I generally get around the city by biking or taking transit, and occasionally rent a car when needed. Even though I work in the suburbs of Toronto, I usually commute by taking the subway out to the end of the line, and then biking the rest of the way from there. (I rent a bike locker at the terminal station from the City, which makes this pretty seamless.)

Intuitively, getting around by transit and cycling is cheaper, but I thought it would be fun to find out. How much money did I save in 2025 by cycling and using transit compared to using a car as my primary way of getting around?

Cost Comparison

Here are my actual transportation expenses for 2025:

Budget (Actual): Transit and Bicycle Transportation

Item Cost Notes
Bike share 163 Annual membership and around $30 of trip-based fees
Bike purchase 273 Amortized over three years
Bike insurance 54 Coverage for theft and damage
Bike locker 142 Around $12 per month including tax
Bike maintenance 170 Purchased a new helmet and inner tube
Subtotal: Bike 802
TTC 1,046 325 trips
GO Transit 109 38 trips
Subtotal: Transit 1,147
Carshare 1,678 15 bookings (about 1,900km), includes gas
Car rental + gas 397 3 bookings (about 1,100km)
Parking 136
Subtotal: Car 2,211
Total 4,160
Table notes
  • Bike share: trip-based fees were primarily from longer segments I rode as part of collecting street-level imagery.
  • Bike purchase: amortizing over three years is totally arbitrary, but seemed logical (if you need to buy a new bike every year... get a better lock??). I bought my bike used, so you could easily spend more than this, especially if you wanted an e-bike.
  • Bike maintenance: if you have derailleur gears you would probably need to budget for an annual tune-up, but I have hub gears which are delightfully low-maintenance.

By comparison, this is my estimate for what it would cost to own a car and use it as my primary mode of transportation.

Budget (Estimate): Car Transportation

Prices and costs are based on a 2025 Hyundai Elantra Hybrid, which is what the CAA cost calculator suggested for the category of “Hybrid Passenger Car” 1.

Item Cost Notes
Purchase 5,724 $477 monthly payment (based on cost + tax of $29,600 and 72 months financing at 4.99%)
Gas 814 CAA cost calculator, with an adjustment for fuel price
Maintenance 331 CAA cost calculator
Winter Tires 350 Estimate for amortized cost of four tires and rims plus service cost for seasonal installation
Subtotal: Operation & Ownership 7,219
Insurance 2,120 Average Ontario premium, per the Financial Services Regulatory Agency of Ontario (around $177 per month)
Subtotal: Insurance 2,120
Parking: home 1,740 $145 per month (apartment garage)
Parking: work 672 $56 per month
Parking: other 100
Subtotal: Parking 2,512
Total 11,851
Table notes
  • Purchase: there are a lot of potential variables and approaches here, see below in the post for additional discussion. Quote was obtained from the Hyundai Canada website based on a base model 2026 Elantra Hybrid with no extras.
  • Gas: The CAA cost calculator estimated $707 per year based on a gas price of 121 cents per litre, an annual mileage of 10,000 to 15,000 kilometres, and a bias towards highway driving. The average price of gas for "Regular Unleaded Gasoline" in "Toronto East" in 2025 based on numbers published by the Ministry of Energy was 139.3 cents per litre, so I adjusted the CAA estimate accordingly.
  • Maintenance: the CAA cost calculator actually gives a range of $182 to $480 per year, but uses the midpoint of that estimate for its top-line number. I also used the midpoint here.
  • Winter tires: this was not included in the CAA cost calculator, but I would definitely get winter tires if I bought a car. This cost estimate was based on some light googling.

As a bottom line, it looks like I save $7,691 a year from cycling and taking transit instead of driving for my daily transportation needs. Not bad!

Quibble Time

Why don’t you get a used car instead? Buying used could help to save some money, though it’s not as good a deal as it used to be (see, for example The Globe and Mail: Time to buy a shiny new car? Used vehicle prices are rising).

For comparison I also tried plugging in a (non-hybrid) 2019 and 2025 Toyota Corolla 2 into the CAA cost calculator. Both were slightly cheaper than the Elantra hybrid, but worked out to be pretty similar to each other due to the higher maintenance cost of the older model 3.

What about getting an EV? I live in an older apartment building, though I think they did put in a couple charging spots in the underground garage recently. I don’t remember seeing any EV charging spots at work, but maybe I’ve missed them. Might be possible, but a hybrid or gas car seemed like a more realistic example for now, based on logistics.

Why don’t you model the cost of ownership based on depreciation? The CAA cost calculator primarily prices based on depreciation, and their estimate was a depreciation cost of between $3,250 and $3,900 per year for the 2025 Elantra hybrid.

When you own a car, it has some resale value, and you can eventually get that value back by selling it or trading it in. However, in this scenario, $477 will actually leave your bank account every month, and you won’t get the resale value back until you buy your next car. Until then, the actual payment amount better reflects your annual budgeting needs than depreciation does.

For argument’s sake, if you want to cost based on depreciation, you can go with $3,575 per year of depreciation costs (mid-point of the CAA estimate) and $786 per year of financing costs (based on 72 months at 4.99%), which would give you a purchase line of $4,361 instead of $5,724. The bottom-line savings would then be $6,328 per year instead of $7,691. Still a good chunk of change!

Why don’t you get better financing / buy the car outright? I don’t know if a 4.99% financing rate is good or bad; so maybe you could get a lower rate from a bank and save a couple hundred a year in financing costs. Buying the car outright (or making a downpayment) would save you some or all of the $786 per year of financing costs, though you could theoretically incur an opportunity cost from not investing that money instead. There are some options here, but the impact is relatively minor.

Your insurance cost is too low / too high! I tried to be generous here by using the provincial average annual premium of $2,120 instead of the GTA average of $2,765. I could have gotten actual quotes from one of those rate comparison websites, but I don’t want to get email spam from several companies trying to sell me insurance for a fictional car. If you think you know how much my car insurance should cost, let me know 4.

Why is your parking so expensive? I checked SpotHero and Realtor.ca for how much it would be to rent a spot in another building in my area, and the monthly costs ranged from $180-200 per month, so $145 per month in my own building seems like a good deal. The cost to construct an underground parking spot can be between $50K-$200K 5, which drives up the market price to rent a spot. I work at a hospital, so paid staff parking is the norm, even in the suburbs 6.

What if you bought a new / more expensive bike? I bought my bike used, so you could certainly imagine spending more if you wanted a new bike, or an e-bike. Some options you can substitute from Curbside Cycle (tax included):

  • New Dutch Bike: $471 per year (probably save around $7,400 per year)
  • E-Bike: $1,507 per year (probably save around $6,200 per year)
  • Cargo E-Bike: $3,390 per year (probably save around $4,000 per year)

These are all based on prorating over three years like with my bike above. My estimates of how the insurance and maintenance costs might scale are pretty rough, hence the uncertainty for how much you might save compared to driving. You could also be more generous with how you prorate the purchase price (the car example spreads the cost over six years). Resale value might also be a relevant consideration for the more expensive bikes.

Other Considerations

I do most of my own bike maintenance, so if you like riding a bike but hate maintaining one, you’ll probably need to set aside some budget for this. I also have no taxi or rideshare expenses in 2025, but if I felt more vulnerable travelling at night or liked to go out drinking more often, I’d probably have to budget for this too. But you’re starting with saving over $7,000, so there’s room to fit these into your budget and still save quite a lot of money versus owning a car.

My workplace is still hybrid (about 2-3 days in the office a week). This saves money in both scenarios: with transit and cycling, I would probably incur another $800 per year in TTC fares, and with driving I would incur about 6,000 additional kilometres per year, which probably translates into at least a couple thousand more per year in gas, maintenance, and depreciation. Plus, there are additional cost and time savings from having to buy fewer lunches, doing less ironing, etc.

Carshare Costs and Trip Drivers

For those who aren’t familiar with using carshare, it may not be easy to get a handle on how often you would need to use it. So here’s a list of reasons I drove this year:

  • Six family trips (e.g. visits, hospital, wedding, funeral)
  • Five friend trips (e.g. visits, wedding, going to the Stratford festival)
  • Two trips where I was running an event and had to bring equipment from our office in Scarborough to the venue
  • Two trips where I had an offsite work meeting or event in a location that is hard to get to without driving
  • Three trips where I needed to go into the office on a weekend to print things for an offsite early Monday meeting

Carshare is a great safety net, and would probably be a reassuring option to have if you’re switching from driving. However, it forces you to think about whether you really need to solve a trip using a car, since the marginal cost of each additional car trip is mostly the same, whereas with an owned car, the marginal cost of your second 10,000 kilometres is much lower than the cost of your first 10,000 since you have a lot of fixed costs.

From a public policy and environmental perspective, this is good: carshare encourages you to drive only when driving is the best solution to your needs, but owning a car (in most cases) encourages you to drive most of the time.

For three trips, I did a “normal” rental, usually because the distance involved was more than the 20km per hour or 200km per day that you get with the carshare program that I use. (Above these amounts, you pay an additional rate per kilometre). It’s worth thinking about when carshare versus rental is the best option, though the convenience of carshare is way better, and something I’m often willing to pay for 7.

I also calculated the approximate cost per kilometre for the budget scenarios above:

  • My carshare trips averaged about 95 cents per kilometre (generally shorter trips or trips during periods when “normal” rentals have peak pricing, e.g. holidays)
  • My rental trips averaged about 41 cents per kilometre (though there might have been a trip where a friend paid for the gas, so maybe it’s more like 45 cents?)
  • With both options combined, my average cost per kilometre was about 75 cents

By contrast, the cost per kilometre for the “owned car” scenario (annual cost divided by 15,000 kilometres) is about 79 cents per kilometre 8.

I was expecting carshare to be at least 50% more expensive than owning a car, but offset by the savings of cutting out the fixed costs of ownership and allowing you to convert costly car trips into cheap transit or cycling trips. As it turns out, my cost per kilometre with carshare was only about 20% more. In addition, if you don’t already own a car, renting one for a long trip outside of peak demand periods is a pretty good deal.

A Final Sidebar About How Websites Affect Our Lives

Why did I write this post? Because I wanted to understand the financial impact of my decisions. In addition to putting a number on my savings, I feel like I also learned how difficult it is to understand the cost of car ownership. And some of these websites out there really aren’t helping.

Dark Patterns on the Hyundai Website

Two positive things I can say about the Hyundai Canada website are that it’s pretty easy to use, and it didn’t make me put in any contact information to quote out the price of a car (don’t get any ideas!) However, when it comes to explaining the cost of financing, it does two things which I dislike:

First, they give you the option for “Future Value Financing”, but the only explanation for what this means is in the modal window that pops up when you click the very small “legal” link under the price breakdown. There is a line in the price breakdown that clues you in to the fact that after five years, you will still owe about $9,500 if you want to actually own the car. I guess this is the loan financing equivalent of leasing a car and having an option to purchase at the end of the lease, but I found it pretty confusing. The layout of information makes it easy to see that it lowers your monthly payment, but not so easy to understand why.

Second, the only place they show you the cost of borrowing is in that “legal” pop-up, where it says “The credit charge is $4,650.21.” Otherwise, the summary information makes it look like the only difference between the cost of financing the car and buying it outright is the $128 Personal Property Security Act registration fee, whereas in fact, if you buy the car you pay $29,488.48 and if you finance it, you pay $34,351.20 9. Whoops!

Budgeting with the CAA Cost Calculator

As for the CAA cost calculator, I think it’s quite helpful, but it’s not a budgeting tool. I don’t think it claims to be one either, but it does show up pretty prominently if you search for something like “budget cost car ownership ontario”.

If you did want to use it as a budgeting tool, I would turn off “include depreciation” and plug in your actual payment amount in the Monthly Car Payment box, and then add a buffer in case gas prices go up or your maintenance costs end up being in the higher end of their range.

Some Suggested Improvements for Provincial Government Webpages

Finally, there’s a real missed opportunity for the provincial government to help consumers understand the costs of insurance and gas. The Ontario webpage for Motor Fuel prices has a lot of useful information, but it would be helpful to have an interactive chart for historical prices in addition to the csv download.

Similarly, the average premiums published on the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario website are helpful, but it would be helpful to have more detailed breakdowns of average prices, in addition to just “Ontario”, “GTA”, “Other Urban”, and “Rural”.

You can get some rough information about how your car model affects insurance rates from the Insurance Bureau of Canada, but some breakdowns by driving record, age, gender, marital status, and annual kilometres would help to better inform consumers about whether the prices they’re quoted are good value for their personal situation.

Anyway, that’s enough math and writing for this weekend — see you out there on the train, cycle paths, and (occasionally) roads!

  1. I would not actually buy this car, I think it’s hideous. ↩

  2. Not hideous, and therefore a car I might theoretically buy. ↩

  3. A quick breakdown of the results from the CAA cost calculator:

    • 2025 Hyundai Elantra hybrid: annual depreciation of $3,250 - $3,900 and maintenance of $182 - $480. Top-line estimate including fuel was $4,599.68 per year.
    • 2025 Toyota Corolla: annual depreciation of $2,505 - $3,006 and maintenance of $175 - $423. Top-line estimate including fuel was $3,983.20 per year.
    • 2019 Toyota Corolla: annual depreciation of $1,595 - $1,914 and maintenance of $693 - $1,374. Top-line estimate including fuel was $3,822.84 per year.

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  4. Relevant inputs:

    • Can use the 2025 Hyundai Elantra hybrid for consistency
    • 30-35 year old male
    • Common law, partner will not drive the vehicle
    • Lives in downtown Toronto, car would be parked in apartment building underground garage at home and at outdoor gated lot at work
    • 10,000 to 15,000 km per year, mostly highway commuting
    • Have had a G license for around 15 years, one previous accident in 2017 (black ice, didn’t hit any other vehicles), have taken driver training, no tickets or convictions

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  5. From Toronto City Council Planning and Housing Committee item “PH27.8 - Visitor Parking Requirements for New Development”. From page 11 in the main report:

    From Altus Group’s 2025 Canadian Construction Cost Guide, an estimate for the typical area required for an underground parking space, including all access ramps, the estimated cost of constructing a single parking space is $52,500-$202,000.

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  6. Providing staff parking at a suburban hospital can be surprisingly costly, unless all of the employee parking needs can be met by constructing surface lots on cheap land. I suspect that the price I would pay does not actually cover the true lifetime cost of providing me with a parking spot at work. The current and future needs at all of our sites require multi-storey garages, which are an order of magnitude more expensive to construct than surface lots.

    Managing parking demand during construction is also very costly. As one example, Trillium Health Network spent $194 million to mitigate the parking impacts during renovations of the Mississauga Hospital (from page 27 of the 2024 Ontario Auditor General report on the “Procurement and Delivery of Selected Infrastructure Projects”):

    The limited space on-site for construction work and for parking for construction workers and hospital staff and visitors led the Development Partner to propose an off-site parking solution. As of June 2024, the cost of the off-site parking along with a shuttle bus for transporting the construction workers was estimated at $194 million over the eight-year construction period.

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  7. On top of the usual roulette spin for what vehicle you get and the slow process for picking up a car, the parking garage where all the nearby car rental places are located has a bunch of pipes hanging down at exactly forehead height. ↩

  8. The 2025 CRA mileage rates were $0.72 per kilometre for the first 5,000 kilometres and $0.66 per kilometre thereafter, so considering that in Toronto I would have above-average costs for parking and insurance, this seems like it’s in the right ballpark. This also highlights how low the mileage rates are for the Ontario public sector, at $0.40 per kilometre for the first 4,000 kilometres and declining thereafter (see: “Reimbursement Rates” under section 5: Travel). ↩

  9. It’s not quite that simple of course; as I mentioned before, there’s an opportunity cost involved if you purchase a car outright. But that doesn’t mean it’s OK to hide the cost of financing. ↩