Ryan Prins' Blog

After some discussion in my previous post, I dug a little deeper into what it really costs me to drive my car one mile. To do this, I took all of the costs that I put into my car, outside of parking costs, and summed them all up. The costs that I included were:

• Gas
• Insurance
• Licensing
• Maintenance (e.g., Oil Change, Car Washes)
• Lease Payments (including Down Payment)

What I found actually shocked me.

It costs me on average $1.23 to drive my car 1 mile. If you remove the 1st month of car payments (which includes a hefty down payment), it averages around $1.00 to drive 1 mile.

I want that to be on its own line since it is kinda shocking. That is more than double what AAA says the national average is.

So, where I had said it only costs me $3.50 to go to and from work was completely inaccurate. It actually costs me $29.52 to drive to and from work each day. It’s pretty incredible that it costs that much. But, even if I took the bus to work each day, my costs wouldn’t fall to zero. I have fixed costs to keep my car running. I still need to pay my lease, insurance, and gas costs. In addition, I may save out on an oil change or two, but since my lease on my car has less than two years left, I would bet that I’d only save out on one oil change.

The next thinking is what would I actually save if I didn’t drive to work at all. For me this is not completely real world, as of yet, but I want to see what it would be like if I didn’t drive to work at all. I would save 552 miles on my car, and roughly $96 on gas.

If I drove half of the month and bussed the other half I’d drive only 324 miles (I’d still need to drive to and from a location where I can catch a bus) and gas would cost me $56.54. That’d save me $39.79 a month.

If you increase the public transit ridership even more, lets say, to three days a week. I’d only drive 240 miles and gas would only cost $41.88, saving me $54.44 a month.

Needless to say, I can play with the numbers all day, but the point is that I learned a lot by doing this exercise. When I got out of school I was pretty excited to get a car to drive that I didn’t pay particularly close attention to what it actually costs to drive it every mile. Granted, if I drove my car more, I’d get better cost per mile averages. However, for me, that isn’t going to change in the short term and I’m afraid that I’m stuck with the average that I have.

If you own/lease a car and you are curious on what it costs you to drive it a mile, I really encourage you to take the time and figure it out. What you find will no doubt shock you, as it did me.

What does this leave me now? Well, I have been looking at alternative methods of getting to and from work. These options include:

• Driving to a location near the bus stop and taking the bus to work.
• Biking from home to the bus, and then getting off the bus and biking the rest
• Status Quo: Continue what I am doing

There are definitely logistics that need to be worked out on all ends for the top two options and I’m looking into how all of this could work out. I don’t know if this is going to change my habits, but it makes me more aware of what it really costs to drive my car and it has forced me into looking at alternative ways to drive to and from work.

Today I got an e-mail from Microsoft to fill out a survey for their Commute program. I don’t participate in it, I’m that guy who drives alone in the car each way. But, when I got done, it made me think about what would the benefit be if I took the bus? So, I started doing numbers:

• Number of trips per month (each way): 46
• Total millage (each way): ~11mi
• Average MPG: 22
• Last price paid for gas: $3.49/gal

After taking a look at that, I roughly estimate that I burn one gallon of gas each day commuting to and from work. That translates to at the most (at least currently) about $3.49 total round trip gas cost.

Next, I went to visit Sound Transit’s website. The ST545 route comes very often and drops off riders right at the 40th street off ramp at Microsoft. The cost of that route is $2.50 each way since it is a two zone trip. So, that would cost $5/day instead of ~$3.49/day. On top of that, I am not close enough to walk to the Montlake bus stop to catch this bus. I have two real options to get to that stop:

1. Drive near the stop and look for free parking then walk to the stop.
2. Catch the 25, which only comes every 30min, and get off at Montlake

Between the two above options, the 1st is the more plausible option. There is ample street parking near the bus stop and it would be a short walk to catch the bus. In addition, when I got home, I could get right into my car and drive home instead of waiting for another bus. The downside is that I don’t really gain much time here. I have to wait for the bus for about the same amount of time I’d be waiting in my car to enter 520. Then, once on 520 I have the advantage since my next stop is my parking space at my office instead of being dropped off by the bus at the 40th Street on ramp.

On the way home, things get more complicated. I don’t leave at the same time every day. I sometimes leave at 5pm, sometimes later. If I am leaving at 5pm, there is probably a benefit of taking the bus since it can utilize the HOV lane the entire way up until the bridge. What that time savings is, I don’t know. I would imagine that it is probably about 10 min or so, but I’m just guessing. Again, when I get off the bus, I can either catch another, or walk to my parked car and drive home.

After thinking about all of this, it just doesn’t make sense for me to take the bus. I wish it did, but I can’t seem to find a good reason to make it work for me. Granted, taking one car off the road should be reason enough, but it just doesn’t make sense for me and what I do. I’d be paying more to ride the bus and traveling between meetings would be more difficult since I have more dependencies on external transportation services. This means I spend more time traveling and less time working.

Anyways, I thought it was interesting to see the differences between riding the bus and driving alone. Does that mean then that I’d be willing to pay up to $5 for a gallon of gas? Sadly, probably.