Well that wasn't quite the message the Guardian Money and Jobs, Sat 15/2/03, 
p.2 was telling us, but that, sadly, is what the figures on their table do 
add up to.
To quote these figures, for a 1500cc car bought new, 36,000 miles over three 
years, cost per mile is 40.9p. That in fact gives car owners four strong 
reasons NOT to use public transport. Remember we are talking about a shift 
from cars to buses, those who don't have cars, have no choice about using the 
bus, may be environmentally virtuous but they aren't going to be contributing 
to a lessening of congestion/pollution in responce to any government 
transport measures.
So, 1) Most bus fares in cities seem to be set at initially around £1.00 for 
any distance, rising gradually with distance. At 40.9p a mile for cars, the 
bus only wins out on cost after some 4 miles or so. Regular travellers may 
get season bus tickets at lower cost, but on the other hand for those not 
going into town every day of the week season tickets may well not be a good 
buy. For many medium-sized towns and cities, the daily commute to the centre 
may well be less than four miles. 4 miles is about the radius of Leicester's 
built-up area.
2) Most cars aren't new. Many are more than 3 years old. The Guardian figures 
were a total cost (tax, petrol, wear and tear, insurance, depreciation etc) 
of £14,726. Divided by 36,000 miles gives the 40.9p per mile. But of this 
£14,726, £8,662 was depreciation and financing charges. For older cars, 
depreciation is much less fast. True, other costs may rise. Older cars are 
less fuel-efficient, and service costs are higher. If we halve depreciation, 
and add a quarter to fuel and service costs, we now have per-mile costs of 
34.5p per mile. We now have something like 5.5 miles radius before the bus 
wins out. That is a city the size of Liverpool.
3) For a motorist who has bought their car, costs like depreciation, tax, 
insurance, are already committed, sunk costs. The only per-mile costs that 
are relevant to an ongoing decision as to whether to use the car or leave it 
at home and take the bus are  petrol, wear and tear, parking charges, and 
congestion charges. These latter two weren't in The Guardian calculations, so 
let's say 6 days a week, 50 weeks a year (holidays excepted) 3 years, add on 
£5 a day for congestion+parking, or £4,500. Petrol was £2,914, total; 
servicing, tyres etc was total £975. We now have marginal or running costs of 
£8369 for 36,000 miles, or 23.3p/mile. The bus now takes some 12-15 miles to 
be economic over the car. That is a city the radius of London.
4) The car has a number of conveniences over the bus, such as protection from 
the weather, door-to-door service, predictability, some safety, both from 
crime and RTAs (at least for the occuopants, tho' not pedestrians cyclists), 
easier to carry things, keeping clothes smart (we live in a very 
appearance-oriented society, if a very smart and able person goes to a job 
interview in jeans, a dim one goers in a suit, guess who gets the job). These 
factors are harder to put a cash value on, but time can be valued. The car is 
still quicker than the bus in many cities, despite priority bus lanes etc, 
because of the door-to-door factor, no waiting, car can go direct, no 
changes. In Leeds for example, the A.64 has all the pro-bus traffic stuff, 
but even in the rush hour a six mile journey by car, Crossgates to the 
University, is around 30 minutes by car but at least 45 minutes by bus (door 
to door, but my start point in Crossgates is 200m from the bus stop). Leisure 
time is generally costed at around a third of wages by economists, say at 
least £3 an hour for a car driver. The 'time penalty' for using the bus is 
then around 75p per six miles here, say 10p a mile on average. Deducting that 
from the car running mileage above gives a car cost of 13.3p/mile. Even for a 
city the size of Tokyo, radius 20 miles, the car is going to win out.
Most measures to curb motorists seem to be far more 'stick' than 'carrot', 
and are heavily into surveillance. For example, speed cameras that record all 
cars over a certain stretch of road, or the London congestion charge cameras. 
If we really wanted a shift to public transport, to reduce congestion, 
pollution, and accidents, we'd start by halving bus fares. Could it be that 
the real agenda here is monitoring citizen's movements, not giving us free-er 
movement in cities?
Hillary Shaw, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds. 
([log in to unmask]).