Doing the Math

commutesolutions.org, a San Francisco Bay area web site, has posted a page to help drivers calculate the true cost of commuting to work by car. It includes an estimate of social costs (about 33¢ per mile, which may be low but is a good working number). Even leaving out the social costs, however, the cost of commuting to work is high enough to raise some eyebrows.

Assuming Bay Area insurance and fuel costs, and a relatively short commute (10 miles each way), plus an average daily non-commuting mileage of 4—almost certainly low if it counts weekends—the direct costs of commuting work out to $5676.00 per year. This doesn't count car payments, although it does include depreciation. Add in the social costs, and the true cost of commuting becomes $7939.00 per year for the Bay Area.

Many Bay Area costs are high compared to the rest of the country—including public transit, although Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is fast, safe, convenient, and well worth the fare. BART is not, however, expensive compared to driving. A daily round-trip commute from Fremont, CA, to the Civic Center in San Francisco, five days per week, would cost $2,600.00, with fewer of the social costs associated with commuting by car.

The Bay Area cost calculator works for other areas of the country; you simply insert your actual cost of driving, depreciation, etc., and you can get a rough idea of the direct costs of driving. Not having a car, I used Bay Area estimates (the defaults on the calculator) and assumed a daily commute of 10 miles each way (the distance from my home to downtown Philadelphia). Auto insurance almost certainly costs more in Philadelphia than in the Bay Area because it costs more in Philadelphia than almost anywhere else in the United States. Depreciation costs may also be higher than in the Bay Area because of poorer highway maintenance. Still, the figures for the Bay Area are probably close to the figures for most cities.

At Bay Area prices, a commuter would save over $3,000.00 per year by selling the car and taking BART to work. Philadelphia's transit system is less efficient, but it is also a lot cheaper. Using a monthly pass, that same commuter would spend $720.00 per year on basic commuting, plus about $500.00 for an occasional taxi ride—a saving of nearly $4,500.00 per year.

Driving to work is not, in other words, either cheap or efficient.