• Lodespawn@aussie.zone
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    2 days ago

    One of my friends did a personal study on his costs at uni and found it was more cost effective to drive his car (this was in the early 2000’s) than it was to ride his bike to uni everyday than buy the food required to fuel the 50km round trip.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Hope he wasn’t majoring in anything like math or biology.

      • Lodespawn@aussie.zone
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        2 days ago

        Well he certainly wasn’t majoring in wilful ignorance so that probably works in his favour.

      • Lodespawn@aussie.zone
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        1 day ago

        No it was the increase in petrol cost was less when he drove than his increase in food cost when he rode, he ate fine when he drove

      • Lodespawn@aussie.zone
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        2 days ago

        Round trip, so it was 25km. Sadly Peth Australia has one of the largest urban sprawls on the planet so 25km isn’t an unreasonable commute here and when you are a young uni student sometimes it’s more cost effective overall to live with your parents. This isn’t a post in support of cars, it’s more saying that fuel for bicycles is most certainly not free and to suggest it is is disingenuous. Arguably there may have been other things my friend could have done to reduce his food bill, but he was already pretty thrifty in general.

    • needanke@feddit.orgM
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      2 days ago

      Wbat food did he use for that math? Because I doubt it would have hold up if he only used rice/beans/noodles/etc. To fuel his bike ride.

      • Lodespawn@aussie.zone
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        2 days ago

        He tracked his food costs and fuel costs for a few months, noted when he drove and when he cycled and then correlated total costs with transportation mode. I have no idea how he was sourcing his food or what he was eating.

    • Damage@feddit.it
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      2 days ago

      25km each way is, best case scenario, 1h per trip, in that case if public transport is not an option, yeah, I’d take the car

      • Lodespawn@aussie.zone
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        2 days ago

        I think public transport at the time was a real screw around for him because his area was poorly serviced and the nearest train station was super dodgy

        • Damage@feddit.it
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          2 days ago

          Yeah I live in a city with decent public transportation, but unfortunately my neighborhood is the one that’s poorly serviced, it’d take me two hours and multiple changes to get to work, it takes me 35 minutes by car and 20 by motorbike.
          Of course I take the latter as often as possible, it’s just better, even on fuel consumption.

          I’d like to bicycle to work like I did to my previous job, but here it’s just not an option, it’d take over one hour, I’d get there drenched in sweat, and risk my life multiple times.