Be green, healthy and rich by giving up on your car
I’ve noticed in the past few years that saving money, staying fit, and being green seem to walk hand-in-hand like a three-way relationship that actually works. One of the simplest ways this plays out in my own life is on my bike. I’ve always ridden bikes. They were my ticket to freedom at age twelve because I could take them up to the library or the local public pool without my mother. As I got older, they became an easy way to solve arguments in a family of three teenagers by riding my bike to work.
As a college student in Olympia, Washington I rode to work and to the grocery store in the rain. After my bike was stolen in Chicago (because I was using a lock good enough for Northern Michigan) I couldn’t wait to get a new bike, and it took a year and a half. Most of my bikes were cheap hand-me-downs from friends, bought at the goodwill, or a repainted toys r us ten-speed from an adolescent birthday. Today, I have nice bikes – as does my wife, and we don’t own a car. Yes, I live in a city where everything is a bit closer together than in the suburbs, but it still requires a conscious effort.
The beauty of the money, health, green trifecta is simple when using a bike to get around. My commute to work is ten miles one way. If I ride five days out of the week that equals 100 miles a week and ten hours of aerobic activity. An hour of cycling burns about five hundred calories, and I get that exercise without having to plan any extra time into my day. It goes without saying that riding a bike means not paying for gas, car insurance, or car payments.
According to a recent article “The Way it Should Be Is The Way It Is” in the June issue of Bicycling magazine by Marik Jenkins “Americans spend one-fourth of their income on their cars.” It goes without saying that cars are expensive. Both cars and bikes have upkeep costs, but the cost of bike upkeep is minimal; maybe a $50 tune-up once a year, or the occasional new tire or tube. A bike can last a lifetime, with proper maintenance, but the same can’t be said for a car.
Finally, on the green front: a bike has zero carbon emissions, a street needs to be 12 lanes wide to handle 40,000 cars but only one lane wide to handle 40,000 bicycles (Jenkins) completing our trifecta.
Sure, not everyone can ride to work because of the infrastructure where they live which doesn’t provide safe streets for cycling. However people can use their bikes for shorter trips. According to “Clif Bar’s 2-mile bike challenge“:
Forty percent of urban trips in the United States are two miles or less, but people use their cars nearly ninety percent of the time for those short jaunts but people use their cars nearly ninety percent of the time for those short jaunts.”
So maybe you can’t ride to work, but how about to the video store, or to pick up milk for your cereal in the morning, or that short trip to the post office? There are a lot of ways to cut down on your dependence on your car, which will lead to more savings in the end. If gas hovers around four dollars a gallon, and your car gets an average of twenty miles per gallon, you’d save at least one gallon of gas in a week if you made a couple short errands on your bike. If you started riding to work, or further distances, those numbers would add up faster easily getting over twenty-five dollars of week in savings if you abandoned a ten mile drive to work.
Even if you use public transit, which is a greener option that driving yourself, you could still save money by cycling more. Chicago transit prices are $1.75 per ride (if you don’t pay with cash), so ten rides per week to get back and forth to work equals $17.50. Combine that savings with your quick trips to the hardware store on the weekends and you can start funneling that money to the fund that needs it the most.
good ideas. my only concern is safety – so maybe cities seem pretty dangerous for bikers. do you know if there are initiatives to make that any safer?
also, you pasted the quote (“but people use their cars nearly ninety percent of the time for those short jaunts”) twice. š
I’m glad you liked this post. Many cities are sitting up and taking notice of the importance of making streets safer for everyone including pedestrians, childrens and cyclists. There are now organizations such as Safe Routes to School among many others which lobby for pedestrian-friendly and bike-friendly cities nationally.
Also, check out the recent article in bicycling magazine about some of the best cities for cycling in the U.S. Even if you don’t live in one of these cities it will give your a sense for the kind of action that people can take to make their cities safer.
And try to remember when you’re staring down an SUV that you are far more likely to be injured as a passenger in an automobile than a bike, statistically.
Best cities for cycling article here:
http://www.bicycling.com/article/0,6610,s1-2-19-17083-1,00.html
Actually sold my Camry 2 weeks ago. It feels pretty darn good to carpool with my girlfriend 3 days out of the week. We share gas/car maintenance and will be putting the extra “gas” money to our summer vacations. The buses in Los Angeles aren’t as efficient as SF Muni, but I feel less stressed out and have more time to read, listen to music and talk to the people around me. We are looking into city bicycling and working freelance jobs closer to home.
Good point, Martinique! Some observations from the Netherlands: it requires an infrastructure geared to cycling, for instance separate cycling lanes (or at least parts of roads marked for bikes. And bike parking facilities, at office buildings, railways stations and so on. My wife and I cycle to work (my wife 4 days a week 2 times 15 km, me 5 days a week 2 times 9 km), and it rains not nearly as often as one would think, given the Dutch weather. As to gas prices: 4 US dollars per US gallon works out at EUR 0,68 per liter at the current ecchange rate. The actual price in the Netherlands is between EUR 1,55 and EUR 1,65 per liter.
Re: cycling safely in cities – I live in a profoundly bike-unfriendly city, but get around just fine. One trick is to exploit the infrastructure that is already there – the route you drive is probably not the one you want to cycle as in a car you will favour roads with higher speed limits. On a bike you will want to find the residential streets which parallel those roads. There will be fewer cars and they will be going slower. Sites like http://www.mapmyride.com are good for figuring out alternate ways to get where you want to go in your neighborhood and include things like hill elevation that don’t matter in cars but do matter for cyclists (doesn’t matter Chicago but a lot of other places it does!).
This sort of strategy can get you out cycling safely faster than waiting for a bike lane to be installed.
I wish Toronto was more bike-friendly, because ever since I started biking in Montreal where the trails are large and totally worth it, I’d prefer to bike over public transportation
It just isn’t safe on the roads for bikers.. š
Thanks for the post – I’m linking to this in my next round of link love!
Icarus – this is going to sound weird, but I heard about a study two years ago that found cars are more likely to drive closer to bikers when those bikers are wearing helmets. It’s all about appearences – if you look like you know what you’re doing, drivers are more likely to leave you less room on the road. If you look like some kind of wacko, drivers are more likely to steer clear from the biker.
That said, I always wear a helmet! And wearing pink clothing seems to do the trick as well!
:0)
M