Isn't it true that bicycle fuel (human food) is actually more expensive than gasoline or electricity? It has a much larger carbon footprint per mile anyway.
And I spend way more of my time on bicycle maintenance than on car maintenance. So if my time is part of it, then that's got to be 10X the cost. But only because I earn more than a car mechanic per hour.
Calories are cheap: Cycling for one hour you burn maybe 500 calories. That's four table spoons of butter.
Bicycle maintenance is cheap: I pay about 20 Euros a month because I ride a lot and don't do any repairs myself. You can easily save half of that if you're willing to get your hands dirty.
Cycling is not much slower than driving: Average driving speed in Berlin is 25km/h. During rush hour it's 9km/h. It's not hard to average 15km/h on a bike, even during rush hour. 20km/h is doable if you're fit.
Surely it is, considering the purchase cost of a car.
But the daily cost is not insignificant. And if you can't afford a car, you pay the daily cost forever.
Cycling for an hour you burn maybe 2000 calories. That's a whole day's food. It can be your 2nd largest expense if you're poor. And the time spent on bicycle maintenance (tires, chain, wheels, adjustment etc) is 'easy to do yourself' for well-paid middle-class folks. After 12 hours in the factory or on your feet in a big box store, the time may not seem so cheap.
Then add in job risk when you get a flat on the way to work. Not insignificant if you're on a clock at a minimum-wage job. Could lose that job.
Its easy to enjoy bikes when well-employed and your time is your own. But for many they are part of being poor, part of the reason they stay poor.
They aren't cheap, but they also aren't your standard airless, flat-free tire, either. They don't feel like "mush" when you ride on them, making you have to pedal harder - they feel identical to a regular air-filled bicycle tire. You can drill a hole through them, and they still feel and work perfectly fine.
If you ride a bike and tend to get a lot of flats, take a look into their products - you won't be disappointed.
Your numbers are way off. Even elite pro cyclists are unable to burn 2000kcal/hr when racing. The estimate of 500kcal/hr is more realistic for regular people.
Getting a flat is insignificant. You can change a tube in less than 5 minutes. New tubes and patch kits are very cheap. And cars also get flat tires.
Ok that estimate is better, 500 calories per hour. But how many calories per mile? That's the proper comparison.
And again, 'very cheap' is relative. In a minimum-wage job it can be your entire discretionary income for you shift. And when I commuted by bicycle I got several flats over a year. I've driven a car for decades without a single flat that interrupted my trip (slow leaks).
And actually not many folks can change a bicycle tire, certainly not in 5 minutes, not at the side of a busy street.
All this glib dismissal of the cost of bicycling seems to stem from a fairly comfortable viewpoint.
A typical cyclist burns about 48kcal/mi. In terms of cost of calories that's about $0.06 worth of Russet potatoes at Walmart. Call it $0.10 total if you include cooking costs. Very cheap. And remember that people burn a few calories just sitting in a car as well.
Every cyclist I know can change a tube. Most people learned how to do this as children. For those who never learned, ParkTool has a great series of videos showing how to do basic maintenance.
The real reasons that people don't commute by bike include safety, comfort, time, security, and cargo capacity. It's not a cost issue. (I totally understand that bike commuting isn't practical for most people.)
The 20€/month that I pay while not doing any maintenance myself is still cheaper than the insurance for a car.
Cars can break down as well, frequently if you drive a pile of junk because you can't afford a good car. Flat tires are of course annoying, but they don't happen very frequently if you have for example Schwalbe Marathon tires and changing an inner tube is not terribly hard. Certainly easier than fixing a car, and at least an order of magnitude cheaper than a trip to a car mechanic.
A more realistic problem with bikes for poor people is that you can't do terribly long commutes on a bike, so it limits the number of job offers you can accept without moving.
