If you're going to ignore all of those things, you may as well ignore the cost of food per calorie burnt as well, which would mean to ignore this article.
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2008/11/16/the-mensa-diet/
In this case, the author doesn't give his measured power output but I took a look at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance#Energy_inp...
and concluded that the cited number of (nutritional) calories is the right order of magnitude, so the author's estimate is physically plausible and didn't involve a mistake about the two meanings of "calorie". The factor that Wikipedia notes that I might have neglected is about muscular efficiency: you can only actually use a fraction of the food energy you metabolize in order to move yourself around.
On the other hand, you can get this much food energy by eating about 120 g olive oil or about 200 g peanut butter. The peanut butter (choosing a random bottle from the front page of Amazon.com) offers 1213 kcal/dollar, a big improvement over the author's 205 kcal/dollar average.
I would also point out that if you're substituting at the margin, you don't have to think about "how terrible would it be if I had to eat only peanut butter all the time to save money?"; you just have to think about "how terrible would it be if I had to eat a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter per day to power my commute?", which doesn't sound that terrible to me.
The IRS and GSA private vehicle mileage rate for 2016 is 54c. The federal government believes this to be a representative cost for a mile driven in a typical private car, inclusive of maintenance and capital depreciation. By that figure, the real cost of a 34 mile round trip is $18.36.
The US doesn't provide tax deductions for bicycle travel, but the UK does. The rate set by HMRC is 20p per mile, equivalent to 28 cents. This figure is inclusive of maintenance, depreciation, third-party insurance, clothing and accessories. Accordingly, the cost of a 34 mile round trip is $9.52. The average cost of living is significantly higher in the UK than the US, so this should be seen as a generous figure.
Even after adding the OP's calculated food costs, cycling comes out as considerably cheaper than driving. There is also the broader issue of the typical Western diet, which contains a significant excess of calories.
but I don't really like the idea of sacrificing exercise for additional hours at work.
The link at the bottom seems to think that you spend 17 calories to drive 15 minutes. If a round trip is 36 miles, and you drive 1 mile per minute, you spend (17/15)*36 = 41 calories to drive 36 miles.
So the cost of driving is really the cost of gasoline ($4.08) plus the cost of food (which is 41/205 = $0.20), $4.28.
http://calorielab.com/burned/?mo=se&gr=16&ti=Transportation&...
Maintenance and replacing worn-out parts have been the biggest expense for my bike. If you count time spent on repairs/general care, then things can get pricey very quickly.
edit: Just read the blog post. It sucks.
