Maybe I'm having trouble understanding because I'm having trouble sleeping tonight, but... how are they getting at my $25 lost per mile in wages? It's not like if I didn't commute, my work would decide I could get paid for that time instead so I could invest the money and save up the nearly $900,000 they've cited over a 30-year career. Besides, whether in my car listening to audiobooks or podcasts or on the bus reading physical books or grading (or socializing if I'm with friends), I make the most of my commute time. I'm not a huge fan of driving, but I really don't see the nearly $8,000 annual loss they're talking about for my ten miles each way.
The way they've calculated my economic loss, it wouldn't really matter if I was walking, biking, taking public transit, or driving... except that since driving is the fastest of all these options, it ends up being the cheapest. The bus, for example, takes 45 minutes and gets me to work about 30 minutes early, whereas driving takes twenty minutes and gets me there when I want to arrive.
And where in the world did they come up with the six minutes/mile idea? Even the bus is faster than that!