Commuting on bike Versus Commuting by car

Spitchips - BANNED

This thread will mention first of all the financial outlay between bike and car over ten year period and then go onto my own expereince with travelling the same journey by bus and bike and seeing which is best.

COST
The financial saving by travelling by bike is dirt cheap, even if you buy a £1000+ commuter bike. Look at it this way - if you had that bike and servcied it well it could easily last you 10yrs. So if you divide that £1000/10 = £100 per year.

You could spend that sort of amount on car parking fees alone for the year.

Other costs are insurance, MOT, depeerciation (maybe £1000 per year), petrol, speding tickets and more. The total cost for a year according to one newsaper calcualted it at about £1500 (dont forget all the hidden charges). So over ten years thats £1500*10 = £15000.

COST SUMMARY
Cost of car for ten years = £15000

Cost for ten years (bike) = £2000

ps the extra £1000 for the bike is worked out at replacement parts and servcing needed during the 10yrs.

Differnce = £12000!!!!!!

You save £12,000 over ten years by travelling by bike. You can even jump lights if safe to do so and some of the cycling paths are beautifult o ride along and *** all over the boredom of motorways!!!!

one benefit of cycling
You also get fitter too.

Bring on the cyclists and bag huge saving.

COST BREAKDOWN OF CYCLING OVER 10YRS
My calculations are £2000/3500 days (worked at at riding for 350 days of the year over ten yrs (350*10 = 3500) =.57 per day!!!

thats right 57p per day - brilliant.

if you did 5 miles per day that would work out at 12p per mile!!!!!!!! if you did 10miles per day it would work out at 6p per mile!!!

If you did club rides too and the odd monthly 25mile+ bike ride it would work out even ******* cheaper!


BIKE VS Commuting by bus
maybe even 2p per mile. Even the buses charge £1.20 for a mile ride; and in 5yrs the same bus ride will probbalu be £2.50 - madness. also with buses its quicker for me too ride to town, do a lap of the town centre and get back home than waiting for bus.
>bike ride = 17mins there and back.
>bus = 5 minute walk to bus stop, 10 minute wait and 20min journey = 35 trip. Then to get back home it would be another 15 min ride and 5 minute walk from stop to home - total time = 70 mins, maybe more.

TIme Difference between bike and bus
I am nearlly 50 minutes quicker than same journey by bus! anyone ready to get scalped?

If you did that sort of mileage on the buses you would be forking out huge finnacial outlays over 10yrs.

Dont forget this is also riding a £1000 bike with £1000 worth of repairs and servicing over ten years - so you wuill be riding a good bike, for the money, and travelling in style.

Does anyone else have any advanatages and disadvantages by traveling by these means? Would be great to get a well rounded picture.

downfader

The only time you can legally "jump" the lights would be if you can get off and walk around

Yes I agree though - you can save a LOT of money. I'd hate to think how much I'd have spent on cars if I drove... I do have a love of ferraris, tvrs etc*

*I love them but know nothing about them, just as with bikes

artaxerxes

I still have a car though.
I start it up every couple of weeks to keep the battery going

Spitchips - BANNED

Travelling by bikes make me and not :x

Travelling by car makes me :twisted: and and :roll:

prj45

I have a car, and like having a car, but I could live without it.

Misses couldn't though, get's v mad when I suggest getting rid of it, but then I'd get v mad if she suggested I get rid of the bike.

Spitchips - BANNED

I also feel like at other cyclists but :P motorists

bluecow

It would never really work out like that though, would it. The majority of people who cycle to work (myself included) own a car. So away with the MOT, Tax saving (unless your car is less than 3 years old, like mine). Plus i didnt have a car for 6 months and at times that was a real pain in the a*se. All i save on by cycling is petrol and the chance of crashing it (cheaper insurance!).
Then you have to factor in stuff like decent cycling wear, lights (mine cost £150), repairing bits, insurance, a decent lock...
Anyway, as inaccurate as your figures may be, your point still stands that its a damn sight cheaper to cycle to work.
If only everyone was clever like "us".

artaxerxes

Living in London I've found that the other advantage of commuting by bike is that I avoid the run of colds/ flu I used to get at this time of year picked up from the steaming bacteria colony that is our tube and train system.

Spitchips - BANNED

bluecow wrote:

It would never really work out like that though, would it. The majority of people who cycle to work (myself included) own a car. So away with the MOT, Tax saving (unless your car is less than 3 years old, like mine). Plus i didnt have a car for 6 months and at times that was a real pain in the a*se. All i save on by cycling is petrol and the chance of crashing it (cheaper insurance!).
Then you have to factor in stuff like decent cycling wear, lights (mine cost £150), repairing bits, insurance, a decent lock...
Anyway, as inaccurate as your figures may be, your point still stands that its a damn sight cheaper to cycle to work.
If only everyone was clever like "us".

Why was it a pain in the a**e not having a car?

If it was something like because of grocery shopping - could jsu use taxi instead - even if the bill was £50 for one journey it would still be a damn fine cheaper than actually owning a car.

mattybain

Spitchips wrote:

Why was it a pain in the a**e not having a car?

If it was something like because of grocery shopping - could jsu use taxi instead - even if the bill was £50 for one journey it would still be a damn fine cheaper than actually owning a car.

Or even get the shopping delivered, ASDA is my fav £5 a delivery and they reguarly mess it up and give us x2 the quantity of some stuff. Also if something is out of stock and they substitute it with something more expensive you get it for the cheaper price. Plus you can very easily see all the special offers in the whole store as they are on one web page. I reckon you easily make back the £5 especially if you consider the costs of driving to the store.

Now I know how easy it is to get to Bradford on the train (where I have to go once a week) I am going to aim to not using a car for a whole month and see how it goes.

Tailend Charlie

Spitchips wrote:

Why was it a pain in the a**e not having a car?

If it was something like because of grocery shopping - could jsu use taxi instead - even if the bill was £50 for one journey it would still be a damn fine cheaper than actually owning a car.

@. Luckily I live close enough to work to be able to ride in, making the above listed savings and keeping fit for proper (ie MTB) riding at the weekends

hisoka

I really should finish learning to drive and getting a test someday, but not had real need to yet so happy enough pootling along on the bike.

Fat Kid

Sorry, can't agree with this at all. I think cycling as a money saving option is generally a myth.

Who here has ridden the same bike for 10 years? As keen cyclists, we are always upgrading our kit, buying new toys, clothing etc.

Given that most people (I certainly do) also own a car and regardless of how many miles one chooses to drive, there are heavy fiixed costs.

I'd go so far to say that cycling is a fairly expensive business and not a cost saver at all!

gpsBRM

I find its not just money saved but time saved. I commute into London from the outskirts (15miles) and find that the time it takes for me to get out of bed and sat at my desk is just over 20mins less if I cycle than if I get the train, that includes breakfats shower etc. Thats 40mins in my day that I save cycling. Thats 3hours 20 mins a week, which is just over 173 hours a year. (ok take off a bit for hols etc)

I have to agree with Fat Kid though, I do seem to spend an awful lot on new kit for my bikes, although most of it is for MTBing then my old kit gets demoted to communting duties.

Rich158

Fat Kid wrote:

Sorry, can't agree with this at all. I think cycling as a money saving option is generally a myth.

Who here has ridden the same bike for 10 years? As keen cyclists, we are always upgrading our kit, buying new toys, clothing etc.

Given that most people (I certainly do) also own a car and regardless of how many miles one chooses to drive, there are heavy fiixed costs.

I'd go so far to say that cycling is a fairly expensive business and not a cost saver at all!

Not at all. If I drive to work it will cost me a tankfull of diesel/week, currently running at about £65 or £260 a month. if I get the train my season ticket through my company loan scheme would cost me £170/month. My bike on the bike scheme costs me £55/month and will last me at least 2 years. Without taking depreciation and extra servicing into account I have already saved £1400 over the year, if I keep the bike for 2 years, which I intend to do, then I save an extra £2k in the second year. That's a tidy £3400 over two years

You can add tyres and tubes into the mix if you like, and the odd bit for the bike, even so £3k is a tidy sum to save for a little effort. If I take into account depreciation on the car due to increased mileage and at least one extra service a year that will be at least £3500 saved. Add in a new set of tyres and thats now £4k.

Whichever way you look at it, cycling is cheaper.

richardvaltos

Couldn't agree more with the above comment. You only save money if you don't have a car. Even then you could save even more by walking instead of cycling! For the majority of people who commute daily by bike (me included) and own a car; the bike is a further expense. I spend about £500 a year running my singlespeed! Tyres,chain, chainring, freewheel,tubes,brake blocks, calipers, btm bracket, clothing, broken lights. You name it there's an almost annual rolling replacement programme. It's the crappy glasgow winters, salt and more rain than you could believe.

roger_merriman

On the other hand with out a car longer journeys can be longer and/or more expencive.
Living on the edge of London trains always go back to the center before heading back out. Means that the very best train time is as good as a truely awful car trip.

rhext

Like most people I guess, cycling does not allow me to ditch the car: I have a young family and getting them about to all the things they seem to need to do would just be completely impractical without.

So I reckon I'm stuck with the fixed costs of the car. But the genuine savings appear to be:

- Diesel. I average about 35 to the gallon at maybe £4.50 a gallon. So that's about 13p a mile.

- Insurance. Using the bike to commute keeps the mileage low enough to reduce the premiums by about £100. I need to commute about 5,000 miles a year to get that, so about 5p a mile.

- Tyres. £600 for about 30,000 miles. 2p a mile.

- There's probably a slight contribution to resale value and servicing costs caused by not using it so much, but difficult to measure so perhaps best not to count that.

So I reckon that a conservative estimate of the saving on variable costs alone is 20p a mile. I don't commute every day, but i managed 5,000 miles this year, and will probably do the same next year. So that's about £1,000 a year.

But then there's the bikes: £700 for the commuter bike. About £300 on maintenance, spares, lubes, tyres etc over the 1.5 years I've been commuting seriously. Another £600 on clothing, lights etc....so at the moment I'm about £100 down over a year and a half. But next year, I'll be about £700 in the black. And the year after that etc.....

Oh, and I forgot. I don't have to shell out £50 a month for a gym membership either. I don't think that cost saving is a major driver (unless you really can ditch the car). But the fitness, time saving, avoidance of the sheer frustration of being trapped in the inevitable morning and evening traffic, coupled with the thought that I'm saving a few pence more than justify it for me.

Oh, and I'd have bought the bike anyway... I just wouldn't be fit enough to ride it if I didn't commute. So I can scratch the cost of that from the calculations and all of a sudden I'm rich again. Brilliant, I can afford a new groupset after all!

W1

I've hit 2,700 miles on the bike for this year in commuting. Even including the cost of the bike, I've probably spent £500 or so, compared to at least £1200 were I to take the tube. I also don't need to join a gym, saving at least another £500 a year. So I'm about £100 a month better off, though I do eat a lot more! And much of the expenditure is one-off stuff, like lights, kit etc, which I won't need to spend again next year.

Of course, the bike is quicker too, saves time that would otherwise be spent keeping fit elsewhere, is much more fun than the tube and less stressful and has made me the fittest I have ever been. Some benefits you can't put a price on.

iain_j

I don't have a car, but savings on not commuting by bus are substantial. The fare for me to get to work is £1.60 so that works out at £768 per year. That's roughly what i paid for my bike, so after just one year i'm saving money (i've commuted by bike for 6 years now), and of course fares go up. Yes i have to pay for parts, repairs, insurance and clothing, but all together it's still cheaper than the bus.

That's just a simple one-bus journey. Savings would be several times more if i had to get more than one bus, or trains etc.

vorsprung

car (per day I drive)
cost of parking £1.60
petrol ( 35mpg, £3.62 a gallon, 10.36p a mile, 15 miles each way)= £3.11
total £4.71

bike (per day)
2 pack of pain aux rasin 89p
total £0.89

Ignoring depreciation and maintainance-- a clear win for the bike

Breathless Commuter Man

We currently run two cars and are going to get rid of mine in the New Year so the savings should come through for me. I will need to use taxis/trains to cover the lack of a car on certain days, but I still think that I will be quids in.

roger_merriman

i would think for a commute that a bike or rather no car transport should be cheaper.

mediamonkey

Fat Kid wrote:

Sorry, can't agree with this at all. I think cycling as a money saving option is generally a myth.

Who here has ridden the same bike for 10 years? As keen cyclists, we are always upgrading our kit, buying new toys, clothing etc.

Given that most people (I certainly do) also own a car and regardless of how many miles one chooses to drive, there are heavy fiixed costs.

I'd go so far to say that cycling is a fairly expensive business and not a cost saver at all!

I did the sums and worked out that commuting by bike would save me a vast sum of money. I've been doing it for 2 years now.

I work four days a week, with a 5-mile trip to the train station, then a 35-minute train ride, then a 3.5 mile hop from Waterloo to the office.

By car, cost per day:
Petrol, 10 miles at 25mpg, based on £1 per litre = £1.80
Car park at station = £4.80
Train ticket (including Underground) = £20.60
Total = £27.20.
Total per year, based on working 46 weeks = £27.20 x 4 x 46 = £5,004.80

By bike, cost per day:
Two extra bananas = £0.70
Train ticket (no Underground) = £15.80
Total = £16.50
Total per year = £3,036

So that's almost £2,000 saved just in daily costs.

Ah yes, but what about the bike? I bought a new MTB through the Ride 2 Work scheme, for a total cost of about £700 (spread over 18 months, deducted from salary). So let's be generous and call it £500 per year for the bike.

Then tyres, inner tubes etc - let's say 1 set of tyres per year and 1 tube per month, £100 will cover that, plus I bought lights, gloves, wet weather gear, a pump etc. Say £300 total, and a lot of that lasts much more than a year.

So the all-in costs by bike are still only about £3,800, and I haven't even got to the additional costs of having an extra car (which I got rid of):

Insurance; £500 per year (actually I was paying more like £600 when I got rid of it)
Tax: £170 per year (probably more than that now, it was a Mazda RX-8, so not very CO2 friendly!)
MOT/servicing/new tyres (a set of tyres costs £600 odd!) etc, pick a figure and double it
And as for the depreciation, well the £21,000 car was worth barely half that after three years so that was £3,500 per year.

I know comparing it to a relatively expensive car rather than a cheap runabout is not exactly fair, but I'd say I'm at least £5,000 a year better off for cycling instead of driving.

Not only that but my commuting time has been cut by as much as 20 minutes, as I don't spend time sitting in traffic and driving round the station car park looking for somewhere to park - I just turn up, chuck the bike on the train and hop off at the other end. No packing onto the Tube either. I'm so much less stressed!

mediamonkey

(Of course, that is largely because I was able to get rid of the car - my wife has a car but she commutes in the opposite direction. We were a two-car household; now we get by just fine with one.)

alfablue

The AA estimates the running costs of a car costing under £10000, for 5000 miles p.a. is 0.58p per mile, so £2900 p.a. Obviously if one is a car owner as well there are fixed costs which are not saved, but this compares favourably with say £250 p.a. bike cost (1 new £1k bike every 4 years), £200 p.a. clothing, £150 p.a. maintenance, cake and other fuel £200 pa, total £800, saving £2100pa.

il_principe

I don't own a car, however I use this as an excuse to spend rather a lot on cycling... overall though I'm sure I've saved a fortune.

mediamonkey

jashburnham wrote:

... overall though I'm sure I've saved a fortune.

Now why does that remind me of the missus coming in through the front door laden down with shopping bags from the sales saying "You'll never guess how much I've saved today!" :?

il_principe

Yeah, probably true, but then £4K will buy a stonking bike or a rubbish car and I know what I'd prefer. I'm dreading the day that family/moving out of London etc will necessitate purchasing a car.

CiB

Creative accounting is back I see.

Basing savings on the idea that the option is either to run a car or have a bike is not consistent with the real world. All this is my own experience based on commuting 20.7 miles each way on a carbon road bike, so here goes.

I do the school run 3 days per week, which limits the times I can ride in to 2 days per week. Not having a car isn’t an option. It’s also true to state that in reality, the bike isn’t much use for going anywhere specific on, apart from to the office & back. Shopping is out as it can’t carry a weekly shop. The theatre? No thanks – there’s nowhere to leave it, and turning up for the evening show in lycra, sweating and looking for somewhere to change, is undignified. Popping to the shopping centre is out – bikes aren’t allowed in, and even with a dozen locks on it I very much doubt that it would be rideable after each time it’s left locked up for an hour or so whilst I’m away from it. To the football? Not really. Parents evenings are a possibility though. In short, the bike is good for commuting, and fun to be out on. But for going anywhere specific it’s of restricted benefit; a car is a necessity.

Commuting then. I’ve just gone through this year’s rides. Cut out the 3 days per week school run, those days out of the office, days when I have to be back by a sensible time after work anyway, holidays, days that fall within the October – April period when I really don’t fancy 20 miles on what seem to be busier unlit A roads or pitch dark country lanes, and unbelievably but true, I’ve commuted on just 24 days this summer.

The math, as some people say.

24 days x 2 journeys per day x 20.7 miles / 52mpg x £5.75 per gallon = £110, as near as doesn’t matter. So biking to work when I can through the summer has returned a cost benefit to me of £110.

Additional costs:
1 x saddle [snapped old one in August], cost £49. Didn’t like it, so had to buy a new one = £42 in sale. Nice.
My glasses – fell out of pocket on two occasions, run over by following traffic. Total replacement cost around £400. (Insurance excess prevents worthwhile claim)
Tubes & tyres – non, so far.
Handlebar tape - £6 I reckon.
Alloy aerobars - £36 but not v good. Sold to the gent in the other office for a tenner.
Carbon aerobars - £99. God’s own contribution to cycling, worth every penny.
Lights & batteries. Not much, already had a load. £20 tops.
New Walkman - £60. Only used on the bike across country, so a cycling cost.
Cycling gear – Aldi gloves, bright togs to be seen by, socks etc. - £100? I dunno.
Food. If I drive in I have a packed lunch. On the bike I don’t carry anything so have to buy food to survive, and to provide the energy for the return journey. Roughly £3-4 per day. Knock it off the gallon of diesel saved by not using the car.
The bike itself. I’m not ashamed of it. £1200 worth of bike, lovely, the best I’ve ever had. It’s pretty much worthless now as a recoverable cost – 3 years old, a few thousand miles of wear & tear on it and likely to be replaced in the next year by something a bit more carbonny and lighter. So let’s factor in another £2000 for that, but hope it comes in under eh?

There’s no pointing adding it up. For an enormous outlay on top of the necessary car, and a few additional and incremental costs, I can save maybe £110 over the summer by not driving to work. Let’s not hide the facts. Cycling is an expensive hobby. It’s not cost effective in the slightest. The reasons for doing it are manifold, but saving money isn’t one of them.

simon_e

After 6 months queueing through Shrewsbury in my car I grasped the nettle and started commuting 5.5 miles each way on my 8 year old Kona. Using the roads, the time was hardly any more than in the car. After a while I switched to mixture of road/cyclepath/riverside route (a nice pic here). This was further but it was much nicer - less time breathing fumes and I could relax more on a wide path alongside the Severn. Changing seasons, weather and everything around me are stimulation and I have time to observe, feel and smell. Instead of the car's choke running (£££) and the windows misting on Winter mornings I'm out there, savouring the crispness. Cold fingertips and a runny nose are a very small price to pay. Even the rain is quite pleasant some days.

Apart from a pair of City Jet tyres, chain & cassette and some lights I've hardly spent anything on it.

Some of the benefits:
- Annual mileage and petrol bills dropped significantly.
- I lost weight and got fitter with little effort.
- I can eat cakes and biscuits with no hint of conscience or fear of the bulge growing.
- I'm always perky when I get to work and don't need a coffee to start my day. While I ride and when I get there I feel ALIVE!
- I look forward to the rides and the things I experience, in contrast to the quiet despair at sitting in queues for large chunks of my journey time.
- my kids know riding bicycles is fun. My son (7) tells me he won't have a car when he's older, he'll ride his bike everywhere.
- if I go into town of an evening I'll now take the bike, see a film or have a pint and then ride home happy.

Edit: I didn't think of clothing. Aldi gloves x2, Altura leggins (3 years ago), Howies merino base layer (£35-ish). The Buffalo windshirt, windproof fleece and wicking t-shirts are decades old. Other clothing items are used for leisure/offroad rides and weren't bought for commuting. The £45 helmet wasn't strictly necessary and I didn't pay for it, that was a birthday present. Not justification, I hasten to add, but facts.

A return bus trip across town (using 2 routes) would be £5.40 and would take nearly an hour. The bike and car each take about 25 minutes door-to-door.

My commute has provided me with immeasurable happiness and reawakened my love of cycling. That's worth more than money can buy.