I've mentioned before an interest in getting a bicycle but I've been somewhat deterred because bikes here seem expensive. And apparently Portland is the same way, as someone wrote of their experiences trying to find a cheap bike in Portland.

Still, what’s up with this bike micro-inflation? Why does there seem to be no market in Portland for used bikes that are actually cheap? Portland is otherwise a pretty cheap city. Beer is cheap. Used clothing is cheap. By major urban standards, housing is cheap too, unless you compare it to the strip-mall-type cities. And certainly there are plenty of people in town who can’t afford to spend $475 — never mind $1,000 — on a bike.

I asked a few people in town about this and got some general sense of agreement and common frustration: cheap bikes are impossible to find around here. The word on the street was that so many people are selling their cars (or taking their cars off the road) and using bikes to commute to work that there just aren’t enough bikes to go around.

Interestingly, he then looks at the median price for bikes and for cars on Craigslist and finds something very interesting:



Of a few sample cities, Seattle is the most expensive place to buy a bike from Craigslist (and the cheapest place to buy a car). There are lots of possibilities why the bike prices are higher here, but the cost of bicycles here seems to reflect the fact that lots of people (including me) want to have a bike to ride.