Every picture tells a story and the same applies with graphs. The chart below illuminates just how much the running costs of motoring have increased over time, over and above the rate of inflation. It is true that the cost of purchasing a car has fallen in relative terms leaving the ‘all motoring’ index pretty much in line with general inflation. However while a car purchase (such as changing vehicles) is often a discretionary spending choice which can be delayed, running a car tends not to be: you have to fill up the tank and insure your vehicles no matter how severe your financial situation.
The second graph shows how public transport fares have changed. They too have risen above inflation but not by as much as the running costs of cars.
Perhaps the main, depressing, conclusion to be drawn is that all travellers have seen costs shoot up.
Note: data comes from Office of National Statistics CPI charts.
Not “all travellers”. Walking is still pretty cheap and, so long as you’re not into Lord Sugar style composite road bikes, cycling is cheap, too.
Walking and cycling may be unsuitable for long-distance journeys but great majority of road journeys in UK are under five miles so perfectly suited to expenditure of shoe leather and bike tyre rubber.
Oh, and cycling and walking – as they are forms of exercise – are good for beating depression, too.
How much has the cost of a bike changed over recent years?
Wouldn’t want to knock exercise but the link between breaking into a sweat and beating depression has been questioned this week: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18335173
Ok, one article against, so many articles in favour. Seems the medical profession like to challenge *everything* and never agree on *anything* besides, “After a year all 361 patients had fewer signs of depression” is a win.
John, I’m not knocking exercise just referring to a report perhaps Carlton hadn’t seen. Best wishes.
Price of bicycles – in real terms – have been falling for years. What you get for your money now is amazing compared to ten years ago. Of course, best to always pay for quality but the ceiling for what could be considered a quality bicycle now hovers at about £200 to £250. Running costs are very low (cornflakes, in the main).
Car use in European city centres is going to be much restricted in the future (by both infrastructure and cost) so it makes an awful lot of sense to invest in a smart, quick, health-giving form of transport.
You can pick a good second-hander on eBay for £50. Also running costs must include coffee and Snickers.
Cyclists, in general, by the way, just tend to be fitter, healthier, happier people. I’ve never seen cycle locked outside a psychiastrist office.
Jeremy Clarkson wants to move to Copenhagen, and doesn’t like cities full of cars.
Game over, end of argument, move on. Nothing the RAC or AA or anyone else can say will hold back the tide of public desire for car-free, healthy transport alternatives. Of course politicians and CEO’s in hock to oil, car and roading companies will continue to serve their true masters, but the tide is turning.
I don’t get how you’re concluding that car purchase is merely a discretionary, delayable thing so it can be ignored. While delay is possible, the rising maintenance costs associated with cars as they age is a familiar phenomenon to many, and delay in replacing a car past a certain point is often not a sensible economic choice. So what you’re really saying in this article is that if you arbritrarily exclude the cost of buying a car, the cost of motoring has gone up. But if you don’t, it hasn’t, whereas going by bus or by rail is now massively more expensive.
Carlton is of course right when he asserts that cycling or walking has remained more or less the same price; while you can of course spend thousands upon a bicycle very few of us do so, and thos who do frequently don’t use such staggeringly expensive bikes for daily commuting. But I would argue that even a similar percentage change in running costs to those above are quite tolerable when we’re looking at a percentage of £200-300 per year (and thats if you’re thrashing your bike to within an inch of its life so you need a lot of repairs!).
I didn’t say it was discretionary, but that it is more likely to be than running a car. It is likely to be easier to find money each month to meet running costs than it is to get your hands on a large lump sum. That doesn’t just apply to cars but everything else we own and run. Clearly there will come a time when people have no choice but to swap models (if they can afford it) but given that many of the purchases we make (again, of all goods) are driven by the desire for something new rather than a desperate need for it then many car purchases are likely to be discretionary. Not sure what’s controversial about this.
and every graph can be distorted to give the answer you want?
I’m not at all sure about the conclusions you’ve drawn from this data. You need to look at the actual increase in costs experienced and NOT just the index. If maintenance costs have doubled, but only from £250 to £500 and the cost of a new car has fallen from £20k to £10k you can’t just average the indices (and you can’t just exclude purchase price – depreciation- because it suits your argument).
Also, in the period you look at the fuel economy of cars has increased significantly, which, according to Which, offsets the increase. http://www.admiral.com/news-articles/4778/fuel-economy-gains-offset-price-increase-says-which/
Dear Simon, what answer do you think we want? My understanding is that the indices are weighted. I agree that fuel efficiency has increased markedly, by about 20% over the past decade. There has been a corresponding decline in CO2 emissions showing that in environemtal terms there is a very good chance that road transport will meet the targets recommended by the Committee on Climate Change. Best wishes.
I’m not a statistician and haven’t looked at the underlying data but I agree that you would need to weight the indices in order to combine them.
However, where you say “The second graph shows how public transport fares have changed. They too have risen above inflation but not by as much as the running costs of cars.” I can’t see what you’re referring to – there’s not a weighted “Running costs of Cars” line to compare. That, combined with your arbitrary exclusion of ‘purchase costs’ resulted in my rather flippant comment that you were distorting the graphs to say something that they don’t .
I have not done a combined car running cost line because I was initially interested in the individual components and that is how they are presented in the ONS data. I did try to include each component on the second chart together with the public transport plottings, however it ended up as rather too messy to decipher. But given that the scale for each graph is the same and the public transport cost lines are flatter than the ‘running costs of cars’ components it suggests that while both sets of costs have risen above inflation, those associated with car ownerhip have risen faster. We also know that in the average UK household the vast majority of spending on transport (I think about 80% off the top of my head) goes on personal transport rather than trains or buses.
Miles cheaper to use trains with walk-up fares than driving – not owned a car f/t since 1976, and saving £’ss
Comparison in Edinburgh-Glasgow trains vs cars – 100 mile round trip Train std fare £19 advance fares from £2+£2 (walk up £9 cheap day return), with a bike no onward connection costs with buses – £5-£6 for day tickets. Time from my place to Scottish Govt door to door 70 min guaranteed
Car at £0.35p/mile = £35 plus parking – say £41 – already train & bike is half the price! Time – if you travel during working day from 1.5-2.5 hours depending on traffic queues and search for parking.
Plus of course the 60-90 minutes of phone calls & other work you can get done on the train which would be illegal when driving.
I can also do a 8-6 working day in Guildford (1000mile round trip) for £160-£170, compared to £350 running costs for a car, and almost fit this in to a 24 hour slot (depart 23.20 return 00.15) Can do London 9-5 depart 04.28 return 22.10. By car such journeys would require overnight hotels and very tiring 3 days in diary.
Once you factor in the valuable time you get on the train the financial case for driving falls off a cliff, and for an employer the increasing importance of the section 2 and 3 Duty of Care will hold them to account – potentially on criminal charges for staff or other road users killed or injured through over intensive driving schedules.
You’re lucky to benefit from a) a railway line that is accessible to you and b) public subsidies on fares. If only the majority of the UK population was so fortunate, who’d bother driving? No brainer.
Majority of UK population is urban so within relatively easy reach of a rail station. Trains not only ones to get subsidies: cars and trucks do, too. Check the latest billions the Gov’t is “investing” in roads.
Not sure that just because you live near a railway station it will allow you to get where you want to go given that 60% of rail journeys start or end in London. I was also under the impression that cyclists use the roads too. As do buses and coaches, taxis and motorcycles, and all the lorries and vans we rely on to deliver goods to the shops which we might or might not then use a bike to get to. Perhaps money shouldn’t be ‘invested’ in maintaining the roads?
My mistake: I should have said “trunk roads and motorways”: from which pedestrians and cyclists are either excluded by law or by prevailing speed of other vehicles.
And as to trucks using roads to get to the shops – an example wheeled out frequently – there’s every reason to limit the size of such trucks in city centres, and make the ‘final mile’ deliveries by smaller vehicles (in some cases even by cargo cycle).
Don’t fight it; this is the future. Any other way and we risk urban gridlock.
And here’s a fine illustration of how some in roads lobby view the “subsidies” splashed on the rail network but who then can’t recognise cash is also splashed on trunk roads and motorways: http://www.railwaypreservation.com/vintagetrolley/CARTOON—SUBSIDY—Car-vs.-Transit-712328.jpg
Thank you for admitting your mistake. As to that final mile, I believe there has been a big increase in van traffic of late, which perhaps illustrates that the shift from large to smaller is already taking place. And urban gridlock? We share your concerns. Does that mean we are on the same side?
It is interesting that whilst motoring costs have stayed fairly constant, public transport fares have risen c.30%