CB HI

Seems we cycle commuters have been saving more money than we thought.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...ion/556620001/

alcjphil

This is news? Owning a car is expensive? News flash, it always has been compared to other modes of transport whether using public mass transport or using a bicycle. Nothing new here

mcours2006

Can't get the article to load. But nothing that's new here. In addition to the obvious cost of insurance, registration, fuel cost, repairs, and parking, I assume they take into account depreciation of the vehicle itself. So yeah, added together it could total $750/month.

I-Like-To-Bike

Except that the article does not say that auto commuting costs $750/month, despite the misleading heading of this thread.


The $750 figure is the average cost of owning a car and driving it for an average of 15,000 miles a year for all purposes (to include shopping, vacations, appointments, sightseeing, recreational activities, etc.) not just commuting. The article also discusses tips for saving money on commuting by using public transportation, biking, or walking for some or all of the commuting trips. Of course that only saves the mileage dependent variable costs of fuel, tires, mileage dependent maintenance, etc., and does little to reduce the significant fixed costs of car ownership - depreciation, financing, registration, licensing and insurance which remain whether the car is used less often or not at all for commuting.

Daniel4

A lot of motorists think those costs are what builds the roads. So they complain about cyclists taking away "their" space.

mcours2006

Yeah, I wish I could read it.

I-Like-To-Bike

Extracts from that article:
"At about $750 a month, transportation ranks just after housing as the largest expense for the average American household, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For married couples with children, it makes up 17.3% of their monthly expenditures, while housing comprises 31.8%."
" AAA estimates the annual cost of owning a car — including maintenance, fuel, insurance and depreciation — ranges from about $6,350 for a small sedan like a Honda Civic or Ford Focus driven 15,000 miles a year to $9,450 for an SUV like a Ford Explorer driven the same amount."
++++++++++++++++
Note:
It should be noted that the AAA cost estimates are based on the costs of buying a new car and trading it in with only 75,000 miles on it for another new car every 5 years .
AAA's Your Driving Costs | AAA Exchange

It doesn't take a financial genius to figure out that trading in barely used cars every 5 years for another new car just for commuting purposes is not for anybody interested in saving money on commuting.

gregf83 

My 25+ yr old car cost me virtually nothing as it's still appreciating. I don't commute with it or drive it very often though.

I-Like-To-Bike

My 2003 Nissan Sentra, bought new, still runs like a top with 125,000 miles on it, 33 mpg on the road and so far other than normal maintenance such as oil changes, and replacement of tires, brake pads, and battery has required only one repair in 14 years - replacing one $25 ignition coil as indicated by a check engine light.

My 2001 Chevy Prizm bought used for peanuts (a rebadged Toyota Corolla) with 192,000 also runs like a top and gets over 37MPG. It even has cruise control with a 5speed stick and has a good sound system. Nice little all around town hoppdiemobile.

CB HI

Too bad some missed this quote.

CB HI

Also:

B. Carfree

Well, not exactly, at least for insurance. Some companies are offering insurance by the mile, which can save a wee bit for very low mileage drivers. In my case, my agent found a way to make my auto insurance a negative cost (the company pays me), but that's only because I'm a very infrequent driver. Unfortunately, insurance is the least of all the costs except for registration (which is nearly free in Oregon).

Still the point of CBHI's post is valid. Being committed (addicted?) to cars isn't cheap. If a young couple can get by car-free for a few years, it will make a huge difference in their financial well-being, especially later in life (nothing like owning a home or two outright to reduce the stress at work, since one finds oneself not needing any particular job to pay the bills).

mcours2006

Wee bit is right! I inquire with my own insurance company and the difference was less than $10.

mcours2006

Thanks for the extract.

The first five years of a vehicle's life is where most of the depreciation happens. You could see the value of your vehicle go to less than half of its original purchase price. For a $20K Civic just owning it for five years would have cost you at a minimum $2000/year in depreciation, more if you financed it...actually even if you paid cash it still cost you more because of opportunity cost. A $20K investment into equities at a conservative 5% return would have returned over $25K. Lots of assumptions about the market here, I know. But just to illustrate a point.

The wise thing to do, if you must have a vehicle, is to buy a vehicle that is 3-5 years old and the drive it to the ground. Remove collision from your insurance policy after about 8-10 years will save you some money, as well as increasing your deductible.

I-Like-To-Bike

What is the next alleged bicycling advocacy and safety tip?

Is it -

• Best way to save money on food costs involves cutting back or eliminating your time spent at restaurants or perhaps eating the cheapest food available that can sustain existence?
• Best way to save on housing costs is to involves cutting back or eliminating your time spent in a convenient and desirable housing and downsize into a smaller house or apartment in a less desirable part of town, or perhaps even consider living homeless in order to save on housing costs.
• Best way to save on vacation expenses involves cutting back or eliminating your time and money spent on taking vacations away from home and just instead ride or walk around in the neighborhood.

The point is - a bicycle (or walking or public transportation) is seldom a suitable, convenient and practical replacement for a person's motor vehicle for ALL the tasks and transportation purposes that a motor vehicle is typically used for year round in all weather. A bicycle seldom offers the same convenience, time savings, flexibility and capability and sometimes necessity to easily carry passengers, baggage or cargo at a moments notice over distance. Believe it or not some people, if not most, recognize that such utility does cost money and are willing to pay for it.

It is not very convincing advocacy (other than preaching to choir) to wax poetically about the significant financial savings gained by bicycle commuting. Exceptions can be pointed out for those who currently incur daily stratospheric motor vehicle parking and bridge/tunnel tolls costs commuting to downtown work sites in Manhattan, S.F, Chicago and the like and could eliminate those costs with a practical bicycle or walking commute, or reduce the commuting expense somewhat by replacing those costs by taking public transportation, if available and convenient.

But those are the exceptions to the rule.

WNCGoater

^This^ Seems threads and particularly threads on this A&S subforum always drift into arguing two different points, or comparing apples to bananas.
I didn't read the article but sure, commuting to work can save money, heck WILL save money. Not arguable.
What THAT discussion became was saving on maintenance, cost of the automobile, insurance, licensing etc. I suspect it is the EXTREMELY rare person that owns a bike INSTEAD of a car. And so, sure, you'll save on gas and maybe a bit on maintenance. But unless you get RID of the car, you still have all the associated other costs of owning a car.

Also, a lot of "advocates" of "alternatives" seem to equate all life in the world as mirroring their life. In what is commonly referred to"flyover country" i.e. not in a big city, commutes are lengthy and often rural in nature. I do occasionally ride my bike to work...12 miles away, over narrow rural country roads...but I'm not going to do it in the pre-dawn darkness, competing with school buses and motorists COMMUTING to work. It would be difficult to add to my bike my wife and my child to drop her off to school, along with her backpack and trumpet case for band. Not to mention a change of clothes for work. There is no public transit option, no trains, no public buses. And so as noted above, MOST of America needs a car, and yes, that is a NEED not a perceived need. It is how we've built this society. It is the nature of our country, and who we are as a people.
Again, a lot of people point to examples in Europe or our own cities of places that are "doing it right" and by the way, "look at the savings", all the while in blissful ignorance of the fact that the rest of the country doesn't necessarily live like you, or in an area where it is even logistically possible.

And so to say you can save money by commuting. SURE you can! But then to start adding the cost of owning a car to "saving money commuting" is a totally different subject altogether, and frankly, not even in the realm of feasibility to the vast majority of us.

indyfabz

I am glad I don't have to drive to work on a daily basis. I walk, ride or take public transit on rare occasions. Only when I go out in the field or go to our NJ office do I drive. Those occasions are few and far between. New car bought in early July of '17 has 4,100 miles on it. I'd estimate that at least 800 of those were put on during a few long weekend camping trips good distances from home.

JoeyBike

Sorry to take your ideas out of the context of your post.

Over the past 30 years I strived to live the most Thoreauvian lifestyle possible without actually becoming a monk. Partly as an experiment in how far I could take it and partly because I really don't care for or need expensive stuff/experiences. Cycling instead of driving is just one piece of the puzzle. I lived in a furnished studio apartment in a safe neighborhood and mostly cooked for myself. Vacations were usually bike tours where I ditched the apartment.

Ironically, in 2018 the cheapest health insurance I can get in my state costs $720/month.That is $8,640/year IF I don't actually get sick. Yes, I would rather be leasing a Lexus than throwing that money down a rat-hole but thanks to my years of practice "doing without" this crazy expense that has nothing to do with my current state of health is still doable without moving under a bridge.

The cost of owning a dependable car, according to AAA, has held steady at $8,000/year for some time now. I presume this means living an "always having a car note" lifestyle. At the moment I am happy that I am not entrenched in an "automobile lifestyle" so I have that 8G to continue enjoying the "piece of mind" of doctors being excited to put me back together again if something happens.

It is not a sin to live far below one's means. Someone occasionally pointing out how much of a person's "life" is consumed by owning a motor vehicle always pleases me. I believe that for many other people, not owning a car is just a small part of the big picture.

My apologies for presuming anything in a post. I know how you LOVE that!

mcours2006

I recognize that not everyone can do what I do--ride 20 km to work every day and then 20 km, nor do all his grocery shopping on a bike, and pretty much live car-free...if he were single and didn't have any children. But I do have a wife and children who can't do what I do so we have a couple of cars. Having and maintaining them is expensive, for sure, but it needs to be so to make everyone else's life easier.

genec

You are right that a bike may not solve ALL the needs of transportation... but one has to consider how often those other needs arise? Just how often does one need to move a piano... and most temporary needs can be resolved with a taxi or rental vehicle...

And yes, quite a bit of this "advocacy" is simply telling folks to drive less... but the reality is, do we really need to fill the roads with single occupancy large vehicles? No, and that leaves more space for everyone else.

And ultimately if the household is two people, it is quite workable to have only one motor vehicle, and use it for the occasions when 4 wheels are needed, but otherwise, commute and do the majority of tasks on a bike. This is exactly what worked out for me. I was car free for several years, during college and for a number of years after college. I even dated my wife to be, while car free. When we married, she brought a car into our life... and the car proved handy when eventually I took her to the hospital to give birth, and later to take the newborn home.

But I continued to bike commute to work, and did so for a number of years, thus as a family, we were "car light." We obviously saved the costs of the second car.

It was only recently that I stopped bike commuting. (about 4 years ago) and now I have retired and commute no where.

We are still car light. We have one compact car (37mpg) that we use for all our regular tasks. I have an old '97 truck, that I remove the cover from a couple times a year, and we use that to haul a camping trailer and bicycles. I do not drive the truck daily... in fact, I drive the truck so in-frequently I have to use a battery charger to bring it back to life whenever we get ready to travel.

KD5NRH

You got lucky on that one; both of my Sentras were junk from the day I got them. Of course, total price was under $2k, so not a huge loss, even though they weren't worth the cost of the exhaust repairs to pass inspection.

Keep an eye on your shift linkage bushings. Cheap fix, and there's a reasonably easy kludge to hold the stick end of the linkage until you can get the part, but a major pain if the transmission end ones go while you're out and around.

But yeah, the easy fix for depreciation losses is to not invest in a car; buy it used cheap, and drive it until it's ready for the scrapyard. Total depreciation will be less than the first day of owning a new car. Buy a car the same way you buy a taco; knowing it'll be a turd when you're done with it.

Hoopdriver

Interesting article that precipitated some personal musings:

I ride twice as many miles cycling than what I put on my truck, yet I am still saddled with insurance and taxes. Get rid of the truck and my savings go way up, but I can't put a half yard of gravel in my panniers and the boat is hard to tow with my bike so I pay the price. If I were to commute using my truck instead of my bike, it would cost me annually an additional $60-$70 in fuel, $150 for parking, and maybe $100 for maintenance. This amounts to a savings of $25 per month, which is handily used up (and more) by all the stuff I have to buy in order to commute by bike.

In addition if I started to drive to work, I would save about 45 - 60 minutes per day and that would allow me to get more home chores done so I could ride more on the weekends. This could easily result in my cycling mileage actually increasing! I would lose the intangibles though: the smugness of doing something that impresses coworkers, the opportunity to dress funny, and of course the annual lame appreciation breakfast my employer does for cycle commuters as compensation for claiming my carbon offsets as their own.

Kinda convincing myself to start driving again. Someone talk me out of it!

CB HI

^^
A canoe or kayak fit nicely on some bicycle trailers.

Before I retired, the math was very easy for me. Parking was a workplace benefit. When parking got tight and the building owner insisted our office turn in one of the parking passes, a volunteer was requested. I volunteered as long as I got the parking cost as an expense reimbursement each month. Reimbursement started at $70 per month and was up to $120 per month when I retired. Savings in insurance, registration, safety inspection and gas was just an extra bonus. Not sitting in rush hour traffic jams was the biggest bonus.

The cycle commuting time just replaced other exercise time. Round trip motoring normally took 2 hours while round trip cycling normally took 2 hours 30 minutes. So for an extra 30 minutes, I got 2.5 hours of exercise.

Sorry so many of you folks do not get such good deals.

genec

What about the cost of going to the gym daily to get all that aerobic exercise?

gregf83 

So without commuting by bike you spend under $50/yr driving? That’s very low.