Reroute.It clarifies costs, benefits of travel choices

Transit

Reroute.It clarifies costs, benefits of travel choices

by Alison Crowley • October 11, 2011 11:55 am

When choosing between walking, biking, hailing a cab, taking the bus, or driving my own car for trips around town, a new app aims to put the relevant costs and benefits of these choices—to me and to society and the planet—at my fingertips. The app still needs improvement, though.

Reroute.It screenshot

Reroute.it is an open-source program featuring a minimalist interface with simple instructions to enter the two ends of a local trip. It seeks to answer such routine questions as: Does the time saved by taking a taxi outweigh the mitigated costs and environmental impact of riding a bike or walking? Reroute.it makes such decisions a bit clearer by stacking all of the information together in one place.

From my office in Georgetown to my apartment in Arlington, I could burn 487 calories by walking home or fork out $11 for a cab ride. But the four-mile walk would take 72 minutes, while a cab ride should take 12. However, the program has yet to factor our region's notorious rush-hour traffic into the travel time variable.

What seems even more appealing is a bike ride: at 26 minutes, travel time is half that of walking, and I would still burn around 143 calories. With a Capital Bikeshare station right outside of my office, and another one near my home, I'm tempted to take the app's word and try out a new method of shortening the evening commute.

Reroute.it has its limitations. It does not allow for a combination of modes: when I'm trying to get home from 17th & U St NW in DC to Arlington, I can't choose to walk the 1.1 miles to Farragut West, the closest Orange Line stop, and then Metro home, or even half a mile to Dupont Circle with a line change. Instead, I can either burn off half of my day's meals with a 96-minute walk home, or spend 42 minutes on an unspecified type of transit.

The transit variable utilizes Bing Transit Routes API, which pulls route information from data provided by participating transit agencies. Here, both WMATA and the DC Circulator have provided their data to Bing, making it difficult to tell which method of transit Reroute.it is referring to when it provides travel time.

Currently, the only cities whose transit fare data are incorporated into Reroute.it's approximations are San Francisco and Seattle. As a result, the cost of riding public transportation is always listed as "not applicable" in any DC-area search. As I used Reroute.it this week, I mentally set a flat transit cost of $4 for comparison purposes against alternative means.

From a cost perspective, Reroute.it's most helpful contribution might be displaying the approximate cost of driving, parking excluded. Using AAA's 2011 average cost per mile calculation, currently set at $0.585, the app highlights a cost that drivers frequently forget, or don't know how, to factor in.

Photo by Ed Yourdon on Flickr.

When trying to decide how to travel from my Georgetown office to a meeting after work in a neighborhood east of the Anacostia River in Ward 7, I was surprised to find out that the approximate cost of driving my car was $5.03; it was a far cry from what would have been a $17 cab ride, and only a few dollars more expensive than taking what would have been a very long bus ride, or a combination of Metrorail and bus.

Until Washington-area transit agencies share their fares with Google's General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format, Reroute.it will never be able to program its transit costs to reflect the actual cost of traveling via Metro or bus.

Reroute.it provides an innovative service in drawing disparate data together into one interface, drawing much-needed attention to the benefits and drawbacks of varying forms of transportation. Some simple improvements, and cooperation from local agencies in sharing data, could greatly increase the app's utility. With wide use, Reroute.it can help further encourage a proper balance between multiple modes of transportation as viable and popular ways to get around the area.

9 comments

Tags: data openness, mode share, technology, transit

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Alison Crowley works in real estate development with a focus on drawing educational, health, and recreational resources to neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River.

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This basically takes what Google Maps can do, takes out directions and puts in calories and cost information. Since I don't make my travel decisions on calories burned and I have a fair idea what each mode will cost, I'll probably stick with Google Maps. Also, I imagine the time information for taxi is a little off, if only for the fact you have to take time to hail a cab.

by Steven Yates on Oct 11, 2011 12:41 pm • link • report

The other significant thing it is missing is the cost of time. Adding an additional hour to your commute can be very expensive in terms of lost opportunity to do something else. If you could put in another hour of work at $11/hr or more, you're better off with the cab according to that table.

by rdhd on Oct 11, 2011 12:54 pm • link • report

Speaking as someone who walks betwen 4 and 5 miles a day, the higher calorie count is nice. But I suspect totally meaningless. A basic pedometer would be a better choice if you are worried about activity or weight loss.

I do try to calcuate the costs in my head. I use a .25 cents/M approach for driving. (15 MPG, about $3 gas, comes to about 20 cents but easier to do in quarters). 4 mile trip is about a dollar in gas, or about a 1/3 of a gallon.

1/3 of a gallon of gas has about 10,000 calories of energy. Cost of that -- again, let's say a dollar.

Same ernergy to walk -- about four tablespoons of olive oil.

My takeaway: human body is very efficient when you dont drag 3000 pounds of car along with you. Gasoline is very cheap -- it is hard to find $1 for 500 calories.

The best choice is all of this is a scooter. The externalities of injury keep that option limited.

by charlie on Oct 11, 2011 12:59 pm • link • report

rdhd,
The other side is the additional time is not a cost if you are able to be productive. I like to bike, and I drive, but I can take a transit commute that takes longer, catch up on email and reading, and legitimately bill for much of my commute time. When driving I'm captive and can't do anything else.

by spookiness on Oct 11, 2011 1:21 pm • link • report

There's no way a four-mile walk burns 487 calories. It's more like 50 calories per mile walked. You're lucky if running a mile burns 100 calories, although that's the general estimate most folks use. Calories burned are closely corrolated with the amount of oxygen required for a given task, so unless someone is terribly unfit, there's no way you're burning MORE THAN 100 calories per mile, as that app. must be saying. For four miles, it's more like 200 calories burned for the typical person.

by Lanier Heights on Oct 11, 2011 1:53 pm • link • report

@ Lanier Heights:

Actually you burn nearly the same ammount of calories walking a mile as you do running the same distance (time is the major distinction. For example, an average 150lb person burns 116 calories per mile at a 5.0 mph pace (12 min mile), and 121 calories per mile at 9.0 mph pace (6:40 min mile)

by Runner on Oct 11, 2011 2:05 pm • link • report

@Lanier Heights -- is the difference that one set of measurements includes what you would be burning according to your basal metabolic rate (plus any lingering increase in terms of BMR that continues, due to a higher metabolism developed over time).

There is certainly a corollation between calories burned and oxygen required, but a calorie is a unit of energy, which is converted into work. The oxygen level required is a corollation, but you have to be very efficient (someone who runs a lot) in order to have your calories per mile drop down below 100 or so.

by Jacques on Oct 11, 2011 2:09 pm • link • report

What I've read -- including this: http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-242-304-311-8402-0,00.html -- indicates that, no, you don't burn the same number of calories walking as you do running. It would be great to believe you're burning over 100 calories per mile walked, but it's just not the case (unless, maybe, you're very unfit). There's just no way you're burning almost 500 calories by walking four miles home from work. Sorry.

by Lanier Heights on Oct 11, 2011 4:41 pm • link • report

@Runner...

I don't disagree with you but my understanding is that running is inherently less efficient than walking. The number I recall is that running burns 3x the energy for the same distance covered.

This seems to be true for most animals that have been studied. Interestingly enough, kangaroos are more efficient when they "run" than when they walk but the researchers determined that this is not due to their having a more efficient "run" (hop?)but rather to their walk being *so* inefficient.

I'm sure Runner understands this but for those curious... From a biomechanical point of view, walking is much like riding a bike in a very, very low gear. If you use the "granny" gear on a MTB you can get a lower gear than walking.

So, bottom line is that the energy burned to distance traveled is not independent on whether you're running or walking. You do burn more energy running than walking. It's all due to the biomechanics and how inefficient we are at moving around.

I'm such a dork. :-)

(I say "Former Runner" - I'm a former serious marathoner, Div.I XC runner, track athlete, coach, etc.)

by Former Runner on Oct 12, 2011 10:43 am • link • report