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Your Commuting Costs By Car Vs. Train?
grepdisc writes "Newspapers in Boston are fawning over a report by the American Public Transportation Association that taking public transportation saves money over driving. How can one possibly save $12,600 per year, when the inflated estimates of 15,000 miles per year at only 23.4 miles and $2.039 per gallon costs only $1,310, and a high parking rate of $460 per month results in under $5600. Is the discrepancy made up of tolls, repairs, the cost of buying a car and ignoring train station parking fees?" Everyone's situation is different — and it's easy to have a chip on one's shoulder while estimating prices. But for those of you with the option, what kind of savings do you find (or would you expect) from taking one form of transport to work over another?
Owning a car costs far more than just your monthly loan payment. I had an old piece of junk which cost me just $1000 a year in insurance since I did not need comprehensive. My guess is that you're looking at least at $2000-3000 a year in insurance alone for a standard newish car (banks require comprehensive for anything they have a loan out for). Add to that a monthly payment for the car of say $300-400, which gives a total of $4000-5000 a year, and you're easily at the $12,600 estimate.
I pay about 500 USD per year for free public transport 24/7 in my city. According to this Swedish checklist, the yearly cost for purchasing and owning a 10 year old tiny car would be about 3750 USD, thus, I save 3250 USD. If I would get a new car, the savings would be around 7100 USD.
(since I don't have or need a car, I will of course have to take the purchasing price into account.)
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and I have to commute in every day. Here's a breakdown, as I did each for two years apiece:
- Drive to local T stop: $5/day parking plus ~$60 for T pass, plus gas.
- Drive and park at work: $240/mo plus gas. I would drive about 15k/yr (work plus other driving)
- Drive 1 mi to bus stop: donation to local church to park in their lot (few hundred/yr), $64 for T/bus pass. In the 2.5 years I've been taking the bus, I've driven about 15,000 mi.
Now taking the bus takes a bit longer, but my employer is nice enough to allow me to work from home one day a week, and I often fall asleep or do work while on the bus, as opposed to getting peeved at the traffic around me.
YMMV. As for me, I'll keep taking the bus.
Don't forget about those of us in rural areas. I carpool with a friend as often as I can, but I live 30 miles from my workplace. No one is going to be running a train from a city of 250 to a city of 10,000, so personal transportation is the only option.
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Buy a bicycle. It will take you less than half an hour. Heck, you might be able to walk that far in two hours if you are fit.
Google Maps will help you calculate the cost of public transit vs. driving. After you map out your commute. Just click on the public transit button. About half way down it will show you a public transit vs. driving comparison.
We tried it in the UK. Privately owned railway systems have proved much more expensive and not neccesarily any better than the fully nationalised British Rail that went before it.
They do have some prettier looking trains now though...
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Do you work for Verizon? Using 0.85 cents per mile, I get 510 dollars over 60,000 miles. This seems pretty reasonable for a set of decent tires. OTOH, dividing your 48,000 dollars by 60,000 miles, I get a figure of 80 cents per mile, which is apparently the figure you used. You see the difference between 0.85 cents and 85 cents?
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Public: TTC, $2.75 each way. I can get a monthly pass for $105. Assume worst: $2.75 each way, 7 days a week.
Car: 2002 Honda Civic, bought used, $10,000, to be paid over 5 years ($2120 yr) or $5.80 day.
Car insurance: We're old, so we only pay about $500 year, about $1.36 a day.
Car Maintenance averages $800 year (tires, brakes, etc. etc.) about $2.19 a day
distance: 6 miles each way.
Gas mileage on car: in city, 24 mpg.
Gas price: $0.85 per liter, roughly = $3.25 gallon, so Cost in gas to drive downtown each day: ~$1.66
Parking downtown = $8 day. (She has a good lot)
So, per day: Car loan: $5.80
Insurance: $1.36
Maintain: $2.19
Cost Gas: $1.66
Parking: $8.00
---------------------
total per day: 19.01 per day.
x 365 = $6938.65 total cost per year for commuting.
total cost per year for TTC: 365 x (2 x 2.75)= $2007.50
Difference? Almost $5000.
RS
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The problem here isn't that these newspapers are fawning over this report. The problem is that the point of the report has been mangled by incompetent journalists. The original report is about replacing your car with public transportation, not just your work commute. That's why they end up using 15000 miles (which is absurdly high for an average commute but much more reasonable for a total year of family driving).
I do find the parking rate high but, then again, my commute is the reverse (from the city into the suburbs) and my company has free parking. Even if it would be more reasonable to assume for a lower parking cost, $2.039 is absurdly low for gas (here in the Chicago area, things are up to around $2.50 from a previous low of about $2.19 at the cheapest gas stations).
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Are you serious?
Population density
Gee I wonder why paris has public transportation and Sacramento doesnt?
The personal cost of public transportation cannot be compared directly to private transportation costs. Political decisions, along with federal, state and local tax subsidies determine the cost of public transportation. For some people public transportation is free (e.g. NYC school children). For those who can't use public transportation but are taxed for it, the cost per mile is infinite.
In 2002 federal transit subsidies were over $7.3 billion dollars. This works out to a subsidy of about 12 cents a mile for every passenger. In NYC, Washington DC, Chicago and Boston the amounts are much higher. On the other hand, the net federal subsidy to highway passenger transportation was negative as a result of gas taxes and tolls.
Since those extra minutes would come out of the time I spend with my family, I would consider them stolen, not wasted.
Wait until your kids get a bit older, then you will consider that hour long commute to be welcome peace and quiet :)
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I lived in Germany for 3 years when I was in the Air Force and the bus and rail systems were wonderful. But thats what? 85 million people in a country not much bigger than Oregon?
That's not really looking at the big picture though... Public Transportation over most of Europe is equally as excellent as here in Germany (not QUITE in some places, but still far better than other parts of the world I've lived in). Taking in Europe as a whole, the size of the place isn't nearly as much of an argument anymore - if the US states ran public transportation like European countries do, it'd work much better.
People seemed to come in clumps making public transportation easier.
I'll definitely grant you that. Something I can never quite fathom when I visit the US is how hard it is to really be "in the middle of nowhere" (which, by my definition, means no people around). Here in Germany, there's people pretty much everywhere, but if you do go somewhere where there isn't anyone, you really are alone. In the US, it always sort of felt like there might be a house somewhere if you just walk over a hill or two. I've also lived in Australia, which has the mind boggling expanses of absolute nothing and some pretty serious "clumping" going on around the coasts.
Then there is the crime. I never, ever, felt unsafe on a bus or train in Germany.
Yep - that's something I definitely love here. "Random" violent crime is very low (muggings, street violence, etc - domestic violence is similar to other parts of the world though, so that's nothing special unfortunately).
On the actual topic though, even here in Germany, I'd pay more to take public transport to work than drive. Only because of my exact circumstances though - for most people it'd be the other way around. I live in the middle of a city, with an U-Bahn stop pretty much right outside my door, but to get to work I can either drive 8km, or take the U-Bahn, followed a bus. U-Bahn alone would be cheap, bus alone would be cheap, but U-Bahn plus bus would be slightly more than I pay for keeping my car running (especially since it's such a short drive). I do make heavy use of the U-Bahn for other journeys though like heading to friend's houses, coming home drunk late at night when I can't be bothered walking home, etc. For mid-distance journeys (within Germany) I generally take the train, and for long distance, I mostly fly, so other than the 8km trip between home and work, I don't use my car much at all in normal day-to-day life (I do like doing "road trips" though, so maybe a couple of times a year, I might do a several thousand km drive somewhere, so I definitely wouldn't give up the car even if my work circumstances were different... that's a matter of doing something I enjoy though, not convenience or cost (it'd be easier and cheaper to fly to most of the places that I go on these sorts of road trips))
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I lived in Oregon for a long time and definitely, even in rural places you can't make it 20 miles without seeing at least 1 farm house, even when you're in the desert of eastern oregon.
As for public transportation, Portland Oregon had it right. Light rails + very good bus system. This allows the speed of the train to be combined with the flexibility of useful bus routes.
Lightrail alone isn't useful, I wish more people would realise that.
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