do is extremely limited. While we could damage or even kill pedestrians, those kinds of accidents are so rare as that I doubt you could get an insurance company to write a policy to cover it.
The purpose of required levels of insurance are to insure that the injured party has someone with the financial resources to pay for damages. While a cyclist is less likely to cause the same level of damage as a motor vehicle, the upper limit (caused by a death) are certainly very possible. Indeed we had a cyclist/pedestrian crash which resulted in a death here in Dallas in the last month. Currently since there is no mandate that cyclists have such insurance, there is no market for it, since there are other ways for an individual to obtain such insurance coverage. If it was required. And I also wouldn't discount the damage even a bicycle can do to a car. I had a rental car provided by an employer that somebody keyed. The repair bill was over $4,000.
Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Motorist have to have liability because of the cost of 45,000 deaths directly attributable to motor vehicle use. Since many of those aren't instantaneous, there are large medical costs associated with those deaths as well as cost of emergency response. There are the costs associated with around 2 million injuries per year some of which require lifelong care. Those costs are borne by society even if the victim has health insurance since the cost of their care isn't paid by their health insurance premiums.
You might claim that cyclists have similar impacts on the health care system but cyclists don't cause the same kind of injury or death rate that motorists do. The ~1000 cyclists killed per year are usually due to accidents involving a motor vehicle collision. Just 'DFO'ing usually doesn't result in life time health care costs.
Liability is not simply for deaths, it is for damages and as I mentioned in my previous paragraph, a cyclist can cause a death. Therefore the liabilities are the same, though the cost of the insurance for a cyclist should be lower since the probabilities are lower.
Originally Posted by
cyccommute
The CO2 and methane produced by animals...of which we are one...isn't pollution because it's part of the environment. Even fire is a part of the environment. Burning carbon that was buried10s to 100s of million years ago, introduces something into the environment that wasn't there before...at least not for a very long time even in geologic terms.
Under current air quality regulations, both CO2 and methane (green house gases) are classified as pollutants. Again though you seem to miss the point. A bicycle is not a no environmental impact machine, it is a lower environmental impact machine, hence there are still impacts that should be included in any cost comparison. You know the OP's question?
Originally Posted by
cyccommute
The excess caloric requirements of a cyclist are minimal compared a nonactive motorist. We are talking about a few hundred calories per day while cycling. Roughly the equivalent of 3 to 5 slices of bread. At roughly 20 slices per loaf, that's maybe and extra $0.5 food/fuel costs.
And power gels and sports drinks add up as well. On an equal volume basis they are much more expensive then gasoline. Again it is a question of comparing costs.
The bottom line at this point is one of differing opinions, since until someone compiles the statistics, there is no evidence either way. Frankly, I would be surprised if the average cost per mile is very different between the two vehicles.
Originally Posted by
cyccommute
I don't agree with your supposition. While some cyclists are cyclists because they are active, many people get into cycling because they want to be more active. I'd suspect that for the Fred crowd, i.e. commuters, the latter is the case. I don't see a lot of racer people out using their bikes for transportation. I do see a lot of the less, shall we say, fit people commuting by bicycle. In post after post to the forums, you see comments like 'I need to get in shape', 'I need to lose a few pounds', 'I want to be more active', etc.