Car travel about a quarter of the cost of transit

Car travel currently costs about 24c/passenger-mile versus 87c on transit in 2007. Randall O'Toole of the Cato Institute gets these rough numbers as follows:

Americans spent $1,070b on driving cars according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis including cars, repairs, insurance, taxes and fees. The drove about 3 trillion vehicle miles according to the FHWA. That's 36c/vehicle-mile.

Average vehicle occupancy is 1.6 persons so the cost per passenger-mile is  24c.

The US spent $45b on transit which provided 52b passenger-miles of travel according to the National Transit Database, or 87c/passenger-mile.

Of course transit is heavily subsidized so the fares paid are much less than 87c/passenge-mile.

The National Transit Database shows the average fare on transit is 20.5c/passenger-mile with the subsidy 66.5c.

O'Toole comments: "I've noticed that transit agencies keep average fares fairly close to the average cost of driving."

So while the price of transit is similar to the price of driving, the cost of transit to society is way higher.

see http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/-Save-Washingtons-Metro-by-privatizing-the-system-public-transit-40425517.html

TOLLROADSnews 2009-03-01