Abaddon wrote:

so if I buy a month in advance I can save myself a wopping 14 cents!!!..there are a few problems here...

Congratulations. You have a maintenance free vehicle? Calculating for gas is the easiest means, but does not reflect the entire equation.

I assume you, unlike Commrade Bucy (who also does the SF - Mountain View shuffle), have no intentions of giving up your vehicle entirely. So we can not eliminate most of the major California vehicle expenses (registration and insurance). However, you might qualify for a significant insurance reduction if you told them you were planning on driving 200 miles per week less. That is worth quoting out and adding to the equation.

Then there is depreciation of asset. No, you probably don't plan to sell your car, but regardless of the plan... your car wears out as a function of mileage. I don't know the life expectancy of your car, but eliminating up to 10,000 miles (40*5*50) of wear a year has to mean something. If you have the standard 4 year/50k warranty, that may not be easy to calculate. Looking at warranty extension quotes, we can ballpark $100-200/year coverage difference.

In general, companies have a standard car usage per mile reimbursement rate. That tends to reflect the cost of gas and wear. For a kick, ask your employer what their mileage rate is. It is probably between $0.30 and 0.60 per mile, which would act as a daily cost estimate of $12-24 dollars.

dmv wrote:

Abaddon wrote:

so if I buy a month in advance I can save myself a wopping 14 cents!!!..there are a few problems here...

Congratulations. You have a maintenance free vehicle? Calculating for gas is the easiest means, but does not reflect the entire equation.

I assume you, unlike Commrade Bucy (who also does the SF - Mountain View shuffle), have no intentions of giving up your vehicle entirely. So we can not eliminate most of the major California vehicle expenses (registration and insurance). However, you might qualify for a significant insurance reduction if you told them you were planning on driving 200 miles per week less. That is worth quoting out and adding to the equation.

Then there is depreciation of asset. No, you probably don't plan to sell your car, but regardless of the plan... your car wears out as a function of mileage. I don't know the life expectancy of your car, but eliminating up to 10,000 miles (40*5*50) of wear a year has to mean something. If you have the standard 4 year/50k warranty, that may not be easy to calculate. Looking at warranty extension quotes, we can ballpark $100-200/year coverage difference.

In general, companies have a standard car usage per mile reimbursement rate. That tends to reflect the cost of gas and wear. For a kick, ask your employer what their mileage rate is. It is probably between $0.30 and 0.60 per mile, which would act as a daily cost estimate of $12-24 dollars.

yeah, so what's your point? first off caltrain themselves advertises that its a way to save money by not paying high gas prices...I'm not in a possition to get rid of my car entirely, so just about all of the other costs are not really of concern to me...as for maintenance costs I've had the car for 3 years now and I've spent almost nothing to maintain it, its all covered under my warrantee...and if you want to argue the corner case of when my car is out of warrantee then your compelling arguement is starting to get way less compelling...

the point im making is this, if caltrain is going to actually encorage people to use it then they might want to have a price that reflects that...I think that the bay areas retoric around clean air should translate into some action, otherwise they're just whiney ineffectual liberal jerkoffs...

Abaddon wrote:
so I've been trying to take the train to work lately...

Tom's law of the bay area: All modes of transportation suck equally. Switching from one mode to the other isn't going to make you happier. It may be slightly faster, or slightly less expensive, but those will be balanced by some other form of suck/annoy.

so with gas costing me about $2.70/gallon lets compare the price of public transit to the price of driving my car...

In order to get the real advantage of not driving you actually have to not have a car. This means:
A. No car tax.
B. No car gas.
C. No car payment.
D. No searching around for 40 minutes for a parking space when you get home at night or...
E. Paying $150 a month for a parking space you don't have to search for.
F. Renting a car if you ever need one, which is fairly easy.
G. You can work on the train.
H. Embracing the local urbahippy way. Simplify, man!

However....
A. It takes longer to get to and from work.
B. The taxi system fucking blows. (I eventually started taking limos to the airport. This was pre-bart. It was only $5 more and they actually showed up when you called them.)
C. Missing the last Caltrain is the suckiest thing that can possibly happen.
D. Except getting mugged on the way home from Caltrain, but that never happenned to me. Your hood may vary.

If you want to see the way a city ought to be run, move to Hong Kong. Until then, welcome to America.

you would think that they would try to put some of that communism style of politics that they love in these parts into action by subsidising public transportation like caltrain...

What you're missing is that the Caltrain mostly serves rich people who live or work in the valley. They don't want to help rich people. They hate rich people! They want to help poor people. The poor people live in east bay and take Bart. Bart is cheap.

Look on the bright side, you can drink beer on Caltrain. You think they'd let the commoners on Bart drink beer in a public vehicle? No way!

Abaddon wrote:
so I've been trying to take the train to work lately...this morning the ticket machine argued with me about whether or not my check card had a magstripe on it...eventually, just as the train left it spit my ticket out...so I got to pay for it and I missed the train...curse!...seriously, why don't all these companies just pay Billy to make their shit, his hacker tools kick all the commercial version's asses...

so all busted ass point of sale technology aside, why does it cost me nearly twice as much money to ride the train to work than it does to drive?!? the cost of a 3 zone ticket (san francisco to mountain view) is $10.50 round trip per day!...so lets break that down and compare that to gas prices...

so according to the us government my car gets about 31 miles per gallon highway and 24 mpg city (this seems to hold true to my own experience)...google maps tells me my drive is about 40 miles from home to work (that commute is killing me)...

so with gas costing me about $2.70/gallon lets compare the price of public transit to the price of driving my car...

at highway mileage rates (which is accurate for almost my entire trip) I'm spending about $6.97 a day on gas to drive to work and back...even if I were to drive the entire trip at city mileage rates I'm still paying only about $8.66 for a round trip in my car....

caltrain does offer some slight discounts if you buy either a 10 ride pass, or a monthly pass...the 10 ride pass will get me to work and back for a full work weak for $44.75...compare this with the average estimated cost of driving over that same week at just $34.85...

the monthly pass will cover me for a full month for $139.25...this is roughly the same price as driving at about $139.40 for a months worth of gas...

so if I buy a month in advance I can save myself a wopping 14 cents!!!..there are a few problems here...

first, like a lot of tech proffessionals in the bay area I am able to telecommute several days a month, even a couple days a month not driving will dramatically shift the cost-benefit analysis in favor of driving...

second, the train takes much longer to get there (between 45 minutes to an hour extra each way), and I have to connect to VTA to make the final leg of my trip to the office, I get this part for free as a Juniper employee, but most people will have to throw down about %50 the cost of the caltrain ticket for a roundtrip on this connecting light rail every day...

third, with gas prices so high we can probably expect one of two things to happen, either gas prices will go back down (although not as low as they were before of course), or they will remain and the resulting inflation will raise the cost of other goods and services...including the caltrain...at best caltrain is breaking even with my car at the monthly rate, and thats not including the cost of c... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

flynn23 wrote:
You'll incur less mileage on your car, slowing the depreciation curve a bit and slowing maintenance cycles a bit, the idea of getting a discount on insurance for low mileage driving is a good one...

This, in my mind seems a fiscal misnomer. I'm sure someone more familiar with the statistic probablities of insurance has a better idea, but it would seem that the more time you spend on the road, both the more likely you are to have an accident, and the more likely you are to be familiar with the vehicle and thus avoid the accident. How often to truckers wreck compared to someone who drives 10, 20, or 50 miles a day? But I digress. I should look into this as well -- I drive less than 100 miles a month but thanks to road conditions, those 100 miles are rougher on my car than 100 miles of interstate.

Catonic wrote:

flynn23 wrote:
You'll incur less mileage on your car, slowing the depreciation curve a bit and slowing maintenance cycles a bit, the idea of getting a discount on insurance for low mileage driving is a good one...

This, in my mind seems a fiscal misnomer. I'm sure someone more familiar with the statistic probablities of insurance has a better idea, but it would seem that the more time you spend on the road, both the more likely you are to have an accident, and the more likely you are to be familiar with the vehicle and thus avoid the accident. How often to truckers wreck compared to someone who drives 10, 20, or 50 miles a day? But I digress. I should look into this as well -- I drive less than 100 miles a month but thanks to road conditions, those 100 miles are rougher on my car than 100 miles of interstate.

I'm not sure if this is a universal standard for actuaries but there's always a break if you drive less than 12K a year. Sometimes more breaks if it's a "classic" car (meaning that it's old, but not priceless old) and if it's a restored vehicle and you trailor it most of the time. I think there's some logic behind how much you're on the road, but that logic breaks down with 'familiarity'. That's never helped me avoid another person's stupidity.

so why does caltrain cost so much money? especially in a part of the world that smugly prides itself on being environmentally concious to the point of being rediculous...you would think that they would try to put some of that communism style of politics that they love in these parts into action by subsidising public transportation like caltrain...I'd love to ride the train to work, and I'm sure a lot of other people would too if it were economical...hell, I'm sure lots of people without cars that live in san francisco wouldn't mind living some where in the bay that was cheaper and commuting into the city...what good is public transportation if you price it so high that no-one uses it...

Decius does a great job of pointing out the practical stuff, so let me do the exact opposite and focus on the esoteric.. I'll even pretend to be serious.

The 101 is the leading indicator of the valley's economic health. When the traffic started to seriously drop off in 2001, we knew the dot-com was over. The more times the traffic is stop-and-go bumper-to-bumper on your way home, the better business is doing! Not to mention, all the billboards and building signs on the 101 are actually "They Live" style methods of subliminal messaging. You don't know it, but you are being blasted with covert messages that tie you into the Silicon Valley grand design.

Until it takes a hour and a half just to get between Redwood City and SFO again, there is no incentive to actually make the economics of Caltran work. The Dow may be breaking records again, but how's the traffic in the valley??

Rattle wrote:

The 101 is the leading indicator of the valley's economic health. When the traffic started to seriously drop off in 2001, we knew the dot-com was over. The more times the traffic is stop-and-go bumper-to-bumper on your way home, the better business is doing! Not to mention, all the billboards and building signs on the 101 are actually "They Live" style methods of subliminal messaging. You don't know it, but you are being blasted with covert messages that tie you into the Silicon Valley grand design.

Until it takes a hour and a half just to get between Redwood City and SFO again, there is no incentive to actually make the economics of Caltran work. The Dow may be breaking records again, but how's the traffic in the valley??

wow, thats actually a really good comment...I never looked at it like that, but you're probably right

wow, thats actually a really good comment...I never looked at it like that, but you're probably right

Oh, I'm sure I'm right about that, even though my tongue is firmly in my cheek.

However, I think you pissed off the Caltrain gods. They are taking revenge on humanity.

Rattle wrote:

wow, thats actually a really good comment...I never looked at it like that, but you're probably right

Oh, I'm sure I'm right about that, even though my tongue is firmly in my cheek.

However, I think you pissed off the Caltrain gods. They are taking revenge on humanity.

first they charge too much, now they're killing people...next they'll be sending sexually explicit emails to thier teenage male interns...

Abaddon wrote:
so all busted ass point of sale technology aside, why does it cost me nearly twice as much money to ride the train to work than it does to drive?!? the cost of a 3 zone ticket (san francisco to mountain view) is $10.50 round trip per day!...so lets break that down and compare that to gas prices...

They've apparently gone up quite a bit. It was only a little over half that during the dot-com boom.