Why? (Part two of several)
Savings
That’s right: zero gasoline. When’s the last time you saw a bicyclist filling up at the pump? With today’s prices, $100/month is a pretty realistic figure for keeping the tank filled. Every trip you take by bike is that much less you don’t have to spend on fuel. If you buy a commuter bike for $400 and commute to work on it for four months, your bike has just paid for itself. Congratulations! You just got a new bike for free, and all you had to do was ride it to work every day. But this is just the most obvious place you save money by biking instead of driving. Fewer miles driven equals less wear and tear on your car, which reduces your automobile maintenance expenditures. Bikes do wear, and their parts need to be repaired or replaced periodically, but the cost of this is a drop in the bucket compared to auto repair.
BikesAtWork has an excellent calculator with which you can figure your monthly savings from foregoing automobile ownership. Their default figures are from 2004, but you can easily plug in your own numbers from your actual household expenses. Even using the four-year-old default numbers, $613.33/month is nothing to sneeze at!
(Series continues tomorrow….)