My post wasn't intended to provide solid proof of the financial superiority of cycling... that's debatable, and I'm pretty sure that there's so many variables that need to be accounted for that it's practically impossible to prove either way.

My point however was that the time difference is not as stark as you make it out to be.

First let's take my commute, since all I can go on is my experience. 19 miles each way. Takes me 1:15 on a good day, or 1:10 on a great day, or 1:20-1:30 on a bad day. On average it's pretty squarely 1:15, however. 75 minutes. When I drive it takes 40 minutes, so the bike takes 35 minutes longer per leg. It's not that I'm a speed demon on my bike- I'm not. I average 14-15mph on my commutes, and I know some cyclists can average 20mph.

So why such a difference? Traffic and lights, mostly. There's this one town I go through on my bike; I can time it so that I go through it without hitting a single light, and passing 60-80 cars in the process. The cars get bunched up at the lights, and the lights are short enough that it takes several cycles for any given car to go through. In the long run, the cars win. But the fact that my commute by bike takes less than twice the amount of time blows the "3 hours of extra cycling per day" idea out of the water in my opinion.

At most I lose 70 minutes for 38 miles of commuting (35 minutes each way). My normal routine was to exercise 5 hours a week before I started bicycle commuting (trying to lose weight), so that takes my deficit down to 10 minutes per day.

Note that none of this even takes into account those days when driving takes far longer than cycling. Which happens more often than you would think. When gridlock occurs, it can sometimes take up to 2 hours to get home, whereas on a bike I could simply zip around the traffic... and SAVE 45 minutes each way.

I would even argue the closer you live to your destinations, the more it makes cycling worthwhile financially. The IRS figures are almost certainly lowballed (because they are used for tax deductions, it's doubtful the IRS wants to lose too much money from deductions), and they're targeted towards people who do a large amount of driving regardless. The problem with a per-mile cost is that it becomes rapidly inaccurate as your mileage decreases. There's a large amount of fixed auto costs that do not depend on mileage. The cost of the car itself, the registration fees, inspection fees, insurance fees, license fees etc. So as your mileage decreases, your cost per mile increases.

Lastly, I would like to point out the fact that when you go car-free, you begin to actually think about your routing more. I find that in a car, I tend to be pretty leisurely. I don't plan out my routes based on distances; I go out, go shopping here, go across town there, etc. When I'm on my bike, I tend to have a plan of exactly where I need to go, and what is the absolute shortest/fastest route I can take between all of my destinations. In short, I tend to optimize my paths on a bike, whereas I tend to waste more time driving unnecessary routes in my car because I didn't really spend a ton of time thinking about it beforehand. As such, that shaves the time difference between driving and riding even more.


So basically, my point is this. There's really no easy way to prove that a car or a bike will be more financially/time efficient than the other, because situations for every person are unique and there's far too many variables to take into account. But unless someone drives an abnormally large amount of distance, or someone bicycles at an abnormally slow speed, there's no way an average person loses 3 hours a day by cycling instead of driving. The time differences are much closer than most people suspect.