My Suburban Life

In re: "Costly Commute: Is alternate transportation best?"

        May 02, 2012 Suburban Life Publications

Dear Editor;

While it may be surmised that the premise of the "fluff" article "Costly Commute: Is alternate transportation best?" was only to disparage public transportation, the choice of data used in the analysis to determine what is "best" skews the conclusion significantly from reality.  As such, the article cannot even qualify as "infotainment," and is a disservice to the reader.

While the article assumes that cars get 33 mpg on the highway, according to the Department of Transportation (2009), the average miles per gallon for newer passenger cars is 22.4 mpg and that of SUVs has risen to an average of 18 mpg.  Based on just that fact, the cost of $6.12 for the car trip set out in the article might increase by 50% to about $9 or even more.  Of course, the commute is not only on the highway.  It is easily conceivable that the car might not be new and might not be achieving 22.4 mpg, but would get less mpg on the particular trip selected by the writer - and just based on this fact, it is likely that the car will fare worse than the $10.50 rate charged by Metra.  And how many motorcycles actually get 56 mph? Very, very few, if any.

The article also fails to take into consideration the cost of driving the car, including maintenance due to wear and tear, regular oil changes, and vehicle depreciation due to mileage.  In addition, the article fails to take into account the health effects of air and water pollution and accidents, which we all pay for with our vehicle and health insurance premiums, not to mention the portion of our state and federal taxes which compensate health providers for services provided to individuals without insurance.  Also, the health effects of driving to the car driver herself due to the time spent battling traffic and the poor road surfaces of our overused and crowded roadways is not factored in to the costs set out in the article.  What about parking?  In the Loop, parking can be as much as $28 a day.  What about the staggering costs of maintaining the automobile infrastructure? We also seem to consider as an acceptable risk an incredible number of deaths and injuries due to vehicle use - 33,808 deaths and over 2,000,000 injuries in 2009.  These primary and hidden costs of driving are all well known.

Public transportation is certainly not perfect.  There are other costs in a diesel train operation as well not reflected in the cost of the ticket, but a realistic analysis would be much more useful in helping the reader understand what is the "best" alternative  transportation.  One might also be interested in factoring in the benefits of multimodal transportation design including various forms of "active" transportation, my personal favorite.

It was sobering to see this poorly researched article - aside from the obvious biases of the writer, using pertinent data could have made it much more thought-provoking.

VTY,

Steve Courtright