Of course the merits of the train decrease if you have nore than one person in your car. In the below example the cost of 4 people in the car would be the same, but £220 on the train. Having said that a single ticket isn't much cheaper than a return, but the car will obviously cost the same to drive from London to Cleethorpes as it does from Cleethropes to London.
These issues are a reality for me at present. I don't have a car, but the amounts that my wife and I pay out in train fares makes me wonder if I should get one.
John

-----Original Message-----
From: Hillary Shaw [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 04 November 2003 14:47
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Travel times


A letter in today's 'Times', from a Cleethorpes resdient (not a million miles 
from my home town of Scunthorpe), comparing travel times and costs from there 
to London, by train and car. In this case, the equation was, time by train, 
3h 40m, time by car, also 3h 40m, because the car was being run in and was not 
to be driven over 55mph. Had the car done the legal limit of 70, or to be 
realistic, say 75mph as everyone does on UK motorways, travel by car would 
probably have been a bit under 3 hours. Cost, by train, single, £55. Cost by car, 
petrol £10, congestion charge, £5. I guess wear and tear/depreciation might have 
doubled the cost to £20, total £25. One could force the car cost higher by 
including tax and insurance, but these are 'sunk costs', paid anyway assuming a 
car is needed at all (it certainly is in any rural area where buses are about 
as common as snow in June). Once these costs are paid, it actually pays the 
motorist to use their car more as these costs are then spread more thinly per 
mile driven.
It's the same story for Scunthorpe to Leeds. Cost of car, petrol alone, about 
half the train cost, or about the same with depreciation/wear and tear added. 
Time of journey, about 1h 15m by car, 2h by train if all goes to schedule, a 
lot longer if it doesnt (which is a lot more often than the times a major 
traffic jam adds significantly to the road time).
As the Cleethorpes correspondent points out, the train is now becoming a 
noisy stressful environment. Noise and jumpy track mean pastimes like reading are 
difficult. This balance says nothing of the journey required to get to the 
station at Scunthorpe, or from Leeds station to one's final destination, or the 
need to carry luggage on/off buses and trains. Furthermore, Scunthorpe station 
charges for pay and display parking, and there is nowhere else within nearly a 
mile to park all day.
If time and cost were the only considerations we could have a utility 
comparison between train and car, something like,
(time of journey by train / time of journey by car) X (cost of journey by 
train / cost of journey by car)
For the train to be an attractive option, the above would have to come out at 
well under 1.0, say 0.7 or 0.8.
In fact the first term is usually around 2.0, and the second between 1.0 and 
2.0. Total advantage of car over train, 2.0 - 4.0.
Can anyone here tell me how much I need to earn to be able to afford to be a 
good environmentalist and use the train - it looks like it must be a lot more 
than a lecturer's starting salary anyway!
Hillary Shaw, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT
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