this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2026
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That's solid advice for your occasional short range bike.
But when talking about substituting a car for a bike with the thereby associated mileage (which the comic implies), in most cases this will be less true.
Main reason for this is that, apart from the frame, bikes mostly consist of wear-and-tear parts.
That is especially true for many used bikes that still have rim brakes and on top may have obsolete parts that are not easy to come by (had that once for my bar-end gear-levers that Shimano decided not to produce any more, because old-fashioned...)
Also a used bike comes as it is, so not really optimized for easy maintenance as you could choose a new bike to be.
I have learned by now (after switching to new bikes every few years and ~20000km before), that the most stressless (and also cheap in the long run) path is to buy a custom bike with robustness and easy maintenance in mind.
So steel frame, no suspension fork but fat 29'' tires instead, mechanical disk brake, standard lower mid range components (less optimized for weight, but often more robust), lowest number of gears possible (less finicky and typically less chain wear).
The initial cost when doing so will be higher, but in the long run will pay itself of when doing 5000km+ per year.
I dunno what typical yearly mileage on a bike used for commuting is... mine certainly did not do 5000km when I was commuting by bike. So your experience might be a bit more frequent maintenance than what most people need to do.
But either way, a used bike is still likely to be pretty easy to maintain. Maybe you're thinking of some specific harder-to-maintain parts? Brakes are a good example; rim brakes wear out quite quickly and are harder to replace the pads on than disc brakes. However, they're still dirt cheap and they're still not hard to replace. I, a cack-handed moron, learnt how to do it fairly easily.
Most people that I know live in the range 10-20km from their place of work, with a second peak around 30-40km (the ones that decided for more rural living) 20km being somewhere around the upper limit of what makes practical sense to still do by bike, this would be 4000-8000km when biking to work 200 days per year.
I was around 18km (so 7000km yearly) for most of the past 20 years, but home office since corona reduced that to much more relaxing 3000km/year.
Maintenance also depends hugely on whether you drive through the winter or stick to the summer months. Wear during winter especially of the drivetrain is crazy...
Regarding the rim brakes: I was talking more about the wear of the rims themselves. Depending on pad/rim-material combination they worn down after 20000km at the latest, rear wheel often even earlier.
One of the main reason I bought completely new bikes every 3 years until about 10 years ago. Drivetrain components worn down even when changing chains regularly, new wheels to become necessary because of rim wear and suspension fork just a piece of extra nonfunctional weight after three winters.
No suspension and easily maintainable disc brakes was a game changer, together with a steel frame and fork, which let me sleep more relaxed because not so susceptible to hidden wear.
A cheap wheel is like £100 new though and easy to replace. So sure, that's another point in favour of disc brakes, but buying a new wheel every few years is, I would say, not worth worrying about - even if you are doing that kind of distance. (I wasn't and had to replace a wheel, either I used worn brakes for too long or something got on the rim and wore it down very quickly) so I would still say used bikes are a good shout.
Also, you can pick up a rideable used bike for £200, maintain nothing except the chain, then buy another used bike, and you'll likely still end up spending less money than if you'd bought new and maintained everything fussily.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying your approach is bad! But for someone considering getting a bike and worried about the outlay (as the OP was), buying used is very much a good idea.
I see it this way: Colleagues riding their car to work typically spend so much more money on convenience extras alone like entertainment system, comfort seating and stationary-heating, while effectively spending less time in their cars than I on my bike, that I see no point in going the complete hardcore way.
Having a bike that leads to less hassle and maintenance time while on top also being tailored to my specific needs and fitted to my stature is more than worth the roughly 30% increase in cost per km, imo.
But I admire all that go the minimalist way!
There is e.g. this one guy who regularly flies past me on an old, much to small 3-gear-woman's city-bike - completely impressive!
Then there is this other guy riding a custom rebuild three-wheeler, complete with canopy, bike horn and an integrated stereo system blasting Metal music, casually greeting everyone passing, as if riding a Harley. :-)
That's part of the fun of riding a bike - there is more variation between bikers, as you have much more freedom to still affordably realize your ideal view of it!
That's true, if you're replacing a fairly nice car with a bike that's not for racing, you will always save money.
I first commuted by bike in northwest Germany where most everyone bought their bike from a humongous bike market held every month. It was fairly unusual to see anyone riding a fancy bike, compare to the thousands of bike commuters you'd see every day.
What I always thought was funny compared to some other countries, is that you were as likely to get overtaken by a little old lady in a long skirt as by a lycra-clad young athlete. Somehow that seemed to dispel the concerns a newbie might have about their own pace.
if you are taking the cost of petrol and using it to buy the bike instead. then the cost for the bike is free as you would have used that money on single use petrol.
I did that math when I bought my bike. "How many times do I have to bike to work to even this out?"
Once I hit it I never touched that bike again.
Consumerist mind set. Bikes don’t tend to break all at once and you can ride a beater right across the country with a hundred bucks of spare parts. A lot of shit you just don’t need and a proper bike is the epitome of that. Also cars require maintenance too, and a hell of a lot more of it and it’s a lot more difficult and expensive. There is probably a whole order of magnitude number of things that could go wrong with a car at any moment.
Going by kilometer driven/ridden my first car for sure cost me way less to maintain than the bicycle I had at the same time. Of course it was an old bike (10 years old at that point). But then the car was also nearly 30 years old.
Fuel costs put it back in the bike's favour of course. But in terms of maintenance and repair, over one summer I rode maybe 500-1000 km at most and must've put like 200 EUR into the bicycle, and drove maybe 5000-6000 km and put like 100 EUR into car maintenance and repairs.
Bikes tend to be cheaper to maintain because the mileages are significantly less.
Yeah if you discount insurance, oil changes, and gas money; then over a 6th month period you might spend more money on parts for a bike than a car. Maybe.
I literally said the math will change to favour the bike if you include fuel?
Oil change was included in that figure and insurance costs next to nothing if you're getting liability only (and you can't really get full coverage on a 30 year old car).
Think over the 4 years I owned that car, I spent a total of 200 euros or less on maintenance and repairs since it sat for the better part of the last 3 years I owned it.
Most of the rest of my cars haven't been this cheap to maintain, but then again they've also done a lot of mileage for me.
My point is that bikes are so much cheaper to maintain in the long run that even if you were doing the same miles, it would come out far cheaper. Just because you have a car that has been cheap to maintain, doesn't change the simple math of that problem. The average price of bringing your car to the shop once could buy you multiple used bikes from garage sales.
I've only ever taken any of my cars to the shop twice or thrice over the years I believe. All the rest of my repairs have been done at home.
If I did 15000 km a year on a bicycle, that would be literally hell for that bicycle. I need new pedals every 500-1000 km because I exert too much force and I can't be arsed to downshift every time I accelerate. Plastics break, metal ones bend. The crank bearing or whatever it's called in English doesn't tend to last too long either. I'm not much easier on my cars either, but they're built to take it.
I have a 20 year old car. This January I had to replace the control arms (bushings were shot), CV axels, and steering knuckle assembly. I did this all myself, to save a few thousand in labor (not joking, thats what one of my friends is paying a shop right now for just the brakes.) Still the price of those parts added up to just under 600. For that budget I could go out and buy a veritable fleet of used bikes from garage sales. Tune them up with tools on hand and a few spray cans of Degreasers and Teflon lubricants they wont even sell you in Europe, and never run out of bikes to ride again in my life. The thing is, I still own a damned car. I resent that I own a car. I won't try to argue that a bike has more utility than a car because it would be impossible. However, I will argue to the end of a time that a bike is more utilitarian. We all just don't live the kind of lives that are compatible with the slower speeds, more difficult travel that a bike requires outside of inner city travel.
Tell that to my 30 year old Gary Fisher that has 15k miles on it and I, nor 2 bike shops I've taken it to can get it running correctly, or find the correct size parts for it.
That’s your fault for buying a gary fischer bike. Thats like owning a british leyland sports car and complaining that none of the local shops have parts for it.
Wow that's got to be one of the most idiotic statements I've ever heard.
“Maybe if you owned a more standard bike, you could find parts for it more easily?”
“Absurd balderdash, I won’t hear of it.”