To think that something has gone seriously wrong with our public transport policy if despite high petrol prices its now cheaper for me to drive to work?

[headfairy]

Last week I was on a course so didn't have to go up to town and I'm probably coming to these train fare rises a bit late.... My single train fare is now more expensive than driving to and from work (I get my transport home paid for as I usually finish work after midnight)

Thats got to be all wrong hasn't it? If only from an environmental point of view.

YANBU.Unless you buy a new car and/or replace your car frequently with a newer model, the fixed costs of running a car aren't that high. Petrol costs a lot, but it is still cheaper, quicker and nicer to use the car than other public transport, most of the time.

It

Train prices are ridiculous.

We paid £200 for a train trip (with a railcard, which we paid for on top of the train fare) for 4 people which would have cost us maximum £35 in diesel. We would have driven, but it was to London and the traffic/parking situation is ridiculous there.

Previously, I commuted for 6 years by train. It was expensive, late and frequently I would stand up for the entire journey. I hate public transport.

lesley - the fixed costs of running a car can be extremely high if you don't do enough mileage to justify it's purchase.

I've seen cars advertised which must have cost the owner well in excess of £2 per mile - even though they kept them for a reasonable length of time (5/6 years), simply because they appeared to barely use them but must have taken an incredibly hit on depreciation + their insurance cost.

I can't imagine spending nearly £60 on my daily 30 mile commute, but some muppets clearly do so.

I disagree Cheryl.

I have my car which I use mainly to get to work, do school runs and get shopping. Of course there are other little personal journeys, and I would include those little random trips in the true cost of running a car.

But when dh and I wake up on a Saturday morning and decide we want to go into London, or on anywhere else that would take two hours drive to get to, we have a clear choice. We don't go, we get the train, or we drive.

If we drive, we have to pay petrol an parking, but we don't have to pay more in tax or insurance or for regular MOTs than we already do to do the essential work/ school journeys. Those costs are non negotiable because we have to pay them regardless of whether we choose to go into London on one particular Saturday or not.

Therefore I think it is fine to only count the costs that would be incurred on one particular trip where we have a choice to get the train, or to not go at all.

IUseTooMuchKitchenRoll - that does make sense, though there's at least the following extra costs:

• tyres (1-2p per mile at least) maintenance (adding any miles always* adds to this, about 2p per mile)

The 'adding mileage depreciation' is a potential issue, depending on the age of the car but that's a complex variable to calculate. The final issue is also the potential cost of any mishap per journey (which you wouldn't use insurance for), again too complex to calculate but I add a contingency to my vehicle ownership cost to compensate for that. Very, very sad I know.

What is not in question is that with 2 of you, the car is likely to be much cheaper - and that's a failure of public transport for sure.

Depreciation though is not a real cost - just an accounting cost. The actual cost of buying a car, insurance, mot, repairs, tax and servicing are the real costs. Of course if you do few miles these fixed costs are expensive. But for most people travelling to work every day and travelling for leisure, etc, the fixed costs per mile are not high.

Surely the potential cost of any mishap in a journey should be included in calculating public transport costs as well?

Depreciation though is not a real cost - just an accounting cost

Your point before was fair, but this on the other hand, is truly baffling. If you don't count the thousands of pounds that disappear between buying a car and selling it as part of the running cost, that really is delusional.

cheryl - But I have already factored in the money to buy a car - the full cost. The drop in value thus is not a real cost to me.

So I buy a car at 5k and count that as part of the cost of running my car for 6 years. If I then sell it I may get 1k back. But the 4k drop in value doesn't affect my pocket at all.

Cheryl, I don't buy a car with an eye to it's reselling value. We have run every single car we owned into the ground. Not everyone replaces their car every 2 years

It costs £1.80 per journey for me to get to my town centre (2 miles away) by bus. I couldnt walk that far,but if I drive, it cost me about say 50p for petrol, 50p for parking, 50p for wear and tear and thats a huge overestimate.If I take kids and DH,its even cheaper by car,but would cost nearly £8 in bus fares???????

YANBU. If I take the bus into town with DH and DD1 who is 7 it costs 5.50....a black cab is 4.80

It would cost me £3.40 every day in bus fares to get to and from work and 2 buses each way. It is about 5 miles from where I live!

You're saying at this point that money is a sunk cost, and I shouldn't take it into account.

Honestly that is crazy!

Example. I bought my car for £5000, cash.

I'll probably sell car 5 years later for £1500, having done 50000 miles in it.

You're saying that £3500 over 5 years and 50k miles is not part of the real cost of owning the car. Sorry that is completely ridiculous.

Disappointing, but YANBU. I persevered with public transport for day to day travel incl commute to work in Bristol for 6 years until it finally got too much. Unreliable dirty buses which cost a fortune - and Bristol is supposedly a "Green City". Buying my car last year was the single best thing I could have done to improve my day to day life: my commute to work (incl dropping DS at nursery) is less than 20 mins, and is clean, dry and comfortable. I arrive at work in a good mood, unlike the ranting harridan I used to be after an hour experiencing First's "service".

OhDearNigel, nor do I. My car before was 10 grand, and lasted 15 years before it was scrapped. It was terrific.

But Lesley is saying she doesn't include the 10 grand in the cost of running the car. That is flipping ridiculous!!!

I said I included the cost of buying the car in the first place - I actually hadn't included any income from resale value. So I would include the 5k for buying your car as part of the cost of running the car.

YANBU.

On the smaller scale of things, it costs £1.80 for a less than 5 minute bus ride to town from my house. £3 for a return, but you can only get a return after 9.30am. Also, the bus fairs seem to go up every couple of months. I just walk.

OK - we'll agree to disagree on the interpretation of depreciation/resale as real/accounting costs. I think both of us take it into account, just in different ways.

We consider the purchase of the car as a capital investment and if we were to sell it/part-x it any money would be a bonus

Actually I reread what you said Lesley. Apologies - what you said from the beginning was perfectly correct. I'm not sure why you disagreed with me - my point was effectively the same as yours. After that I skim read your response and assumed you hadn't taken into account the cost of buying and then selling/scrapping.

YANBU. It used to cost me more (with a weekly saver ticket) to catch the bus to work each week than it was to drive.

Oh I have to say that without a saver ticket it would cost me £10 per day to travel to and from work. Which was a 15-20 minute car journey!

Yanbu. DH and I have resisted getting a car for the 12 years we gave been together, and always used trains and buses. But now we have three kids who are missing out on trips to safari parks and the beach because it is so difficult to reach them using public transport, and if D H drove to and from work he would be home at ten to six instead of ten to seven and spend so much longer with the wee ones.
Because of this we plan to get a car this year, but I'm really not happy about it. When there are more recharging stations we plan to get an electric car but this won't be that much better as it won't help congestion and also the electricity will still be produced at least in part by fossil fuels.
Better, cheaper public transport would be great, but if it wasn't on the agenda in the boom years there is no chance it will be a priority now.