la traviata

personally, i think if you are only concerned with saving money you are missing out on the best part.

jpdesjar

/\This
The joy alone I get from riding and not sitting in a car is priceless.

Tigerprawn

While looking for a job a car may be more beneficial... For those who already have jobs the commute time on a bike may in fact be faster than a car. Especially if you work early in the morning when everyone is also trying to drive to work.

Sweat really isn't a problem. Fresh clothes, small towel, and some deodorant and you're good to go.

caloso

+1

It's not about what you're saving, it's what you're gaining.

Tabor

Which one do you disagree with? The deaths per mile, the disproportionate number of cycling fatalities with alcohol in their blood, or my cholesterol numbers? I can find the sources for all of them if you really care. However, I must warn you that cyclist deaths per mile is hard to get a firm handle on because no one can agree on how many miles they travel per year in the US.

DX Rider

Something else occured to me about the, "commuting by bike doesn't save money" argument.

It operates under the assumption that the entire sum of every bike commuters biking expenses accrued are due to commuting.

Even if I DIDN'T commute, I'd still have the biking expense. Let's do the math. note: Your formula may vary due to what your personal expenses would be.

Monthly expenses with car:

Income - daughter - house - food/etc - car expenses - bike expenses = amount A

Without car:

Income - daughter - house - food/etc - bike expenses = amount B

amount B - amount A = Amount C

If Amount C equals zero or is equal to a positive number than commuting by bike does not save me any money. If however Amount C is a negative, than I am saving money.

In my case Amount C is a negative number, therefore commuting by bike does save me money. Since even if I did commute via car or public transportation, I'd still be biking 100+ miles a week.

savethekudzu

Yes.

I don't do it because it's cheaper; I do it because it's better.

RVD72

How many actually don't have a car and only use a bike? I think for most of us, we also have a car so we don't save on insurance, car payments, etc. We only save on gas, a bit of maintenance, some resale (less mileage), etc.

But as others have said, it's not really just about saving money.

wunderkind

This thread fails. OP is a troll.

LesterOfPuppets

No car here for quite some time. Thing I hated most about going car free was bike trailers. Either used and crappy for $50 or new and decent for $300.

I finally found a donor vehicle to make into a trailer. Been stoked ever since.

ghettocruiser

Correct.

Joe_Mo

This. A million times over.

PaulRivers

I disagree with "Mile for mile, cyclists get killed at a 1.5x greater rate than drivers". Partly because I've never heard this before but it sounds silly, frankly, but mostly because I don't think they have any way of figuring that out - how would they know how many miles someone biked in a year? How would they randomly collect and sample the statistics? It's *very* difficult for me to believe you're more likely to be killed on a bike than in a car given the vast number of people who refuse to bike regularly on the roads and only bike on trails - how the heck would they get killed?

It just doesn't seem to pass my "common sense" filter. :-(

Bah Humbug

The eternal problem with this is that not all cars, nor all bikes, are created equal.

Both can be picked up off Craigslist dirt cheap, especially if you're willing to wrench on them yourself.
Cars cost insurance, but unless you only have a car for commuting and can give it up for the bike, you have to pay it anyway.
Cars have hugely variable maintenance costs, insurance costs, and depreciation.
Someone who only rides to commute is going to attribute the price of the bike to the cost of bike commuting, while someone who would have one anyway will not.
Someone who only drives to commute is going to attribute the price of the car to the cost of car commuting, while someone who would have one anyway will not.
Someone who commutes through traffic may be slower than on a bike, while someone who avoids rush hour will not be.
Someone who would work out anyway may regard it as time back, since it means less other time spent on cardio.
Someone who doesn't care about working out may regard it as time wasted if it's even 5 minutes slower.

I believe there are more I thought of while reading this thread that I forgot while writing this. And regarding the comic with the guy saving $12/week, I call shenanigans. Maybe in the '90s, but that's an AWFULLY short commute for someone to be dressed like he is for biking it.

lil brown bat

Nor are all commuting situations. The whole "doesn't save you money" claim implies a comparison to something, but what? Not everybody has the same set of alternatives and commuting choices. If I drove into work, parking alone would cost me a minimum of $250 a month -- and that's at a garage about eight blocks away.

crawdaddio

Commuting to work daily by bicycle is in no conceivable way more expensive than commuting to work by car. Not even close.
(Period).

Check your math.

making

I dont care what you guys decide. But if you decide it does not save money, dont tell my wife.

fotooutdoors

What he said

JeffS

A few here don't have cars, including myself - though my wife does. I'm assuming we're the very small minority though.


One thing I've mentioned before... selling one of two cars doesn't automatically cut your insurance bill in half. We had two fairly new cars with full coverage. On paper both cars cost about the same to insure. When I removed my car from our policy I lost our multi-car discount and our total bill dropped less than 10% - something like $160/yr I believe. That's an insignificant amount. One day I quoted putting an old beater on my account with minimum insurance. Our total rate actually went down by a couple of dollars. It's like they've decided they're getting X dollars from us regardless. We have no tickets anymore so I guess this is as cheap as car insurance gets for us.

The whole thing pisses me off to an extent because her car gets driven no more than it did before. They effectively doubled the cost of her insurance. My only option might be to remove myself from the policy altogether - and just not drive.

xtrajack

Everyone's situation is different,hence the term "Your mileage may vary"

coldfeet

Well, yeah.. But my tank would be at least 45lbs if not for the cycling. And I eat more than when i wasn't.

The biggest saving for me is the vastly reduced temptation to "impulse shop"

mrbrown

It costs an average of US$12,000 a year to drive in Singapore (includes the loan, road tax, insurance, congestion tolls, gas, maintenance and parking). We pay about 4x more than Americans to BUY a car due to heavy car taxes that our govt imposes on car ownership to reduce the number of cars on our congested roads (we do have a very affordable and well-run public transportation system).

I have six bikes of varying cost, all acquired within the last 3 years of bike commuting and I have spent no more than 4 months worth of driving on them (even when I include the bike upgrades).

I have even calculated that riding my most expensive bicycle daily to work, even if I include maintenance, is cheaper than public transport over a period of about 5 years (and the bike is likely to last beyond that).

When I think of how much I used to spend on just overhauling the radiator of my Opel Astra, I shudder. I could have bought myself a really nice carbon fibre road bike for the money. Haha!

dynodonn 

Years ago, I calculated that I was spending $1500 a year on motor vehicle expenses, so that's what I have based my yearly bicycle expenditures on since then, and needless to say, over time I've have accumulated a rather nice bicycle fleet/tool/gear/accessory collection.

Somehow I find having a working collection of bikes and gear at hand is far better than a folder of gasoline and insurance receipts. Plus, I have plateaued out some time ago on bikes and gear that I need for commuting, and I'm now using only a small portion of the aforementioned amount and the remainder going to other personal non cycling expenses.

Another thing, I now travel less miles since it's a little harder to press bike pedals than car/truck pedals, making me put more thought into whether I should make the trip or can it be consolidated with another some other day, and that thought process has carried over to my driving habits as well.

For me personally, commuting by bicycle, versus driving, saves me a considerable amount of money.

daveinduluth

i put a $50 dollar pair of slicks on an old mountain bike and have so far avoided buying a second car. Savings? 5-10K

Seedy J

I had a car, and this is exactly why I had to get rid of it. After moving from the suburbs to the city, I rarely used the thing. Even if it just sat in the garage all month (which wasn't unusual), it still cost...

Parking: $150/month (no cheaper options, and it was a 10 minute bike ride from my apartment)
Insurance: ~$130 or more/month (don't remember)
Road tax: $400/year
Vehicle inspection: $1500 every 2 years

Of course, it's much cheaper to own a vehicle in America, but if you didn't drive at all, you'd still have insurance and maybe car payments to deal with.

My costs for cycling are a $4 tube maybe once a month (at worst) and a pair of crappy $15 Vittoria tires every few months. After riding it for 4 years, I replaced the chain, rear cassette, and cables on my commuter bike (less than $100). My commute is only 8 miles, so it doesn't require any extra "fuel" (maybe a banana when I get home).

Taking trains and buses to work would cost me $15 round trip every day.

Any way you look at it, in my situation, cycling to work is by far the cheapest way to go.