To Drive or Not to Drive?

It used to cost me about $30 to fill up my gas tank, now it's a little bit over $50. My commute to work right now is about 36.6 miles/day and I usually need to fill up the tank about once a week. That's about $200/month and $2,400/year not including driving to anywhere else, but work.

One of my co-worker start taking the Metro to work, so I thought that I should as least calculate how much I could possibly be saving if I were to do the same. Yesterday at the gas station, it cost me $4.69/gal. My commute is about 96% highway and my car gas mileage is 22/28. I'm just going to use 26 mpg, since it's mainly highway. So 36.6 miles/26 mpg = 1.40gal/day. So the total cost for gas/day for me is $4.69*1.4 gal = ~$6.56/day not counting car wear and tear. It takes me about 20-30 minutes each way to get to/from work depending on the traffic.

The Metro day pass is $5/day. I calculated my route and I would need to be at the nearest bus stop about 2 hrs before work.

So money wise, I would save ~ $1.56/day. Time wise, the 1 1/2 hours time difference per way is definitely not worth it for me. So to drive or not to drive? I'd definitely drive for now.

If I could save $5+/day then I will probably consider taking the Metro. That would mean that gas would need to be at least $7+/gal.

How much are you spending per day for gas and how much would gas needs to be for you to take public transportation?


LA River
View from Amtrak window, while heading South.