Can you save money by getting bike and train to work?

I decided to try to reduce my 'car farts' (CO2 and other noxious gas emissions) by cycling to work. It's a bit far for me to go there and back each day (10.25 miles each way), so I decided to cycle to a train station, leave one bike there, catch a train, then get on my second bike at the station near my work (I had to leave a bike there for this purpose) and cycle the rest of the way to work.

So does it save me money? The journey by car is 9.6 miles, so twice a day that comes to 19.2 miles. journeyprice.co.uk tells me that this journey will cost 2.00 pounds each way, so 4.00 pounds a day for petrol. The price for my return train ticket was 6.20 so the train only cost a little more. If I get the train for a whole year (260 working days), it should cost me 1488 pounds, compared to 960 pounds for petrol for my car for those days.

However, if you get a season ticket, it turns out you can save lots of money. For example, if I cycled to work every day, for my journey (just 1 stop) I could get a year-long season ticket for 948 pounds, so if I travel on 260 working days, that is about 3.65 pounds per day. Cheaper than the car! Even if I just cycle to work 4 out of 5 days a week, it means the train costs 4.56 a day, just 56p more than car, which is little to pay for the cost of avoiding global warming from CO2 emissions, and air pollution from other nasty gases spewed out by my car!

cyclestreets tells me that I avoid 6 kg of CO2 emissions a day if I cycled all the way, instead of driving the car. Assuming 260 working days a year, this would mean I'd prevent 1560 kg (1.56 tonnes) of CO2 emissions a year. The UK produces ~400 millions of tonnes of
CO2 emissions a year, but if each of its ~66M citizens cut out journeys by this amount, it would reduce UK CO2 emissions by ~100 million tonnes a year. So it is in the hands of the people. Get on your bike everyone!

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