BIKE: Back to Illich and the hours it takes to travel by car

[Michael Bluejay]

Regarding the various concerns about my analysis, allow me to clarify:

1. I agree that getting most of the savings requires that you get rid 
of the car completely.  I never said otherwise.


2. I'm also aware that most people won't find it easy to give up their 
cars completely.  That's not the point.  The point is:  How much does 
NOT getting rid of your car cost you, in terms of time, whether you're 
able to get rid of it or not?  No judgement is made about how feasible 
it is for people to avoid that cost, that's separate.  I only wanted to 
look at how much the cost actually is.  If my analysis was to figure 
how much money someone spends on food someone eats in a year, you 
wouldn't be screaming, "But that's not realistic, you can't stop 
eating!"  The point is just to figure out how much it costs.

Now, speaking aside from the analysis, I do think that people have a 
greater opportunity to get rid of their cars than they think, 
especially if they use the occasional taxi and/or and electric scooter. 
  Yes, that decreases the savings from getting rid of the car, but the 
savings will still be substantial even with modest extra expenses.


3. In the example I used in the newsletter, I didn't use a $100 bike, I 
used a *$300* bike, replaced completely every five years, $150 in 
accessories for the same time period, and $50/yr. in maintenance, for 
$140/yr.  That's way more than I spent the first ten years I biked in 
Austin.  And most motorists own bikes *anyway*, so in one sense the 
cost of the bike isn't really an added cost.  But let's assume that it 
is.  Though the newsletter article pegged the cost of the bike at 
$140/yr.,  in this recent example when I converted money to time I 
neglected to include the cost of a bike at all.  So if you figure that 
your savings from ditching the car are not the whole $7,232 but rather 
$7,232-140=$7092, then it takes 507 hours a year to earn enough to pay 
for the car, not 517.  That means the effective speed of the car after 
considering the time needed to pay for it creeps up from 5.3mph to 
5.4mph.  Whoo-hoo.  You could double or triple the cost of the bike and 
it would still be negligible compared to the car costs.

4. I'm surprised that none of you found the more serious error with my 
analysis that I just realized:  I used the full annual costs of car 
ownership even though the example had it being driven only 3500 miles a 
year.  So using the Minnesota AAA's figures, capital costs are 
$5789/yr. while operating costs are $0.131/mile, or $459.  That puts 
our annual cost at $6248, or $6108 after the cost of our bike.  It 
takes 436 hours to earn that, which pushes the effective speed of a car 
up to 6.1mph, still slower than a bicycle.  Are you happy now? :)

One last thing:  Although it's possible to use the long, unwieldy email 
address for the list, the short one works just as well:  
forum .

-MBJ-

On Tuesday, November 25, 2003, at 09:09  AM, Dan Connelly wrote:

>> "Another way to convert money into time is to figure out the average 
>> speed of a car after accounting for the time needed to earn money to 
>> pay for it. Average speeds for urban autos is 25mph (11, see 
>> website). Based on a 7-mile one-way commute, that takes 140 hours a 
>> year. Once we add in the 517 hours required to pay for the car [from 
>> the table above], we have 657 hours total, which brings our average 
>> speed down to 5.3mph -- slower than a bicycle."
>
> I like this analysis.  However, calculations like this always invite 
> comment.
> A few:
>
> 1. Many people don't have the option to work less for less income.  
> This,
>    however, is true only in the short term.  In long term, they can 
> save
>    and retire early, for example, so spending less does in fact 
> translate
>    into time in the long-run.
>
> 2. Many people won't sell their cars, so including fixed capital costs 
> in
>    the marginal cost of driving may be misleading.  However, this isn't
>    strictly true, as cars contain a strong mileage-based depreciation
>    component.  Additionally, driving less results in less need for
>    enhanced car features.   So capital costs are, to some degree, 
> marginal.
>
> 3. It's unfair to use an average car, without using an average bike.  
> My
>    3 bikes sum to around $5k in capital (one mountain bike, one road 
> bike, one
>    commuting bike) for 3 bikes.   This is a non-trivial investment.  
> If you're
>    going to use a low-end ($100) commuting bike, use a low-end ($2K?) 
> commuting
>    car.
>
>    For me, if I was going to get a car, it'll be a <=$3k used Honda 
> Civic,
>    or similar (high-end example: 
> http://austin.craigslist.org/car/18860321.html @ $3.6k;
>    low-end example: http://austin.craigslist.org/car/19734903.html @ 
> $1.1k)
>    Thus this analysis is only partially applicable to my
>    decision.  Getting a Porche or SUV or pick-up (in many cases)
>    is for recreation, not utility.
>
>    Any analyis of this sort should acknowledge that the choice isn't 
> binary
>    (cheap bike, average car).  It's more of a sliding scale
>    (cheap bike, expensive bike, cheap car, average car, expensive car).
>
> Additionally, the analysis omits externalized costs.  (for example,
> a fractional probability of killing or maiming a pedestrian, times
> the social cost of killing or maiming a pedestrian). Only
> a selfish commuter fails to include these in cost-benefit calculus.
> Unfortunately, I'm cynical enough to believe most commuters are 
> selfish.....
>
> Dan
>
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