Re: Cars make more economic sense than transit: fact

[Brendan W <bjw@nospam.com>]

Iskandar Baharuddin wrote: 
> qldspeed wrote:
> > On Mon, 19 Jul 1999 10:59:21 +1100, David Bromage
> > <dbromage@omni.com.au> wrote:
> > >Mark Gibson wrote:
> All snipped without disrespect.

> The "studies" of the advantages of public transport invariably
> leave out one key factor: the value of the time of the
> passenger.
 
> When someone comes up with a public transport systems that goes
> where I want to go when I want to go, and fast, I will happily
> sell the car.
 
Very true. Where I live a train station is about a 10 minute level
walk from my house. My work is 25 minutes by train then a another
5 minute walk to the office. The problem is that trains only stop
at my station twice an hour! Even though about twice as many
trains as this pass through. This means that if I do not order
my life exactly according to the sparse train availability when 
getting ready to go to work or coming home, I can easily end up
wasting a further half hour waiting for a train that actually 
stops at my station. That makes the total journey time to be
anything between 40 mins and 1 hour 10 minutes. Plus it costs
me $5 something for the train ticket.

If I drive (which I do), it takes me 20 minutes to drive, and
5 minutes to walk from where I park to the office. Total travel
time = 25 minutes no matter *what* time I depart either way. And
this is the case for someone who lives within walking distance
of a railway station, ie, no buses or any BS like that! I am 
really not suprised so many people choose to drive instead. 
Given that I would own my car anyway the cost of petrol and wear
and tear of each trip to work is less than $5 btw.

Of course the other big thing that the public transport "studies"
forget is that many of us actually *enjoy* the driving experience,
ie, we are enthusiasts. I *like* driving my car, I derive
pleasure from it, I like listening to the stereo in my car and
I enjoy the personal freedom of being able to go where I want
when I want. I would never live without a car. And this of course
is where the economic arguments fall down - even if public
transport was good enough for all of us to willingly commute to
work and home this way, most of us would still own a car,
therefore the cost of car ownership plus the cost of commutable
public transport has to work out cheaper than the cost car
ownership plus the extra cost of car commuting, or else it is
in reality more expensive.


Regards,

-- 
Brendan Walker
'96 EFII XR8 Falcon
_bjw_ AT _cisco_ DOT _com_ (to email decode and remove the "_"'s)