If you factor in wear and tear, parking, etc. It’s probably still cheap.
You can also rent a car when you get there for something like the same amount for the day and not worry about the wear and tear part.
You can also rent a car when you get there for something like the same amount for the day and not worry about the wear and tear part.
Driving 1 person is already close to the price of a train ticket. Driving 2 people is ~50% discounted. Driving 2 people, and then not having to rent a car/taxi, is something like a ~75% discount.
With a real carbon tax, these numbers would look a lot closer to eachother.
https://theicct.org/blogs/staff/planes-trains-and-automobile...
They report some 80 passenger-km per liter of Diesel equivalent energy, compared to 13 passenger-km in a modern hybrid. Both values include the energy production, utilization and energy expenditure for infrastructure.
This assumes a modern network with electric trains though. I'm not sure if the article you cited still uses diesel-powered trains to arrive at such extremely different figures.
Taking a bike is a much easier thing to do if you want easy access to the inner burbs and urban core of Portland.