A Different Train Of Thought
For about the last six years, I have been working from home, which I love. I don't have to deal with traffic, rising gas prices don't impact me that much and it gives me the ability to lease (which I prefer to traditional financing). Then fate decided to throw me a curve ball as word came down that I would have to go into the offices of a major dealer group that Edmunds has a relationship with. They were staring a new project and they wanted to have an Edmunds representative there in a consulting role. Suddenly I had a 40 mile round trip commute to deal with. The problem was that my two cars are leased for 12K miles/year, and both are too close to their mileage limits to accommodate the extra 10K miles/year I would be driving.
I had two choices. The first was to drive and pay the over-mileage fees and the cost of gas (now suddenly a concern) to the tune of about $5000 per year. Or I could take mass transit for $60/mo. I chose the latter.
So for the last couple of weeks, I have been taking south Florida's Tri-Rail mass transit system. I drive three miles from my house to the train station. From there I take a 20 minute train ride to downtown. From the downtown station, I take a shuttle bus that drops me off about 100 yards from my office. Typical travel time each way is 60-70 minutes, which is 20-30 minutes longer than if I were to drive, if there are no traffic jams.
I am essentially giving up my time in an effort to save a lot of money. However, one really nice benefit is the reduction in stress. Traffic totally stresses me out, and since there is no traffic to deal with on a train, I arrive at work relaxed and my ride home is generally just as tranquil. The trains are clean and not over-crowded (yet).
I had never really considered taking mass-transit in the past, but now that I have, I have been suggesting it to everyone I work with. People I suggest it to have never really thought about it either. Most people don't like the idea of giving up their cars. But there is no question it is a savings of money.
In addition to saving money, I am not burning 350-450 additional gallons of gas/year (depending which of our cars I would drive) and in turn I am not emitting 4-5 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
How many miles is your commute and have you ever considered mass-transit or car pooling?
~2-3 miles to work. Barely enough time for the car to warm up in summer, not enough to warm up in the winter. I used to take a bus, hated it. Used to be in a subway city, subway was fine, bus was/is terrible. Even with traffic, if I had to take a bus I'd pass. A train/subway, their ok.
However, I disagree with the basic idea that huge numbers of tax dollars are spent on mass transit, and fares dont come close to covering the costs of the ride.
An extra 80 minutes each day for mass transit? That's gotta get better.
The extra time certainly is a factor, but part of the problem is that I have to catch a connecting bus to my ultimate location.
Here is how my schedule breaks out:
In the morning I leave my house at 7 AM. The train is scheduled to arrive at 7:19, and it usually takes between 5-10 minutes to drive the three miles to the station. I like to leave myself a cushion just in case.
The train arrives at the downtown station about 20 minutes later (it makes two other stops along the way), where I board a waiting bus. The bus takes another 15-20 minutes to get me to my office, as it makes various stops along the way.
In the evening, I leave the office at 5:15 to catch a bus scheduled for 5:27. I get their early in case the bus is early. It returns me to the station to catch a 6 PM train. In the afternoons the trains are usually running 10 minutes late. So I finally get home around 6:30-6:40.
I could certainly save some time each day if everything could run on time, but there are never any guarantees of that.
Also, keep in mind that the driving time is under ideal conditions. But how often is a commute ideal?
When I was growing up, I had the option of attending high school at the West Palm Beach School of the Arts high school. Of course, it would have required waking up at 5am every day to ride Tri-Rail from my home in Boca Raton. At the time I knew absolutely no one who rode Tri-Rail - now, 10 years later, Tri-Rail breaks ridership records every month. It's amazing what a little $4/gal gas will do.
I wouldn't brave an I-95 commute for anything short of six figures, but that's just me. Maybe the bus network has improved since I've lived down there but I doubt it. That's always been the issue with South Florida transit - Tri-Rail is good, but there's not a good supporting network at either end.
2-3 mile commute? Bicycle. You're looking at a maximum of fifteen minutes each way, no gasoline burned, and after a few weeks you're going to be in much better physical shape.
Yes, mass transit takes longer, but since you're not driving you can actually spend that time doing something either productive, pleasurable, or both.
It amazes me how people fight to keep a reason to drive a car to their destination - especially when there are better alternatives available.
$60 dollars a month is amazingly cheap for the mass transit. Here in metro DC, I could drive to the metro stop, pay $4.50 to park, $4 one way to the nearest stop to my work, transfer to the bus for $.45. Then reverse the whole thing for a total of $13.40 a day. My round trip driving is about 42 miles, so regardless of the extra time I would spend taking mass transit, gas would need to be about 7 bucks a gallon for it to make sense financially.
Cowbell, the regular monthly price is $80 (still cheap I think), but I get a corporate discount which brings the price down.
I used to live in Chicago and they know how to do public transportation. I took the L and later the Illinois Central, a very quiet electric train. I loved the half-hour train ride for reading the paper or relaxing. Now I drive 30 miles to work on the 405 in Los Angeles and I think it is the main cause of my high blood pressure. I love cars and I love driving. But I don't like sitting still in a car staring at a long line of other stressed out bored people in cars.
syke - i'd bike, but i sweat. and work in slacks/shirt/tie. The 2 dont mix.
If i was working in a shop where I got dirty... i'd bike.
I do bike after work.. building up to 20+ mile rides... one day might do a century ride. Its just not going to happen by going work.
I commute 45 minutes to San Francisco's financial district - not somewhere you want to actually drive to. The metro (or whatever you call it - ours is BART) is slightly more expensive than gas if you have an efficient car, but people take it out of convenience. Downtown areas are what mass transit was meant for, after all. Ever since I started this commute, I've been doing a lot more reading, so it's been good for me. My Miata is more enjoyable as a weekend car, too.
It's pathetic that our rapid transit system loses money despite those fares. But at the same time... why do we insist that public transportation systems pay for themselves, when roads clearly don't either?
San Francisco is a contrast to L.A., where public transit generally sucks and can often take far longer than driving, and rarely is close to your departure/arrival point. And building subways underground for gazillions of dollars in earthquake country never really make much sense to me. Since it's "LaLa Land" anyway, perhaps we should travel by eletric monorail!
I work from home now near Chicago, but I once had a 50-mile commute to downtown Dallas from Fort Worth. Traffic was awful, and the stress was killing me, so I tried the train. Problem was I had to drive 10-15 minutes to the train station, sit on the train for over an hour, transfer to light rail, and then jump on a bus. In the end, I still had to walk two blocks to the office, and the whole ordeal took well over two hours. I was willing to put up with a lot to avoid the Mixmaster, but four and a half hours was pushing it.
Of course, if the job had been more than a summer clerkship, we would have moved. Still, quite a few people preferred living in FTW despite having jobs in Dallas. It's doable if you work right in downtown, but getting out of that central area gets difficult really fast.
On another note, I've only been in one town where I actually liked taking the public bus system: Blacksburg, VA, home of my alma mater.
Each way:
20mins/12 miles by car (15mins without traffic)
60mins/15 miles by bike (maybe 45mins if I get good)
70-90mins by transit
carlisimo,
If I were commuting to SF's financial district, I'd take transit as well. Besides the commute, I can think of other reasons to keep the car at home (parking, crime, ability to get work done on the commuter train, etc).