Terry's post about how cyclists are more efficient than Salmon got me thinking...how efficient are we? So, in that thought process, I decided to give a number to it. The number that I decided was most interesting was dollars per mile. Of course Salmon and Eagles don't pay for their food, so that makes it difficult to calculate. I decided to compare the efficiency of a person riding a bike to a person driving a car.
Conclusion : a person riding a bike costs $.07 / mile, while a car trip costs $.14 / mile.
Now, of course these numbers change quickly when the person starts eating more expensive food. Anyway, the 3000 miles that Jared has put in over the past couple of months has cost him at least $210. Assuming that took 3 months, he spent $70 per month to fuel his workouts.
Assumptions :
the person only eats king size snickers bars
a person driving a car burns no calories
gallon of gas costs $3.00
snickers bar costs $1.25
500 calories in a snickers bar
car does 22 miles per gallon
a person riding 20 miles burns 600 calories
6 comments:
A car trip only costs $.14/mile in GAS. Tires and oil together cost another couple of cents and insurance costs somewhere around $.07/mile, so you are right away up over $.20/mile. Of course a very expensive part of the car is depreciation at $.15/mile in a cheap realm ($20,000 car depreciated to $0 value over 130k miles). Bikes depreciate too, but the equivalent of a $20,000 car is probably an $800 bike, which will last 10000 miles, or around half the depreciation rate as the car. Heck you could spend as much in windshield wiper blades as you do in a year on fancy bike tires - assuming you have a decent shop sponsor or tire deal.
The standard deduction for driving is, I think, $.45/mile.
This is something that non-car owners don't get, which is why they think it's cool to put in $10 'for gas' on a 120 mile rountrip to a race. The car cost of that trip is close to $50.
Just sayin'
The only way to really calculate this is through true cost economics.
http://www.adbusters.org/metas/eco/truecosteconomics/true_cost.html
Chuck is on the right track, but doesn't tack on environmental impact costs to society.
And the fed rate per mile is now .505 cents. (Either that or I am cooking the books here at the shop).
AAA says it averages about $.52 a mile to drive, I guess that's full cost of ownership/driving. I've been riding to work every day and figured on my own that I was probably saving just over $5.00/day and that's a lowball figure. Just doing the math puts it over $7.50/day, but I wear out bicycle tires hence the deduction.
I'll take the extra $100/month anytime.
All of this just gave me the idea that I need to find a business related to cycling so that I can write off all of my road trips, like Jared.
Please--everyone talks about "writing off" expenses, but I still made more when I was a teacher.
When I ride I only eat Black Caviar spread on truffles with my golden spoon. So my $$$ per mile may be higher than most.
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