Do you think public transport is expensive?

sharnad

it would take me to long to travel by bus

Crisp_£_note

I dont drive and never have but I cant afford public transport in our area let lone nationaly. Plus there is no discount scheme for my age and I am not a student. So easiest option is walk or take a bike or arrange a lift with someone when they are going that way anyway. Shopping I either get delivered, walk to the local shop or go with / ask others to pick me up a few items on their route / own trips. Only inconveinience is the 4 times a year trip home to see family as its so expensive (its lovely to see family its an inconveinient expense ). But save towards it each week.

FATBALLZ

Yes it is extortionate. My train ticket to work costs about £6, but the car park at the station is £8 a day. If it wasn't for the fact I have a partner who can drop me off at the station I would just buy another car and not bother with public transport at all.

KxMx

thescouselander wrote: »

Not ours, they stopped doing this ages ago now - its £15 per large item removed now.

If it's in good nik then try freecycle or a local charity.

Evilm wrote: »

A friend lives up the road from me and worked at the same place. She spent £5 a week on fuel in her car and was generally home in less than 5 minutes.

But when you add price of the car, insurance, repairs etc, what does it really cost her?

Local buses here are good, but even the best value option (£48 for 4 weeks unlimited travel around Ipswich) is alot of money for me (I don't drive so no choice), and a train to see my grandparents is still expensive from the days when there were 2 companies and it's cross county: £5 for return, it's one stop and takes 9 minutes. It's already gone up twice this year. Very glad they have lost franchise!

Evilm

KxMx wrote: »

But when you add price of the car, insurance, repairs etc, what does it really cost her?

Her insurance & tax is cheap and the car was a banger so wasn't too expensive. Again I think her servicing is cheap too. Even if you say here costs are another £5 a week and its the same price as the bus then she still gets 1hr 20 minutes per day over me to use as she likes that allows her to pick up her kids from school etc.

Mids_Costcutter

Strider590 wrote: »

If you have a car then yes it's expensive, your car costs say average £90 a week (all costs). If you have no car then public transport is going to cost a lot less, but if you have a car then your adding the cost of public transport to the cost of running a car.....

Additionally a train from my home town to where I work is £4.80 (its literally the next stop away), parking in the city is £4 a day. But I drive in, park a mile from work and then walk in the rest of the way, saving me £80 a month!

Refueling costs me £60-£65 every 3 weeks..... That's £3 a day to drive in to work.

So for me it's a choice between £4.80 a day + car running costs sat at home, OR £3 a day + car running costs.

Car wins every time!!

You're absolutely right, making a comparison between the running costs of a car versus public transport does depend upon whether you own a car or not and have the fixed (standing) costs which that brings. However why look only at the fuel costs when making a comparison? Tyres, servicing, parts, car parking, road tolls as well as fuel are all variable costs that will change depending upon your mileage. Liftshare also do a good cost calculator that enables you to work out annual costs as well as those for a one-off journey:

https://www.liftshare.com/calculator.asp?skin=277

The AA have produced some tables with typical running costs which may also be useful:

http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/running_costs/petrol2010.pdf

So does the car really win every time? And is the £4.80 the daily train fare with a season ticket?

VinceNoir

Public transport round our way is rubbish. If I wanted to get from my house to my parents on the other side of town, I'd have to pay £1.30 for a bus ticket from my stop to the shopping centre then another £1.30 from there to the my parents stop (I could be waiting 10-15 mins at the shopping centre). They don't do the ticket cheaper for a return journey either, so it would cost in total £5.20 to pop round to my parents for sunday dinner.

It's only about 10 mins max. in a car, probably about 25 mins in the bus if I there's a bus waiting at the shopping centre, usually more like 30-35 mins.

So yes, I think public transport is expensive.

thescouselander

Out of interest i checked the local bus companies website to see what the fair is into town these days. Unfortunately they don't list their prices on the website presumably because of embarrassment at the high prices. I do know that 3 years ago it was £4 one way into town at peak time and it took over an hour to get there despite the journey being less than 6 miles. So yes, expensive and very very slow - you might as well walk.

Pound

I have to say I'm a bit disapointed with this thread. Whilst I understand some people can't use the bus (e.g. if they work before public transport starts) or just prefer not to I think there's a real opportunity for money saving and apart from my original post that doesn't seem to have been discussed.

Lots of people have brought up the fact that if you buy a single or a return ticket then your cost per mile is huge compared to using a car. I don't disagree with this, using public transport like this is extortionate and I would much rather own a car than do this. But the point I was trying to make was that you can use the bus without paying these high prices. Handing cash over to the bus driver is the equivelant of renewing your insurance without shopping around, leaving your savings in an ISA for years earning 0.25% interest or using a gas meter. You're subsidising the people (like me) who can it cheaper.

Using Vince's example. £5.20 sounds like a typical bus fare for quite a short journey and adds up over a year if you took that journey five times a week. But with a bus pass that exact same journey is going to cost £1.90 (averaged over a year).

I think I'm probably alone in my idea and I won't be sharing a bus shelter with any of you any time soon but I'll make one last effort to show the cost saving potential.

Here's a table showing roughly what your costs are with a car or a bus pass over 1 year. This is assuming you ditch your car and doesn't require you to cut back on journeys. Remember, to save money, you need to keep your wallet in your pocket when you step on the bus, the only thing that should be in your hand is your mobile phone (if you have an mticket) or a bus pass.



So here we have an annual saving of £1,045. The above table won't be the same for everyone as bus passes may cost more in other areas, etc. It may be more expensive or it may even be cheaper.

An added benefit I feel I should mention is health. Bus stops typically are not next to where you want to go, you need to do some walking and sometimes brisk walking. Some people do no exercise at all and walking to the bus stop twice a day would make a huge difference to how much exercise they're doing.

I know there are downsides to using public transport, there's no denying that. But it's obviously a personal decision whether you won't to tolerate those issues or save money.

Mids_Costcutter

A number of people have replied to this thread with the view that public transport is expensive. Generally they're right. In actual fact the cost of motoring has fallen by 13 per cent in real terms since 1997, while bus and coach fares have increased by 17 per cent above inflation. Rail fares have risen by 7 per cent extra above inflation.

The OP thought that £3 for a 10 mile journey was expensive, that's nothing! Last year the Campaign for Better Transport held a competition to find the most expensive bus fares in the country. The 'winner'? A 15-minute journey from Elgin to Rothes cost a family of three £14.80 return. Another example: Weston to Bath centre, about 2 miles, cost: £4.10 return. And of course those were the fares last year, there'll have been increases since then no doubt.

Little wonder then that Britain is one of the most car dependent nations in Europe, something that all of us will pay the price for.

Having said all that by and large public transport generally is cheaper, especially if you live in one of the larger urban areas and undertake some of the usual MSE investigation and planning.