It all depends on your baseline as to whether bicycle commuting saves money or costs money, or if it saves time or costs time.

I was a bus commuter for six years before I started cycling. Lemme tell you, using the bus with no car and no bike is really cheap. At least around here.

When I first made the decision to start cycling, I budgeted one year of bus passes, (12 @ $55/month, or $660) for nine months of cycling. I expected to spend $500 for a bike, lights, lock and helmet, reserving the rest for "incidentals", and figured I'd take the bus again through the winter.

Well, I blew through that $660 and more before I even discovered BikeForums, which is where I subsequently discovered things like studded snow tires, fenders, racks, panniers, realistic lights you can actually see by, clipless pedals, flat repair kits, tubes, tools, lubes, and the whole festival of other cycling accouterments.

Near as I can tell, that first year cycling cost me three years of bus passes. My current commuting bike alone cost three years of bus passes, before I started kitting it out. Its replacement cost is roughly 5½ years of bus passes--all before maintenance expenses.

And I don't regret a dime of it.

As for time, if I don't take the long loop to work, I come out ahead. The long loop comes out just about even with bus commuting time.

Cycling can be damn expensive !! I have three expensive bikes, plus all the accessories like fenders, racks, lights, tires, locks, spare parts and components, good quality outdoor clothing... plus all the food I have to eat to keep my body going... it all adds up very fast. But it's been worth it, I have no regrets, it's been money well spend.

There are quite a few double income, two car families around. If you commute, you can drop down to one car... the family car. That savings alone is probably enough to buy several bikes and hire someone to drag you to work in a kiddie trailer.

Don't forget the cost food! I commute about 25 miles round trip and burn about 1000 kcal in doing so. The price 1000 kcal of decent food is at least $5. That's about twice as much as it would cost to buy gas for my car to go the same distance!

Unless you're climbing mountains, I doubt you're averaging 40 kcal/mile. A lot of calorie estimators guess way, way high.

And there's no way 1000 kcal worth of pasta or brown rice costs $5 (nutrient requirements don't tend to increase a whole lot with increased physical activity, so basically you just need to add extra carbs).

Doesn't have to be. I've got 22,700 miles and 6 years so far on a $300 bike. Including lighting (including failed lighting experiments), stuff that I've bought multiple times due to breakage or whatever, tire replacement, studded tires for winter, clothing, everything combined I don't think I've got more than $1200 into cycling. I still don't have any wish to buy another bike, the hybrid does everything I want a bike to do.

My wife and I have had to bear the burden of an unused second vehicle through the "economic downturn", for almost 18 months now. We hope to sell it soon. We bought it used for about $19k, and the monthly costs are $470 a month payment plus insurance ($80 a month) annual taxes ($190). so, without even driving it, our annual cash outlay is about $7,000 - a portion of which is "equity"
So at the moment, not only am I using a bicycle as my primary transportation, I have a four-wheeled money siphon sitting in the driveway because it is difficult to find a buyer (and it is doubly difficult to sell it living at a distance from home as I am at the moment).
So, yeah. I'll be money WAY ahead when I get rid of that. If I were to lump everything I've spent this year getting the entire family set up with bicycles and accessories, I'm money ahead in less than a year. Let's be fair and account for the fact that the second vehicle (if driven daily) would be owned for 8-10 years beyond the loan payoff. Even with that, the average annualized cost after selling it (if it has any value at that point) would still be about $2k-2.5k a year, not including fuel.

I did the old POS car routine for a while, and it is not as cheap as everyone thinks it is. Initial cash outlay of $500 to $2000 is typically followed by another $500 to $1000 to bring it up to good serviceable condition, followed by $750 to $1000 a year for annual maintenance costs/oil changes (assuming it is driven daily). Let's say $1700 to $2500 a year if you assume said car will last 3-4 years before dying completely.

Our primary car is a prius and costs considerably less than our second car (a 4x4 Nisan pickup). Well, until the time comes to replace our batteries :O

I'm not completely buying the "heaps of extra groceries" argument, because it is a small increment in my case. YMMV, but not a big issue for me.

I know this topic has been discussed ad nauseum before, as it is now (and I'm now contributing to the ad-nauseum-ness). Here's my quick take.

- I made the mistake of getting a second vehicle. I am not likely to repeat that mistake.
- I could completely replace my sub $2,500 commuter (with bells and whistles) almost three times a year and break even with my present cash outlay to own my undriven second vehicle, and probably once a year compared to the "prorated" cost. Of course, I have no intention of doing this.

Yeah, the math is pretty easy in my situation.

If I were splitting hairs of transit versus bicycle, I really wouldn't care about the cash part - it is more about the health benefit and joy of riding at that point (for me).

I'm with canyoneagle on this one... I've never sat down and actually attempted to calculate the costs of bicycle commuting, but it's gotta be cheaper than owning a second car. Even if it's not I can't put a pricetag on the health benefits of regular cycling; suffice it to say they outweigh any monetary gains by far.

I estimate the cost per mile for my commuter at 5 cents (tires, chains, clusters, brakes, spokes, cables, etc). I estimate the cost per mile for my automobile at 35 cents (fuel, oil, tires, maintenance, linear depreciation). I do not pay parking or tolls. I need to have the car for purposes other than commuting.

After 4 years and about 400 commutes of 18 miles round trip I have almost saved enough to pay for the cost of my bike and biking accessories. And if I had worked overtime rather than spent the extra time bike commuting I would be way ahead.

So, for me, bike commuting is for the enjoyment, not for the money.

Hm, 5 cents per mile is probably about right for me too, if I also include clothing and lighting. I've spent about $1200 and am close to 23000 miles on the bike.

Last time I calculated it, it was about 10 cents per mile, so it's going down and hopefully it'll continue to do so.

As I said earlier in the thread though, cycling actually costs me money because of the amount of time I spend doing it versus driving, which if I were working overtime instead (which I definitely would be doing), vastly more than offsets the cost of running the car.

If there's one thing to learn from this thread, it's that the economics of bike commuting varies greatly depending on one's situation. In many cases, it's cheaper than driving, but in other cases, it's more expensive (especially when opportunity costs are considered). I think most of us here can agree that biking is more fun and less stressful, but that's a selection bias because we're reading a bike commuting forum. If it were a driving forum, the attitude about biking versus driving may be the opposite.

Call me crazy, but I could care less if I save money or not. I've done the math and I save nearly $10/day when I ride my bike to work (parking, mass transit, gas). On the flip side, I spent around $1300 building my commuter bike, and another $500 or so on clothing/gear. Plus the time and cost of bike maintenance..... I'm no accountant, but I consider it a break even proposition without factoring in the health benefits, lower stress, and overall enjoyment. Even if bike commuting is costing me money, it's worth every dime. Now, if I can just convince the wife......

This is a really smart post and I agree with everything, especially the discovery of and bikeforums and bike-gear-porn. For me the comparison isn't to a car but to using the El in Chicago. A monthly pass costs $86 dollars (I think - been using daily passes in the last 3 years for the rare times I take the train). I started riding seriously in late 2006 and in 2007-2008 spend over $3K on a new bike and assorted accessories. It will take about 34 months to recover those costs. These days I probably spend a couple hundred bucks a year for tuneups, tubes, etc. As a year round commuter I'm looking to turn a profit sometime in 2011-2012.

I have a wife and two small children. I could never get rid of the car so it's just a dumb comparison.