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I think food to pedal the bike cost money.
And don’t even get me started on all the healthcare the meat bag driving it needs.
Edmonton is in Canada, so that is covered 👍
Just don’t get your teeth knocked out in the crash
Teeth? Do you mean Luxury Bones™?
Luxury Bones Enamel Edition Pro Max
Probably less than non-cyclists due to better health, so a net negative cost.
Studies have actually been done on this.
Cyclists do have higher risk of injury from traffic, but the health benefits from the exercise they get more than makes up for it. Cyclists have significantly lower all-around mortality and injury/sickness rates than car drivers.
US specific issue.
I guess when you have fancy pants, you go on adventures.
Also the extra exercise will prolong your life and you’ll have to pay even more.
Longer life means you have to buy more food. That will make a hilarious ad campaign for cars - save money, live shorter
Live fat, die young
Damn, I miss their compilations
Its more the cocaine needed to ride long distance that costs the money.
You need food regardless if you bike or drive. Maybe just a little more if you are in good trim and bike a lot. Still cheaper than gas for a car though.
The amount of calories you burn every day doesn’t change much, even if you exercise. Unless you’re doing some serious hardcore training or exposing yourself to extreme cold, it won’t make much difference to your calorie usage (your body just reallocates it from something else to exercise). Most of your movement calorie-burn is just from everyday movement.
That’s why I use an electric self driving bike
One of my friends did a personal study on his costs at uni and found it was more cost effective to drive his car (this was in the early 2000’s) than it was to ride his bike to uni everyday than buy the food required to fuel the 50km round trip.
Hope he wasn’t majoring in anything like math or biology.
Well he certainly wasn’t majoring in wilful ignorance so that probably works in his favour.
Maybe try not living 50km away from the university you need to attend almost every day?
Round trip, so it was 25km. Sadly Peth Australia has one of the largest urban sprawls on the planet so 25km isn’t an unreasonable commute here and when you are a young uni student sometimes it’s more cost effective overall to live with your parents. This isn’t a post in support of cars, it’s more saying that fuel for bicycles is most certainly not free and to suggest it is is disingenuous. Arguably there may have been other things my friend could have done to reduce his food bill, but he was already pretty thrifty in general.
So drive and starve was the conclusion? Was this Trump U?
No it was the increase in petrol cost was less when he drove than his increase in food cost when he rode, he ate fine when he drove
25km each way is, best case scenario, 1h per trip, in that case if public transport is not an option, yeah, I’d take the car
I think public transport at the time was a real screw around for him because his area was poorly serviced and the nearest train station was super dodgy
Yeah I live in a city with decent public transportation, but unfortunately my neighborhood is the one that’s poorly serviced, it’d take me two hours and multiple changes to get to work, it takes me 35 minutes by car and 20 by motorbike.
Of course I take the latter as often as possible, it’s just better, even on fuel consumption.I’d like to bicycle to work like I did to my previous job, but here it’s just not an option, it’d take over one hour, I’d get there drenched in sweat, and risk my life multiple times.
A car runs on money and makes you fat.
A bike runs on fat and saves you money.
The saving money part might be not completely true
It’s definitely possible to spend a lot on your bicycle but it is almost certainly cheaper than using and maintaining a car
Even the higher-price mid-range bikes are way cheaper than the cheapest cars, and there’s a lot on the bike that you can just do yourself instead of relying on a mechanic, most parts are cheaper as well, lots of bikes allow more personalization…
Bikes are the paragon of freedom Anericans think cars are.
Time is money tho
In cities bikes are often faster than cars. They don’t get stuck in traffic and you don’t have to worry about parking. On longer distances this goes away, but short urban trips are no brainers.
Depends on the city. And the definition of city.
My city used to be a “bicycle city” before it was cool, but nowadays cars have taken over the roads and the bike infrastructure that’s been created sucks, when I worked just 6km from home, car was faster even in rush hour traffic. Now work is outside the city and the bike is simply too impractical, it takes too much time and it’s dangerous.
I have fond memories of working and living in the country side and going to work on my MTB through tree plantations, but alas, that’s in the past.
How does this have so many upvotes? As long as it’s actually possible to ride your bike in your city, the cost of buying and then maintaining a bicycle is WAY, WAY, cheaper than a car
It’s rare to replace a car with a bike though. You replace journeys instead, so end up with a lot of the fixed(ish) costs anyway.
Saves me loads on my commute though.
Wtf are you on about? A good bike costs less than a few months insurance and gas.
Good thing they are free! Wait…they aren’t? And they run on fossil fuel tires?? Oops.
Yeah, similarly, one could make the mistake of walking. But even sneaker treads use rubber. Same poison!
You actually can get bikes for free pretty often, especially if you’ve got the ability to turn a wrench.
And while modern tires probably do incorporate some fossil ‘fuels’ (technically not fossil fuel if you’re not burning it, by the way), they don’t have to. Old school tires are made from vulcanized rubber, which can be made by reacting natural rubber from a rubber tree with sulfuric acid and heat. No fossil ‘fuels’ involved.
Bicycles have less mass than a car and therefore need less fossil fuel for their tires. Bicycles are objectively cheaper to buy, maintain, and run than a car, even if you go for the average expensive bicycle and the average cheap car. There just is no way to make the car come out on top when it’s about costs.
Dumbest internet comment today. Well done!
Bike tires don’t usually weigh more than 300g.
Car tires usually weigh more than 7kg and you need 4 instead of two.
The only slightest bit of an argument here could be for trains.
I also need maybe 5 specialised tools to service my bike (which is veeeery easy to do compared to doing it on a car) and those tools together cost less than 200€. Then I spend around 200€ a year or less on parts to service my bike, and I use it to go to work every day.
My car is sooooo much more expensive than that, even though I do most stuff myself.
Most people pay almost twice as much
Have you seen the cost of groceries?
Well, it’s about one banana per half an hour
Bout to stroll up with a peddle assist and demand free gas
arent there bikes that run on gas though?
We generally refer to those as Mopeds, at least in the US
Omg. So dumb. They are never going to sell any regular.
If you’re on mastodon and like dad jokes, puns and thai recipes, Natasha is a good follow
I too pass gas freely when riding.
Cool, now do oil based tire prices.
How often do you change tyres?
You’re making perfection the enemy of good. Nobody said bikes themselves were free - everything requires some maintenance and parts.
And if we are comparing bike tires to car tires, they are still a lower volume of petroleum based rubber, and cheaper (especially given that you need two rather than four). A new bike tire is generally anywhere between $50-100, so that’s $100-200 to change the pair you are riding. And new car tires are about $150-250 depending on brand and size, so that’s $600-$1000.
