There's a bit of hidden assumption that one already owns a car for other reasons and that's probably a valid assumption unless one lives in a center city.
Yes but I think this trial was just trying to encourage more train journeys on that line. The whole rail and bus system would need to improve for people to realistically give up their cars. In this trial, they might still do lots of other car journeys and just use the train for this particular journey (and may still need a car to get to the station).
The trial wasnt just about mode shift from car users, it was mainly a transport equity policy for making train (/mobility) usable for people on lower incomes.
It's disappointing to see Hannah didn't factor in the cost of running and owning a car, which is the only way anyone can achieve those per mile journey costs. It averages about £2000-£3000/yr (aka £50/wk) so needs to be accounted for within, or adjacent to, the bar chart.
I had to buy a car for the first time for a new job last year. It's a 100km round trip twice a week that would take twice as long on public transport. I spent £12k on a car and I'm currently saving £250 a month for its eventual replacement and the insurance is over £800 a year. The depreciation and insurance costs are almost certainly higher than the petrol costs per month. Now I often drive to places I could get to by tram or bus because the marginal cost is less. To get people out of cars it needs to be convenient enough to go without car ownership.
Thanks Hannah, I was disappointed to see the end of the trial. I'm a regular train user so I wasn't one of the increased users in my normal commute to Edinburgh but I did travel into Glasgow more regularly by train (where I'd normally drive and park) because the price was so significantly cheaper (taking into account parking costs as well). Behaviour change takes time and I think the trial was under promoted outside of train stations where the only people you reach are current train users. If the goal was specifically to change commuting behaviours then I'd have expected to see more working with employers, most people in my workplace didn't know it was happening.
As a sometime regular traveler between Boston and New York, the cost of travel by car is cheaper, especially as another commenter pointed out if you're traveling with multiple people. But, and this is huge, the hassle factor of driving from Boston to New York at pretty much any time is far greater than the train. Travel by plane is an option, but the cost and hassle factors (getting from any of the airports to Manhattan or Brooklyn is a bit of a nightmare) make the train a better alternative. If you're going from Boston to Washington D.C. that reverses since both Boston and D.C. have conveniently located airports and the distance is far enough that it adds to the train's and driving's hassle factor.
I live halfway between Boston and NYC along the Amtrak corridor. After taking the train to both cities (as well as Philly), I will never ever drive to them again. The stress of dealing with occasional train delays is nothing compared to the anxiety and stress of driving to and through those cities, finding and paying for parking, etc etc. Kicking back and reading a book or taking a nap and ending at your destination refreshed is priceless.
Thanks Hannah. For car journeys you should include parking at the destination and any congestion / emissions charges. For London trips those make a car journey much more expensive.
I live a 45 minute train journey from London. I hardly ever drive in because those costs make the train cheaper and for that journey it is much more convenient (I”m a 10 minute walk from the station). So agree with your hypothesis.
Similarly, one "hidden" cost to factor into flying is getting to the airport - often the cost of doing that (or of parking if going by car) is on a par with the cost of a budget airline flight. If only we all lived ten minutes from a train station ! Or even a bus stop.
There are some other intangibles: Driving a longer distance often requires toilet breaks, increasing time and inconvenience. The train does not (though what state the toilet may be in in an X factor, but the same is true of petrol stations). This is a big factor for older people.
Train travel absorbs the wear and maintenance on your vehicle. Which isn't something car-owners think much about, generally, but you have to amortize that cost over mileage driven. Every mile driven also increases the chance of incurring and accident or getting a traffic violation. And, there's wear-and-tear on the body, too, as driving itself is very stressful.
Lastly, train travel has delays, yes, but so does driving. Especially during peak hours! How often can a car commute time be doubled by traffic? Or, worse, by a fault with your own vehicle?
The car has space for 2, 3 or 4 people so divide the costs by that factor. Trains are very expensive, an archaic method of transportation for people in the 21st century in most cases. 3 centuries of strips of steel on the ground restricting where the heavy vehicles can go.
Factoring opportunity costs would be interesting (albeit subjective and complex).
If assume reason for travel is professional, then is the commuter more economically productive on a train (than hands, eyes, and mind occupied driving a car)? However, would such a productivity-focused person upgrade and pay more for 1st class (more space and quiet to work).
All good research raises more questions than it answers. So, well done again Hannah!
I would have also mentioned demand reduction. 4 day work week would wipe out 20% commute journeys, along with the emissions savings associated with slowing down the economy.
I would love someone to do this sort of analysis for my U.S. metro area (Denver). Our public transit is pretty abysmal compared to UK and Europe options, and it's not like it doesn't exist, it's just not used often enough to justify its frequency, is how I understand it. They've even done zero fare months in the summer, to try and reduce our ozone issues, but the uptake is not significant; it was curious to hear that fare reductions didn't make "enough" difference in the UK, too. Meanwhile, there's been talk of regional trains, which are enticing, but if our first and last mile transit options are crappy, I'm not sure people will even take a train for 20 miles or more. And yet, it's typical cocktail fodder to complain about "traffic these days"...
Lucy. I think your Denver observation is similar to many U.S. metropolitan areas. I do wish someone would make a large scale analysis on a life cycle scale between light rail, gasoline car, and EV for major American cities taking all of the cradle to grave costs into account, including the infrastructure costs of roads and rail tracks (usually with initial costs paid by long term government bonds and maintenance costs by user fees and tax payer subsidization), auto insurance, car purchase and maintenance costs, and costs of installing and maintaining public EV charging stations.
I live in the San Diego area and used light rail almost every day for a commute for four years. It only works and can be justified if the drive commute to the station is under five miles and walking at the destination is under 15 minutes. The drawback is the track beds are barely elevated above grade and flood when it rains.
Occasionally I’d have to take CalTrain/Amtrac from San Diego to downtown LA. Longer drive to the CalTrain station and 20 minute walk at the destination end, but way less stressful and less time than driving in traffic.
I think San Francisco Bay Area residents can make similar observations with BART.
On those occasional train trips between San Diego and LA, with the train making stops along the way, I observed another curiosity - the traveler who drove a twenty year old beater car to their local train station parking lot and then at their destination (usually not downtown LA) walked to a second twenty year old beater car in a 24/7 free parking lot for last miles drive to work.
With all of these scenarios a car is still needed and the annual maintenance and insurance costs greatly exceed the gasoline costs.
Funny, I did a similar work yesterday. It concerned comparison between travel type for a trip from my place in Switzerland and Bordeaux, France, as I have soon a marriage there.
Results for a one way: 10h on highways, 7h10 on railways and 4h20 on airways. Plane is the cheapest, even if I consider to offset the carbone (~64 €/ton): 96 CHF, vs 143 CHF. By thermic car, it is the most expensive: 200 CHF; EV is as train: 147 CHF.
But as I am not going alone, I must consider a cost repartition. So the car becomes the cheapest: for two people, it costs 100 CHF, 74 CHF on EV.
So cars may be cheap. But drawback as you mentioned: the “free time” when travelling: by car, I should get around 1h30 so rest, but on train I’d get 5h40 free to do whatever I want.
To put it in a nutshell, I’d say that trains should become 50 % cheaper if we want people to be okay to switch, and accept bargains as employers, as offering one day of travelling by train…
Finally, I recommend two websites: www.cff.ch (Swiss trains): when you select a trip, you have access (down the page) to an “eco-comparator”, so that you can see differences between trains, car and planes (CO₂, primary energy use, time, working-time, etc.). And www.greengo.voyage, a french website which allows you to find “green” trips and to compare travelling modes (time place-to-place, cost, CO₂).
As a regular commuter from Edinburgh to Glasgow, whose 26-30 railcard has now expired as I hurtle towards middle age, I'm really not looking forward to paying 30 sheets to go to work. Given that the service has recently been limited to 2 trains per hour, it does not feel like great value for money. Your brilliant comparison illustrates that point more so.
However, I will continue to use the train because it is an electrified and low-carbon option, you can do work/admin during the journey and joining the M8 traffic is not conducive to a good morning/evening.
> experienced more chaotic and unsuccessful trips to London than successful one
That's pretty unlucky. I travel between London and Inverness by train a couple of times a year, and I've only experienced significant disruption twice in the last ~12 or so times (and on both those occassions, I was less than 2 hours late).
Planes can be unreliable, too, of course. Cars have to deal with vagaries of traffic. Walking is most reliable mode of transport!
Car costs should really consider other costs of running a car (purchase/hire, tax, maintenance, insurance). Maintenance costs generally rise with mileage as well. Looking only at fuel prices makes cars look misleadingly cheap.
Although travelling with 2+ people does shift the calculation slightly in favour of car, it does not do so as much as you might expect. Train companies understand this dynamic; things like family railcards, much cheapter child fares, two-together railcards and duo tickets mean that train travel costs do not scale linearly with the number of people travelling.
Home charging at 24p per kWh. Well yes, if you charge during the day. But if you charge overnight it is less than 10p. That makes an EV charged at home the cheapest by a country mile! Perhaps not a realistic option for a trip from Edinburgh to London though, where public charging would be inevitable.
I do wonder if this can be expanded into a series of posts on, say, the per-capita/per-mile cost of building out SAF infrastructure at Britain’s major airports vs. building EV charging infrastructure along the M1 vs. building HS2 or a full ECML bypass
What about the cost of buying a car, maintenance, insurance, tax etc?
There's a bit of hidden assumption that one already owns a car for other reasons and that's probably a valid assumption unless one lives in a center city.
Plus once you own a car, these become sunk costs, and the decision how to travel to work tomorrow doesn't include them.
Yes but I think this trial was just trying to encourage more train journeys on that line. The whole rail and bus system would need to improve for people to realistically give up their cars. In this trial, they might still do lots of other car journeys and just use the train for this particular journey (and may still need a car to get to the station).
The trial wasnt just about mode shift from car users, it was mainly a transport equity policy for making train (/mobility) usable for people on lower incomes.
It's disappointing to see Hannah didn't factor in the cost of running and owning a car, which is the only way anyone can achieve those per mile journey costs. It averages about £2000-£3000/yr (aka £50/wk) so needs to be accounted for within, or adjacent to, the bar chart.
And once it is more than one person, the car is a no brainer.
But then the CO2 is halved too
Just what I was going to say!
I had to buy a car for the first time for a new job last year. It's a 100km round trip twice a week that would take twice as long on public transport. I spent £12k on a car and I'm currently saving £250 a month for its eventual replacement and the insurance is over £800 a year. The depreciation and insurance costs are almost certainly higher than the petrol costs per month. Now I often drive to places I could get to by tram or bus because the marginal cost is less. To get people out of cars it needs to be convenient enough to go without car ownership.
Thanks Hannah, I was disappointed to see the end of the trial. I'm a regular train user so I wasn't one of the increased users in my normal commute to Edinburgh but I did travel into Glasgow more regularly by train (where I'd normally drive and park) because the price was so significantly cheaper (taking into account parking costs as well). Behaviour change takes time and I think the trial was under promoted outside of train stations where the only people you reach are current train users. If the goal was specifically to change commuting behaviours then I'd have expected to see more working with employers, most people in my workplace didn't know it was happening.
As a sometime regular traveler between Boston and New York, the cost of travel by car is cheaper, especially as another commenter pointed out if you're traveling with multiple people. But, and this is huge, the hassle factor of driving from Boston to New York at pretty much any time is far greater than the train. Travel by plane is an option, but the cost and hassle factors (getting from any of the airports to Manhattan or Brooklyn is a bit of a nightmare) make the train a better alternative. If you're going from Boston to Washington D.C. that reverses since both Boston and D.C. have conveniently located airports and the distance is far enough that it adds to the train's and driving's hassle factor.
I live halfway between Boston and NYC along the Amtrak corridor. After taking the train to both cities (as well as Philly), I will never ever drive to them again. The stress of dealing with occasional train delays is nothing compared to the anxiety and stress of driving to and through those cities, finding and paying for parking, etc etc. Kicking back and reading a book or taking a nap and ending at your destination refreshed is priceless.
Thanks Hannah. For car journeys you should include parking at the destination and any congestion / emissions charges. For London trips those make a car journey much more expensive.
I live a 45 minute train journey from London. I hardly ever drive in because those costs make the train cheaper and for that journey it is much more convenient (I”m a 10 minute walk from the station). So agree with your hypothesis.
Similarly, one "hidden" cost to factor into flying is getting to the airport - often the cost of doing that (or of parking if going by car) is on a par with the cost of a budget airline flight. If only we all lived ten minutes from a train station ! Or even a bus stop.
There are some other intangibles: Driving a longer distance often requires toilet breaks, increasing time and inconvenience. The train does not (though what state the toilet may be in in an X factor, but the same is true of petrol stations). This is a big factor for older people.
Train travel absorbs the wear and maintenance on your vehicle. Which isn't something car-owners think much about, generally, but you have to amortize that cost over mileage driven. Every mile driven also increases the chance of incurring and accident or getting a traffic violation. And, there's wear-and-tear on the body, too, as driving itself is very stressful.
Lastly, train travel has delays, yes, but so does driving. Especially during peak hours! How often can a car commute time be doubled by traffic? Or, worse, by a fault with your own vehicle?
The car has space for 2, 3 or 4 people so divide the costs by that factor. Trains are very expensive, an archaic method of transportation for people in the 21st century in most cases. 3 centuries of strips of steel on the ground restricting where the heavy vehicles can go.
Factoring opportunity costs would be interesting (albeit subjective and complex).
If assume reason for travel is professional, then is the commuter more economically productive on a train (than hands, eyes, and mind occupied driving a car)? However, would such a productivity-focused person upgrade and pay more for 1st class (more space and quiet to work).
All good research raises more questions than it answers. So, well done again Hannah!
I would have also mentioned demand reduction. 4 day work week would wipe out 20% commute journeys, along with the emissions savings associated with slowing down the economy.
I would love someone to do this sort of analysis for my U.S. metro area (Denver). Our public transit is pretty abysmal compared to UK and Europe options, and it's not like it doesn't exist, it's just not used often enough to justify its frequency, is how I understand it. They've even done zero fare months in the summer, to try and reduce our ozone issues, but the uptake is not significant; it was curious to hear that fare reductions didn't make "enough" difference in the UK, too. Meanwhile, there's been talk of regional trains, which are enticing, but if our first and last mile transit options are crappy, I'm not sure people will even take a train for 20 miles or more. And yet, it's typical cocktail fodder to complain about "traffic these days"...
Lucy. I think your Denver observation is similar to many U.S. metropolitan areas. I do wish someone would make a large scale analysis on a life cycle scale between light rail, gasoline car, and EV for major American cities taking all of the cradle to grave costs into account, including the infrastructure costs of roads and rail tracks (usually with initial costs paid by long term government bonds and maintenance costs by user fees and tax payer subsidization), auto insurance, car purchase and maintenance costs, and costs of installing and maintaining public EV charging stations.
I live in the San Diego area and used light rail almost every day for a commute for four years. It only works and can be justified if the drive commute to the station is under five miles and walking at the destination is under 15 minutes. The drawback is the track beds are barely elevated above grade and flood when it rains.
Occasionally I’d have to take CalTrain/Amtrac from San Diego to downtown LA. Longer drive to the CalTrain station and 20 minute walk at the destination end, but way less stressful and less time than driving in traffic.
I think San Francisco Bay Area residents can make similar observations with BART.
On those occasional train trips between San Diego and LA, with the train making stops along the way, I observed another curiosity - the traveler who drove a twenty year old beater car to their local train station parking lot and then at their destination (usually not downtown LA) walked to a second twenty year old beater car in a 24/7 free parking lot for last miles drive to work.
With all of these scenarios a car is still needed and the annual maintenance and insurance costs greatly exceed the gasoline costs.
Funny, I did a similar work yesterday. It concerned comparison between travel type for a trip from my place in Switzerland and Bordeaux, France, as I have soon a marriage there.
Results for a one way: 10h on highways, 7h10 on railways and 4h20 on airways. Plane is the cheapest, even if I consider to offset the carbone (~64 €/ton): 96 CHF, vs 143 CHF. By thermic car, it is the most expensive: 200 CHF; EV is as train: 147 CHF.
But as I am not going alone, I must consider a cost repartition. So the car becomes the cheapest: for two people, it costs 100 CHF, 74 CHF on EV.
So cars may be cheap. But drawback as you mentioned: the “free time” when travelling: by car, I should get around 1h30 so rest, but on train I’d get 5h40 free to do whatever I want.
To put it in a nutshell, I’d say that trains should become 50 % cheaper if we want people to be okay to switch, and accept bargains as employers, as offering one day of travelling by train…
Finally, I recommend two websites: www.cff.ch (Swiss trains): when you select a trip, you have access (down the page) to an “eco-comparator”, so that you can see differences between trains, car and planes (CO₂, primary energy use, time, working-time, etc.). And www.greengo.voyage, a french website which allows you to find “green” trips and to compare travelling modes (time place-to-place, cost, CO₂).
As a regular commuter from Edinburgh to Glasgow, whose 26-30 railcard has now expired as I hurtle towards middle age, I'm really not looking forward to paying 30 sheets to go to work. Given that the service has recently been limited to 2 trains per hour, it does not feel like great value for money. Your brilliant comparison illustrates that point more so.
However, I will continue to use the train because it is an electrified and low-carbon option, you can do work/admin during the journey and joining the M8 traffic is not conducive to a good morning/evening.
> experienced more chaotic and unsuccessful trips to London than successful one
That's pretty unlucky. I travel between London and Inverness by train a couple of times a year, and I've only experienced significant disruption twice in the last ~12 or so times (and on both those occassions, I was less than 2 hours late).
Planes can be unreliable, too, of course. Cars have to deal with vagaries of traffic. Walking is most reliable mode of transport!
Car costs should really consider other costs of running a car (purchase/hire, tax, maintenance, insurance). Maintenance costs generally rise with mileage as well. Looking only at fuel prices makes cars look misleadingly cheap.
Although travelling with 2+ people does shift the calculation slightly in favour of car, it does not do so as much as you might expect. Train companies understand this dynamic; things like family railcards, much cheapter child fares, two-together railcards and duo tickets mean that train travel costs do not scale linearly with the number of people travelling.
Home charging at 24p per kWh. Well yes, if you charge during the day. But if you charge overnight it is less than 10p. That makes an EV charged at home the cheapest by a country mile! Perhaps not a realistic option for a trip from Edinburgh to London though, where public charging would be inevitable.
I do wonder if this can be expanded into a series of posts on, say, the per-capita/per-mile cost of building out SAF infrastructure at Britain’s major airports vs. building EV charging infrastructure along the M1 vs. building HS2 or a full ECML bypass