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Vehicles cost half a dollar per mile to operate. Excluding the cost of labor for the driver, public transit will be in general cheaper if there is at least some demand for it. After a certain point, moving towards a shuttle system over a fixed route system might be best.

https://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/driving-cost-per-mile/




> Excluding the cost of labor for the driver, public transit will be in general cheaper if there is at least some demand for it.

Yes, if you arbitrarily exclude the labor, which is a big fraction of the total cost, and conveniently assume enough demand (capacity factor) to cover for higher vehicle costs and higher fuel costs, then yes, public transit will be cheaper. That's what I meant when I said that for highly popular routes it will be more cost-effective.

In real world scenario though this rarely works out for real systems out there. For example, I live in Seattle. The metro bus system is quite extensive and offers good coverage, by national standards. The bus fare here is $2.75 per ride. The farebox recovery is 27%. This means that to cover all operational costs of the bus, the fare would have to be $10.20. Suffice to say, it is much more expensive than total cost of owning and driving a car, as long as your trip is less than 20 miles. Bus trips this long are here absolutely miserable: 20 miles bus ride in practice means at least one transfer, and so instead of 20-30 minute drive, you're looking at 1:30h journey, assuming no traffic of course.


Public transit typically costs more than that in the US, because that labor you’re leaving out is unionized and very expensive: https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=88.




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