Here is one reason why people select the much more expensive option of driving a car over using public transport:
I'm going to make numerous ball park assumptions here because I'm lazy and besides, it's not as if policy depends on this blog's rantings anyway, so what the heck.
Canada's average per capita income - ~$46000
Average hours worked per year (assuming full time employment): 1820
Average pay/hour: ~$25.27
Based on my experience it takes about 50 minutes to get to work.
Google Maps claims that a car would make the same trip in 20 minutes.
Assume this is representative.
Hence, the daily work commute takes one hour longer on public transit. Let's assume that we consider a person's time to be worth their wage rate (this is a big assumption and not really accurate, but let's assume so anyway).
Therefore, public transit would cost ~$6317.5 (Don't ask me why I bothere with a .5 after saying the figure was approximate.) in terms of hours spent.
Hence the total yearly "cost" of public transport (the actual money you shell out for a transit pass + this cost) = ~$7817
That brings the cost a lot closer to the $8500 figure the CAA mentioned as the yearly cost of an average car.
This makes the decision of people who buy and drive cars a LOT more sensible. And this is not counting the innumerable small trips one would have to make as a parent to satisfy the demands of kids, little trips to the grocery store, etc...
In conclusion, time matters to people. So if you want more people to hop onto a bus, you have to make the bus commutes a lot faster.
1 comment:
To arrive at the hourly pay you have divided yearly income by the hours. The income is of all the population whereas the working population is small. Hence the cost of public transoprt will be much higher than your calculation which augments your argument.
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