Y'know, even if my company stopped subsidizing my transit pass, it would still be worth it to take the light rail in. Especially since it gives me a 30-40 minutes of reading time to and from the office.
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Y'know, even if my company stopped subsidizing my transit pass, it would still be worth it to take the light rail in. Especially since it gives me a 30-40 minutes of reading time to and from the office.
Hey Dave, thanks for posting this! I would appreciate if you gave correct attribution back to us – you can find it here. http://www.streamlinerefinance.net/cost-of-commuting.html Glad you enjoyed it!
The problems with the math on this is that you actually need a good Public Mass Transit system. Not sure that a two hour bus commute is better than a 20 minute drive.
Yes, BD, you’re right.
Trying to encourage folks to use public transit in the Bay Area (BART, CalTrain, buses, light rail, and occasionally bicycles as well as carpooling) while simultaneously cutting back service seems to be a speciality.
Say you’re in Santa Cruz, and you work in Cupertino. You can take the 17 Fwy Flyer to the CalTrain station, and get off in Sunnyvale, but how you then make it West to where you work by bus is not something I know, unless you work at an address ON DeAnza Blvd. That’s three methods already, taking over two hours. Each way. If you don’t have regular hours, as many commuters in SillyValley don’t, you cannot take public transport at all, including a company-furnished vanpool.
From where I live, I’d walk about 2 miles to the nearest lightrail station (or drive it in 5 minutes) or walk the better part of half a mile to the bus line, take it 3/4 mile up to the nearest lightrail station, get off at Diridon station, go underground (I think) to the CalTrain side, go to Sunnyvale, get a bus to Cupertino, and how long will I walk then? Might shave 30 minutes of that commute! I could also walk the better part of half a mile to the bus line, take it up to San Carlos/Stevens Creek, and ride a Stevens Creek non-express bus out to Cupertino. Probably an hour on that bus alone.
Yeah. Now, imagine you’re right at a transit district or county boundary, and think of the even greater fun you’ll have!
Did that from Claremont to mid-Wilshire for about three years, without a car, when my carpool driver wasn’t available. If I worked late, the Park&Ride I needed wasn’t available, and I’d have to take a slower longline bus, which would dump me into a *lovely* part of town in Pomona, to wait in the dark for a bus that might get there in 30 minutes or longer, and then take it up Indian Hill to Claremont. It was at least two hours back home that way–and that was the only option on weekends if I had to work overtime. Unless work was going to be 4 hours or more, I couldn’t justify those four hours of transit.
It’s certainly not a simple decision to make. The point of the infographic would be, though, to try and coordinate where you live with where you work (or where transit can be grabbed to where you work) — or at least to consider the economics of doing otherwise.
That’s non-trivial, in our current society, and in our urban areas poorly designed for mass transit. If I still worked in Lakewood/Golden, it would be a choice between a 30 minute car ride or a 2.t hour bus downtown and then out to Red Rocks CC and then on a feeder bus to the industrial park we were in. I went through a similar issue way back in the day trying to take a bus from Phillips Ranch to Pasadena.
So the time equation is a definite factor. Where I think this Infographic comes in handy is in recognizing that the real dollar costs of that convenience factor is.