Let say that you live far from the university (in the case of a student) and you have to get a bus every time you want to have a lecture. Getting a weekly or monthly bus pass is one of the option. It is £9.70 per week or £37.30 per month. (The price is for 18+ a.k.a student price. Refer TFL - Season Tickets)

As for myself, I need to go out from my house 1 hour before my class start to ensure that I have reach the lecture centre on time. So, I thought the idea of getting a bicycle on the first week I'm here.

Here are the pros

• Save lot of money. By two months, if I get a monthly pass (£ 74.60), I can nearly buy a new bicycle.
• Save a lot of time. Most of the time during peak hour, bus can't move fast, and the frequency decrease. I can go out 20 minutes before a lecture start with my bicycle.
• Avoid freezing for nothing. Sometimes you have to wait for 15-20 minutes before a bus come. And waiting at the bus stop in cold winter is annoying. By that time, with a bicycle, you can reach your house.

Here are the cons

• Travel pass is good for traveling around as it has unlimited number of board. So, you can simply go to the lecture, take a bus and go to nearest town and has some window shopping (as the price is high, so can't buy every time you go out), and get back home.
• When it rain, you have to take a bus if you want to go to the university. Going back home is fine as a lil bit wet won't bother much as you can change when you get home.
• It's so cold during winter. I have the same thought with my housemate - It's freezing during winter, sometimes it's fine, but when the wind is raging and blows, we can hardly move on our bicycle. I feel like my face being tear up with knife. Simple advice, over 5 degrees (7 much better), it's okay. Lower than that, bus is much comfortable.

Price

As usual, you have to consider the price. I recorded numbers of time I use my bicycle and it seems that after 3 months and half of using it, it equal to the price of going to university, taking bus, and pay of single journey (2006, it was 80p, now it is £1 per single journey)

I guess I saw a bike for £30 in East London. But I bought my bike in Halfords (http://www.halfords.com) for around £80. It was during Christmas sale, so I got some additional things for free (mudguard, lock,bag). It's good if you can just browse through the website, and compare the price. Raleigh Bikes (http://www.raleighbikes.com/)  is another site but the bicycle there is much expensive.

Watch out for cash coupon. The shop may give you £20 worth of coupon for you to spend anything in their shop (I got that from Halfords, I ended up exchange a lock for a better one). So, you can just use that coupon to buy lock and mudguard.

Accessories

For safety, you should have a light set. At least the continuous flashing LED light to put at the rear is good enough (although I don't have one, but don't follow me for that). But you must have a mud-guard as it is raining sometimes and the road is wet and it can wet your bag when you cycling (I had one, but during winter time, the wind blows it away). And also a bicycle lock. It is not a bad idea to get it from home if you seriously want to get a bicycle here as the price will differ a lot.

And one other compulsory thing is hand gloves. It's freezing during winter.

I have the same model of bicycle as the picture