This week, my car - once more - went into the shop. It's an 1988 BMW, and it's got over 300,000 miles on it (and in fact, I also own a 1987 BMW my partner drives), so the people at the shop & I are on a first name basis. Indeed, J & I once brought the owner, flowers, as she has given us SUCH good deals. By chance, it was her birthday the day we did that, and even though we explained we didn't know that, she believes to this day we brought her birthday flowers (her English is not stellar). Point is, this is a good relationship to have when you own an old Beamer.
Anyway....I was forced to commute, for a couple of days, on the bus & BART. And after shelling out what seemed like a lot cash daily, I did the math and realized it's $11.40 per round trip. That's right. And it takes about an hour if you're lucky, and 90 minutes plus if you're not. And it's kind of annoying: bus, BART, then city shuttle.
My drive, on the other hand, is cheaper, easier AND faster. No kidding. Door to door is about 30 minutes without traffic, and today, on a Friday afternoon and crossing the Bay Bridge, it was still less than 45 minutes. Even with the $4 toll and gas, driving is cheaper than public transit.
What is WRONG with world? Public transit should be FREE. It should also be quicker and/or more convenient than driving. HOW can we motivate people to give up their cars if we don't make it BETTER for them to NOT drive?
Now, I personally still would need a car even if it were free & easy. My job requires me to be in different places on a weekly or daily basis. But even I have a regular home office, and I'd love to leave the car home on those days....and maybe I will, but really! Give me SOME motivation.
And this from a woman who loves public transit. I love, for instance, the New York subway. I'm one of those people who goes to transit museums. I have NY subway socks. When I am in foreign cities, I make it a point to take the train, the tram, the trolley, the whatever they have.
And yet here I am, in America, in an urban environment whose transit SHOULD be rivaling that of New York or any great European city, and I have not one, not two, but THREE old BMWs.
Yes, I got another one this afternoon. The old one, that came out of the shop, finally reached the point of no repair - that means, it ain't worth it to fix it cause it's on its last legs anyway. But hey, it still runs, and I'm hoping to sell it to someone who just needs to get around town. Because sad to say, it'll be cheaper for them than the bus.
When I was living in San Francisco and working in Palo Alto, I'd take BART downtown, then the bus over to Caltrain, and Caltrain all the way out to Palo Alto. It was 2 hours of travel, while a car would have taken less than 40 minutes. On the other hand, I got so much writing done...
ReplyDeleteBut when you do your calculations above, you only count gas and tolls. What about insurance? If you're going to do a real comparison, I want to see all the numbers! My memory of car insurance is that it was expensive!