A Coarse Comparison: Public Transit vs. A Personal Car

November 4, 2010 | Mike Morrice

Over the past year, I began voluntarily leaving my car at home in favour of public transit for trips outside of Waterloo Region. My intention was to begin to wean myself off of my car, in favour of a more sustainable mode of transportation.

This summer I was on the bus back to Waterloo from a conference in Toronto, and I realized this change has become about more than just sustainability for me. I’ve decided to share a micro-level analysis here on the costs and benefits of taking public transit to Toronto for this particular conference. My analysis is broken down into the four main areas effecting my decision: economic, sustainability, personal time/convenience, and social.

Some of the results were expected, but some were a little surprising.

Economic

Best Option: About even, though this is being kind to the car and doesn’t take into account all costs of car ownership, namely maintenance.

Cost of public transit:
When buying as part of a value pack, the Greyhound bus costs $15 each way; $30 roundtrip to Toronto and back to Kitchener. Add in two GRT bus passes and my total cost was $35.

Benefit of public transit:
If I had taken my 2000 Cavalier, using stats from this site & assuming a price of $1.06 per litre, the gas alone would have been $19.93.

On top of this, the two fixed costs of car ownership should be divided into the total kms per year: insurance (approx $1200/year), and oil changes ($50/quarter = $200). Assuming 20,000km driven/year and 216km for this trip, these two costs add $15.12 to my trip, for a total of $35.05.

This still doesn’t take into account depreciation of the asset (in my case this is negligible), any lease or other cost of ownership (none for me, I purchased outright), and maintenance (for me this has been approximately $1,500/year).

Other Factors:
With the $35 I did spend, I supported our public transit network rather than the oil & gas industry, which I see as a positive overall.

Sustainability

Best Option: Bus, but not as obvious as I expected.

Cost of public transit:
A bus has an emission factor of 70g of GHG per passenger kilometre, so with a roundtrip distance of 216 km (door to door), the total emissions I was responsible for was 15.1kg.

Note for all calculations I used emission factors supplied in the Accounting Methodology section of our Guide to the Regional Carbon Initiative – this is the same math used when we calculate GHGs of Regional Carbon Initiative members.

Benefit of public transit:
My car has an emission factor of 213g of GHG per passenger kilometre, so the total emissions would have been 46kg – approximately three times as much as the bus.

Other Factors
By taking the bus, I continued to learn about bus schedules, stations, & online reservation systems, all of which help reduce my future personal dependence on my car.

Note that I could have reduced both my cost and GHG emissions by cycling to the Kitchener bus terminal, rather than bussing. But I have been advised time and again not to leave my bike at the Charles St station overnight. Truthfully, this is a real shame – I would support indoor lockers, or at the very least, video cameras, to help combat this issue.

Time/Convenience

Best Option: Car, by far.

Cost of public transit:
Door to door, my trip from Toronto to Waterloo was about 2.5hrs, whereas in my car this would typically be about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Benefit of public transit:
Because I didn’t have to drive, the time I was in the bus was used reviewing notes for an upcoming Board meeting, providing feedback to Helena on our event sponsorship strategy, and continuing with recent reading on Canadian history.

Social

Best Option: Public transit.

Cost of public transit:
None. I can’t think of any missed social benefit that I would have been exposed to had I driven rather than taken the bus. I might be missing something though – feel free to let me know in the comments.

Benefit of public transit:
I continue to be surprised by how many friends I run into on the bus, and the good people I meet. In this case, I ran into one person I knew on the Greyhound to Toronto, struck up a great conversation with my seatmate on the way back to Kitchener (about Louis Riel, predictable given my reading at the time!), and in the GRT bus back in Kitchener I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen for well over a year – he had just returned from a trip to Africa.

Summary

So there you have it. I think this puts together a more compelling argument for out of town public transit,  while also recognizing the inherent challenges.

And you know what? It’s a good thing I feel this way. My housemate recently got into a bit of a fender-bender with my car, and it wasn’t economically sensible to spend the money to repair it.

The result? I no longer own a car, and I now feel more able than ever to continue to get around without it. That, and Sustainable Waterloo Region recently joined the Grand River Car Share – for those meetings in Waterloo Region that we just need a car to get to.