<p>I go to bunker hill community college in Boston. I pay 210$ a month for the zone 5 pass MBTA commuter rail. Its unlimited usage and also gives unlimited use on the subway too. I dont have a drivers license but i am just wondering if i would save more money driving. This current semister i payed 747.60$ for September through December. From south station to campello station its 22 miles so 44 miles each day 4 times week</p>
<p>you could lease a car for $200 a month but you’ll also have to include gas, insurance, taxes on the lease, ect.</p>
<p>public transit is probably cheaper but more of a hassle</p>
<p>If you’re going to be paying over $700 a semester it’s probably more worth it just to buy a cheap car. Don’t waste your money on leasing, that’s a bad idea. There are a lot of really affordable used cars out there that will last you a long time. Find an expensive one that you can pay for up front or in a very short amount of time. </p>
<p>Because it won’t be worth it if you’re stuck with car payments for the next few years.</p>
<p>Look into parking before you go forward with the car idea. That can be just as costly as commuting by mass transit.</p>
<p>Yeah, when I commuted I paid $130 a month for parking. That plus gas and everything else really added up.</p>
<p>^ damn. w.t.f?</p>
<p>My parking permit’s $50 for the semester…</p>
<p>But with parking, you also have to consider that the hassle of finding parking at some schools is enough to make you not want to drive there to being with ;)</p>
<p>I don’t know many people who choose to have a car in boston… free parking rarely exists and when it does it’s either a 2 hour limit or there are never spots open. It’s also tough to find affordable overnight parking within boston, but since you live outside of the city I’m assuming you’d have a free or cheap place to park your car while you’re at home. I’m not sure where your school is in the city, but at my school parking is about $200/semester, and I expect most schools charge similar rates for their garages/lots.</p>
<p>Cost of parking at school and at home definitely need to be a factor. Since you’re talking boston, the cost of monthly parking + insurance + gas probably isn’t going to be significantly less than the $210/month that you’re already spending on the T.</p>
<p>Then there’s also just the hassle of dealing with outrageous rush-hour traffic into and out of the city… it once took me almost 3 hours to make the 40 minute drive to gloucester because I left boston at 4:30. That really sucked.</p>
<p>It depends. According to Metro’s cost calculator, I’d only be paying about $9 a month more if I drove to school. However, that’s using the GSA rate for car costs, which is tailored toward adults. </p>
<p>Insurance for people my age is incredibly expensive (read: at least $200, which is already more than my Metro commuting costs) so it would be horrible for me to drive to school. Maybe when I’m a senior I’ll be able to get cheaper insurance, but until then it’s Metro for me.</p>
<p>Basically, if you want a rough estimate of how much it would cost per day, just take the number of miles driven each day and multiply it by .50 (since GSA reimburses at a rate of 50 cents per mile). Then add how much parking would cost per day.</p>
<p>You don’t need a car as a college kid in Boston.</p>
<p>Cars are expensive. If you get a car loan you have a monthly payment + insurance + gas + maintenance + parking. Those things add up. Get a flat tire, there’s $100+ to replace it. Battery dies, there’s $100+ to replace it…and those are just the cheap things that go wrong with cars. Breaks are few hundred bucks minimum. Timing belt, AC repair, they start to get expensive…you see where I’m going with this Plus Boston is too crowded with very little parking and bad traffic. </p>
<p>If I was a college kid in a major metropolitan area (New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington DC), there’s no way I would have a car. It’s just not needed. At least with depending on public transit you know the MOST you are going to spend on transportation is $210 per month. Same cannot be said for a car.</p>
<p>I’m assuming three more semesters of community college?</p>
<p>747.60 x 3 = $2,242.8 = your budget.
If pay for the car, insurance, registration, gas, and parking for the next 1.5 years under $2,242.80 then you should do it. You should also be aware that say you spend an extra 30 minutes a day parking, in traffic, or shoveling snow that same time could have been spent at a part-time job or getting a little extra sleep.</p>
<p>Here’s another way to look at it, just based on gas costs.</p>
<p>44 miles per day x 4 days a week traveling to school = 176 miles per week.</p>
<p>Average car gets about 20 miles per gallon (could be more or less depending on what car you have). So, 176/20 = 8.8 gallons of gas per week…let’s round that to 9 to make it easy.</p>
<p>$3.00 per gallon on average X 9 gallons per week = $27.00 per week on gas (just going back and forth from school).</p>
<p>$27 per week X 4 weeks per month = $108 per month in gas costs alone.</p>
<p>Cost of Public transit per month $210 - Cost in gas w/ a car $108 = $102</p>
<p>So now you have $102 per month to spend on insurance, car payment and parking (this doesn’t even include maintenance costs). If you can find a car + insurance + parking for less than $102 a month, you’d then break even.</p>
<p>Bottom line, I can’t see you finding a car that costs you less than $100 per month.</p>
<p>also if you take the bus or train you can get homework done or study for a test and if you drive then you have to watch the road the whole time so you cant study, so that’s like that many extra hours you can study instead of be driving, so i think that makes it worth it by itself to take a bus or train. Plus if you take the train it is more fun anyway. I always like riding on the train especially if it has the seats that face backwards. And you can see diffferent parts of the city that you cant see in a car, like roofs and in peoples back yards.</p>