Hi Everyone,
I have been biking to work at least 2 days a week for the last year (I also work from home at least 2 days a week). I was a reluctant biker when I first encountered this blog and decided to take the plunge last spring. Since then I'm averaging about 40-80 miles per week biking to work/running errands around town. Biking has been a great (rediscovered) addition to my life. I’m a numbers guys so I wanted to outline my experiences from a time/calorie/lifestyle perspective. I hope this gives everyone the incentive or at least a realistic portrayal of taking up bike commuting. Of course, everyone’s situation is going to vary from the numbers I present below, but hopefully it will give you a framework to calculate your own.
Some Background on Myself:
I used to bike commute in the spring/summer/fall years ago when I lived close to my first job (about 5 miles away). I started biking then when I had car issues and didn't have the money at the time to replace it. I quickly discovered that I enjoyed it and it was a great way to get around town. I have since moved to the suburbs, married have 2 kids and currently live about 10 miles away from my current place of employment.
Exercise:
I have always been active (ran a couple of marathons, weight lift, etc) so jumping back on the bike a year ago wasn't something I was afraid from a physical standpoint. I initially had to do some convincing to my wife to start biking to work because of my existing workout schedule. Eventually we compromised and I decided to run less and bike more as long as I would spend the same amount of time between these activities.
From a calorie perspective I found that I was burning roughly the same amount of calories but biking would take me longer to achieve the same amount of burned calories from a strictly time spent exercising stand point. Since I was replacing my car commute this means that I could subtract this time from my total exercise time which made biking a more efficient way of exercising.
Biking: 4495 calories per week (session = 20 miles @ 14 mph * 3 times a week)
Running: 4528 calories per week (session = 8 miles @ 8.5 min miles * 3 times a week)
Car Commute Time: 30 min per day, 90 min per week * 3 = 1.5 hours total
Biking Time: 80 min a day * 3 times a week = (4 hours – 1.5 hours) = 2.5 hours total time
Running Time: 68 min a day * 3 times a week = 3.4 hours total time
Take-away: I can burn the same amount of calories while spending less time away from home biking due to the elimination of my car commute. Also, I really like coming home and not having to then leave to exercise. I feel like I get more of evening time back in exchange for getting up early to make it to work with enough time to cool down, change clothes, etc.
**I don’t have a heart rate monitor so these are estimates based on my height/weight/age calculators. Also, I presented best case scenario numbers across the board. Of course there were days where I was much slower commuting/running/biking, but I wanted a constant number for calculations. When I use worst case numbers ratios were still roughly the same I would just spend more time overall with either activity.
Expenses:
As some background: we own 2 cars both late model Toyotas with decent gas mileage. We paid for both in cash years ago so we do not have a car payment. Before I started bike commuting I drove to work 3 days a week while working from home 2 days a week. Below is my breakdown of my *estimated* savings and the actual gas costs from mint.com.
Bike Expenses:
Used Bike = $150.00
Bike Lights (Head lamp, front light and 3 tail lights, lost 2 until I figured out to secure properly :-/) = $150.00
Fenders = $35.00 (an attempt to save new bike components this year)
Bike Chain = $10.00
Derailleur = $13.00
Bike Tires/Tubes = $50.00 (new tires could have probably waited, but they looked sweet!)
Bike Maintenance (had to have my old wheel trued before finding it needed to be replaced) = $20.00
Special chain lube (winter cycling) – $5.00
WD-40 and Cleaner: $10.00
Wheel Replacement (Old Bike): $45.00
Water-proof Panniers (which I love): $90.00
Bike Rack: $20.00
Additional Winter biking clothing: $80.00 (had a lot of winter running gear already, but I needed better gloves, socks and rain pants)
**I did not include my repairs as a labor cost since I have done most myself up to this point
Total year 1 Bike expenses: $678.00
Estimated Car Expenses:
Estimated car expenses: 0.35 cents per mile based on make/model (old car, cheaper parts, relatively good gas mileage) * 60 mi per week * 42 weeks (ballpark number that excludes business trips, vacations, work from home, etc) = $840.00
Real gas expenses in Mint x 2 cars:
Mint gas expenses average per month 2014: 236.00 per month (have cycled very regularly since Jan)
Min gas expenses per month 2013: 292.00 per month * (cycled sometimes starting in spring, more client visits required this year)
Mint gas expenses per month 2012: 228.00 per month (did not cycle)
Take-away: As of yet, overall transportation savings seem to be minimal from my switch to biking to work, but it has been hard to parse out the savings due to the variability of our driving habits. On the bike side, this year I got more serious about bike commuting and decided to invest in what I needed to do a year round commute so expenses were higher. My hope is that later this year and next year I will begin to see noticeable savings in mint.com.
I know that to really save more money I would need to go down to 1 car instead of 2, but I don’t see this as an option due to my requirements for work and where I live. Also, we already have very minimal driving requirements due to the fact that my wife works part-time and I work from home and bike to work.
Conclusion:
There really isn’t a lesson to this post, but I thought it was interesting to see the differences from both an exercise and financial standpoint. The bottom line is that I have rediscovered cycling and I love it!
My only other piece of advice that I have learned this past year about bike commuting is that it is not something to jump in without getting some experience under your belt. My city’s cycling infrastructure is seriously lacking for commuters. Cycling in the suburbs has been a challenge and I have had a few close calls that were avoided due to being properly visible and adhering to traffic rules. My experiences this past year have given me motivation to become involved in our local area biking associations to improve and grow our local biking infrastructure. I can see now that there is a lot of improvement needed in my local area that won’t get any better unless someone does something about it.
I seems I have written a wall of text already so I’ll end it here. Happy cycling everyone!
