SAVE $9,530 A YEAR TAKING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

WASHINGTON - People who opt for public transportation over driving in the D.C. metro area can save $9,530 a year or $794 a month, a new report finds.

The report linked to an American Public Transportation Association public transit calculator that allows you to enter your individual information (for a number of cities, including D.C.) to calculate your savings by taking public transportation instead of your car.

I tried it. My car is a small truck, about 20 mpg (can’t go fast enough during the commute for the truck to get beyond a fast idle). Commute distance is 58 miles round trip. Using fare information from the Virginia Railway Express, the Washington DC Metro, and estimating the cost of a parking space at $7.50/day based on a monthly rate, I had my annual savings estimated:

-$1002.82

That’s right. Public transportation would cost me roughly $1,000 more per year than driving in to work. Not to mention that it would cost an extra hour of commute time each day.

What happened to that $9,530 savings?

AUGUSTINE’S LAWS

Norman R. Augustine, former chairman of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, wrote a book which I have used as a systems engineering “bible” for nearly as many years as I have been a practicing systems engineer. In it, he has written fifty-two “laws” about life, engineering, and defense acquisition which are both humorous and prescient.

Here’s Augustine:

It took the federal government seventy-seven years to build up to where it could dispose of $1 billion in a single year. It reached the $10 billion level in another fifty-three years, jumped to $100 billion in just forty-three more years, and required only twenty-five years to smash through the $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000.00 for those who like figures) barrier. “Blessed are the young,” said Herbert Hoover, “for they shall inherit the national debt.”

President Obama exceeded $1 trillion in only 30 days.

The significance of these observations is obvious.

Law Number LII “People working in the private sector should try to save money. There remains the possibility that it may someday be valuable again.”

HMM

The stock market has been up for two consecutive days.

Is it because Wall Street is beginning to have some confidence in the Obama administration? Or because Wall Street has no confidence in the Obama administration and has decided to go it alone?

I'd like to hope for the former, but I'm betting on the latter.