is commuting expensive?

clarkey cat

bit of fun in the old Grauniad today

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/b ... ve-cycling

Wrath Rob

I checked wiggle, I'm a platinum member as I spent over £500 in the last year And that didn't include the bike service...

As always the comments make me laugh more than the article itself

iPete

I'm triple platinum, do I get a prize or do I just blame wiggle?

You can't put a price on your fitness and if you consider cycling a hobby, double bonus.

sketchley

Door to door for me is 55min cycle commuting, PT is 1hr 15min minimum so PT is not quicker. However factor in time spent at the gym as I know get back around 8 hours a week, travelling, changing and working out at the gym as well.

As for cost, £150 per month Zone 4 travel card + £60 a month gym membership is £210 or £2,520 per year. So a £1,000 bike every three years still leaves £6,560 over the three years or £2186 per year. If I spend half of this on clothing, maintenance etc I'd save £3 per day or just over £ 1000 per year.

That's without factoring in additional savings from being fitter and healthier.

clarkey cat

The comments are hilarious:

"I made a bike using oatmeal and an old clock I found on my allotment - all you lycra louts riding £100 bikes are a menace"

W1

The glaring typo in the sub-heading is incredibly irritating.

You can spend as much as you like cycling, or you can do it cheaply. I estimate I spend around £500 a year running a bike (that's everything including tubes, batteries and clothing), so it's not as cheap as just buying the bike and needing to spend nothing further, but it is certainly cheaper, more pleasant, more reliable, more consistent, more fun and better for you than PT - and all that's worth more than money!

roger_merriman

For me public transport is the worse option in that have close on a mile walk after for the only sensible ish bus, at which point why bother since you can walk it in 45 mins any way.....

car has too many junctions, on a good day it's 15 mins but mostly its 30 mins and sometimes a lot more.

by bike it's 20 mins and you can thread two parks into the route.

both the bike and the car are cheap to run, but the car requires insurance/tax.

Both are worth about the same, and like wise deprecation is close to flat.

I don't save much money as my car is cheap, it's a old but well maintained car that runs on loose change, (£20 would cover a months fuel)

but the bike is even cheaper.

Mr Plum

I'd rather ride through the rain every day than use public transport or pay £1.35 a ltr. Much more enjoyable anyway :twisted:

hfidgen

£800 bike (after R2W scheme savings)
£250 accessories / clothing
£70 on tools
£80 on repairs (thus far)
£500 on gym membership (mainly for the shower)

---

£1700

Estimated commuting days in 2011 = 140
Cost per day = £12.14

Catching the tube for 140 working days would cost me £700-£800, so the bike is twice as expensive, but tbh... I can live with that.

jimmypippa

Public transport currently would cost just over £100 per month.

A new £650 bike on cycle to work each year and no maintenance, returning the bike at the end of the year would cost £30per month.

I am not doing that, but have kept my bike, so will need to add in the cost of maintenance, but the bike was paid for in the first year.

Its a no-brainer in my case

Gussio

Commuting is very expensive if you travel by car or public transport......

What price health and spiritual wellbeing?

meanredspider

hfidgen wrote:

£800 bike (after R2W scheme savings)
£250 accessories / clothing
£70 on tools
£80 on repairs (thus far)
£500 on gym membership (mainly for the shower)

---

£1700

Estimated commuting days in 2011 = 140
Cost per day = £12.14

Catching the tube for 140 working days would cost me £700-£800, so the bike is twice as expensive, but tbh... I can live with that.

Surely your calcs assume all of the costs are written off in a year. Sure the gym & repairs are but the bike, clothes, accessories & tool are still worth something.

I've probably spent something like £2k - but save £5-6 a day on fuel alone and £20 a month on gym membership. It's probably taken me 1.5 years to pay it off but I fully expect to be using the investment for at least as long again.

Initialised

Depends, on your attitude. Browsing sites like this don't help keep things cheap. There's always a slightly better model for a few £ more whether you're looking at a full bike or just a lamp.

ndru

I read the article twice and still don't know what the bloke is on about?
Money spent on cycling
1) Bicycle L600
2) Lock L30
3) Insurance L30
4) Rain cape L10
Which amounts to 670
I haven't touched the bike in 6 months time bar tensioning the chain myself...
That's against L1200 for commuting by tube from zone 3 to 1... plus I use my bike for all other errands too, which saves even more money...

Jay dubbleU

Plus using PT opens you up to risks of catching everything from the sniffles to bubonic plague

SmellTheGlove

Clicking through to Wiggle from here http://www.cycletoworkcalculator.com/ as mentioned in the Graun, there seem to be some extra discounts applied, esp. to the shoes I was about to buy anyway! Result.

hfidgen

meanredspider wrote:

hfidgen wrote:

Estimated commuting days in 2011 = 140
Cost per day = £12.14

Surely your calcs assume all of the costs are written off in a year. Sure the gym & repairs are but the bike, clothes, accessories & tool are still worth something.

True! The bike and equipment will retain some value for several years yet. The 3 year cost will be pretty good if you reckon the frame and more expensive parts of the bike make it that far.

motopatter

my park and ride costs would be £2 / day x 4 days / week = £8/wk + £2 petrol to get there a week. So c£450 per year

versus use of bike I've had for years that wasn't getting used (same for bike gear - I used to be quite enthusiastic). I have bought a spoke tool and had the rest of the tools I have needed to date.

It can be done cheaply on any old hack if your commute is short, but if mine were longer I recon the consumables would mount up more (as yet c&s ok etc), and I'd probably invest in a more suitable bike.

joelsim

Bike £480 after CTW rebates
Accessories - anything up to £300 to get started
Maintenance - none yet, but let's say £150 per annum

Total about a grand.

Public Transport - £250 per month. And useless connections which mean I stand around waiting for ages loads.

Car - main car 23mpg, journey 36 miles total = approx £10 per day x 20 days per month
Little car - 45mpg = approx £5 per day

250 working days in a year:
Bike: £4 per day (assuming it has no sell-on value)
PT: £12.50 per day
Car: between £5 and £10 per day minus the depreciation of the extra miles ie about £1k per annum, so really £9-£14 per day.

I know which is the nicest too.

2nd year, assuming £250 on servicing and a new set of clothing, £1 per day.

motopatter

also

most days allowing for a 'cool down', change and 'bath in a can' and a quick snack I still don't have to leave as early as I would if I wanted to drive to the park and ride (ensuring I was there in time and not miss the random buses) and wait for the old f*ckers to get off the bus in front of me and dawdle out of the bus terminal in my way and then walk to work.

I think others have already pointed out the time taken for pubic transport commutes

asprilla

Commuting by PT costs me about £300 a week, that's a new bike every year. Huzzah!

motopatter

£300 * 52 = £15,600 :shock:

wtf do you ride 8)

motopatter

Asprilla wrote:

!

oh, and PWEI rock 8)

other bands of the era I also enjoy =
FOTN
NMA

thoroughly had a great time during the 80s/early 90s

8) 8) 8)

joelsim

motopatter wrote:

£300 * 52 = £15,600 :shock:

wtf do you ride 8)

5 weeks holiday. £14,100.

Cheap.

optimisticbiker

Time & distance
Bike: 15miles each way, around 70min door to door (58ish moving).
PT: inc walk to/from station 1hr30 - 1hr45
You save:22.9 days (over 4years/600 commutes)

Costs
Over the 4y:
Bike £450 on C2W
Maintenance (me) inc tools and parts £200
Kit around £450
Electrolyte drinks £480 ! (yes, I didnt realise how much I use either)

total = £1580
number of commutes over 4y ~600 (1 year I wasnt commuting very much)
cost per commute by bike = £2.63
cost per commute by PT (average over the 4y) = £7.13
You save: £675/yr

Enjoyment factor:
Bike: 99%
PT: 10%
You save: Priceless

No contest

motopatter

Joelsim wrote:

motopatter wrote:

£300 * 52 = £15,600 :shock:

wtf do you ride 8)

5 weeks holiday. £14,100.

Cheap.

is the personal mechanic included in that cost :shock:

joelsim

Good idea. He can run behind the bike all the way.

motopatter

Joelsim wrote:

Good idea. He can run behind the bike all the way.

and ride it up hills for you

joelsim

motopatter wrote:

Joelsim wrote:

Good idea. He can run behind the bike all the way.

and ride it up hills for you

Were you following me in RP yesterday?

motopatter

Joelsim wrote:

motopatter wrote:

Joelsim wrote:

Good idea. He can run behind the bike all the way.

and ride it up hills for you

Were you following me in RP yesterday?

nope

CiB

Pffft - relying on a third-party widget to tell you what you save? You need Finest OCD With Added OCD, with a bit of OCD thrown in. I give you: my mileage logs for the car over the last n years that show miles per pound, averaged daily cost etc, linked into an Excel spreadsheet that records the days that I commute by bike, and any bike-related spending. Whizz it all up through a neat little macro and some graphs and a final group of cells that show total spend, save & average inside leg measurement and it spits out the answer. As of today 33 commutes for the year (that few? Not good enough...) has saved £197.72 less £34.11 spending giving a net benefit of £163.61, or £4.96 per commute.

The flexibility is in what's deemed to be commuting-related bike spending. The initial cost of the bike isn't; I'd own a bike anyway. Same for all the gear. All that goes into the Spent pot is additional snacks & bits that are directly attributable to cycling to work, like the Lidl track pump for a fiver as I couldn't get home otherwise.

Stats. Everybody needs some stats in their life to see how well we're doing.