I seldom post but this thread got my interest. Gas by me (long island) is around $3.95/gallon for regular. My family has 2 vehicles (car that gets @ 19/20mpg around town and 27/28mpg hwy and a SUV that gets 16/17 locally and 22/23 hwy. Fortunately for me my daily commute involves walking to a train to get to a subway to walk a few blocks to work. My wife doesn't commute but does a fair amount of around town travel to get the kids to/from after school activities. The SUV is a 2001 with 65,000 miles and the car is a 2007 with 30,000 miles of which we are responsible for 10,000 since it was purchased used in Sept of 2010.



So we are fairly "light" users of the cars but that said the higher prices at the pump do get our attention. Okay - where am I going with this. I want to begin commuting by bike however I'm about a 28 to 30 mile commute 1 way. That's a bit too ambitious for me so my plan involves driving 1/2 way to park and riding the rest. So my car use will actually go up as a consequence of wanting to commute by bike part way. The trade off will be a savings in subway which will be unfortunately offset by the higher car usage (wear/tear and fuel). Oh well.



But wait - there's more LOL. Economics in general interest me. The economics of oil and other petroleum products are of particular interest to me as I believe they will play an increasingly larger role in the global economy as we reach the point where we are confronted with increasingly global demand and decreasing production and reserves (aka Peak Oil - in short all the cheap easy to get oil has been gotten and what's left will cost more and more to get).



Anyway - I'm getting to the point now really! - I came across this interesting blog that discusses the MPG of a human as compared to the MPG a car gets and the associated costs. You can read all of it here http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/...pg-of-a-human/ but the short story is that a single person on a bike beats out a single person in a car MPG wise but if you've got a family of 4 (raises hand) the car wins. Also you need to consider the petroleum costs that go into producing the food that we need as fuel to ride a bike.