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Your Commuting Costs By Car Vs. Train?

Posted by timothy on from the part-of-the-world-time-of-day-round-trip-distance dept.

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?

20 of 1,137 comments (clear)

  1. depends by tsalmark · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If I continue to own my car then it costs more to take public transit, but not by much. If I sell my car and take public transit I save a few grand a year, assuming I rent a car one weekend a month.

    1. Re:depends by g-to-the-o-to-the-g · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've gone car free in the last year or so, and it's saved me a pile of money. Around $7k/year for fuel, plus insurance and car payments add up to more than $20k/year. I use my bicycle most of the time, but when I need to go longer distances I can combine biking and public transit (though I almost never actually do this). I love the freedom of being on a bicycle, as you have all the rights and privileges of both motorists and pedestrians. Travelling through heavy traffic is much faster by bicycle. And then there are the positive health effects.

      --

      Hi there

    2. Re:depends by Moryath · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No shit.

      I could "use public transportation." I'd still drive 5 miles roundtrip to the station every day. And of course, the station is only available 6:30am-8am and return trip 4pm-7pm. So if I need to stay late at work I need my car. If I need to go help a friend after work, or pick up kids, I need my car. If I want to go somewhere after work, or during lunch hour, I need my car.

      In other words, if all I did was ever go to work exactly on time, and come back to home exactly on time, I could do it. But my life isn't predictable like that. Imagine you're a normal family now, mom, dad, 2.5 kids, possibly older parents to take care of. On any given day something could happen and you need a car to go help someone out.

      If public transportation were ubiquitous, hey, no problem. But it's not. Municipalities run it "as a business" rather than admitting it's a service, a public utility, and admitting that hey, we need to put in enough tax money to make it cover enough areas. It may mean some nights, an empty bus is going up and down the street, but the alternative is people NOT riding in the morning because they're afraid of not being able to get a bus in the evening.

    3. Re:depends by MyDixieWrecked · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When I first moved to NYC from New Jersey about 5 years ago, my friends were freaking out about the fact that I was paying about 20% more in rent. Once I did the math, I was able to show that I was saving significantly more money by not having a car between gas, maintenance, tolls, parking, insurance, etc. I get an unlimited metrocard for the same cost that I was spending on gas every month (this is in 2004, so I was spending about $60-70/month).

      When I moved back to jerz, I opted to not get a car. I still worked in the city and would walk about a mile to the train station every day and take the train in... the monthly train pass was around $250, and I could avoid getting a metrocard since I could walk to work from the train station. Although the monthly cost of a car would probably be under $250, the up-front cost of the car just didn't make me want to get one.

      Now that I'm living in NY again, I just take the subway everywhere. I really wish there was better public transportation outside of major metropolitan areas.

      --



      ...spike
      Ewwwwww, coconut...
    4. Re:depends by hellwig · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I could buy a new car for what you pay in a year. Jesus christ man.

      --
      Eggs
      Milk
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      Cat Litter
      Soda
      ...
    5. Re:depends by characterZer0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I was an overweight wimpy nerd. 10 months ago I started taking the bus to work and biking the 9 miles home. I could hardly walk up the stairs by the time I got home. After a few months I could run up the stairs. One day I missed the bus and biked to work, and have been biking both ways since.

      I lost a lot of weight, my blood pressure and heart rate are better, and I can bike 10 miles in under half an hour.

      I enjoy my commute now more than I ever did driving.

      --
      Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
    6. Re:depends by nutrock69 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It all depends on where you are and what your commute is like.

      I live near Philadelphia - near being described as "between Philly and Lancaster/Harrisburg". Went job hunting this winter (not by choice) and landed a good job in downtown Philly. I drove to work my first three days. I've taken the train ever since.

      Why? Because I did my math. 50-some miles each way is a typical "local" commute for people in my area. Nobody thinks twice about it. 100+ miles a day, plus traffic, had me filling my tank after 2.5 days, or twice a week, to the tune of about $50/week - or $10/day - just for the gas. 21.5 working days average a month makes the gas to $215/month. Best price I could find for reliable parking is also $10/day, so my total per month given that my car is paid for is roughly $430/month.

      That doesn't count wear and tear on my car, wear and tear on my sanity or blood pressure. Nor does it count the fact that the average drive time was 2 hours each way, and (as someone else also mentioned) those 2 hours were spent doing nothing BUT driving and screaming obscenities at the other cars.

      SEPTA's costs? $181 for the monthly anytime pass, a buck a day to park, and a single tank of gas = ~$227.50/month. The trip is less than an hour each way, and I've been catching up on old tv shows, reading books, and playing games on an ipod. Certainly less wasted than driving, and my sanity has never been better - if it could've been called that in the first place, that is... :)

      Other people might not be so clear cut, so maybe it's not for them, but for me this was a no-brainer. Aside from the occasional delay once in a while, there's no reason for me to think otherwise.

    7. Re:depends by Chaos+Incarnate · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Possibly dumb question, but... how did you bike only one way? Where do you get the bike, if you didn't leave the house with it?

      --
      Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
    8. Re:depends by electrons_are_brave · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Meh. In Australia, well-off people own cars AND live in the areas which have good, efficient public transport. Poor people live in the back of nowhere miles from that single bus stop where a bus has never been seen. There's a good paper on "Car ownership and Social Exclusion in Australia". http://civil.eng.monash.edu.au/its/caitrhome/prevcaitrproceedings/caitr2007/johnson_caitr2007.pdf As you'd expect, those who can afford cars mostly buy them. Poor people can't afford, but are often forced buy, cars or they can't get to work. "In Australia, lack of access to private or public transport was found (following having a criminal record) to be the second highest barrier to social and economic participation in a study of job seekers facing multiple barriers to employment". I noticed in the report that it might be different in the US because in Australia the richer you are the nearer you tend to live to the the centre of the city, which is also where the lush jobs and the good public transport are. Poverty, bad jobs and bad public transport go with outlying suburbs. I get the picture in the US that the well-off prefer to live in the suburbs and that good jobs are more decentralised? Speaking in broad generalisations of course.

    9. Re:depends by adolf · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Aw, hell. This is 2009. You can use the extra time on a train for a lot of things, including Slashdot, and thus have even more free time for your family.

      How much of your attention is with your family right now as you read this at home?

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
    10. Re:depends by sumdumass · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm going to admit that my experience with public transport is limited to a few specific occasions where I was away on a business trip, but I want to second your notion.

      In my experiences, I take a flights to another city, stay at a hotel and took public transit to where I needed to go (well, used to, I don't anymore). It generally took roughly an hour to an hour and a half longer to get to each destination I needed to go to and I had the itinerary and routing worked out in advance by the secretary at the places I was visiting. One trip, I had to take a $15 or $20 cab ride to the lite rail station and wait 20 minutes for the train. Then after a 35-40 minute ride, I had to hop a bus with two transfers so that meant not only waiting the extra time while each bus hits the other stops on the line, I had to get off twice, walk two blocks away, and wait 15 to 20 minutes for the connector to come by. Then I still walked roughly 3 city blocks to get where I needed to be. My meetings took roughly an hour longer then planned so I took a taxi all the way back to the hotel for $80. I spent roughly $25-$30 on the public transportation and it took a total of four and a half hours or so one way. On the way back I decided to just take a cab, it took me one and a half hours, cost $80 for the cab, and I was still able to hit a show that night. The next trip, I rented a car for $50 a day, squeezed in two extra meetings (over two days), and saved not only time but money as well. I also was able to park in the lots of the places I visited so walking which isn't an issue outside of time involved (moving at 3mph verses 20-30mph or faster) was rather limited to the back edge of large parking lots.

      While public transportation works for some, it isn't a magic bullet for anything. Well, at least not like the story is attempting to claim. Also, if you take the parking away from the study, it loses most of it's bite. This is especially true if you look at all the driving you have to do in a normal day. We seem to be focusing on the one task of going to work but if you get rid of your car, you will need to go to the market more often because you can only carry a few bags of groceries at a time, you will lose the hour there, lose an hour when going to the doctors, the movies, the jazz festival downtown or county fair or whatever else it is that normal people do with their spare time. It's just not worth it.

      I have rarely went to some place where my parking wasn't validated by one of the places I visited or the place had it's own parking lot and the parking was free. Even my attorneys office in downtown Columbus Ohio will pick up the parking tab by issuing you a promissory voucher that you present to the parking attendant when leaving. And we know how greedy those sharks can be. I have never had to pay to park on the street in front of my friend's houses, a relative's house, the grocery store, or the local pub/bar. They put too much stock into the paying to park thing to be grounded in reality for most people. And that's not even considering the extra time that can be used more productively doing something else that is important to you.

    11. Re:depends by commodore64_love · · Score: 3, Interesting

      >>>While public transit took longer, I never considered those 120 minutes to be wasted. I read a novel a day for months.

      You can "read" novels while driving too, or college lectures, or just the radio. I've done this for years, first on cassette and now on my cheap MP3 player, and therefore the 40 minute car drive is still the better choice (IMHO) than the 2 hour metro.

      ALSO:

      If I got rid of my gas-guzzling car, and traded it in for a 70mpg Honda Insight, or the new 240mpg 2-seater from Volkswagen, those options would be a lot cheaper than public transport. And more flexible (leave home when you want; come home when you want; do errands on the side like grocery shopping).

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  2. "Everyone's situation is different" by taustin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'll say. Here in southern California, I'd have to drive my car to any form of mass transit, and I'd have to drive farther than it is to work.

    1. Re:"Everyone's situation is different" by bennomatic · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yeah, there really is no "one size fits all" solution. In the SF Bay Area, there are plenty of lost productivity hours in driving one's self. Hit the wrong traffic patch and it can take you 2 hours to get 15 miles. My wife and I used to work in neighboring office buildings, and we got our wires crossed one day that she had driven in to work, and so she left without me. I called her on the cell phone, found out where she was, and without her pulling over, I was able to jog up to meet her before she got on the bridge, even though she was four blocks ahead of me.

      One other solution that's really great--which I used in Oakland/SF commute--was the casual carpool. Cut through most of the traffic, ride in comfort (usually), no extra stops, and one direction is free. I wonder how many cities have that these days.

      --
      The CB App. What's your 20?
  3. Some More Numbers by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Well, from their calculator, they do include parking costs and they have a table for Maintenance (4.67 cents per mile on a medium car) and Tires (0.85 cents per mile on a medium car).

    And I think they're banking on things like if you are married and one of you drives and one rides the train or bus, you can cut down to one vehicle maybe:

    If you can live with one less vehicle in your household, you would save an additional $5,576 in car ownership cost (full-coverage insurance, license, registration, taxes, depreciation and finance charge).

    I like public transportation but in DC, the metro rail sucks. It sucks something fierce. The stops in DC are so so limited. I still end up taking taxis for most of the places I want to go ... or plan for an hour walk. I go to NYC and it's like heaven--I do not care of the condition of the train. DC rails shut down at midnight on a weeknight ... and sometimes you wait 15+ minutes for the next train. Transferring is almost out of the question. Wish it worked for me for my job but it doesn't. It barely works for me on my drinking expeditions.

    --
    My work here is dung.
  4. The article doesn't seem to include depreciation by cshay · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Your average new car costs very roughly $3000 a year in depreciation. It may be less if you have a cheap japanese model, and much more if you have a American SUV. A car is very expensive compared to taking trains when you factor in depreciation and insurance.

  5. 100 miles to the nearest commuter train, by JesseL · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Let's see; I've got a 4 mile round trip, on a motorcycle that gets 35MPG, with free parking, plus $75/year insurance and $12/year registration, say $200/year for maintenance... I'm looking at $350 per year in in commuting costs.

    --
    "Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
    1. Re:100 miles to the nearest commuter train, by ArsonSmith · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I tried this while going to school. What you are missing is that $150,000 medical bill when someone plows into you and you break L1 and L2 in your back.

      --
      Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
  6. What about TIME? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If I were to commute using public transportation, I would add 45 to 60 min to each direction of the commute.

    At my salary, ($41 per hour) this equates to a loss of over $20K per year.

    I'll drive my car thank you very much!

  7. I think it's worth it. by delirium+of+disorder · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Taking the train instead of driving would allow me to save thousands of dollars in gas, car payments, tolls, parking frees, tickets, maintenance, and etc. Maybe not five figures, but still a lot of money. There are non-financial indirect benifits to taking the train too.

    On the train, I feel safer knowing an accident probably won't happen and that if it does, it probably won't kill me. I also don't have the headache of police stops and tickets. Additionally, I get to spend the commuting time reading, coding, sleeping, etc. It's much less stressful and allows me to be more productive. I know that my carbon footprint is lower and I'm doing less to support despotic oil regimes. I get exercise walking between public transport stops. Unfortunately, I live too far out in the suburbs to make commuting by train to work in the city practical. It just takes too long (frankly driving takes too long as well). I can only take public transport on the weekends and for personal travel. I'm currently looking for work in the Chicago area, and will strongly considering moving to take advantage of the city's train system.

    --
    ------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.