How much does your car commute actually cost?

[FiftyIsTheNewTwenty]

While we're on the car theme, here's a great article from Strong Towns, with a great infographic:

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/3/23/how-much-does-your-car-commute-actually-cost

[alsoknownasDean]

It's an interesting infographic :)

However, it probably only works at a certain level. Someone with a 50 mile commute wouldn't be paying $40K a year for it. Variable costs will increase but fixed costs won't (rego remains the same whether one does 50km a year or 50,000km a year).

I guess part of that would be the thought of "if you didn't have to drive to commute to work, would you own a car at all?". For those that would continue to do so (realistically most of us), the cost would be lower than someone who would happily go car-free if they didn't have to commute.

Also, they're assuming that car parking is free. It certainly isn't anywhere near my workplace. In my case, car parking alone is 50% more than a daily public transport fare.

[Viking Thor]

The numbers are flashy but illogical. Almost all of the cost is for "time", but since you don't instantly teleport to the office with non-car commutes this makes no sense. Various other severe flaws, including estimating a 6 minute mile (you could run it in that time).

I don't drive to work, but the numbers cited here seem like an absurd overestimate of the costs involved with a car commute.
 

[mizzourah2006]

The numbers are flashy but illogical. Almost all of the cost is for "time", but since you don't instantly teleport to the office with non-car commutes this makes no sense. Various other severe flaws, including estimating a 6 minute mile (you could run it in that time).

I don't drive to work, but the numbers cited here seem like an absurd overestimate of the costs involved with a car commute.

Yeah the time was the first thing I noticed. I live 10 miles from work and my commute is 20-25 minutes each way. According to the info graphic it shoud be 2-3x that.

[alsoknownasDean]

Depends on where you live and work.

I live about 5 miles from work and driving there would take me 30-35 minutes. Biking takes about the same :)

I'd believe 6 minutes per mile in a large city.

[Mezzie]

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!

[Lmoot]

 Very flashy infograph. But they need to deduct the cost of not having a car. Costs like moving closer to the job which can cost more in housing, or getting a job closer to you, which can pay less. Did it deduct public transportation, if so I missed it.  There are many things you can go without that make it seem like a bad deal over 30 years span. We could only grow lettuce and tomatoes and carrots and subsist on those, and rent a bedroom in someone's house, never getting a place of our own.

 My car saves me time. Which I have very little of. I work from home so I don't use it much for work, but my part-time job I go to about three times a week is in a different city, and I travel to do things since I'm a bit further out. I will say that the graph is good at showing the pros and cons of having a higher paid job further away. Eliminating a comment for my daily routine is the best thing I've ever done for my health and sanity, and it helped the pockets to.