Earth Day

Today is Earth Day, so I guess I should post something.
The truth is I have TONS of stuff I want to post on this blog, but the whole eco-thing is everywhere now, that it's easy to get lost in the green crowd.

Today, I want to talk about the economy of driving downtown to go to work. $1.20/L here in the GTA. I think it might have dropped to $1.19. I'm wondering why there are still soooo many cars on the road. Do they really have no alternative? Is there anyone really still driving from the suburbs all the way downtown just to go to work? Let me do a little bit of simple math on how much I save by not driving to work:

One way driving distance = 34.4km (google maps)
I drive a '97 Honda Civic - as fuel efficient as a conventional car can be at an average of 7L/100km (includes city and highway driving), so it's about 2.4L of gas per one way trip

Therefore at $1.20/L of gas, each trip costs about $2.90
Parking costs $8.50/day

So, total transportation cost/day = $14.30
That translates into a monthly cost of ~$286-$329 (20-23 day work month)

Instead, I take the GO train which is a 1km drive from my house and pay $159/month for a pass. I know most people don't live as close to a train/bus/subway station as I do, but come on. We can't just solely blame this on bad city planning. (Maybe, I'll do a post on that next.) The train ride also offers the luxury of sleeping or reading or thinking for an extra 40 minutes each way, rather than dealing with the nonsense of traffic (and trust me, it is stop-and-go almost all the way on the DVP any time of the day, but especially in morning/evening rush hour traffic). The one time I had to drive down there, I'm pretty sure it took way longer than the train and I would never do that unless obligated to. What are all those crazy people doing on the DVP? And why is there only one person in each of those cars?

Okay, so it wasn't much of an eco-post, but I'm just putting it out there.
Take public transportation!!! Carpool!!! A little inconvenience is worth the extra cash! Isn't it?