The Trips
I'm going to take the last year as a typical year for me as a typical 20 year old student. I admit that this state of affairs is not the global average, but I do think that the system of commuting (to and from campus), with 6 long trips a year (uni to home and back) is one that can be very simply adapted to a professional lifestyle. The commuting trips are similar, and the long trips could be travelling somewhere for a holiday (going somewhere for christmas, for example). The main difference is the holidays, which means I'm not commuting to uni (work) 5 days a week for about 4 months in the year.
Let's now examine my different trips.
Commuting:
I travel to and from uni 5 days a week for 30 weeks a year (10 weeks x 3 terms). The distance is about 10 miles, so I am travelling 20 miles a day. This means 100 miles a week, and 3,000 miles a year. My car (a 10 year old Peugeot 106 quiksilver) does about 40 mpg, so I'm using 75 gallons of petrol a year to commute. At a petrol price of about 115p per litre (1 gallon is about 4.5 litres), that works out at £375 a year.
Long Trips:
I make 6 long trips a year, from home (Surrey) to uni and back again. The distance is 95 miles, so the total distance is 570 miles a year. Using the 40mpg and 115p figures from above, this works out as 14 gallons, and £71 a year.
Gym:
Over the summer, I've been going to gym. For thoughts about making power from gym machines, see my earlier posts: here are Part 1 and Part 2. My initial plan was to bike to the gym (a distance of 3.5 miles) but after that proved difficult due to the poor cycle paths and convenience on my part (so a trip to the gym would take 1h30 rather than 2h) I ended up driving. I went 3 times a week, there and back for 7 weeks in the summer. So, that's a total distance of (3 x 7 x 3.5) 73.5 miles a year. Using the same values as above, this is 1.8 gallons and £9 a year.
Other:
There are other trips I make- I'm driving to Sheffield as part of hockey preseason this year, for example. Also, I drive to Sainsbury's to go shopping every two weeks or so (during term time), a distance of 1 mile, and so a total distance of 15 miles. I also travel to hockey training over the holidays, once a week, a distance of 5 miles, maybe 10 times a year. This is a total of 50 miles.
As the gym trips were over 70 miles and cost less than £10, I'm going to ignore these other trips. If I drove to Scotland, for example, I would obviously have to include that as a special long distance trip.
So, to recap. The main trips I make in an average year are commuting to uni and back, long trips home and trips during the summer to the gym. The figures are below:
Commuting 3,000 miles £375
Long Trips 570 miles £71
Short (Gym) Trips 73.5 miles £9
So that's what I do now. How can I reduce my car driving and save money?
Obviously the Commuting values are much larger, so reducing this is a much higher priority than cycling to the gym, for example. Let's start there.
Options for Commuting
The obvious one for me as a student (at Warwick at least) is to take the bus. There is a bus service running onto campus for most of the day and night, and the charge for a bus pass for 3 terms is £252. The bus is often slower than a car, and obviously there is less freedom (you have to wait for the bus rather than just get in and go) but still, the bus is a much cheaper option, saving £123 a year, even before including the (frankly ridiculous) £3 a day parking charges on campus.
[These parking costs add an extra £450 to the cost of driving (£3 a day for 5 days for 30 weeks). There are places you can park which don't charge, but these are usually a bit further away.]
Another option is to bike, and a few of the superfit among the university do this. However, despite the obvious money savings (biking is free!), the idea of cycling 20 miles a day and 100 miles a week seems a bit optimistic to me.
A further option is to lift-share, so I am only driving (say) 3 days in the 5. this would reduce my costs to £225, a saving of £150. The parking costs would be £270 in this case, so the bus is still cheaper (if I pay for parking).
It looks like in this case, getting the bus is the cheapest option. This is also better for the environment, as I won't be changing the emissions the bus by getting on it. There is an good point to be made that if loads of people decide to take the bus rather than drive, the bus company will need to put more buses on the route. Also, the added weight of another passenger will reduce the bus's efficiency slightly. However, as a simple approximation I will consider these problems negligible.
Options for the Longer Trips
I have already said that judging by the numbers, reducing the commuting is more important that reducing the longer trips. However, that doesn't mean I can ignore the long trips!
There is a problem with not travelling by car when going home- I need to cart a carful of stuff with me back and forth each time. I could conceivably reduce the trips with stuff to 2 a year, one at the start of the year and one at the end, leaving most of my belongings at uni over the holidays. However, let's see the options for travelling home just with myself.
One alternative to driving to and from home is to take the train. The cost of a return from home to uni is around £30 (with a student railcard). Compare this to a return journey by car: 190 miles, so £24. It is more expensive to take the train home!
Another alternative to driving is to get a coach. From the national express site, it would cost £50 to get to Woking (which is still 8 miles from where I live). That's more than twice as expensive as driving! However, cheap bus sites do exist- Megabus for example. There I found a single trip to London Victoria for £4, so a return for £8. I would still need to get from Victoria to my home in Surrey, though. This would take a train journey and another £8.50 (return, with a student railcard). So, I could get from uni to home and back for £16.50. This is also helpful to the environment- instead of putting another car on the road for 2 hours or so, I'm going on a bus and train that would be running anyway. However, this journey is difficult (changing twice- once from bus to train, then from train to train), lengthy (3 hours) and probably fairly uncomfortable.
It seems, then, that the best option for longer trips would be to drive. That way, I can still take a carful of stuff with me, enjoy a comfortable seat and not have to worry about missing connections or delayed journeys. However, this is just for travelling home for the holidays. If I was visiting a friend at a different uni, or going home for the weekend, it may well be a cheaper, more convenient (don't have to worry about parking) option to either take the train or bus.
Options for the Short Trips (Gym)
I consider these trips as "city driving"- short (less than 5 mile) trips that are taken frequency, if not regularly, without carrying a large amount of stuff. How can we stop driving these short journeys?
Biking/Running: for going to the gym at least, it seems stupid to drive 3.5 miles to go and sit on a stationary bike, going more than twice that distance while not moving. It is something I often get annoyed at other people about (in a general way). However, this summer I have been just as guilty as others, and have put convenience ahead of common sense (and the planet!). In the area I live in, the cycling facilities are pretty poor and I think this is a general theme across Britain. People often look at places like Holland as shining examples of cycle infrastructure, then get annoyed at our lack of it. However, the infrastructure is only going to come when the demand comes- when people start getting on their bikes and showing that there needs to be better facilities. London is a great example of this: over the last 10 years or so more and more people have started to bike to work, mostly because the congestion (and the congestion charge) is just unbearable. Because of this, the cycle infrastructure has improved a lot, culminating in the introduction of "Boris's Bikes", a scheme of bike hire. There is plenty of information about bike travel in London here. I personally think this is a brilliant idea, as long as the bike stations get sufficient saturation (that is, you can get and drop off a bike where you need it).
Train/Tube: I could get the train to the gym, but it is a bit out of the way. It would also cost £2.40. There isn't a tube system where I live, but there is in London. A normal return trip of a few stops would be about £4.00. Comparing this with the cost by car, its 7 miles, so 90p. This ignores any congestion charges in place in a city.
The public transport option is only going to become a realistic option for most people when it is cheaper, faster and more reliable than going by car. In many cities it is already faster (due to congestion) and often more convenient (searching for a parking space in London is notoriously difficult!). However, the pricing and reliability of these systems really needs to be improved. The only reason many people will choose to take the train to visit their family (for example) rather than drive is if it's cheaper. It's sad to look at continential public transport and be jealous at how cheap and punctual it is, and wonder why we can't do as well. After all, we started off the rail transport idea, but have been overtaken in efficiency, reliability and speed by other European countries and Japan. Part of the reason these other places have such a superior service is that they were built in the 1950s (after WWII) rather than at the dawn of the railroad in the mid 19th century. It's time we took some serious action to repair our aging systems.
I don't claim to know the solution to these problems. I know it sounds contradictory to demand cheaper fares and also a massive overhaul of the infrastructure. However, this is a problem of country-wide importance, and one that needs to be solved soon.
Two simple things have emerged from this thought experiment, then. These things were pretty obvious and known beforehand, but it's good to quantify some of these qualitative arguments as I have above.
- Taking public transport to work every day saves money, and the planet. (This may involve buying a bulk ticket e.g season ticket.)
- By taking the bus to uni rather than driving, I would save £123 and 75 gallons of petrol.
- For most trips (non-bulk tickets e.g a season ticket) and for shorter distances public transport is prohibitably expensive. If these methods of transport are to become more popular, they need to be cheaper and more reliable.
- It is £6 cheaper to drive a typical 190 mile journey than take the train and £1.30/£3.10 to drive a typical 7 mile journey by train/tube.
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