I also had to buy extra winter clothes to bike in this past winter in Chicago. There are many expenses that posters on this board seem to forget. Bike mechanic prices seem to be as shady as auto mechanics as well. I could buy a whole tank of gas for the price of a bike tune up.

My car is a 2006 Honda Insight, which gets between 65 and 70 mpg . . . but it cost $42.00 to fill the little 10 gal. tank!

Good thing I ride my bike so much.

Rick / OCRR

I filled my car yesterday, I bought the cheapest gas, I think it was $3.90+ The highest grade was over $4.00 a gallon. First time I have seen or even heard about $4.00 in the USA.

Oh, we had >$4 gas in NYC last year.

In '66 I would gas up my motorcycle with pocket change.
In '62 there were no Happy Meals!! Hamburgers were about $.19.

1 tank of gas = 1 week of driving
1 tune-up = 6-12 months of riding

Do the math.

But how many of those 100 $ would it take you to get to work, or, how long would they last you? My car takes $50 to $60 to fill, because it has a smaller tank (and because gas is more expensive in Seattle than the national average).

Those winter clothes should last you a lifetime, and should be useful when you're not on the bike, as well. I mean, you can't live in The Windy City and not have winter clothes if you ever go outside, even just walking around...

Either way I have to pay a lot. My car requires an alcohol interlock device thats $65 so I can't drive under the influence. I need that device for 1 year. My car is more reliable than my 10 year old bike. Always breaking spokes, had to replace peddles (again),had to replace rear tire (again) ect.... Even the bus/subway system is increasing in price. I also had those pannier things on my bike rack but I couldn't haul groceries because the bike would topple over! A car is not as evil as some make it out to be. Obviously, I enjoy biking too otherwise I wouldn't be posting here.

How much is it now?

Opposite end, SF Bay Area...I paid $4.53 if I recall correctly.

I think it's something like $3.90 for regular and $4.40 for super, where I live, I'm sure it's even more elswhere. It may actually hit five bucks by May.

Downtown Chicago is about $4.59 for the cheapest. I think we are second highest next to the Los Angeles area.

Wow. Holy carp.

I am not old enough to remember '62, but in the late '60s gas was less than 20 cents a gallon. Even "gas crisis" prices seem pretty reasonable now

I ate teen burgers too - at A&W Root Beer Sttand, they had bacon which was a radical thought in the early 60s!I actually spent quite a lot of money on my bike this past six months: a new set of tires/tubes, a pair of MiNewt 600 Cordless headlights, four tail-lights, chain lube, cold-weather gloves and a couple of other oddities. Nevertheless, during the same period of time I tracked the difference between bike expenses and the gasoline I would have used in my car and cycling ended up being over $600 less expensive from late July 2011 to December 31st. I wrote a weekly blog tracking the expenses here: ((link)). If I was to go completely car-free, add car insurance and maintenance to the list of things I would no longer have to pay. If you take the time to actually track the difference between automobile usage and bicycle usage, it is quite eye opening. My bike (about $500 new) paid for itself in only 5 months.

I haven't filled my '97 Ford Explorer up in a while. I usually on fill it half full. I get 12 miles to the gallon and it is 12 miles one way from my home to work. Each day costs me 2 gallons of gas. The higher the gas prices go the more sense is makes for me to ride. In LA I have seen gas prices from $4.17 to $4.90. So Pay $8 to drive or save $8 and get healthier? I pick saving it.

I put some gas in my 01 Lumina last night, I figure, it would cost $50-60 for a full tank $35 got me 3/4 full, but that last quarter is measured weird. It isn't bad for us as my wife's car needs an alternator replaced so I'm only using 1 car, but we still drop the kids off at school so I figure she's using a gallon a day just doing that. :(

Not sure how far it is for her to drive so no idea fuel usage there. Just going around town to Target and super markets (less than 10). I'm much easier on the throttle than she is, so I'm sure there's a difference there as well.

$4.40 last night.

Next big bike expense will be tune-up, rear tire, lights, and perhaps a better trailer to start taking that to Target and markets.....

Ya, wife and I have been sharing a ride a few days this week. My Exploder is in the shop and a few days a week we just have to carpool to do obligations with the kids. We work in the same direction so no real extra mileage for us I think plus her not having "shopping time after work" is saving us money too. lol

I got my license the week gas top $1.40 a gallon Highest in history up to that point. You woulda thought the world was coming to an end. That was the same week I bought my big block Charger! :)

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.

That was 50 years ago and we had a 2 gallon gas can for the mower and dad would give me 40 cents and tell me to fill the can and keep the change. The 40 cents would almost fill the can but there was never any change. Everything has went up 10 to 20 times from then to now with maybe the exception of wages and some really strange outliers. If I would have told my dad that in 2012 we would be $4 to $10 a gallon for water out of a vending machine in tiny coke size bottles with fancy names and not complaining he would have had my head examined. If I told him gas and cars will go up 10 to 20 times but milk would only go up by a factor of 4 or 5 and we wouldn’t drink the whole milk as it’s not good for you we would drink watery milk with the fat removed more head examination. I could go on and on.

The more amazing thing is in 1973 I bought my first new car a VW bug out the door under $2000, was a peppy little car and hauled 4 people around nicely, and it delivered 30MPG year after year using 1940’s technology. You could pick up Mothers Earth News in 1973 and read an article almost every month on someone building a hybrid car in their garage and getting twice my 30MPG. Pick up a Popular Science and read articles on how GMC had EV’s designed and built and tested and ready to roll.

People live in a self-projected reality and most just except things are the way they are. We buy into what we are told.

YADIW! WAGTYAY! My last inner tube to be retired was a first. The valve core blew down into the tube itslelf when I last tried to air it up. I had just patched it for the fifth time. I still have my complete box of CO2 cartridges. I won't use one unless it going to save me from being late to work. Never skimp on the quality of tires. I have been relying on Panasonic Ribmos for a couple of years. Spending money on the right things is saving money in the future. And yes, commuting is brutal on tires and they must be replaced before they become unreliable. Every commuter will tell you about their respective and expensive learning curves. I found my experience started to pay real money dividends after about 18 months of dedicated commuting.

Ouch, I went for a bike ride this weekend, to Long Island, I've seen places where the cheapest gasoline was $4.10 and $4.70 for Super Duper Gasoline.

I buy Schwalbe Marathon tires. I ride almost every day, 16 miles a day and they last a year. They'd probably last more, but I replace them every year anyway.

And yeah, it takes many months before you get everything right and your body gets used to daily riding.