The calculus of flying vs. driving
 

I head up to Sacramento from Long Beach a couple of times a year for meetings. Recently, I have been driving and spending a day or so in Yosemite or Sequoia. But, with my next meeting in mid-December and as my car isn’t set up for skis, I was all set to fly. But thinking about it, I may just drive:

I can drive in 5 hours and a half hours @ 75 MPH (when I behave myself).

To fly it’s an hour and a half from my front door to take off. Then, it’s another hour and a half to pick up a car and drive into Sacto (thinking that with all the TSA bull I would check luggage). I am going to have to kill a couple of hours after my meeting, coupled with the inconvenience of not being able to leave when I want, so I’ll arbitrarily add another hour and a half to my equation. Therefore: 4.5 hours to fly vs. 5.5 hours to drive, it’s getting pretty close. In fact, here may be an example where TSA has pushed a potential customer out of an airline seat into a car.

The cost of flying vs. driving is kind of a wash (although maybe I should factor in a speeding tix I got a couple of trips ago), particularly since it’s passed thru as a business expense. The meeting is early, and not miss-able, so I’d spend the night before in a hotel either way.

If I could sweeten the deal and get some miles, but American doesn’t fly into SMF (Alaska via PDX or SEA is a little intense/expensive for me), and to get United miles I’d need to add another 45 minutes to SNA or LAX. And, while JetBlue from LGB is as good as it gets to fly without status, their True Blue program is, to me anyway, truly worthless.

So, do people have a formula to decide to drive instead of fly?

No set formula, but miles. I'll drive up to 250 miles without thinking twice about it. 300, a little thought and 350 is about my cut off point for driving. In West Texas we drive miles, not so much by time as the roads are great and the traffic fast.

In fact I won't fly 250.

It's a time based formula for me. If I can do the trip in under 4 hours in a car, then I will drive (though that's not set in stone). At 4 hours it becomes a bit of a wash. Over 4 hours, I'll fly.

As I said though, not set in stone. When working in Montreal last year I had no need for a car in Montreal, so I flew from Toronto to Montreal because I didn't want the hassle and expensive of trying to park a car that I wasn't going to use.

All my travel is personal, so expense is obviously important; however, my overriding concern is the tradeoff against time— if driving is going to take so long it costs me Friday night on the town, or my limited vacation time, I'll definitely fly. In fact, because I usually leave after work on Friday, the airports are post-rush whereas the highways are jammed, and since I don't own a car and would have to rent one, it's almost never been a better time/money value to drive as opposed to fly where there's a nonstop available.

How long I need to be there is a main factor for me. For a 1-3 day trip, once the distance passes 3 hours, it is a flight. When I lived in DC, that meant Philadelphia was my northern limit and Richmond was about as far south as I would drive. Here in LA the equivalent is San Diego south, Palm Springs east, and Santa Barbara north/northwest. If I will be going for a longer period, I might be tempted to drive to San Francisco or places of similar distance... have in the past... but then again I was planning to drive to Napa and Sacramento this weekend prior to a meeting in San Jose on Tuesday, and am now about to leave for LAX for my 7:50 PM flight to SFO (decided Tuesday of this week I really did not want to drive)!

I do the reverse trip routinely, SMF to BUR (only occasionally LGB) and return. 400 mi door to door. My main issue is luggage. If I'm moving stuff from office to office or staying in LA area overnight, I drive. No TSA, no shoe carousel, no hauling bags to and fro, no flight delays, no standing on queue to get a "non-smoking" Hertz car that always smells of smoke, no SWA. Just more convenient. 5.5 hrs door to door with a book on IPOD from Audible. Relaxing and I'm in control, not TSA, not ATC. Might reconsider a bit if AA did the run, but they don't.


That said, when it snows over the grapevine (I-5) I fly. Headed South on Sunday, back Thursday. Looking forward to Woodward's book this trip.

I also live in Northern California and travel to Southern California regularly. I rarely drive. Basically, only when I need to carry a lot of stuff with me or when I need my own car down there. (Usually I borrow one from my father.)

I just hate that long drive. To me, it's NOT relaxing.

Ed

I'd rather not drive... but if flying does ont save you any time..
and considering the current state of TSA, I think you are better off
driving.

Flying is lot safer.. but I'd rather not be treated as a 3rd class citizen
bythe people whose salaries come from my tax money.

I've stopped flying unless its absolutely necessary.

I'd second that.

I used to drive between Newport beach and SJC area more than twice a month. Depending on the schedule, I'd prefer to go on 101 >> PCH for the South bound, I-55 >> I-5 for the North bound, sometimes I spent a night at Monterey. It was indeed a fun. Though, a couple of months later I got bored and decided to opt AmericanEagle flight to/from SNA or LAX instead.

I do still remember its course layout and scenery. Also remember a black BMW E38? driven by woman doing flat out overtook me as I'm crusing on I-101 North around Salinas. Unfortunately, I was driving a PT Cruser that day (dollar rent a car, turbo model was not available nor 300C) so that couldn't catch it :td:

Back to topic: It's been quite a while since I did do that last and have no idea the current road conditions though, "LGB--SMF" that looks doable to me unless it is on a weekly basis.
You should be able to get there in less than a 6 hour barring any traffic. One thing's for sure... There is a lot of bad driver tries to provoke you on I-5. So, it's going to be hard to behave yourself doing at only 75mph.

I don't own (or want) a car, so would only really consider driving when there's no plane/train/bus/bike alternative (in my fiancée's car, or a hire car). Even then, I find long-distance driving very tedious, and would try to avoid anything much over 3 hours.

I would say its a great idea where the public transportation is plenty and
reliable. Places like North America where public transportation is almost
absent or useless for most cases, driving is the best choice.

I think the highways came too fast here :p

The time might be roughly equivalent, but it's what you can do with that time that counts for me. In the lounge and on the plane, you can relax and read, or work. Driving, you can do neither. Plus, driving for five hours can be fairly exhausting--do you really want to show up that tired the night before, then have to get in the car and drive for five hours after what could be a stressful meeting?

well.. if the major portion of your time is consumed in
getting to/from Airport, checkin and security.. I think
driving might make more sense.

I'd rather fly, but recent changes make it more and more
difficult.

Sna - Rno
 

I head from Irvine to RNO a few times a year. I've tried several different airlines, but there aren't too many satisfactory flights to and from.

Flying from SNA:
1) Aloha, $182.60 RT. But I don't like the flight times, real late outbound and real early inbound.
2) WN, but it always has at least one stop and is more expensive at $199.20 for the same dates, and you're basically cattle.
3) My preferred carrier, AA, only has an AS codeshare out of LAX on a DH8 for $178.60. But I have to spend an hour driving out to LAX. :(


By road:
1) I-5 north to Sacramento, where I switch to I-80 east, pretty nice, but climbing drive through the Sierras. (9 hours)
2) There's the 55 Fwy to the 91 Fwy east to I-15 north to I-395 north. That's a slower drive, but very scenic and very fun to drive a car that handles well. (10 hours)
3) There's also I-15 to US-95 north to I-80. But US-95 is the main street though several towns where the speed limit goes to 25 mph, and the sheriff sits there waiting for you...plus the scenery is all desert. (10-11 hours)

Depending on how much fuel costs at the time and how much time I want to spend (or how much I have to carry) I usually end up driving. But during the winter, I-395 and I-80 end up getting snowed in pretty bad, so I end up flying Aloha to RNO. But I usually end up driving more often than flying.



Steve

:confused:

to answer the OP's question, anything longer than 5 hrs and I fly.

--

Screw the TSA and screw the airlines who go along with them and screw the EU for bending over to the US and adding the stupid baggie rules. I drive in the US and take the trains in Europe and stick pretty much to intercontinental flights. Except of course when I am in Asia where they somehow have retained a bit of common sense.

What's the speed limit from LAS to LAX these days?

The previous posters all mentioned that the decision to drive versus fly is largely a matter of personal preference. For me, I'm a) lazy and b) love a bargain. I view travel in dollars and minutes, not miles. For me this means it usually works out to fly medium distances (i.e. >200 mi). I live in San Francisco and love to visit Tahoe. My calculus for winter 2006-2007:

Drive
I work near the Caltrain Station and it takes me ~30 minutes to bike home
My car gets ~28 mpg on the highway (I drive a 2 seater with AWD)
The distance is ~208 miles .
Gallons of Gas used: ~8 (*2 for round-trip)
Current Price Per Gallon: $3
Marginal Cost: $48
Time is >8 hours assuming no stops

Fly
BART from SF Embarcadero Center to OAK cost $5.35
Dep: 6:32p Arr: 7:15p
OAK-RNO WN2383 8:10p-9:00p $118.60 inc tax
Pick-up old Car at Reno Airport, drive to Squaw 45 minutes
(distance 45 miles, 10 mpg gas $2.25 per gallon)....cost $35.26
RNO-OAK WN306 9:05p-10:00p
BART/Muni from OAK to Home cost $6.60
Dep: 10:30p Arr 11:53p
Total Cost RT=$165.81
BUT...a WN free ticket is worth ~$300 on eBay
and I earn 1/8 of a free ticket with each round-trip (i.e. $37.50)
So...the all-in cost of flying is $128.31, or $80 more than driving.
And time is a consistent 8 hours...

This all means that, assuming that a) gas prices stay the same and b) WN does not lower the effective price via either a fare sale or RR bonus...it makes more sense to drive.

It's 70. You can comfortably drive about 80 without attracting attention, assuming the traffic isn't schizoid.

I've tried all of the above options before and I can vouch this. I'd dare to say that, there's a bunch of bugs flying all over around US-95. So, your vehicle's radiator/oil cooler could get damaged. I had to wipe them down every gas station to prevent from overheating.
As for I-395, you'd better bring tire chains with you. Last time, I encountered snow there and was offered a lovely $98 for a set of chains alone at the gas station. 18inch, though.

The answer for me is about 4.5 hrs for business and up to 8 hrs for personal travel (depending on the fare). :p

I think the OP summed up well why short hauls have taken a real hit with business travelers with the post-9/11 security and all. Not only is the time situation upset with longer delays at the airport and the possibility of a very long security line, but the travel-related TAX situation on the money side gets worse. Car rents are typically loaded with taxes, sometimes for unrelated things, and airfares also take hits for PFCs, the segment tax, the security tax and the ticket tax. All that "overhead" is avoided with driving.

That said, I'm an almost 100% leisure traveler, and flying has helped turn me off of drive trips for any real distance. Seems every time I get on a long-distance interstate out of ATL, even to go to BHM or something modest like that, it's an unpleasant experience with too many cars/trucks trying to do 80 on an interstate that doesn't have enough room in many places to do that and to keep a safe following distance. It's easy to see why the roads are many times more deadly than the skies, and why 1,000 or so extra people died on the highways vs. the usual in the 3 months after 9/11.

One thing the tax situation does, though, is make me favor fewer longer-haul trips over more-frequent shorter hauls.

My formula is, if you have to ask, drive. You will know when the only way to get there is to fly. But flying doesn't save any time if it's less than 6 hours and even less than 15 hours, it's pretty shaky financially when you consider that by driving you have your own car and not some rental. For instance, my husband heard the news reports of the liquid ban and put the kibosh on my plan to use free miles to fly to Midland/Odessa from New Orleans and then rent a car to get around Marathon/Big Bend. Even considering we would have flown free, it turned out we saved money -- he purchased several heavy items on the trip that would have cost significant bucks to ship motor freight. They wouldn't have flown at all due to the weight. You wouldn't even think of such things when flying. You limit yourself without even thinking about it.

One time I got the dumb idea to fly to my folks in Knoxville from New Orleans -- a 9.5 hour drive. Flying over there was OK. Flying home, there were tornados in Memphis or some such happy horse puckey, and I had to fly all over creation to finally get back to New Orleans. If ANYTHING goes wrong, you save no time by flying, yet you have to rent somebody else's stupid unfamiliar auto.

When I lived in Seattle I would drive to Whistler in the north, Spokane in the east, and down to Bend/Eugene in the south. I have done the drive to Sacramento and Las Vegas before. But I don't think I would again.

Now living in Lugano, CH I train to places like Milan or Rome or Zurich but rent a car to go to Bern or Munich. I fly to places like Amsterdam, Spain, or Morocco. I think alot of it depends on how soon I need to be there (or be back), how long my vacation is, how much it costs to drive vs. train vs. plane.

2.5-3 hours is my cutoff. Philly is a drive, Providence is a drive, Boston and Washington are flights.