Problems with the Bus

Last night we went to my brother's house for Easter dinner. (Which was awesome, thanks guys.) We decided that we would do a sort of "park and ride" by driving to the bus stop, parking the car on the street (free on Sundays!) and taking the bus. Going to my brother's house was no problem. The bus was right on time, the ride was pleasant... the walk from the bus stop to the house was about 10 minutes -- not too bad. It took about 40 minutes in all (driving would have been about 20). But on the way back, we missed the bus. Big problem! We walked to the bus stop, but just as we were getting there, we saw the bus go by -- early! Almost 10 minutes early. This was NOT COOL, as the next bus wouldn't be by for another hour. It was already past my kids' bedtime, so my cousin and my brother's girlfriend gave us a ride to the car -- why two people? Aha! Because we don't all fit in one car. So, it didn't save any gas at all -- in fact, it was worse. We should have saved 14.6 miles of driving. Instead, we caused 30 miles of driving. ARGH!!

Lesson learned? I guess it's not realistic to take the bus at night with the family. OR we'll have to plan to be at least 15 minutes early at the bus stop.

My brother did let me know about a cool new feature of google -- in some cities, you can do google directions and click on a tab that says "Take public transit". It will give you various options of where to take the bus and tell you how much money you will save. According to this feature, driving would have cost us 7.06, whereas the bus only cost us 1.00 (because of the young kids and my student status). I think this is a pretty realistic driving cost. A while ago I calculated how much it cost us per mile to drive, and it came out right around .50 a mile. This figure is not just for gas, but wear and tear on the car, maintenance, etc. The IRS rate for 2007 business use was 48.5 cents per mile, so about the same.

I'll be updating the driving numbers on Wednesday.