Transportation. That's what I am thinking of. Would it be best for me to bus to work or drive to work? At my old job it was an easy decision with a free bus pass. Bus all the way. With my current job, it gets trickier. For one, there are two possible destinations: West & V.
Method
I am going to compare the two based on cost and total travel time. For the car, it will be simplified to gas cost. Even if I took the bus, I would still have to keep the car so the maintenance numbers would be roughly the same in both situations.
Assumptions
- Gas costs 3.899/Gallon
- Car mileage is 25 mpg
- West distance is 9.5 miles
- V distance is 18.1 miles
- For the 31 day period, there are 23 working days
The Numbers
West | Car Cost | Bus Cost | Cost Diff | Car Time | Bus Time | Time Diff |
| Day | $ 2.96 | N/A | N/A | 60 min | 81 min | 21 min |
Month | $ 68.15 | $ 47.00 | $ 21.15 | 23 h | 31.05 h | 8.05 h |
| Year | $ 817.85 | $ 564.00 | $ 253.85 | 276 h | 372.6 h | 96.6 h |
While the bus would take longer, I would save $21.15 a month at the cost of about 8 hours a month. Each hour I give up I save about $2.63.
The V location is a little different story. The 8.6 mile difference has a large impact on the car cost.
V | Car Cost | Bus Cost | Cost Diff | Car Time | Bus Time | Time Diff |
| Day | $ 5.65 | N/A | N/A | 80 min | 128 min | 41 min |
Month | $ 129.85 | $ 47.00 | $ 82.85 | 30 2/3 h | 49 h | 18.4 h |
| Year | $ 1558.23 | $ 564.00 | $ 994.23 | 368 h | 558.8 h | 220.8 h |
In this scenario, we see a lot more savings. I would save $82.85 a month at the cost of about 18.4 hours a month. Each hour I give up I save about $4.50.
Conclusion
The bus does cost less, but at the cost of more time. I could probably do more things to save the $2.62 per hour exchanged. The V location makes it a bit sweeter of a deal on the bus vs. car. Overall, I might start checking out the bus if gas costs get higher. This is only estimated at the current gas rates. If they go higher, the bus gets sweeter and sweeter. If the evilness of $5 per gallon comes near the end of the summer like some predict, the picture changes drastically. Under $5 a gallon gas, I save $40.40 a month (almost covering the cost of the 31 day bus pass) to West at $5.02 per extra travel hour and a whopping $119.52 a month going to V at $6.50 per extra travel hour. If I were to work at V (which I will be at some point in the distance future), it would cost me $7.24 a day just to get to work. Not a pretty picture.
So the bus will probably be coming into the picture soon. It would be good to get into the habit now when I am at West as the savings at V will be nice.
It would be even better if I could bike to West. Though that would just be a good weather thing and I would need to get my lazy ass in shape. I'll save that for another musing later.
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