Wanted: Crowded trains and gas-price escapees

#810 and #812 Providence/Boston are bad. I haven't taken them for a while, but many times they'll collect the fares from everybody before Mansfield, when the train becomes impossible to navigate. The #923,#819 #925 Boston/Providence are usually so crowded that you get a free ride, especially by the time they load up in Back Bay and Ruggles.

I try to board a train before they call it, so I can get a single seat on the double decker cars.

I'm not much help because I haven't taken the train consistently in a while, but judging from what I see, it hasn't changed much.

I'd like to escape the gas prices so much that I'm considering building my own commuter rail extension over to my office in Maynard, MA. I've done the math...and it would almost be cheaper.

My office moved from Maynard to Acton in the fall. I wish I could take a train from Framingham. *sigh*

Soaring gas prices are still not high enough to compete with the MBTA's excessive fares.

Random example: Commuter rail from Lincoln to Boston is Zone 4, which costs $5.75 per ride. The distance is about 15 miles. If your car gets 30mpg and you pay $3.40/gallon, the cost of gas for 15 miles is about $1.70.

Non-random example: Red line fare from Central Square to Davis Square is $1.70 with a CharlieCard. The driving distance is a little over 3 miles. Even if you only get 27mpg, at $3.40/gallon that's still about 40 cents worth of gas. That is why when I feel pinched for money, I drive to Davis instead of taking the T despite living only 3 blocks fromt he Central Square T stop. So, ironically, higher gas prices make me *less* likely to use public transit if I'm in a financial situation where that actually makes a difference, because I have to spend more to drive to the places the T can't (conveniently) get me to, so I'm more likely to want to save money getting to the places the T can conveniently get me to, and choose to drive to those places too.

Hmm, not that simple:

Hmm, let's flush those numbers out a bit more/better, shall we?

1st of all, if you commute for the entire month, you would get a Commuter Rail Pass, which in Zone4 is $186. Say you commute for 20 days (conservative, but lets say you drove in a few times) which equals 40 trips, so the math is: 186 / 40 = $4.65 per trip.

Now lets flush out the real vehicle numbers:

Average car today costs $20,000. Lets say that cost depreciates to $0 at 150,000 miles. So, the cost to operate that vehicle per mile is:

150,000 / $20,000 == 13.3 cents/per mile.

15 miles Lincoln > Boston == 13.3 * 15 == $2.00. + your cost of gas $1.70 == Total $3.70.


So $3.70 to drive vs. $4.65 to take the train.

Some other things that were not figured in on the car side, auto insurance, random vehicle repairs + replacement maintenance needed on car. Gasoline is actually more expensive right now than your calced amount, and I also think you would be hard pressed to get 30mpg in stop-n-go rush hour traffic in all but the smallest vehicles.

All of those factors would make your auto trip a little more expensive. So it really is almost even.

-- Stefan in Montreal..

Re: Hmm, not that simple:

Please add in the time and effort to find a parking spot and to shovel out the car in the winter!

Re: Hmm, not that simple:

Not to mention the cost of parking!

Re: Hmm, not that simple:

Tell me about it - parking at my workplace costs $250 a month!

One person here tries to park on the street to save money. She has to run out every couple of hours to move her car to a new spot, which can take quite a while - at least fifteen minutes each time, sometimes longer. I imagine that could become a problem, eventually!

You're talking about something very different

this is so predictable: Every time I explain how taking the T costs much more than gas to drive, people chime in with an attempt to explain how using the T exclusively compares with the total cost of having a car. I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous: I'm not talking about the decision of whether to own a car at all, I'm talking about the decision of whether to drive or take the T for an individual trip. In fact, I explicitly mentioned in my comment: "because I have to spend more to drive to the places the T can't (conveniently) get me to" - implying that I do drive to places I won't/can't take the T to no matter how much it costs. Like to my girlfriend's place in Vermont a couple of times a month, for example.

A recent rise in gas prices is not going to result in a huge difference in the number of people who own cars, because that's a much larger lifestyle issue. Sorry, but the decision of whether to have a car at all is not determined by any of this. The difference recent changes in gas prices make is primarily in the decision of when to use that car for particular trips. Also, monthly passes save you a little bit of money only on months when you take the train twice a day every weekday. Miss just a few days for vacation or sickness or a business trip, and the pass quickly loses its value. Or, as in my case, work a couple of days from home each week.

The price of the car, the price of insurance, etc. are all sunk costs and do not affect this calculation at all. You're trying to address the decision of whether to own a car at all, and that decision is made based on much bigger factors than whether to take the car or the T to work.

I cannot do without a car, for the life I have and want to have.

I can, and want to, mostly use the T rather than my car to get around the city. However, at those times when money is scarce, I use my car to save money. A lot of money.

It's as simple, and true, as that, and I think most of the potential increased new ridership this post is considering fall into the same category: People who already own cars and will keep them. Even more so, this post is considering people who have normally commutted by car, and theorizing that because of higher gas prices, many of them are now swayed to commute by T. That's only true of they don't think about it carefully enough, because if in fact they've got a car and have been commuting by car, switching to the T will cost them more.

Notice, BTW, that even with your way off-base comparison to the total cost of owning a car, the T still costs more. And that my Davis Square comparison used 27mpg, not 30, though I actually average 33mph in my very-common Saturn SL1, overall for all my driving, so I don't think 30 is especially optimistic.

Granted, in some places parking or traffic are so expensive as to make the T cost-competitive, but those account for a minority of commuters as far as I know. Far more people work along route 128 than in downtown, for example.

Re: You're talking about something very different

But what gas mileage do you get in the city? Does your 33 mpg calculation include the highway driving to Vermont? I get terrible gas mileage around Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, since there are so many unsynchronized red lights.

A far bigger obstacle to taking the T is the fact that most T trips are far slower than driving. Especially when the Commuter Rail is involved, and there isn't a train for an hour or two when I need one. Most T bus routes don't win speed awards either.

Imagine for a moment a useful commuter rail system, like they have in Europe: frequent (every 15-30 minutes all day!), fast trains with good acceleration. The cost of the extra train trips could be comparable to the current costs by running shorter trains operated by a single person, with a proof-of-payment or downtown-turnstile fare system to avoid paying so many people to punch holes in pieces of paper all day.

Re: You're talking about something very different

I'm in the opposite situation: I often go places where the T is faster and more convenient (Central to Harvard, Porter, or Davis). When I've been in low income situations, I would mostly drive, and it did indeed save me money, significantly.

You can increase your gas mileage around traffic lights by taking care not to accellerate more than you need to, so you don't need to brake much, and by noticing when lights change so you can anticipate whether you'll get a red or green and slow down or speed up accordingly. If you can coast to a light rather than get there a few seconds earlier, stop, and have to start again, you save gas; if you can avoid adding extra speed that you'll need to brake off shortly after, you can save gas.

However, all of that may change the cost of gas for a round trip to Davis from 50 cents to 40 cents; whatever you do, it's not gonna be $3.40. It'd take about $3 of meter parking to get to the point where taking the T doesn't cost extra.

Re: You're talking about something very different

Oh, believe me, I already try to avoid wasting gas by all those methods. But there's only so much you can do when the main roads get unnecessarily long red lights that aren't synchronized.

Another point to consider is that the MBTA is sure to raise the fares before long. My understanding was that they'd go up in 2009 or 2010, but some weasel-wording from Dan Grabauskas a while back makes me think we'll see a push for an increase later this year.

Normally they've done 20% jumps. I doubt they'll be that restrained this time, though. Personally I'm betting on something closer to 35% or 40%.

As for the cost of driving, the average American passenger car (excluding "light trucks", which are of course a substantial part of the American fleet) was 22.4 in 2006, the most recent year for which data was available. I drive a 2001 Nissan Altima, and we give it good maintainance; it doesn't get more than 25-26 MPG, though. My daily driving commute would be around 125 miles round trip. About 75% of that distance is highway driving.

The commute takes just under 2 hours each way under good conditions. About 75% of that time is spent dealing with traffic in the Boston area, stop & go driving (which uses proportionally more gas, of course).

Let's say I use five gallons of gas per day. At $3.60 per gallon today that comes to $18 per day, $90 per week, and $360 per month - if we assume that I drive to work 20 times per month.

A Zone 6 pass (my pass) costs $223 per month.

Okay, in fairness I still have to get to the train station; that's about 20 miles of driving, round trip, each day. On the other hand, that's a carpool of sorts; my wife drives my son to his daycare after they drop me off, and that's pretty close to the train station. Still, we can say that driving in all the way uses four gallons more than taking the train does. That's still $288 vs. $223.

Not to mention wear and tear on the car - no small consideration - the cost of parking (which is $200 per month, not the $250 I mentioned earlier).

And there's also the big intangible: the sheer mental strain of dealing with crazy drivers and the often-ridiculous traffic congestion in the Longwood/Fenway area.

MPG ratings tend to be very conservative. Have you figured your actual MPG average over time?

If you commute to work every weekday of the month and get a pass, I believe there are some commutes (yours may be one of them) where the commuter rail is cost-competitive with gas, though I'm pretty sure they're a minority of commutes. Of course instead of dealing with traffic you get to deal with missed trains and other stresses.

T fares are already waaaay too high, and it's ridiculous that we stand for it. Massive amounts of our tax money are used to maintain roads, traffic lights, police patrols, and other infrastructure to support driving, resulting in the individual cost of driving being much lower for most people than the individual cost of public transit. Our political view on public transit is that it should somehow support itself through fares, and we bemoan the much smaller amounts of public money contributed to keep it afloat, and bemoan its "debt". How much "debt" would the road system bear if it didn't get more public money in a year than our public transit system has in total throughout our lifetimes? Why is it that we don't all call our legislators several times a year demanding an elimination of user fees on public transit?

MPG ratings tend to be very conservative. Have you figured your actual MPG average over time?

I did, actually, a while ago. It was 26 MPG, as I recall. And that was back when I was driving in to work, so it's pretty accurate.

Of course instead of dealing with traffic you get to deal with missed trains and other stresses.

And I've made that into a positive - sort of, anyway - by starting up a blog about it. As a result, I've been interviewed by a few reporters and BostonNOW! even did a feature on my blog a while back, before they folded. I'm not such an egomaniac that having my picture in the paper makes up for the frustrations of dealing with the MBCR, but at least I knew I was going to DO something with the commuting experience rather than just put up with it.

I agree completely with your comments on tax money and road maintenance.

Why is it that we don't all call our legislators several times a year demanding an elimination of user fees on public transit?

In my case, because I don't have a legislator. Or rather, I do, but he's a Rhode Island legislator and has no influence at all with the MBTA. I'm trying to move back to Massachusetts, though, in which case my legislator will hear from me often. :D

The T gets plenty of money for capital projects, but they don't spend it on anything useful (at least not within the last 20 years). Take a look at the massive stations and tunnels for the Silver Line Waterfront, which is slower and has less capacity than the Blue Line route to the airport.

They seem to have spent the biggest chunk of it recently on the whole CharlieCard system. That money would've been put to much better use eliminating fares on all or part of the system.

Maybe instead of driving you should invest in a bicycle. Everyone I know who comes to central sq from davis bikes over. Saves time and i'm sure it saves money. Ive driven into central sq a few times in my life and just finding a parking space is ridiculous.

I do agree with you that 5.75 for a zone 4 (my zone) is a bit expensive, but most people are buying passes, like myself, and i use the commuter rail 7 days a week to go to school, then to work and then home again.

If you're a train rider you learn to plan around train schedule. I enjoy reading on the train, something I never get done at home, and the occasional phone call. (keeping it quite of course :) )

As for me I do own a car like you, but I average maybe 24 MPG. I have never ever thought about driving into the city in my life. It's stupid especially via 95 or 93. What scares me is that people drive from my former community (Blackstone) every single day. How do they do it? And yes, I do get there faster 80% of the time than they do.