Cost of driving back to hometown

February 6th, 2011 Filed under English entries, Opinion

This Chinese New Year holiday, I drove back to my home town Gaomi, a rural area near Qingdao, Shandong province. I had several ways of travel back home, by train, by air or driving by myself.

Since my wife and my mother would go together with me, the travel cost shall consider the total cost of all three. After comparison, I finally decided to drive home because it’s the most economical and convenient.

During this travel I found an interesting yet easy formula to calculate the cost of long distance driving in China. The total cost of long distance driving is approximately 1RMB/km, in which 0.4RMB is toll fee and the rest 0.6 is fuel cost.

Option	Time Cost	Money Cost	Convenience
By air	5h 1h30m fr home to airport 1h30m fr BJ to Qingdao 2h fr Qingdao to village	900 RMB cheapest flight found on kooxoo, 300*3, not including taxi fee	Inconvenient It’s the fastest way, however, it needs someone from hometown to pick us at the Qingdao airport and drive home which is about 70km away.
By train	7h20m 1h30m to train station 4h50m fr Beijing to Gaomi 1h from station to village	735 RMB second class seat 245*3	Extremely inconvenient We have to take a taxi to the train station and take another one from station to hometown village. Most of all, it’s extremely hard to get a ticket during this time.
Driving	7h 600km distance, 100km/hr, plus 1hr of rest	600 RMB Fuel cost: 340RMB=8L/100km * 6.8RMB/L * 6 Toll fee: 260RMB	Most convenient You get on the car, pedal to the metal, and then, you are there.