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Old 06-04-2012, 03:10 PM   #61 (permalink)
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it might be expensive but you can not "DO" anything with if it you say reduced it to 10 minutes.

what would you "DO" with the 250 20 minute chunks of time? remember you can't bank them. you can't add them up you can not save them.

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Old 06-04-2012, 03:40 PM   #62 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by Nerys View Post
what would you "DO" with the 250 20 minute chunks of time? remember you can't bank them. you can't add them up you can not save them.
You seem to be looking at that 20 minutes as if its an isolated timeslot - as if 'I'm going to do this for 20 minutes, then I absolutely must do something else' which makes it look fairly useless. Fortunately, any task or activity that takes a longer block of time can be time-shifted or extended into that 20 minutes. You can timeshift your sleep 20 minutes later on the clock, and the saved time moves your arrival home by another 20 minutes, extending the block of time that is 'not-sleep-or-work' by 40 minutes a day. For me that is about 4 hours right now. (must have me beauty rest) With an extra 40 minutes, I extend that to 4.67 hours, a 17% increase in personal time availability to do whatever I want with. 40 more continuous minutes of working on the house, or writing my novel, or whatever else I care to do.

So I can't save them, nope not even a bit. But I CAN spend them on whatever I would like instead of commuting, and I can put those on the same (or alternately, adjacent) days together. Back when I commuted 150 miles a day, I didn't really mind the driving, I just minded the loss of my personal time.
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Old 06-04-2012, 04:07 PM   #63 (permalink)
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My worst part of the commute is the last 5km to get to work and the first 5km when leaving work.

It takes me 15min to cover that 5km to get to the highway and another 30min to cover 45km!!

So even if i moved to 5km away i only cut my commute to a 1/3rd...And my house price has tripled.

My co-worker lives exactly half the distance from work that i do. We both have the same commute time wise. He goes through the city and i come from the outside. His house and land is the same as mine and yet he paid twice i did and pays property tax and mortgage double what i do. It takes him just as long to go to a store as me because hes constantly sitting at red lights while i have a 80km/h rural road with one or two lights.

And the people who say "oh, you commute 1 hour each way, thats 2 hours a day in the car, imagine what you can do with that time" are being narrow minded.

Unless you live AT work, you have a commute. It may be shorter but you still have to drive/bike/walk XX amount of time. So to compare someones commute to a ZERO value is misleading.

Lets not even take into consideration the fact that since i moved outside the city to a rural small town i CANNOT stand being anywhere near the center of a metropolis. You can take your "convenience" and "hussle and bussle" an i'll take my clean air, friendly neighbors and kids playing on the streets.
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Old 06-04-2012, 04:10 PM   #64 (permalink)
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I can do a lot with 20 minute chunks of time. I can set my alarm for 5:50 instead of 5:30. My kindergartener's alarm can be set for 6:15 instead of 5:55. I can drag my 3 year old out of bed (literally) and dress him while he's still yawning and stretching at 6:35 instead of 6:15.

I can stop at the grocery store, hardware store or gas station on the way home without being late to pick them up at 5:00. I might even be able to get a haircut. I can get dinner started 20 minutes earlier. I'll be able to see sunlight later into the fall and earlier in the spring.

I'm looking forward to changing.
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Old 06-04-2012, 05:28 PM   #65 (permalink)
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I just started a third-shift job, which brought my commute down from 30+ to 21.6 miles each way. It's all back roads now, so I'm no longer driving on I-95 and dealing wiith tolls and crazy traffic. It takes me about 35 minutes, but it's a pleasant, relaxing drive, particularly in the morning when I come home and the sun is out. My mileage is almost the same (68.3 mpg on my last tank), and the drive even takes me past my building lot; when I finally build my passive solar home, my commute will be reduced to 18 miles.
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Old 06-04-2012, 05:49 PM   #66 (permalink)
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I drive 350 miles each way twice a week back and forth (Fridays and Sundays) between work and home. It's about six hours, and not too bad. I get a chance to relax, talk on the phone to friends and family and listen to some great talk radio via iHeartRadio on my Android phone.
Yes, I would prefer not to do it, but its now second-hand, and the time flies by...even at 67mph and 67mpg.
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Old 06-04-2012, 09:16 PM   #67 (permalink)
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Started taking public transportation and walking most of the way when I was still working.

Driving to work simply is too expensive. I have to pay for toll, parking, fuel and wear and tear for the maintenance of the car. Walking improved my health and rid me of my nasty tendency to cause road rage. When I'm walking or in the bus, I just take the time to enjoy the view and visit some mom and pop stores along the way.

One thing...they implemented a Vehicle Reduction scheme in the capital city. What that means is, you are not allowed to use your car for the whole day. It has been that way for decades and I really don't know whether it's working or not since most opt to buy a second or third car.
Sample:
plates ending in 1 and 2 are not allowed on the roads on Mondays
plates ending in 3 and 4 are not allowed on the roads on Tuesdays
plates ending in 5 and 6 are not allowed on the roads on Wednesdays
plates ending in 7 and 8 are not allowed on the roads on Thursdays
plates ending in 9 and 0 are not allowed on the roads on Fridays

it used to be this:
All cars with plates ending in 1,3,5,7,9 are banned from roads Tuesday Thursday and Saturday
All cars with plates ending in 0,2,4,6,8 are banned from roads Monday Wednesday and Friday
it was on for 3 years but got replaced by the scheme i mentioned above
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Old 06-04-2012, 09:28 PM   #68 (permalink)
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The downside though is what used to be a 1 hour drive for 18 miles is now an hour and a half when taking public transportation but I don't mind..like I said there are lots of mom and pop stores and some other stalls you couldn't stop for when in a car but you can visit wen you're walking...not to mention the bus/jeepney takes the more scenic route

This is the view from the coastal road you'll get when you look to the side of the bus or jeepney when going home.

it aint my pic though but its the same place
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Old 06-04-2012, 09:30 PM   #69 (permalink)
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This thread reminds me of a conversation I overheard between two professors. They were talking about how nobody should live more than a walk away from work. They seemed puzzled when I asked them how a janitor is going to afford one of the near campus houses. Even if you can afford the house, the doubling of the price for an identical house 20 miles away means high property taxes. In Wisconsin, you're talking $2000-$3000 more per year extra just for the tax.

I think this arugment is like the one for using waste vegetable oil. The oil is free, so it makes financial sense... until more than just a couple of people are doing it. Now, you have to pay for the oil, unless you have good connections. The same can be said for housing. How many people are going to be able to live that close to their work? Its nice if you can live that close, but its not as easy as the author makes it seem.

My arguments against the article are a $500 vw diesel rabbit that gets 45mpg. Cost of ownership is $0.03/mile. Fuel is about $0.10/mile. Extra time from not commuting would be spent surfing the net, so no extra cash for me. I can't get any extra money, no matter how much extra I work. Same size house and yard/garage in town would be 3x what I paid for the one I have. No buses or other public transportation is available, unless I move into the city.

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Old 06-04-2012, 09:57 PM   #70 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by slowmover View Post
1) Driving costs $0.51/mile. It doesn't. Especially to an eco-modder. My car gets relatively poor mileage compared to many on this forum (~32 MPG), and its cost of ownership is well under $0.15/mile. If I paid for maintenance, this would surely increase, but would not even be close to $0.51/mile.

Actually the per-mile cost is likely higher. Much higher. You are confusing fuel cost with the greater "ownership cost": purchase price, finance charge, depreciation, tawes, insurance, registration, etc. Fuel cost is less than half, on average.
[snipping the car-centric stuff out to focus on the commuting part]
We'll take an example of the three cars I own now:

Purchase price: All under $3000 but keep in mind that you can't just add this price to depreciation to make a figure. If you want to use this figure you can't add depreciation to it, you can use one and say you'll keep the car forever or you can factor the depreciation you expect at the time you plan to sell.
Finance charge: Non existent and doesn't really change with your commute distance.
Depreciation: I bought one for about half the cost everyone was asking for it, the next I bought with an asking price that was over twice what I paid, and the other probably depreciated down about $1500 now as it used to be rust free but now its almost a decade older and covered in brown flakes. I could sell two of them for the price I paid for them because I bought them with excellent opportunity, the asking prices are still $5-6k and the car is in great condition.
Taxes and registration: All three cars are $42 a year for this.
Insurance: Three cars combined $80/month (maybe if you are a young new driver you are paying loads more money for one car, I don't know)

Since the car is a one time purchase for most people that will likely last over a decade and hundreds of thousands of miles, its a larger issue if you paid to much for your transportation by buying new. You really can't factor the commute distance into this though because depreciation is based more on time and rust than anything else.

So let's take one car and do some math.

$3000 to buy and you keep it for 10 years and drive it into a lake.
$300/year
You were smart and saved the money to buy a reasonable car instead of hucking money into something shiny that smells good and has 5 miles on it. Don't get me started on leases either.
Depreciation? We drove it into a lake, it's not cumulative, we already factored this.
Tax/reg $42
Insurance, I paid $45/month for one car, you could expect the same if you've got good credit and aren't driving a sports car with the $5 deductible crash and 'acts of god' coverage. $540/year
Maintenance: 3 oil changes for 15k miles $24/year plus a coolant change every 2 years $20/year. I popped a water pump once, swapped the belts and hoses, spark plugs, and a few other things, and that's about it $350, so over 6 years($60/year). Add a tire swap every 3 years at $320 per swap, we'll figure $107/year.

$1253 per year, almost half of this is insurance and the car would likely give you more than a decade of operation.
How much is gas? If we figure 40mpg and 15,000 miles(375 gallons).
$3.50/gallon $1312
$4.00/gallon $1500
$4.50/gallon $1688
$5.00/gallon $1875

Figuring $4 gallon as gas prices don't exactly trend down over time, we're paying more for gas than anything else out of a $2753 total.
...but 15000 miles / 2753 = 18 cents per mile with everything included.

Now of course we are a bit better off if we don't drive our car into a lake like this scenario predicts. My daily driver is a Honda Insight now though and its costs are lower and the car in my example was actually bought for less than $3k.

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