You guys have $2.00 a gallon gas?:eek:

It's not our fault you live in the land of perpetual sun and socialism...... Just sayin.....:thumb:

Well I don't actually commute on my bike (Too long of distance, on very bike hazardous roads at too early of a time, with ~50 lbs of books. I just like this forum) but I read somewhere else on the internets that with the same 30,000 calories in a gallon of gasoline, you can travel about 500 miles on a bike. And also that vegetable oil has the same calorie content as gasoline. So just start drinking that stuff and you should be set! :D (JK)

That sounds about right, Zullwick. I suppose if I rode 100 miles a day, my appetite would go from 2,000 calories a day (that's the average recommended intake, right?) to maybe 6,000. 6,000 calories and five days is 500 miles, so yup. Maybe I wouldn't quite eat 6,000 calories, but it's in the all park, anyway. I don't actually know how much I eat. But my point was that the cost of energy per mile seems to be more for cycling than for driving because of the differences in costs of fuel.

Starship Troopers.

Only at the expensive stations by the expressway. $1.85 to $1.89 elsewhere. Up from about $1.58 as the low that I can remember, a couple of months ago.

I live in southeast Michigan. This area has a chance of tanking BAD in the next year. If gas goes back to $4/gal again AND GM tanks, I expect to see a HELL of a lot of bikes on the road, all from Wal-Mart or garage sales. I may actually have to start locking my bike - part of the reason I don't bother locking now is that the vast majority of people around here wouldn't be seen dead riding a bike.

:lol:


I've had to teach myself to eat. Seriously. I forget all the time. So I've taken to reminding myself to actually EAT something. Anything.

Care to share those left over Oreos? :D

Hands have been lost over less...

Uh, I just spent $500+ on car tires today. Gonna stop complaining about the high price of bike tires.

Bike costs: $.05-$.10 per mile
Food costs: $.05-$.50 per mile

Cost to operate a very economic car: $.35 per mile (and you have to drive it into the ground)

If you use any sense about what you eat you'll always come out cheaper riding a bike. With two bikes, verse one car, you might break even if you don't count health and independence as a benefit.

It also depends on how overweight you are. You can drop 20lbs and ride 5 miles a day without changing your eating patterns significantly.

Also, it's hard to cost food when it tastes so good.

This is a little old but it's recent enough to get an idea: http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/...f-obesity.html

The top box is under a nickel a mile. Some of that stuff is plausible: The peanut butter, wheat buns and french roll. The second box is a nickel to a dime and that's stuff you're pretty likely to grab.

A lot of people try to factor in the amount of oil that goes into food. Michael Pollan claims there's around 10 calories worth of oil in every calorie of the American diet. That estimate might be too high or low but it's quite true that we use oil to grow lots of our food. Then we use oil to ship it. Then we use oil to keep it cold, and we may even use oil to heat it up and eat it.

Vegetable oil is one of the cheapest sources of calories though.

For me it depends on the cost of gas. The more expensive it is to fill a tank, the more I am saving just to spend some place else. /rant Like kid clothes, did you guys/gals know a 5 year old grows like a weed? I mean what's up with that? /rantoff

As long as you plan it correctly you can save money. For the summer, I have 5 shirts and 5 shorts, in the winter, I have 4 pairs of pants (2 cold, and 2 chilly) and 3/4 long sleeve shirts (2 are basically a sweat shirt that wisks) and the winter stuff I wear 2-3 days in a row since I don't sweat nearly as much. I still do the same amount of laundry as before I was commuting. It is all in how well you plan and prepare.

Edit - I forgot the most important part for me, at 730am it takes me 20-30 minutes to drive. It takes me 20-30 minutes by bike going a more direct route. Also, by riding, I haven't considered the idea of joining a gym since I am getting about 5 hours of cardio a week.

I hear you, but have you noticed how bike tires cost a heck of a lot more per pound?

My commute is about 60 miles each way. Taking the train with my folding bike costs $24/day, plus bike maintenance; that's less than parking in Manhattan. Add to that the cost of a car and maintenance ... insurance... gas... NJ Turnpike toll... Lincoln Tunnel toll... oof! To answer your question: I have no idea. I can't do the math.

I'm with its just me.

Year one is expensive, but since I purchased a dedicated commuter kitted out to meet my commute needs, I barely buy any bike stuff. I bought an ipod player, shorts, 2 tires and 2 tubes last year.

In summary, year 2 it started to pay for me.

$24/day? My commuter train ride costs $60/Month to go from New Haven to Bridgeport and back.

Some things make me very glad that I moved out of NYC, no matter how much I miss it. What an expensive place to live!

more commuting... more exercise... better health/shape... fewer health problems... lower healthcare bills in the future

+1

I started logging my commutes in November 08, but I started commuting in March, 2008. Here are the stats according to my North Central Texas Council of Governments:


Since November 2008, you've logged 2600.00 miles and prevented more than 1855 pounds of pollution from entering the air. The table below shows how much you've saved by using an alternative commute:

• Trips Reduced: 73
• Total Miles Saved: 2001.28
• Gallons of Fuel Saved: 95.3
• Money Saved: $1,044.67
• Calories Burned: 42640

Emissions Reductions:

• VOC:1137 grams
• NOx:927 grams
• CO:27 lbs
• PM:20 grams
• CO2:1823 lbs
• SO2:143 grams

Fantasminha, pretty amazing logging!

Now, with those 42,640 calories burned, did you "replenish" them in your diet, or did you lose weight?

Same with me. If REI moved their store so I don't ride past it every saturday this might be a different story...

One thing that I havent seen mentioned yet is that many of the one time costs of commuting (bike, most accessories) a lot of people would have anyway just because we like to ride! Instead of riding once or twice on the weekends people are riding M-F as well!

Why does it always have to be about money? I am in the best shape of my life which will hopefully keep me around longer to spend time with my wife, kids and grand kids. Hopefully someday, great-grand kids. What price can one put on that???

I did a quick estimate this evening; I'm definitely not saving money compared to driving if one looks purely at the money I've spent on cycling and converts it to fuel (and mileage) that could have been provided to the car.

If I estimate my total cycling expenditure as about $1400 (both bikes, repairs, and accessories) and gas at $2.25/gal (what I paid last week), that comes out to ~622 gallons that could have been used in my car. I'm currently averaging 18.1 mpg over the 1450 miles I've put on my current car, so 622.2 gallons * 18.1 mpg = 11228 more miles that I could have driven at current tank rates if I'd spent bike money on gas money.

I've put about 1107 miles on both bikes so far, so I'd need to ride 10k more miles to break even at current tank rates. That's several years away, and that's if I don't spend a penny more on the bikes in the mean time. So no, looking at a fuel opportunity cost, I'm not nearly saving anything by riding. It's actually quite humbling to crunch the numbers.

Even if I'd only spent $60 on cycling--for example, on my $20 MTB and $40 helmet, it would mean (60/2.25) * (1450/80) = 484 miles before I broke even on such a meager cycling setup at current gas prices. When you look at things this way, it becomes apparent that you've got to find other reasons to ride besides the desire to save money, because unless you're given the bike for free or ride the hell out of it, it's far cheaper to put the bike money into the gas tank.

How long will it take you to ride 10,000 more miles?

I think when you look at return over the long term and see that it will take a long time, you let yourself discourage yourself too easily.

A few years ago, we had some really leaky windows in our house. I told my father in law that I figure it would take ten years for the investment (of replacing the windows) to pay off. He pointed out that it's like a 10% return on my money. You can't buy a security with a guaranteed 10% return over ten years, so it's actually an excellent investment. He was right, so we replaced the windows quickly. And I don't see the savings, but they're there (hidden), and life is so much more comfortable with no more drafts in our house in the winter.

A bike can sometimes serve you well for 30 years. Think of how much money it can save you over the really long term.

There's a car-free section of bikeforums. Not all of us can go car-free. I'm asking myself if I can, and I don't see how I can, but I'm not giving up posing the question to myself. Not yet, anyway. Still, the more car miles we replace with bike miles, the better. No need to be a purist.