Metro Math, It Doesn’t Add Up
Last Monday I was sucking fumes on the way home so I pulled in to the local Shell station and for the first time in my life paid four dollars a gallon for gas. At first it pissed me off, but then I thought about it and decided that I’m a rich white guy, so it’s not a big deal to pay high prices at the pump. Hell I can afford it with all the money I make oppressing minorities and dumb Democrats.
But part of me has always been curious about how the common man lives, so I thought I’d give this mass transit thing a try. Guess what? It actually cost me more to take Metro to work for one day than it does to drive my car. Here’s the math.
Parking at the Centreville Park and Ride was free. The 12C bus to the Vienna Metro station was $1.00 and took 25 minutes. The Orange Line train from Vienna to Ballston was $3.10 and took 20 minutes. The bus from Ballston to the office was free since I had transfered from the train, but took another 10 minutes. That’s $4.10 to ride the system for 55 minutes. Round trip that comes to $8.20 and two hours each day.
Driving from my house (a mile or so west of the Centreville Park and Ride) to the office is about 23 miles. My non-hybrid compact 5-speed averages 30 mph, so at $4 per gallon it costs me $2.93 to drive to the office. The drive is about a half hour in the morning because I leave at the butt crack of dawn. Afternoons when I’m forced to share I-66 with mere mortals takes about an hour. Round trip is $5.96 and90 minutes per day.
By driving my own car to the office I save $2.24 in cash and 30 minutes in time. Plus I don’t have to be around people I don’ t care to know. I get to listen to my radio as loud as I want. Driving by myself gives me the chance to make phone calls to catch up with people from the American Heartland. If it’s hot and I want to strip down to my boxers for the commute home, I can do that too.
Don’t try to bring up the cost of owning a car because that’s a non-issue. Cost of ownership (car payment, insurance, etc.) are fixed costs that don’t change no matter how much or little I drive. Oil changes and other routine service calls are part of the service package that I bought with the car. Again, those won’t impact my caluclations.
So what’s the bottom line here? It’s that I can save both time and money by using my own car instead of riding with the dregs of society on mass transit. This I consider to be a good thing.
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I do not believe this
That’s your issue, not mine. Get over it.
Comment by fornetti | 30 August, 2008
I can understand if you love to drive, your American.
But you didn’t calculate the brake down of how much your auto insurance cost you per day, the cost of your auto payment per day, and the cost of maintenance on on your car per day. Plus just guessing from your love of sharing the HI-way with others, you should also calculate you health insurance cost per day, because it obviously pisses you off, so high blood pressure, possibility of accidents, or traffic tickets, road rages. . .
on the bus or the train you can read a book, listen to your favor mind numbing conservative/liberal radio show, decompress from the office, and just kick back for that extra five min.s on the bus/train, and be thankful that your not stuck in traffic.
rework those figures up to match an annual pass or monthly pass on the metro, from your house to work. Do the real math. better yet get rid of your car.
If were to ever live back in the DC metro area again, I’d save the wear on my car for driving to the beach or, anywhere else.
Plus dude you live what did you say a mile from the flippin’
Centersville station, why aren’t you riding your bike or walking?
Bus= live better, live longer
car= live faster, die faster, spend more of your dough on get to and from the place you make dough
your math make sense only to big oil companies.
Here’s the thing about your calculations. I did consider those factors, but driving vs not driving doesn’t change any of the metrics you mention. My insurance costs for the car are fixed at the same rate no matter how much I drive. My health insurance rates remain the same no matter how many miles I drive. So those two things are none factors in the equation. Metro monthly passes don’t cut the price per trip enough to really talk about.
I do miss reading during my commute, I’ll give you that. But now I spend my commute on the phone with friends adn family so that when I get home I don’t have to detract from the time I give my wife and kids. Plus the combination of train and bus that I need to get from the office to the house adds only five minutes on a good day. On a normal day it adds almost twenty minutes.
Sorry to burst your bubble chump, but I did do the real math. And until gas hits six dollars a gallon it’s cheaper and faster for me to drive to the office.
Comment by James | 10 September, 2008
I’ll give you that part about health and auto insurance, sorry I didn’t read your blog entirely before pressing send. You live in an area with a top rate transit system. The system only gets better with ridership. I know you disagree but I think that insurance is part of the transportation equation, metro must have to have insurance calculated into their cost, in case some knuckle head falls or is pushed in front of one of their trains or buses. In any case you have to park somewhere is parking covered by your work? I know here in Portland Oregon, you won’t find parking for less than 70 a month downtown. That alone covers my monthly bus pass. So what about parking since I see now that you didn’t cover that part of the equation.
Plus just doing a quick google it looks like VA is going to ban cellphone use while driving, one traffic infraction would certainly screw up your math. Plus if you come home a little late, maybe you’ll have dinner waiting for you.
have a good day.
Comment by James | 11 September, 2008