I think even with our nice car we bring down that average. My cheap beater cars pull it way down, but I am handy and had some fairly good luck with my low cost cars. I don't think that figure is a crazy number though. Of course in about 2 years of commuting on my Trek I didn't even spend $100 total on it so thats pretty cheap no matter how you look at it.

I imagine that cost assumes some sort of monthly payment. assuming 7K a year, that's about 585 bucks a month. After payments, insurance and gas alone, it's pretty easy to do that in a month. When you own one outright and simply pay insurance, gas, and do all your own maintenance, that number goes down pretty fast. But the more I live, the more I think less than 25% of people even know how to add oil to their car, much less replace a starter or radiator or something similar. And you just gotta have the fanciest/flashiest car, but you don't have 20K sitting in your account, might as well finance it, right?

I was thinking the same thing. Although, I do have to show bluefoxicy some respect for keeping a close eye on their nutrition. But for 7 miles, I just drink water and eat granola type bars. More like 50 cents a bar at best. Plenty of sodium with the sweet and salty peanut bars I prefer. But probably more sugar overall than if I were using non-sugar electrolyte tablets and cliff bars. I forget what kind of sugar cliff bars have. Never did get into those.

I hadn't thought about the cost of gas as part of the ownership cost so all that considered we are probaly pretty close to that number. Even if you own the car outright you might be a person that wants to spead out the purchase price over the course of a few years. The cost of a car can really add up.

Do you need an assistant???

Using my basic cost calculator and the bill I just got from my LBS I am going to have to commute 43 legs (one leg = one way to or from work) to break even. I'm not calculating in the health benefits just simple out of pocket costs/savings. I'm using the cost of gas for today to calculate.

I actually don't save that much my biking because I try to keep all of my expenses cheap.

I have a 1995 Audi A4 w/60k miles that I bought for 3k€. It gets used about once per month for a round trip to the extended family (about 500 miles) ... which costs about 130€. The maintenance is minimal and insurance/registration runs about 1000€ year.

The bicycle was 799€ and throw in a helmet and lock and it's around 900€. I run my old clothes when I ride it.

The subway is subsidized by my work and I get a full city pass (including airport) for 26€/mo.

I guess all my expenses are low (except for my 2000 USD/mo student loan payments.)

Sounds like you need to learn to turn some bolts??

I will once again restate an assertion I made in another thread "True Cost of Commuting by Bike" that anyone who is under the impression that bicycling to work as opposed to driving is a "break even" proposition at best or even the more costly alternative would fail a basic home economics course- if that is the case for you then you're either screwing up the math, spending a lot of money unnecessarily or not really riding your bike to work with any regularity. For those of you still struggling with the economics of biking to work or understanding the true cost of ownership of an automobile and the true cost of commuting by bike here are some useful links:

https://www.edmunds.com/tco.html

From Klipingers'


And this site might be helpful-

https://andyjordans.com/page.cfm?pageID=207

No truer words have ever been spoken.

I'll go read that when I get home but as I've also stated this is a simplistic calculator knowing I'm ignoring many other factors. I'm doing nothing more than showing basic money spent versus money saved in a few categories.

My bike is already fully depreciated.
I don't pay parking.
My insurance isn't going to go lower.
I'm ignoring vehicle tire wear, less oil changes, etc. because I choose to for my purposes.
And on and on.

Again this is just a small calculator. I'll expand it as time goes on and will certainly start to include some of the things you have linked into. I may lose interest in expanding it as I'm going to commute as much as I can regardless of what the calculator show.

Thanks for the links... again I'll dive into them later tonight.

Using the 2006 column from this chart:


I think one easy way to make my calculator more realistic yet keep it simple is the "Cost per mile" value. I'm not going to use $0.51 as one site suggested because I'm already factoring in the cost of fuel the day of each ride.

Using one chart that came up from https://andyjordans.com/page.cfm?pageID=207 the cost showed 52.2 cents which includes 26 cents for fuel. Fifty-two dot two minus the 26 leaves 26.2 cents remaining. The chart shows 5.6 cents in Maint + Tires but does not give insight into what goes into the "Average Cost per 15,000...", "Variable Cost" and "Fixed Cost" so I don't know if it all applies to my situation. For instance my insurance costs won't lower, etc.

So.... I think I'll make up my own highly-scientific and research-intensive numbers until I hopefully see numbers that are more broken out. I'll double my 5.6 cents to give 11.2 cents. Ta-da! Science! That's probably more reliable than some research driven numbers I've seen.

WonderMonkey, Just for clarification- when I wrote, "if that is the case for [you] then you're either screwing up the math..." The "you" in this case was not directed at you as the OP but to the general reader and, particularly, those readers that are somehow under the assumption that riding a bike to work has to be a rather expensive proposition.

The variables involved in computing the actual costs of transporting oneself to work/school can be extrapolated into all kinds of complexities (including the costs of Clif bars for a cyclist's ride or the Starbuck's or egg Macmuffin the driver grabs for the drive in every morning) and can be extremely individualized based on the specific commute and commuter. But at it's most basic, general level it is probably 5 x's more expensive, on average, to commute by private auto than it is by bike- even when the commuter owns a car that sits unused in the driveway while they commute to work on their bike.

The posts that astound me are the ones that claim to drive a perfectly running car, which was given to them and for which they pay minimal insurance costs, never breaks down and their commute has no tolls, no parking fees and for some inexplicable reason their employer subsidizes their drive. They then go on to assert that it costs far less to drive than riding their $3500 carbon fiber bike, on their $120 tires that wear out every 500 miles, wearing their full cycling kit, which must be laundered daily or they have several sets, and they must be "fueled" by special nutrients harvested in remote mountain lakes in South America... and that this set of factors somehow applies to everyone, world wide who rides a bike for transportation.

Sure. Thanks for clarifying but I didn't take it as any sort of attack or anything. I figure that as long as I capture whatever it is that I spend commuting that I WOULD NOT HAVE driving that is a cost. That's the easy part and includes the Cliff Bars or the beans grown in the intestines of a Yak in some mountain, etc. However a rack for the rear of my bike to hold a change of clothing and shower junk IS included. The hard part is the actual cost of driving to work. I'm going to keep it simple yet look for ways to be as complete as possible. A round figure per mile is in line with my "simple" approach.... I just have to find a realistic figure. For now I'll use the one I came up with and then improve it as I move forward.

Nohing that will add anything to the current conversation, but just a thought that came to me. It might be useful to add a column to the chart with your actual bike expenses (that you could add to as you have new ones). then you could put in a calculation to divide your total bike related costs by the miles ridden to see your total cost per mile (however you choose to define it). In fact, that sounds like something I might do this evening. In addition to knowing the savings versus the car, it would be kind of cool to watch that # decrease (hopefully) over time as the miles add up.

Yes that would be good. I'll add that on my summary page. Do you want my spreadsheet or are you going to do your own?

when I used to train for races I had a little mantra I would sometimes repeat under my breath as I rode- "the more I ride the faster I get, the faster I get the more I ride..." maybe for commuting I should change it to- "the more I ride the cheaper it gets, the cheaper it gets the more I ride..."

Using my new spreadsheet it will take 31 legs to recover commuting related costs.

Or "The more I ride the more camping gear I can buy...".

The way I'm looking at it, people choose to bike commute for one of these two reasons:

1) It saves money for their situation and point of view
2) It just feels good, with or without any scrutiny of the costs

For me it's the second one. If I factored in the amount of overtime pay I'm sacrificing by bike commuting (once or twice a week, 20 miles each way) then there's no way I could conclude that I'm saving money. But OTOH, doing this is a great way to get in some riding during the week which I otherwise wouldn't be able to do.

I'm primarily your reason #2. I'm layering on your reason #1 just to get a rough idea and I like doing things like that.

If you don't mind sharing yours, I'd appreciate it. You can email it to mk313 at me dot com

Thanks,

How do you factor in health benefits?

It costs me several thousand a year to commute (opportunity costs of the extra time spent) but I'd continue to do it even if cars and gasoline were free, because the benefits to my mental and physical health are huge.

It's my opinion (backed by nothing in particular) that most of the people on this forum are not commuting because they can't afford to drive, they're doing it for some other reason than money.

Sent.

The only way you could even come close to factoring in health costs is that if you know you have medical costs and they clearly go away or reduce as you become healthier.