I did the math for what it costs a car owner daily to drive to work based on the following: Assuming monthly payment of $350 Assuming 20/mpg Assuming 20 miles to work each way Assuming $600/yr for insurance Assuming 241 working days a year (365- weekends, 2 weeks vacation, 10 holidays) Assuming $1.40/gal for gas Assuming conservative maintenance costs of $60/year (2 oil changes, new wipers)

All that comes out to $22.97 to drive to work each day and sit in traffic. No wonder the transit crowd wants us to subsidize their ride to work so they can pay less than $10/day?

-- Kevin McDowell (kevinmcd@microsoft.com), January 12, 2000

Answers

Well- yes. But they're only paying about one eighth of the total cost. That's why something as inefficient as transit keeps going at all. New users are paying pennies on the dollar of marginal costs of addins services. Even at ten dollars a day, just paying off the cost of ONE STALL in the Mercer Island park and ride garage would take twelve years, even if the operating costs of the bus and maintenance costs of the garage were zero. Transit is just too dumb to do, unless you can get someone else to pay for it. If it were ever truly successful, and a high percentage of people used it with great frequency, the whole house of cards would come tumbling down. There'd be no one to cost-shift the cost to.

-- (craigcar@crosswinds.net), January 12, 2000.

"All that comes out to $22.97 to drive to work each day and sit in traffic. " Though you have to ask, what percent of auto use is for the purpose of commuting. The average person put about 14,000 miles a year on a vehicle. The NPTS 95 indicated that only 17.7% of trips and only 22.5% of miles were work related (http://www.bts.gov/ntl/data/NPTS_Booklet.pdf) < Commuting to work accounts for about one-fifth of person trips and person miles Commuting accounts for only 18 percent of person trips and 22 percent of person miles. However, when the topic of personal travel is discussed, it is often in terms of the commute to work. There are several reasons for this deserved emphasis on travel to work: employed adults travel about 6600 more miles per year than those without jobs the temporal and geographic concentration of work trips place the largest strain on all transportation systems, and for the individual worker, the trip to work often dictates when, where and how his/her other travel is accomplished. - Commute trips are in the minority, even during rush hour In examining the work trip as a component of total travel, it is useful to compare work trips by time of day with trips for all other purposes. There is a common perception that most of the trips made during the traditional rush hour are for commuting to work. The survey results show that the work trip share during these times is smaller than expected. Approximately 37 percent of trips for all purposes start during the two rush hour periods, defined here as 6am to 9am and 4pm to 7pm. Only 10 percent of trips for all purposes are work trips starting these two periods. Less than one out of three person trips starting during rush hour are trips to or from work. Commute speeds increased by more than 20 percent over the past 12 years While the average commute to work has increased in length, the travel time to work has not shown corresponding increases. Between 1983 and 1995, commuting trips grew 37 percent longer in miles, while the travel time increased only 14 percent. The speed of the average commute, 1 including trips by all modes, went from 28 to 34 miles per hour. This trend seems to fly in the face of the reality of congested roads. There are three reasons most often cited for the increase in speed of travel time to work: the continued decentralization of metropolitan areas the expansion of the peak period, because of greater flexibility in hours of work, and the switch from carpool and transit to single occupant vehicle trips, which are usually more time-efficient for the individual worker, even though they may be less efficient for the overall transportation systems.

So basically, your work trip is closer to $4 a day than to $23. Not counting the taxes you pay to subsidize the transit riders.

-- (craigcar@crosswinds.net), January 12, 2000.

Gee, I guess people could commute a for a bit less than $22.97 per day.

86 Peugot takes $15 dollars worth of fuel per week, and drives 80 miles a day (40 miles each way) Insurance is less than $200 per year. The cost of the vehicle? No idea anymore. Paid cash anyway. Why did you include the capital cost for a car but not a bus? Maintenance costs? It's a bit older, how about $1.00 per commuting day. Two additional stops are made each week, but are directly on the route home. It is not used for any other trips. This vehicle commutes twice the distance for less than $5 a day. Can we afford a newer vehicle to commute in? Yes, we already own them. But why would we use them for commuting? The Peugot is so efficient! It also carries two commuters, average cost per rider, $2.50. I think Kevin better try again.

-- Marsha (acorn_nut@hotmail.com), January 12, 2000.

Moving away from anecdotes and back into the real world, according to Litman (Transportation Cost Analysis:Techniques, Estimates and Implications) the average internal cost (paid for by the driver, sooner or later) for vehicle operation in urban areas during peak hours is about $.71/mile, with another $.61/mile for external costs (paid for by everybody else), or about $1.32/mi. For Kevin's commute, that works out to about (20 x .71=) $14.20 internal, and (20 x .61=) $13.20 external. No wonder the commuter buses are full. Now if we could just figure out a way to cut Kevin's $0.61/mile subsidy.

-- Keith Maw (mapworks@connectexpress.com), January 13, 2000.

Moving away from anecdotes, or in this case, something that you can not prove, mine is based on real facts, not Techniques, Estimates and Implications. Even my "newer" T-bird gets 30 miles to a gallon hiway, costs $300 per year to insure, and using your maintenance figures, still far less to operate than your figure. Now, since you want to include the capital cost for it's purchase, you will now need to sit down and figure out just how much that bus trip REALLY costs, for the taxpayer, who subsidizes everything above fare recovery. And since I would be using local transit, there is no fare at all. Kevin, you still convince no one and probably should have done a little better math.

-- Marsha (acorn_nut@hotmail.com), January 13, 2000.

Kevin posted "No wonder the transit crowd wants us to subsidize their ride to work so they can pay less than $10/day?" That basically says it all Kevin. Except, in many cases it's far less than $10.

No wonder the anti-transit crowd wants the traffic improvement initiative.

-- Marsha (acorn_nut@hotmail.com), January 13, 2000.

Keith--"Moving away from anecdotes and back into the real world, according to Litman (Transportation Cost Analysis:Techniques, Estimates and Implications) the average internal cost (paid for by the driver, sooner or later) for vehicle operation in urban areas during peak hours is about $.71/mile, with another $.61/mile for external costs (paid for by everybody else), or about $1.32/mi. For Kevin's commute, that works out to about (20 x .71=) $14.20 internal, and (20 x .61=) $13.20 external. No wonder the commuter buses are full. Now if we could just figure out a way to cut Kevin's $0.61/mile subsidy."

Ummm, based on my reading of the study's summary (http://www.vtpi.org/tcasum.htm), your numbers are way off. According to my reading, external costs are more like $0.32/mi and internal costs are more like $0.69/mi. As a result, the internal cost remains about the same, but you've effectively *doubled* the external costs. FWIW, I eyeballed the graph on the page for my numbers. Heuristically, I think my reading is far closer to correct as my percentages (68 internal and 32 external) correspond with a later chart.

In reality, I'm not certain *most* of what he calls externalities should be classified as such. Given the ubiquity of the automobile in the US, the fact is most of these costs are borne by commuters as a group. As you might expect, he tries to explain away this criticism towards the end of the paper. Maybe I just didn't understand his response, but it didn't seem very convincing. As an example, his analogy about stealing was woefully inadequate and reminded me of the saying "when you resort to emotion you've lost the argument."

-- Brad (knotwell@my-deja.com), January 13, 2000.

Hey, guess what. The feds put the newest transportation statistics annual report up on the web (http://www.bts.gov/programs/transtu/tsar/tsar99/7chap05.pdf)

Heres their current quote concerning costs.

People could afford to buy more vehicles and travel services in 1995 than in 1977, especially since the cost of the most widely used kinds of transportationcars and planesfell in real terms. The inflation-adjusted cost of owning and operating an automobile declined from 47" per mile in 1975 to 39" per mile in 1995. in 1995, and the proportion of the population 16 years and older licensed to drive rose from 81 percent to 89 percent.

-- (craigcar@crosswinds.net), January 13, 2000.