I did a little math for earth day. Maybe someone can help me see the light...
...I have a round trip commute of 11.8 miles, which in my 25 MPG 1998 Civic takes 0.472 gallons of gas for a cost of $1.67 in gas. Now I paid $30,000 for purchase (bought new), taxes, repair and insurance over the 115,000 miles I've driven that car which works out to a current cost of $0.26 per mile driven, or $3.08 per commute. So my total commute costs me $4.75.
The problem is that the DC Metro costs me $2.55 each way, for a total of $5.10 each day. Since I'm not driving but I still pay insurance on the car I maintain, which costs $1.36 per day for a total of $6.46 to ride the Metro.
So, if I've done my math correctly, I would be paying an extra $2.01 to ride the Metro. Gas would have to cost an additional $4.25 per gallon, or $7.80 per gallon for me to break even.
Now I've timed my commute and it takes me 15 minutes there and 20 minutes back, by car for a total of 35 minutes. It takes me 15-20 minutes to walk to the Metro, 0-5 minutes on platform, 11 minutes to my stop and 10 minutes to work from the platform. That's a total of 36 to 46 minutes each way.
According to CarbonCounter.org over the 3,540 miles per year which I commute in my 25 mpg Civic I release 1.24 tons of carbon. According to that site, I could buy $14.88 of offsets per...year in order to become carbon neutral for commuting, or even more to become carbon positive. I could offset my entire year of emissions with the extra money I would have spent on 8 days of taking the Metro.
So why should I take public transportation?