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Go Green, Save Money: Ride a Motorcycle   by Ron Ayalon

Would you like to have a lot of fun, save money, and go green all at the same time? You can, and it's easy. Just join the growing numbers of Americans riding scooters and motorcycles.

Perhaps you've noticed the price of gasoline lately. It's higher than $4 a gallon in some places, below that in others. For convenience we'll do all the math that follows figuring $4 gas. You can make appropriate adjustments based on what it costs near you.

Do you drive a Luxobarge Deluxe in the four-wheel category? Getting, what, 21 miles per gallon? Or maybe you have a more efficient car that gets 34 mpg. Let's use 30 mpg for calculations, again for convenience. So every mile you drive costs you 13.3 cents in gas alone.

How would that change if you rode a motorcycle? Well, for starters, a 600cc bike like the Kawasaki Vulcan 900 Classic, a V-Twin, runs about 55 mpg. At $4 a gallon for gas, that comes to 7.27 cents per mile. Or let's put it this way: for every 100 miles you ride on your Vulcan vs. driving your car, you would save $6.03. Now, you wouldn't be riding the bike all the time. Winter is an issue, and it can also be difficult to bring home a family's worth of groceries on a motorcycle. So let's say you ride the bike to work, a round-trip of 20 miles, four days a week. Then figure you do that nine months out of the year, for a total of 3,120 miles. You've just saved nearly $190.

Now let's look at a smaller bike, say a Star Motorcycles V-Star 250. Now we're talking around 78 mpg. At $4 per gallon you cover a mile for all of 5.13 cents, so now you're saving almost $255 on those commutes alone.

Of course, any other driving that you take the bike instead will only increase your savings. How much you save is up to you. But the point is, once you have the bike you'll want to take it rather than the car as much as you can, because it's fun. Motorcycles are fun. That's a big part of why people ride them. In your car your commute is generally just wasted time. If there were any way to get to work without having to actually spend all that time on the road you'd probably jump at it.

Riding your motorcycle to work is a whole other thing. "Hot dog," you think, "time to go for a ride. Even if it is to work." Of course you may find that you're not saving quite so much money because the element of fun may seduce you into taking a longer route. It's a hazard we motorcyclists live with. Don't spend too much time working up pity for us.

And finally, there's the element of going green. It's pretty obvious that if you're burning less gasoline you're doing the environment a favor. There are environmental costs of extracting the oil, refining it, storing it, and shipping it, as well as of burning it. Burn less and you cut back on them all.

But there's a lot more than gas involved in going green. Motorcycles also use less steel and plastic and other materials to manufacture. Each of those products has its own supply chain so there are savings there as well. Granted, if you still have to own a car and then also own a motorcycle, you are using more resources, not less. But the more you ride rather than drive, the longer your car lasts. That's the big resource consumer, so if you can double its lifespan the savings come to a lot more than the resources used to build the bike.
Finally, factor in the very minimal damaging impact of the bike on the roadway--a 600-pound vehicle vs. a 2,200-pound vehicle--and the reduction in traffic congestion and the smaller piece of land necessary to park the bike and the environmental benefits just keep adding up.

Who knew having fun could make you such a virtuous person!

About the Author

For New York Motorcycles, visit Island Powersports at http://www.IslandPowersports.com or call 516-795-4400. We have rock bottom pricing, outstanding customer service, and knowledgeable staff to satisfy your thirst for fun. Schedule an appointment today to get out and ride!
2011 Kawasaki Vulcan Vaquero Sneak Peek

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