Worth it?
One of the main gripes from the road lobby is that transit is more expensive than driving on government-subsidized (mostly) free roads using gasoline provided by domestic companies that get favorable royalty rates and tax credits for drilling on public lands or from foreign sources protected by the might of the U.S. military. Since farebox recovery rates are much easier to calculate than adding up the many scattered subsidies for cars, roads and sprawl, road travel always looks cheaper.
Then gasoline hit $2.50 per gallon in many places.
In February of 2004, we wrote about a new ferry service between Milwaukee, Wis., and Muskegon, Mich., across Lake Michigan.
For $118 roundtrip per car and $85 roundtrip per individual (pricing schedule), you can take the 5 3/4 hour road trip in about half the time. By road, the trip is 276 miles long. With a 15 mpg SUV and $2.50 gas, your trip will cost $92 assuming your mileage doesn't go down as you crawl all the way through Chicago. If you value your additional time at your destination and on the boat instead of driving at $15 per hour, you get an additional $172.50 in utility for the round trip. Suddenly, the ferry starts becoming competitive. Even if you had to use some sort of Zipcar-like by-the-hour car rental service to get around, you still may be ahead depending on how much you value your time.
Of course, this is a special case. Most destinations do not have large bodies of water between them that you have to drive around, nor are most vacation trips taken alone. But still, the ferry shows how, as gas prices rise, other alternate modes of transportation become economical.
The question that remains is whether American drivers are rational actors.
Post Author:
rj3 | 10:59 AM |
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