The True Cost of Driving
While doing some totally unrelated to rail, I ran across this site “The True Cost of Smoking” - quite interesting, but since I don’t smoke, not that relevant. But then I thought, obviously there are similar calculations out there for “The True Cost of Driving” - well sure, here you go.
Let’s give it a try - suppose my job was in downtown San Francisco. That wouldn’t be too unusual. To drive from Mountain View to San Francisco is roughly 38 miles (according to Google Maps), i.e. 76 miles round trip. Suppose I work 5 days a week and use my car for commuting exclusively. In that case, my annual cost of driving (or more precisely, the annual cost of my driving) according to that site would be ~$23,500, i.e. roughly $90 per day!
Well, that sounds like a lot. And I’d like to be able to say that using public transportation would be “cheaper”. Sure, I can tell you that a Caltrain ticket would cost me $6.33 per day (based on a monthly pass cost of $139.25 and an average of 22 days of usage every month). But that is clearly not the “full cost” - there are other costs to be factored in, i.e. contributions to Caltrain’s budget from tax monies, cost of pollution, etc.. Is there a site that shows “The True Cost of Public Transportation”? Adron, that sounds like something you might be interested in? I’m pretty sure that public transportation would still be cheaper than driving overall. Such a calculation would probably also show that there are economies of scale associated with public transportation, i.e. if ridership goes up and trains are fuller, farebox recovery will be better and less taxpayer money will be needed. In other words, the (absolute, not just relative) share of total costs covered by fare purchases will go up. Sure, as more and more people use the train, there will need to be some investments, i.e. add more cars to trains, acquire more rolling stock, even run more trains, but even there, the economies of scale should still prevail.
PS. The more comparable number to that Caltrain ticket cost would be the “Total Direct Drivers Expense per mile”, which in my example above was $0.86 - times 76 miles that results in a total per day of $65.35. Still a lot more expensive than using Caltrain.
PPS. Caltrain also has a calculator.
Posted in: Caltrain, Commute, Fare Policy, Finance, Money | January 16, 2007 4:25 pm
3 Comments »
Marcel Marchon, on January 16, 2007 @ 9:55 pm
Interestingly, somebody else also had the idea to post about this topic today. See here
Adron, on January 17, 2007 @ 5:26 pm
I’m gonna have to work on that one.
The last time I did the calculations it worked out to about a buck something ($1.12-1.25 for car travel in an average American 20mpg car with a life span of 10 yrs.
An efficient operating rail system could provide the same service under 4/5 peak service (i.e. not full cars) for about $0.80-1.05. The higher number being light rail. If the system was really efficient, re: circa Milwaukee Roads Hiawatha trains or Chicago’s Metra the cost could be cut to about $0.75-0.90 the higher being slightly “less packed” trains.
Either which way, the prices seem close until one looks at the yearly totals and noticed the thousands in differnce.
George Bailey, on December 10, 2007 @ 3:32 pm
I’m going to have to dig back on these numbers, 0.86 to 1.25 per mile is making me choke! I knew it was high, but that’s more than I thought.
So if this is true (and assuming trucking costs are related), I wonder how come there’s so much freight trucking as opposed to better use of freight trains. Always seemed odd to me - maybe the management logistics is simpler for single trucks than hundreds of cars?
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