On Sat, 3 Jun 2006 07:26:39 +0100, Walter Briscoe wrote:

I was surprised you can do the work journey for 50p by car. I assume
that is the marginal cost. i.e. it ignores depreciation, car tax,
insurance, etc.

Oops, I didn't address this in my otherwise all-encompassing response to
Tom Anderson.

My estimate of 50p is based on some ancient calculation I did which was
mostly to do with petrol but did have a bit added on for other costs.

It is probably an underestimate to some extent, but given that
circumstances dictate that I can't go completely car-free
('circumstances' mainly being too many relatives living nearby but in
areas with awful public transport links, due to our almost-in-Kent
location), many of the extra costs would be incurred anyway so aren't
strictly relevant.

One reason the figure is so low is that I have a Kia Picanto which was
not only very cheap to buy to start with but also has extremely good
fuel consumption, to the extent that I didn't notice any difference when
moving to it from my old Citroën AX, which was also cheap to run, but
was getting on a bit so had started to run up some hefty maintenance
bills. The Picanto's still new enough to be only halfway through its
three-year warranty so no worries on that front either!

Anyway, don't want to ramble about my car for too long, lest I start
sounding like some kind of car-lover when in an ideal world I'd go
everywhere by public transport! Suffice to say I do have a 'My other car
is a bus' sticker in the Picanto

Paul