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Cost/savings from riding — 1 rider’s experience
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March 7, 2010 at 7:59 pm #3741SantaCruzRiderParticipant
My goal was to test the waters and see if I enjoyed commuting to work. My route starts at the ocean, takes me into the redwoods and over a 2,000-foot pass and then drops into Silicon Valley and back to sea level. It’s 45 miles each way and a mix of mountain roads and super slab with carpool lanes.
I decided early on that I wanted to keep my costs low, primarily to avoid cash losses I would likely suffer should I have found that I didn’t really like riding through rush hour traffic.
I figured I would save some gas money, but my goal was never to save so much that my motorcycling paid for itself.
Following are my first year commuting costs/savings. Keep in mind that these are based on my circumstances, which includes needing to continue to maintain my existing car, doing all my own vehicle maintenance and being relatively thrifty.
Gas $ saved by biking rather than driving 11k miles: $864
Annual insurance and registration: -$395
Tires, oil, filters (above the annual average of my car): -$110
Total saved minus annual cost: $359 savedAdditional costs for gear and bike:
Bike itself: $1,500
Gear (2 helmets, jacket, gloves, pants, boots): $585
Bike repairs (from garage door incident): $100
Bike improvements (seat back, fasteners, mirror, etc…): $280
Total gear and bike: $2,465At this point, I will recoup my entire investment in under 7 years and more like 3 years if you figure I can likely sell the bike for what I paid for it. Of course there’s a fair chance that I’ll buy more gear and bike farkles by then, but the gas savings is obviously helping to defray the costs of riding (in my case).
Other significant savings include the time saved commuting (because the bike allows me to use the carpool lane and otherwise slip through traffic – 68 total hours saved this last year. It’s tough to pull a dollar value on your time, but it has to be worth something. Of course I’ve also put just about that number of hours into cleaning up and working on my used bike, but I typically enjoy that kind of putzing around mechanix, so it’s a wash.
The biggest bonus to me is that the commute itself is just plain fun. Figuring I’m riding about 272 hours a year, I’m paying only about $2.23 per hour to ride (based on the idea of me selling the bike today for what I paid for it and donating all my personal gear to charity). That’s pretty close to being the cheapest fun you can have.
In final analysis, my experiment has been a real success. I could have afforded to spend much more, but keeping the costs low has assured me that I’ll keep commuting on my bike because I love it, rather than because I’m too embarrassed to shelve a new bike I might otherwise be making payments on.
When I bought my current bike, I figured I’d keep it for just a year or so to prove the concept and then “upgrade” to something newer once I had a better feel for the commute. Now I find that I fell into a bike that is pretty close to perfect for my route and the way I ride. I’ve also put a fair amount of sweat into the old bike and I now get a fair number of compliments – so that has its own rewards.
March 7, 2010 at 8:39 pm #24828RabParticipantI’m a full time motorcycle commuter in the SF Bay Area too.
I think the main down-side to motorcycle commuting is in depreciation of the bike; especially if you buy new. You’re going to put a lot of miles on that bike in a relatively short time and here in the U.S.A. where motorcycles are largely considered toys, that matters a lot in resale value.
So! You either replace the bike in two years at, say, 25K miles and take the depreciation hit for a new one, or, you keep it and run it into the ground, because if you keep it for another couple of years and put, say 50K on it, you might find it difficult to sell at all; even though it’ll probably run to over 100K if well maintained (and not written-off of course). Just don’t tell your insurance company that you do anything more than pleasure ride a couple of thousand miles a year or they’ll crucify you. They don’t consider the mileage when you make a claim anyway in my experience.
I too mainly do it because it’s fun and quicker and if I weren’t commuting by motorcycle I’d be riding BART (it’s a train folks!), so depreciation wouldn’t be a part of that equation.
These are just my musings on the subject and I may be wrong, but it’s the way I currently see it.
I think the take-away from this is not to commute on an expensive new motorcycle.
March 7, 2010 at 9:01 pm #24831owlieParticipantThanks for the thoughtful write up on this. I like the way you have broken it out since it seems like everyone who wants to start riding to save money forgets some of the other realities about riding.
Glad to know that the riding to commute thing is working out for you!
March 8, 2010 at 12:36 am #24832Gary856ParticipantHere’s my damage in 14 months, 13k miles of riding:
Bike costs (4 of them, all used): $12,500 total, plus tax, license and registration. If I were to sell them all today, I’d get about $10,000 back. Used bikes are real bargains. It would have been much, much worse if I bought new.
Insurance: about $1,200/year for all 4 bikes.
Maintenance/repair/upgrade: $2,500. This includes a pair of new tires and some suspension component upgrades. I change oil myself, the rest go to the shops.
Gear: $3,300. (1 helmet, 2 leather jackets, 1 textile winter jacket, 1 mesh summer jacket, 2 pairs of overpants, 4 pairs of gloves, 2 pairs of boots, etc.)
Time: countless hours riding in the hills on Saturdays to physical exhaustion (too tired to ride on Sundays, plus my wife would kill me if I’m out all weekend), plus countless hours on Craigslist and daydreaming until my head hurts.
Right now I ride 6 days a week. I keep a turn-by-turn, street-by-street ride log on Excel, and if I took the time I could figure out exactly what % of that 13k miles was commute to work, and how much was weekend rides. Without actually adding them up I’d guess 40-50% of the 13k miles were “unnecessary” fun rides. Some times I feel guilty burning a full tank of gas just to ride in the hills for no reason other the fun of it.
When I’m on a bike, I feel that sense of freedom, and see the world differently. Driving now does feel like being in a cage.
March 8, 2010 at 1:22 am #24836IBA270ParticipantGary, you’ve committed the first sin of motorcycling…you’ve added up the costs, LOL!!!
March 8, 2010 at 3:00 am #24837eternal05ParticipantDude,
Where are the pictures? What’s the 4th bike? Common mate — don’t leave us hangin’!
So you had a GS500, an SV650 (naked/F/SF?), and a YZF-600R already, right?
March 8, 2010 at 5:47 am #24838Gary856ParticipantHey eternal, you’ll like my bike #4. Looks familiar? Just got it last Thursday, ’08, one owner, 2600 miles, all stock except for front/rear fenders. It doesn’t have much power but it’s crazy fun, just like everyone says. The ergo’s very different; don’t know how to ride it right yet. Now I want to get an old dirt bike to learn how to ride dirt properly. You got my other 3 bikes right; my SV is naked.
SCRider, sorry about the thread jack.
March 8, 2010 at 6:27 am #24834Gary856ParticipantI know – I didn’t quite realize how much it was until just now. Holy crap! And this is before I venture into track riding…
March 8, 2010 at 10:46 am #24839eternal05Participant‘Nuff said.
March 8, 2010 at 4:40 pm #24840TrialsRiderParticipant…forget the old dirt bike, get a Trials bike and ride over that rock you’re parked next to !
March 8, 2010 at 7:02 pm #24842Gary856ParticipantJust how would you get on top of that big rock? Wheelie onto the smaller one, and then hop onto the big one? Can it be done without the smaller one next to it? I’m content to be a spectator rather than a participant on this one.
March 8, 2010 at 11:44 pm #24846TrialsRiderParticipantThat’s the line I would try, my riding partner competes at the expert level, he could ride that rock in any direction
March 20, 2010 at 3:24 am #25017Jeff in KentuckyParticipantI used to drive a car 6 months a year in Upstate New York, and ride a motorcycle 6 months a year, for five years. The motorcycle insurance and gas costs were a lot less, but it was not that good when it was cold, rainy, windy, and when I had more than 1 extra person or more than a small amount of stuff to haul. Replacing motorcycle tires is quite expensive- they usually last less than 10,000 miles and often cost more than $100 each, not including labor.
Generally, people will keep their car, so their bike is an extra expense, unless they drive many miles to work and back, and their car gets terrible gas mileage and their motorcycle gets much better gas mileage. I also worry about the safety of being surrounded by cars during the morning commute, especially when it is dark and at least one car driver was out partying late the night before, so is tired and hung over now. I leave my motorcycle in the garage for my 9 miles to work in stop and go traffic.
I could get a little scooter to save the most money, but put myself at the most risk from cars.
March 20, 2010 at 3:33 am #25018briderdtParticipant…but when I get on the bike, I wanna keep on riding. So if I were going to look at the cost savings, I’d have to ride something like 800 miles a month that I would have normally been driving, just to break even.
Simple solution – don’t look at riding as a way to save money, but a way to enjoy the time on the road.
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