£ per mile for your bike

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rugby bloke

Veteran
Location
Northamptonshire
Its coming up to a year since I bought my Giant Defy, in this time I have covered just over 2800 miles. I paid £1300 for the bike so that breaks down to 46p per mile. This strikes me as a pretty low figure which I'm happy with and shows how cheap cycling is.

However I know there are forum members out there who ride considerably longer distances and have managed to pick up much cheaper bikes, so some of you must have ridiculously low £/mile numbers ... Who can post the lowest figure ?
 

KneesUp

Guru
46p a mile sounds a heck of a lot - but it assumes your bike has a value of £0 and has had no maintenance costs.
 
OP
OP
rugby bloke

rugby bloke

Veteran
Location
Northamptonshire
46p a mile sounds a heck of a lot - but it assumes your bike has a value of £0 and has had no maintenance costs.
This is based on a really simple calculation of cost or purchase divided by miles ridden. I did not take into account maintenance, which has been pretty minimal thankfully (a couple of bottles of tubeless sealent and a bike service) or the current value of the bike - which I would not know without doing a bit of research.
Just a bit of fun to be honest ...
 

Dogtrousers

Kilometre nibbler
I couldn't put a figure on it.

Thing is, I have frittered away so much money on stuff like rims, wheelbuilding, cables, tyres, brake blocks, chains, cassettes, saddles, accessories like pumps etc. and even a complete refit of gearing and so on. I don't keep records of that.

If I use just the purchase figure then my Spa is currently running at about 8p/km or 13p/mile and dropping. But factor in my ridiculous bike junk spending habits ...
 
Its coming up to a year since I bought my Giant Defy, in this time I have covered just over 2800 miles. I paid £1300 for the bike so that breaks down to 46p per mile. This strikes me as a pretty low figure which I'm happy with and shows how cheap cycling is.

If I knew how many miles I'd ridden in the last 20 years on my 300 GBP bike I'd probably come up with fractions of a penny.

If I use just the purchase figure then my Spa is currently running at about 8p/km or 13p/mile and dropping. But factor in my ridiculous bike junk spending habits ...

If you factor in maintenance, It'd suggest we also need to factor in costs saved by using a bike instead of a car or public transport.

At what point can I claim to my wife that I'm making a profit on every mile cycled and therefore should be encouraged to 1: Ride more and 2: Get all those nice shiny bike related things I've been wanting?
 
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glasgowcyclist

Charming but somewhat feckless
Location
Scotland
My previous commuter (Trek 850) took me ~65,000 miles over 15 years from an initial cost of £400, so that's 0.006p per mile.
That doesn't include the 5 years of mental mountainbiking I did with it all over Scotland before I converted it for road use in 2000.

I still have it...

commute4.jpg


commute1.jpg
 

KneesUp

Guru
If I knew how many miles I'd ridden in the last 20 years on my 300 GBP bike I'd probably come up with fractions of a penny. If you factor in maintenance, It'd suggest we also need to factor in costs saved by using a bike instead of a car or public transport.

At what point can I claim to my wife that I'm making a profit on every mile cycled and therefore should be encouraged to 1: Ride more and 2: Get all those nice shiny bike related things I've been wanting?

I'd say you should count all the direct costs - purchase, parts, maintenance and offset the value of the bike. I don't really see why you would factor in the costs saved by not using another form of transport though? If I offset my cycling against the cost of having a chauffeured limo to work, it's be very cheap indeed. But then if the cost of the limo took into account the cost of using a helicopter instead, it wouldn't be much ...
 
My previous commuter (Trek 850) took me ~65,000 miles over 15 years from an initial cost of £400, so that's 0.006p per mile.
That doesn't include the 5 years of mental mountainbiking I did with it all over Scotland before I converted it for road use in 2000.

I still have it...

View attachment 478769

View attachment 478770

Looking pretty spiffy considering it's age and heavy usage.
 
I'd say you should count all the direct costs - purchase, parts, maintenance and offset the value of the bike. I don't really see why you would factor in the costs saved by not using another form of transport though? If I offset my cycling against the cost of having a chauffeured limo to work, it's be very cheap indeed. But then if the cost of the limo took into account the cost of using a helicopter instead, it wouldn't be much ...

In my case it is because the bike is specifically a substitute for a car, and I also buy a season ticket only for the central zone of Stuttgart, despite living further out of the city, and cycle to the tram stop on the zone boundary instead of taking the bus, so I save about 2€ a day on that too...

I also cycle to the local big town for shopping and appointments instead of travelling by bus, and after I've cycled the 200m back up the hill I reckon I'm due some kind or reward...
 
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