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Many a time while planning a trip, we’re confused whether to park our car at the airport or use a ridesharing app. Of course, the goal is to save money. This calculator helps you do exactly that. No guesswork. Just pure calculation.
At the outset, it’s important to note that parking your own car at the airport doesn’t mean considering just the parking fee. If you’re using a gasoline car, it also means the gas cost to travel back and forth to the airport.
So, to calculate the parking fee, you need to add the gas cost and the parking fee cost. Now, how do we calculate the gas cost? Simple. Divide the distance from your house to the airport (in miles) by the MPG of your car. MPG, as you may know, is nothing but how many miles your car can run on one gas gallon. This division gives you the number of gallons you need to travel back and forth to the airport. Multiply the number of gallons by the gas price per gallon. That’s your gas cost.
Gas cost = Gas gallons [Distance to Airport (miles) / MPG (miles per gallon)] x Gas price per gallon
For our aforesaid example, Gas cost = [(20 x 2) / 25] gallons x $4.50 = $7.20
Note: 20 miles has been multiplied by 2 because the calculator input is the one-way distance to the airport. Multiplied by 2 means the total back-and-forth distance.
Now, calculating the pure parking fee is simple. Multiply the number of trip days by the parking rate per day.
Parking fee = Trip duration (days) x parking rate per day
5 days x $20 per day = $100.
Parking cost = gas cost + parking fee
$7.20 + $100 = $107.20. So, $107.20 is the total parking cost in our example.
Moving on to ridesharing costs, it’s nothing but the rideshare fare (one way) multiplied by 2.
Ridesharing cost = $35 x 2 = $70.
So, in our example, ridesharing is cheaper.
Ridesharing costs are lower when you go on long trips or stay close to the airport. Whereas, parking costs are lower when you take short trips or stay far from the airport.