Bike:

Initial Cost–Bike: $70
Initial Cost–Reelights: $40

Car:
Parking: $10/day (7am-7pm)
Parking: $275/month (private lot)

I give food a wash since I tend to eat more than I need to when I don’t bike and I tend to eat about the right amount when I do bike. In terms of bike fixes I had a piece of glass in my rim which cost me 2 tubes within a week–but that was nothing compared to the $500 timing belt I had to replace in the car.

Granted, I have a cheap bike and fix it up myself, but one month of car usage costs more than my bike has.

The Calories to $ is not the same for you as it is for me. My breakfast consists of Pronutro and fructose and this comes to 2500 Calories to the US$ for me.

Now I burn 565 Calories on my morning commute of 4 miles, which translates into 6cents per mile cycling.

Also following sport nutrition guidliness will have a big impact on the food choice. Hence my reason for using fructose and pronutro.

Also, I don’t think you can equate eaten calories to miles travelled with nearly the precision that you can calculate miles per gallon. And the cost of a muffin is not necessarily the cost of calories. I eat breakfast every day. Usually it’s the same breakfast, or at least if it varies it has nothing to do with whether or not I bike to work. On that basis, I guess my caloric cost of biking to work is zero. It’s a free ride every time I don’t drive.

Also, the fact that you pay 3.00 for a muffin and feel that it gives you 8 miles of travel does not mean that universally food eaten to bike > gas required. Some people might go further on that muffin. Some people might use cheaper and/or more calorie dense food.

I can believe that some people require a lot of calories as a result of bicycling, possibly more calories than than you could afford from the equivalent amount of gas. I can easily believe some people spend far more on food than gas. I just don’t believe that you can say definitively that food required for biking costs more than gasoline. Not with the data at hand at least.

Hmmm…well, let’s see: a muffin at Starbucks costs about $3.00, provides 400 calories, and might get me about eight miles down the road on my bicycle. I get eight miles per $3.00.

A gallon of gasoline costs about $3.00, provides about 31,000 calories, and might get me about twenty miles down the road in my car. I get twenty miles per $3.00.

The calories burned by a car are not especially relevant. All one needs is the miles per gallon and the cost of gas.

For my part, I’m fairly certain my monthly grocery bill has not gone up by the amount I would have spent in gas. I’m not convinced my food consumption has gone up at all. If anything, exercising more regularly makes me more health conscious, and less prone to unhealthy snacking. I know there are people for whom that’s not true, people who dramatically increase their food intake in response to exercise, but I don’t think it’s an across-the-board figure.

A person burns between 30 to 100 calories per mile by bicycle, depending mostly on speed, but also on fitness, etc. A car going at 20 MPH for an hour, and getting 20 MPG, burns about 31,000 calories, or about 1,550 calories per mile, or 15 times as much. To be fair, though, the car might weigh 15 times as much, too. A motorized bicycle with fuel efficiency of 200 MPG is fairly close to a rider’s efficiency. I believe electric bicycles have much higher efficiency than humans…

Then there’s the exercise issue. Many people feel that without cycling, they would spend more time in the gym. If that’s the case, they would burn the calories there, rather than on the bike, and it seems the net change in food intake would be nil.

“Has anybody ever tried to quantify the miles per gallon of food that a bicyclist burns/requires?”

You can probably use this message board post — comparing the per-trip carbon output of an electric car and a bicycle — as a touchstone:

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/tesla-roadster/3486-bike-vs-roadster.html