In July, I took the train to Ottawa. It was my first time on VIA Rail. I enjoyed it immensely. Michael and I drove to David and Dayle’s house to pick them up, then onto Rani’s. Rani drove us downtown to Union Station and her brother, who lives downtown, drove the car home for her. We left home at 10:45 and arrived at our residence in Ottawa at 6:20 for a total travel time of 7:35. We could have shaved off about half an hour, but then we might have run the chance of missing the train. It cost me $68 (not including the cost of the car portions of the trip) one way.
When I began planning this family trip I looked into taking the train, but it turned out to be much more costly and time consuming than driving.
We would have had to take Brampton Transit ($22.80, four people, two ways, Presto cards), GO Train (Family Pass 2x$35), Via Rail ($786.48) and Ottawa Transit ($26.80, four people, two ways, Presto cards).
The direct costs of taking our car included gas ($110), tolls ($58) and parking for 3 nights ($33).
Using the CAA Driving Costs Calculator ** for my minivan I determined that a fully loaded rate, including insurance, repairs, gas and depreciation is $0.58 per kilometre.
*Taking the car allowed us to take a side trip to Brockville to see Canada’s first train tunnel which is newly reopened as a cycling and pedestrian attraction and is included in the total trip time of 6.5 hours.
Driving was a no-brainer, even for someone like me that tries to minimize my driving and even though we did not drive the entire time we were in Ottawa. It took less time, gave us more flexibility for sightseeing on travel days, and cost dramatically less money.
I imagine, but did not investigate, that even had we rented a car and paid for insurance, it would have cost less than taking transit.
If one considers only the direct costs of driving it would have been cheaper to drive even if only one person was in the car! And for two people it is essentially a wash between fully costed driving and transit.
Even if we had paid a $0.29 per kilometre toll (the amount paid on the provincial portion of the 407 and 412) for the entire trip (964km*$0.29), it would have only added just over an additional $200 to our driving costs.
Unless the cost of driving is deliberately and dramatically increased, how can we hope to motivate enough people to stop driving to make a difference to congestion and greenhouse gas emissions?
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