Ruminating on (complaining about) My Commute

I live just about exactly one mile from the PG Plaza Metro station, and a bus stops across the street and two doors down from me to take me there in about 5 to 7 minutes. My work is right next door to the Suitland metro station - gmaps pedometer says it's 0.3 miles from the center of the platform to the elevator by my desk, as the commuter walks. This trip, from getting on the bus to butt-in-chair at work, vice-versa, takes about 1 hour 5 minutes and costs $9.50 a day.

My company provides a public transit benefit if one asks. So I asked, and I now have a SmarTrip card that gets automagically loaded with $110/month through the SmartBenefits program - which gives my company a tax break so it's win-win I guess. But $110 will only cover 11.5 days of this, so I still have half a month of commuting to cover by driving or paying my own way on metro.

I am liking the metro, a lot, actually. But, the original purpose of this was to save money, so I did the math.

In my car, my commute is 11.6 miles in the morning and takes about 20 minutes, and 17.5 miles in the evening which takes about 40 minutes. (I take the beltway home because driving north on the BW Parkway in the evening is absolutely horrific.) So, 29.1 miles. My car gets 25-27 mpg, but I went with 25. I get my gas for $3.99 a gallon at my local Shell station. This means it costs me about $4.65 a day to drive.

Metro: 2 hours 10 minutes; $9.50 per day
Drive: 1 hour; $4.65 per day

Metro is more than twice as expensive and takes more than twice as long.

That is downright lame. I suppose I could look at it over a month and tell myself that the metro benefit lowers my daily cost of metro transit to $4.25, but that's illusory. The fact is that the benefit makes my commute free half the month, and I need to choose the cheapest option for the other half - and that is driving, and that sucks bilge water.