Safe Speed Forums

Please add in this area ALL the costs that we can think of that Motorists have to pay out for to run a car on UK roads :
I am addressing just how much the Motorist has to 'cover' - this has come up in the relation to why people find it 'worth' not to pay for (or cannot afford to) insurance, mot etc
So I wanted to see what does the FULL Cost of Motoring look like.

Main :
Car
Road Fund License
Insurance
Maintenance (general overall)
wear & tear maintenance (tyres/brakes)
Servicing & Labour
Fuel
Parking Charges
Parking charges mobile phone costs (to enable the parking charges)
Clamping charges
Tolls
Congestion Charging
Ommission Zone charges

Legal :
Parking Fines
Parking Clamp & administration fees
Pound & administration fees
Speeding Fines
If you fail to disclose SORN - auto fines.
If you fail to re-insure and fail SORN then - auto fines

Court Process Costs
Pay for your own costs to court - is ANY legal aid about?
Pay (now) for the Prosecution - if you win
Pay if you loose
Court Additional fees to failure to pay fines ...

Illegal
bribery payments - on the increase
Motorway parking charges

Additional Education :
Pass Plus ? cost?
Voluntary chosen courses - estimate your costs & why you chose that course ....

other ?

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

"Speed awareness course" fees.

By Road Fund Licence I take it that you mean Vehicle Excise Duty?

It is interesting that, despite this plethora of expenditure, most contributors counted little more than the cost of fuel when comparing the costs of motoring and public transport (Thread What is your experience of public transport

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Have to pay? You don't have to pay speed fines, clamping charges etc.. if you don't drive or park illegally.

Or the congestion charge for that matter, or toll charges (yet).

Under car costs you should add depreciation.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

And loss of interest on capital spent on the car, or the cost of servicing a loan.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Mine dont!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Well, (and you know this perfectly well I am sure)!

That is because car "Ownership" and car "use" (on the marginal journey) are, by most car owners, accounted in separate columns (as it were)

The descision to "own" a car is considererd separatly from the descision to make any individual journey.

as a result the choice is between "Not having a car and being totally dependent on PT" and "having a car and judging each journey on its individual economic merits". In the second scenario PT almost always compares poorly for someone who has already made the descision to own a car.

Sure, most people will appear to save transport costs by going "Car free" but the main reason for this is that you will simply make less journeys (certainly less spontainious ones) added to which you may find higher costs elswhere in your life (needing to use more expensive accomodation near to stations, shops etc) and other costs which are less easy to quantify such as having to live in grotty inner-city accomodation in order to have good PT/Work links (Of course not ALL inner city accomodation is grotty, but if you can afford the nice stuff you wouldnt be having this discussion ), having your travel options severly limited, having to travel in less comfortable enviroments and so on and the fact that you may well end up spending a lot more of your life travelling (what will you spend less time doing to compensate? Sleeping perhaps. Is that good for you??)

By analogy, most people could "save" money over buying/renting a house by finding a cheap long-stay hotel/boarding house to live in, but I suspect few would make that choice. (unless it was forced on them)

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Of course I appreciate the differance in the cost of owning a car and the cost of using a car but I suspect many people fool themselves about this. I have just had an argument with a collegue who justified his decision to drive to London on the grounds that the train fare was fifty odd pounds whereas his car would only use 35 litres of fuel at just under a pound a litre.

I have (apropos the unquoted part of your post) never advocated going "car free". Car ownership is an essential plank of an integrated transport policy. All I ever ask is that for every journey you do a proper cost/benifit analysis of the various transport options. And that means properly costing the car journey.

Fuel is obvious - no one ducks that one. A modern car doing ten miles per litre is about eight pence a mile . Depreciation - lets say you buy a twelve thousand pound car anmd run it for 100,000 miles and resell it for two thousand - another ten pence a mile. Service - ten 10,000 mile services is another £3,000, threpence a mile a mile. Two sets of tires at £500 - halfpenny a mile. This is approaching twentyfive pence a mile so my collegues's journey really cost him over eighty pounds.

Of course you are entitled to put a price on the convenience and comfort of using a car though that convenience is often illusionary.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Bangernomics cuts it right down to size. Depreciation is small, as it depends on the length of the MOT. Servicing, forget it. 1 oil change a year, no filter. The AA covers the risk. Cost: a fiver. Tyres: 30 quid each. Yearly outgoings: say around £350 all in if you are lucky. If you can get get a diesel at 60 to the gallon, total is not much more that 12 p a mile. Insurance: 92 quid third party. It's the only way to go, nowadays.

PS: I bought a really good Toyota Corolla back in '03 for £450. It lasted me 4 years. I splashed out on a Clio in 2004, and paid a grand, but it had a low mileage. That's still only got 60k on the clock, so I expect that'll last another three years. I also have a Peugeot deisel, but I don't know how that'll work out yet.

When PT costs more than a 20mpg car then you have to ask yourself why. I usually check out train costs whenever I can but by the time you add in train station parking and the extortionate cost of the ticket then PT at the other end to get where you want to go then the car is just cheaper, even at 20mpg! Doesn't seem to matter whether it was short journeys or long ones. A day return to manchester from stoke used to be £8. Now it seems to be £14!! Add in the inconvenience of changing multiple times it is just less trouble by car. I actually think park and ride is the best balance then you aren't clogging up city centres but the return transport is cheap and frequent.

As most people have a car anyway it is only the fuel and parking costs which are relevant. There are many journeys eg family holidays with luggage/kids etc where PT just isn't possible. The more I check out PT alternatives the more trouble they seem to be with cost, poor route choice, long journey times. It's a no brainer frankly. Take the car and have more time with your family and friends instead of wasting it on a bus/train.

Also the legal costs, penalties and fines are choices not actual costs in my opinion.

If you work in a city and live fairly near, some Metro systems are quite good. Merseyrail, for example, has 120 km
of track and 67 stations. There is no fee to park at most of them. It works very well, a bit like the S-Bahn/U-Bahn
system in Munich. It carries 100,000 passengers a day. It can't be beat.

Does your car not suffer depreciation: does it not require maintainence: does it not wear out tyres? Please let me into the secret of this magnificent machine!

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I call them "jalopies"!

Ok, here's a worked example, me and my GF want to go to London Euston as she has a hospital appointment and as per usual have been given short notice, so I ask nationalrail.co.uk for the prices from Newport to London , I have a choice of off-peak at £85 with certain unspecified restrictions but we'll almost certainly be coming back at rush hour so that's no good, or anytime at £175. That's £175 each.

On top of that we need to add £6 to park at Newport and 12.5 miles each way driving, lets assume I get 40mpg and £1/litre which I don't because I don't have a diesel, but it makes the sums easier. Lets also double the petrol cost to account for wear and tear (depreciation is not an issue on any of our cars) That's £1.42 in petrol each way, total costs for one person:

Tickets: £175
Parking: £6
Diesel: £2.84
Wear and tear: £2.84

Total: £186.68 (Two people: £361.68)

Lets be kind and get the £85 off peak tickets:

Total: £96.68 (Two people: £181.68)

Lets drive there instead, it's 152 miles each way
Tickets: £0
Parking: £15
Diesel: £34.56
Wear and tear: £34.56

Total: £84.12 (Two people: £84.12) There is no congestion charge because you can turn left just before reaching Euston station and there's a handy car park there just outside the con charge zone.

Now lets assume we don't have a frugal diesel but a gas guzzling 20mpg luxury car, that will double our fuel costs.

Total: £118.68 (Two people: £118.68)

So for a single person trip the best case scenario for rail just edges out the worst case scenario (excluding 6 litre Bentleys and the like) for cars by a whopping £12, for that you get restrictions on your travel time which could land you a nasty fine if you screw up and travel at the wrong time, and may entail waiting around at either end to avoid this. Even in this ideal scenario once you add a second person the car is much cheaper.

For that extra £12 you get to drive your hulking great luxury gas guzzler at any time of the day and without having to put up with all the other unpleasantness of public transport which I described quite well in another thread.

If you drive a small economical diesel you beat the public transport costs in both scenarios.

Obviously I'm not including car ownership costs such as tax, MOT and insurance since they're fixed costs regardless of whether you make that particular journey or not.

I know! Why are these trains so flippin' dear? I once took a return trip from Luxor to Aswan, 200 km, and it cost just a couple of Egyptian pounds. These firms are gouging us.

But you do have to put up with all the unpleasentness of motorway driving - long periods of stationary traffic, madmen trying to kill you and so on.

At least you did the comparison which is all this PT proponent asks.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

But at least on British trains you get to travel inside rather than on the roof

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

As a fellow Clio owner, I salute your heady optimism!

Bought my 1998 1.4 Civic in 2002. It's really difficult to calculate the cost per mile untill it goes. I rekoned it was circa 40p/mile. The low annual mileage was pushing the fixed costs per mile up. I pushed the MPG's up to over 40 (boring) which kept the fuel down to 12p in the summer, it's 10ish now.

The mileage is now 91800 and I started at 29500. It cost 6995 less 600 trade in and the total cost of the loan was £125. It's now worth £700 to trade. have no intention of selling it untill it's dead. I always think people are overly optimistic with their maintainance costs, which they call "servicing". It only costs a 2 or 300 notes to service for the year, but have one problem and that can double. I did some rough head calculations and rekoned 20p/mile for the next year if I do 10k as I now consider it written off "on the books" and just checked and I'm not far off.

Travelling alone it might be cheaper on the train, but worst case to go to my parents/family nr Telford from sunny Southend is 5 hours (it can be that bad), it's normally 3.5 hrs, which is best case from the trains assuming I go when it suits them not me. Take a friend with me and the cost of the train soon pays for a nicer car.

Have to pay? You don't have to pay speed fines, clamping charges etc.. if you don't drive or park illegally (in the main).

Or the congestion charge for that matter, or toll charges (yet).

Don't you think it's a little out there to include costs incurred due to failure to pay fines as a cost of motoring?