This is a question I try to ask every time I take a bus, a train, a flight, or my car for traveling. In western Europe (that includes majorly Belgium, Netherlands, France, Germany, United kingdom), most of the cities have a remarkable public transport infrastructure. You can choose from buses, trams, and in some cities, underground subways. The buses predominantly run on diesel, with some cities having electric buses, which means zero operation carbon emissions. Some prototypes of hydrogen-fueled buses are on trial which can revolutionize the transport of the future. My office is fifteen km away from my residence, and interestingly, I found one of the most efficient and rapid modes of transport for myself: the train. Many colleagues like me take trains to commute. As compared to a car, I have many advantages such as :
- Travel efficiency: With the train, I escape the morning traffic and therefore I am quite less stressed at my office. While on a train I can quickly read some personal or official emails.
- Swiftness: A train rolling at 100 kmph is faster than driving a car through traffic and signals.
- Cost: The price of a monthly subscription beats the price of fuel charges. Then there are additional maintenance costs and monthly insurance of the car.
The electrified TER train in France produces 29.2 g of carbon dioxide gas per kilometer (TER) as compared to 104 g per kilometer of my car (3.5 times more emissions). So overall it gives me immense satisfaction when I choose train over the car.
Well, all days are not the same and sometimes the weather (rain or snow) does not support my choice of sustainable travel option. Sometimes I have to work late in the evening and cannot catch the morning train. Some days I have to finish a midway bank work, and there are days when trains are delayed due to technical faults or strikes, and then I have to take out my car. But overall, I can feel satisfied that for going to my office I use a sustainable mode of transport unless situations arise as mentioned before.
But this habit takes a major shift as my choice of mode of transport differs when I have to visit a friend in the evening or buy groceries from a supermarket. I switch to my car which is rapid and efficient for point-to-point journeys. When I discussed this with a friend of mine, he said that at least you take the train as one of your transport in a day, many even don’t do that given the choice. This was a kind of ‘consolation’ prize but when I think deeper, I am spending in two ways for my transport: on public transport as well as on petrol, maintenance and insurance of my car. I knew if I switch completely to public transport it will cost less but that devoid me of the flexibility of time to visit some places, discover a restaurant off-road and the commercial center located in the outskirts of the city.
So I decided to compare the two options: the first is commuting every time by my car and the second is to include a mix of public transport and car, wherever necessary without compromising time loss. The next challenge was to decide the key parameters to compare the two scenarios. After some research, I choose the total running cost, convenience, travel time and environmental impacts as parameters. Safety and health benefits are definitely important but I did not consider them to narrow down my comparison.
Steps I took to compare
For a month, I used my car for commuting to the office besides grocery shopping, visiting my friends and leisure driving to nearby places. By car, I usually take 30 minutes to reach my office in the morning but almost 40 minutes in the evening due to increased rush hour due to people going shopping and activities (I guess). For grocery shopping, car provides me with a lot of flexibility as I could fill my car’s trunk with a week of grocery. It provided me with a lot of convenience and freedom to catch up with friends in the evening and attend my sports sessions. I had to fill the fuel tank twice a month, costing me around 140€, washed it atleast once in a month costing 6€ and paid for parking which cumulated to around 10€ and a 42€ monthly insurance (minimum offered by my insurance company which literally did not cover even any scratches and therefore I switched to a higher one). I am not adding here other charges of driving a car (motor oil, windshield washer fluid), which is done once every several months. Thanks to the air pump in our office parking, I did not pay for that.
Sometimes it was a bit difficult to find a nearby parking otherwise I found a personal car quite a convenient option for point-to-point commute, with a lot of flexibility.
In the subsequent month, I purchased the monthly subscription of public transport which costed me 40€. I choose the public transport for most of my commute such as for office, visiting city center. I also filled the cars fuel tanks for remote pick-up and drops whenever necessary such as grocery shopping to avoid pulling heavy weights from the supermarket to bus stops, save time and continue some leisure driving.
Overall it costed me 110€ with the hybrid option and escaped the stressful morning and evening traffic times. But I find the public transport less convenient and ineffective inside the city specially when a bus becomes completely trapped in traffic jams. Besides I was not comfortable in packed buses due to the sweating odour and no seats. Further I had to be a bit careful about my wallet and phone all the time (my smartphone was stolen in Lyon metro two years back). Infact a bicycle for city travel seemed worth than taking a public transport (warning: be careful from bicycle thieves in europe).
So the hybrid option costed me less than the car. Except for the trains to office which has a fixed departure and arrival timings, it was less convenient for city visits and I had to be vigilant all the time. From environmental impact point of view public transport and train wins over usage of car, but that comes at the cost of stress of being vigilant and discomfort with public transport. Here I am not sure how to compare the two situations. Do you know?
The question in my head is : does it worth to buy a subscription for using only the train for going to the office ? I started exploring other options. I am in a rented apartment now so I can move closer to the office and switch to a bicycle. Or I can start a car-pooling option to share the carbon footprint with office colleagues (but it does not always work), due to morning priorities or due to detours. To reduce my carbon footprint in travel I will keep exploring other ways.