Vancouver BC MMM thinking commute calculator

[Stasher]

Vancouver BC has always been a progressive city in terms of things like recycling, cycling and really anything green, this is a very west coast attitude. I just stumbled across this calculator and very impressive website discussing the real life costs of commuting within Vancouver. It was developed for a transportation plebiscite that was held on transit in the city but it does bring up a very interesting discussion on public funding. A major source of funding comes from fuel tax on motorists but with an increase electric and fuel efficient vehicles as well as an increase in transit use, the available funds decrease. So then where does public transportation look to generate it's revenue keeping in mind that user fees are often kept low (subsidized) to promote usage. I could type more but it's a great website that you can navigate through yourself to find all the good info.

Check out the website, a terrific morning read.
http://movingforward.discoursemedia.org/costofcommute/

[Zikoris]

It's interesting that they include health care savings from exercise with walking and biking, but don't add health care costs from the lack of exercise from driving. I can see not including it in public transit, because very few people have a bus that goes from their front door directly to their workplace, and hence do a fair bit of walking anyway.

[Chaplin]

It's interesting that they include health care savings from exercise with walking and biking, but don't add health care costs from the lack of exercise from driving. I can see not including it in public transit, because very few people have a bus that goes from their front door directly to their workplace, and hence do a fair bit of walking anyway.

I guess they had to pick a baseline for costs and savings to be compared against, and driving is the unfortunately logical baseline.