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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?
For me it is simply a question of time - time spent behind the wheel of a car is wasted time as far as I'm concerned. On transit I can sleep, read, email/browse on the blackberry, even get out a laptop. I've made it a point the last couple times I've moved to make sure I have good access to transit options.
For sure - plus, even if you're saving on distance, taking a bus trip from Pasadena to Glendale (neighboring LA cities, about 10 minutes apart) is a 3-hour trek involving taking one bus downtown from Pasadena, another bus across downtown (leaving after a 40-minute wait), and a third bus back up to Glendale. San Diego is similar - occasionally you find a bus that goes from where you live to where you work, but in most cases you're talking about substantial personal cost to get TO the transit, and travel time that takes an average of four times as long.
So, for one thing, the surveys should include "lost productivity" hours or something, since those four hours I lose every day by choosing to use mass transit could be worth more to me than what I spend on the difference.
The problem with these sorts of studies is they lump in the fixed and variable costs for car ownership. The only way you get rid of the fixed costs (like insurance and registration) is to get rid of the car altogether, and there aren't too many areas in the US where that's a feasible option. Where I live public transportation to most of the places I go simply doesn't exist. I can take the train to work (though I'd have to ride my bike to the train station), but if I get called up for jury duty, say, without my car I'm taking a taxi for as long as the trial lasts.
So when I take public transportation I'm reducing variable costs - depreciation, gas, maintenance. But there's no way I can come out ahead this way, since I'm still paying insurance and registration on the car that's sitting at home.
This is the problem with rail in most places. Most urban/suburban areas are so poorly laid out that rail is only able to service a very few number of people from "near door" to "near work". This is made several times worse if they are only able to put the rail 'where people will let them', which usually means the rail doesn't service many people along the route - because it's in the boonies.
Almost forgot to add:
- it takes me 25 minutes to reach work in the car.
- it would take 1:30 to get there via public transportation.
The real problem is population density.
Places (NYC is the poster child) that have a high population density get effective mass transit, meaning subways or good light rail service. Other places get ineffective light rail and/or buses.
In a highly populated area, a single stop can serve thousands of people, where as most places in America measure thousands of people per square mile. It just doesn't work out for mass transit in places like that. What service is available is universally slow and underfunded, usually with heavy subsidization by the local government.
You can thank the suburbs and the 1940/50s dream of everyone owning their own home. The "American Dream", a 60 year old invention that caused the massive economic build up of Detroit and the eventual collapse. It also helped out the environment a lot. Nevermind, I'm digressing.
It's the population density.
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Location, location, location.
I've not owned a commuter car for the last 10 years. In that time I've biked, walked, and taken public transit to work, depending on the city, job, and distance. Currently, my commute is by bus, which runs at 15 minute intervals at peak and at 30 minute intervals off peak.
Throughout this time I've selected my residence based on public transit and other service availability. It just becomes another attribute to house/apartment selection. "Must have garage" becomes "Must have grocery store within 5 blocks".
Yes, if you choose to live away from public transit, there'll still be a cost of car ownership to get to the station. But if you choose to live close to the transit (just like a car owner generally chooses to live near roads), this is not so much an issue.
I think that the mindset of "transportation services must come to me" needs to be updated on a societal level. However, until the rest of you catch up, I'll be taking advantage of my lower monetary cost, lower stress lifestyle.
Just because public transit takes longer doesn't mean it's automatically a waste of time. I used to work a job where my choice was a 40 minute drive (in bad traffic, it could double, but that was fairly uncommon) or a 120 minute bus/subway commute (never varied by more than 10 minutes). While public transit took longer, I never considered those 120 minutes to be wasted. I read a novel a day for months.
I view it as wasting 80 minutes a day doing nothing but driving, vs. using every second "productively".
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And there in lies the problem. Somehow, we are entitled to 6 lane freeways and highways but urban, suburburban and interstate rail is, wooo, scary socialist stuff that "loses money". Do that for six decades and you get a serious problem. Like Dallas
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I thought exactly the same thing, until i started commuting by train....
My drive used to vary between 50 and 80 minutes depending on traffic, one way. The train commute (including 6 minutes to drive to the train) was 90 minutes consistantly. One could easily argue i was loosing between 20 and 80 minutes a day with my family.
However, it occurred to me after I started commuting several things:
1) the time in the morning didn't count. I actually had MORE time with my family in the mornings. How? well, I basically had to leave at the same time each morning one way or the other, since traffic could easily put me being late. This meant more often than not I got to work 20-30 minutes early. Also, since I could quite easily (and comfortably) eat breakfast on the train, I was no longer in a mad rush to get my shit together in the morning, and could spend the tome actually talking to my kids instead of barking orders and running from room to room, and cursing when i burned breakfast trying to do too much in too short a time. My whole morning was calmer and more controlled, and I not only had that time with the family, but I ENJOYED that time for once.
2) The end of the day. This was easier in many ways. First, i knew I allways had about 40 minutes on the train doing a whole lot of nothing after breakfast. Most mornings I simply read news, a book, watched a podcast, something like that. Other mornings I was actually working, preparing for my day, prepping for a meeting with a client, reading a tech manual on a new software package, something productive. This extra time meant I was also more focused at the office, and got my shit done. I found I rarely ever worked overtime anymore, and if I had some unfinished work, I did it on the train on the way home.
3) The worst part of the commute was ALLWAYS coming home, not going to work in the morning. As anyone who commutes often knows, people vary on when they go in to the office, from 7ish to closer to 9AM, but nearly every fucking one of them are on the roads at 5:15PM... and on a mission. 50-60 minutes in the morning was the norm, with the occasional bad commute. Coming home was ALLWAYS on the 80 minutes side. So I really only lost about 10 minutes on average coming home. I used to leave the house at 6:40 and get home about 6:30. While using the train I still left at 6:40AM, and usually was home at 6:45 (if I didn't hit the grocery store or something on the way back).
Then, there's overtime. As i already mentioned, i worked a LOT less of it. When i did, it was on the train, or just a few quick e-mails from home (unless some server blew up). Coming in the door I didn't have a head full of crap to do. i used to walk in the door, scream hello, go right to the office, and sit there for an hour smelling food I was expecting to eat cold later. Using the train i came home, sat down, and spent family time with the family far more often than the prior situation. Yes I got home 20-30 minutes later on average, but I EARNED 30 minutes with my family I never used to get anyway!
Also, driving is streessful. Many nights the fise and I got in fights over stupid stuff just because I was in a mood to fight. With the train ride to calm me down, even the side effects of a horrible day at the office never made it back to the house. ALL my family time was FAR more valuable too me, not to mention having more of it.
Would I have prefered to work a lot closer to home and avoid the commute completely? Well, yea, sure. That is, if I could have had a comperable salry and work for a comperable company and earn comperable experience. unfortunately, that simply wasn't possible. My commute, saccrificing what an hour a day, earned my family a nice big house in a great neighborhood. We sold that house, moved south, and I now make a VERY comfortable living at another comperable company in a job my experiences earned me, and we have an even more massive house in a nicer neighborhood, and the money to have truly quality time together. I
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