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?

Comments

depends

[tsalmark]

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.

Re:depends

[Zondar]

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.

Re:depends

[g-to-the-o-to-the-g]

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.

Re:depends

[Moryath]

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.

Re:depends

[Moryath]

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.

Re:depends

[Bandman]

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.

Re:depends

[mrbene]

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.

Re:depends

[characterZer0]

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.

Re:depends

[ShadowRangerRIT]

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".

Re:depends

[phantomcircuit]

Are you serious?

Population density

• Paris - 24,948 /km^2
• Sacramento - 1,818/km^2

Gee I wonder why paris has public transportation and Sacramento doesnt?

Re:depends

[nutrock69]

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.

Re:depends

[electrons_are_brave]

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.

Re:depends

[Sandbags]

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

It's Time, not Money

[joebok]

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.

Re:"Everyone's situation is different"

[ctmzeus]

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.

Doesn't pan out

[tsotha]

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.

Re:Not everyone has access to transit

[iroll]

Exactly! I'm a bush pilot in Alaska, and I think this article is just silly! Sure, ON PAPER public transit in NYC may seem to be cheaper than my float-equipped Cessna, but they're making all sorts of false assumptions! For example, I do my own maintenance--where's THAT in their spreadsheet?

OH WAIT--THIS ARTICLE IS NOT ABOUT RURAL TRANSPORTATION, WHICH EVERYBODY KNOWS IS DIFFERENT THAN COMMUTING IN MAJOR URBAN AREAS.

And there in lies the problem

[thoglette]

Where I live public transportation to most of the places I go simply doesn't exist.

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