Wow, How cheap is that

[SkipdiverJohn]

My newest bike was bought in January and so far has cost me about 250p per mile ..

At that cost you should give up cycling and take the car instead!
All except one of my bikes are secondhand (the new one was £72 about 34 years ago), the cheapest being free and the most extravagant costing £20. Then I add on the cost of anything I've bought for any bike such as tyres to get the thing to a reliable rideable condition. Depreciation is really a non-event with the sort of bikes I've got, so I only consider the per-mile cost of replacing the consumable stuff that wears out, not the cost of the bike itself - as I could sell any of mine for at least as much as they owe me. It's just a small amount of cash tied up in bikes, but they'll never fall in value below their secondhand cost.

 

[Heigue'r]

My bike makes me 33p per mile on commuting duties at the moment or put another way,it has paid for itself and all replacement components plus all associated kit,jerseys,bibs etc...thats better than cheap

 

[nickyboy]

45 calories a mile...maybe if you’re 25 stone or riding in the alps

Depends how hard you ride. I burn about 650 cals an hour riding hard. Where I live that's about 14 miles so 45 cals a mile is close. Even if it was a flattish ride, a hard hour would be 20 miles which gives cals/mile not too far away from the OPs number

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Depends how hard you ride. I burn about 650 cals an hour riding hard.

How can you possibly know that unless you've personally ridden under laboratory conditions? There's large variations in metabolic efficiency between individuals, even before differences in physical size are taken into account. Any estimate of calorie consumption is just that - an estimate, and likely to be a very rough one.

 

[nickyboy]

How can you possibly know that unless you've personally ridden under laboratory conditions? There's large variations in metabolic efficiency between individuals, even before differences in physical size are taken into account. Any estimate of calorie consumption is just that - an estimate, and likely to be a very rough one.

Yep, it's an estimate. Strava does an interesting set of calculations based on individuals weight, bike weight, terrain ridden and speed to calculate calories consumed

Not saying it's accurate but it's likely not to be highly inaccurate. Usually works out at about 650 per hour when ridden hard

 

[Milkfloat]

Yebbut those multipacks contain things that used to be called "fun-size", but we're being conditioned to accept as normal.
They are 39 grammes compared to the massive (!!) 51 grammes referred to in the post I linked to.

Hence being nearer 40p when you look at it as a per gram cost. However I do agree that this deflation in size is something to write to my MP about.

 

[JhnBssll]

Some people buy a £200 bike and ride it half a mile and put it in their garage for a year. Take it out, find it doesnt work, spend £50 quid on servicing it, ride it half a mile and put it back again for another year. Their cost per mile is going to be significantly higher than someone buying an expensive bike and putting thousands of miles on it, it seems to be an arbitrary number to me. I'm far more interested in smiles per mile

My commuter is the workhorse of my collection, it must be costing me pennies to keep going, definitely cheaper than the car. Having said that since I've been cycling the wife has noticed my car sat on the drive and has started using it instead of hers as it gets better economy. She works a lot further away than I do so my grand plan of reducing the miles my car is doing has backfired spectacularly Also when I do need to use the car it's never got any diesel in it How do I factor in this hidden cost to my pence per mile calculation?

 

[si_c]

Yep, it's an estimate. Strava does an interesting set of calculations based on individuals weight, bike weight, terrain ridden and speed to calculate calories consumed. Not saying it's accurate but it's likely not to be highly inaccurate. Usually works out at about 650 per hour when ridden hard

I found it to be a little on the low side in terms of estimates - plus it now uses the estimate from whatever device you are using, so it's probably less consistent now than it was - I think you'd be good adding around 20% to your guesstimate given the terrain you ride.

Did a medium intensity ride yesterday, which for me is around 800kcal per hour or 45kcal per mile, when riding hard I'll do around 1000kcal per hour, which can be between 50 and 60 kcal per mile. Those are pretty much exact figures.

 

[si_c]

Some people buy a £200 bike and ride it half a mile and put it in their garage for a year. Take it out, find it doesnt work, spend £50 quid on servicing it, ride it half a mile and put it back again for another year. Their cost per mile is going to be significantly higher than someone buying an expensive bike and putting thousands of miles on it, it seems to be an arbitrary number to me. I'm far more interested in smiles per mile

My commuter is the workhorse of my collection, it must be costing me pennies to keep going, definitely cheaper than the car. Having said that since I've been cycling the wife has noticed my car sat on the drive and has started using it instead of hers as it gets better economy. She works a lot further away than I do so my grand plan of reducing the miles my car is doing has backfired spectacularly Also when I do need to use the car it's never got any diesel in it How do I factor in this hidden cost to my pence per mile calculation?

Definitely the more you ride, the better value for money your bike is. In terms of purchase cost, my commuter has now cost me around 6.5p per mile in capital expenditure, but given that I've subsequently had to maintain and service the bike, replace parts you can probably add another 8p per mile on top (including the cost of tools and parts - a new set of wheels, four new tires, 5 or 6 cassettes (I currently have 3 I rotate between with different ratios) and probably about 8 chains).

 

[si_c]

Thats debatable.

Depends whether they've been frozen or not.

Personally I prefer eccles cakes.

 

[johnnyb47]

Hi again,
Cycling for me was not taken up for commuting, but purely for something to enjoy and unwind to.. As the miles clicked by its obviously become more and more addictive. Trying to beat personal goals , and watching my weight fall off has been immensely satisfying, and being on a tight budget it's been a fantastic way to be able to see the world around me and to get fitter. I could of taken up regular swimming or signed up for gym membership ,but it would of cost a small fortune and I would of got bored of it very quickly being stuck in the same environment. With cycling even the same rides offer different challenges on a daily bases. Varying weather conditions and the ever changing seasons always keep me motivated to wanting to go back out the next day. Meeting different and new people at cafe stops always adds to the variety as well. I often hear non cyclists at work etc comment about how expensive bikes are nowadays, but I tell them it simply doesn't have to be. I point out cycling can be as cheap or expensive as you want it to be depending on your personal circumstances. Yes I would love to have an all bells and whistles top of the range bike, but like most of us finances usually dictate what we can have. At the end of the day though ,cheap cycling has still got me out of the house and away from the the tv and has helped me to lose some of my six bellies and five chins :~))))).
It's a win win situation for anybody deciding to take up cycling.
Save money by ditching the car, Lose weight,
Meet fantastic people out on the roads and places like Cycle Chat,
See places you would never see in the car and not stuck to paying dead end money on gym memberships or the constant costs involved in activities like swimming etc.
What more could you ask for in life :-) :-)

 

[Gravity Aided]

I find that over the years i have become quite knowledgeable in local history and sites, all due to the fact that I'm moving a lot slower and taking time to see things that others drive past without a thought. Like a little neighborhood school near me, still in use as a school, built in the 1930s, concrete where stone would usually be, and with a cornerstone stating that the school was built under the authority of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration at the depths of the Great Depression.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Emergency_Relief_Administration
I would also be hopelessly remiss if I did not point you in the direction of this thread.
https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/t...rporating-other-interesting-geographs.215788/

 

[Alan O]

A quick calculation suggests my tourer and MTB have both cost me about 21p per mile so far. That's over a period of about 2 years, so that's obviously dropping as time passes. Oh, and the fixed-wheel Falcon that I still haven't finished building has cost "divide by zero error" per mile.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Some people buy a £200 bike and ride it half a mile and put it in their garage for a year. Take it out, find it doesnt work, spend £50 quid on servicing it, ride it half a mile and put it back again for another year.

I'm convinced this happens a lot more than many people would like to admit, and not just at the cheapo end of the market either. Two of my secondhand bike purchases are simply in too good a condition for their age, for them to have been used at all regularly. Both were still on original-spec tyres after 23 and 30 years, with none of the mechanical wear & scuffs & knocks you'd expect to see. The older bike even has a Reynolds 531 frame, and wouldn't have been cheap to buy when new - yet someone bought it at considerable expense, obviously didn't ride it much, then left it in their garage for the best part of 3 decades..

 

[southcoast]

Johnnyb47 do you have any pictures of the bike, is it the one in your avatar?