You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?
I used to wonder why one person person would want to travel on a car that has a capacity of carrying 5 persons.
You see our family could not afford a car, or even a motorcycle, the train was only accessible from the city to another city. Other means of transport like ships and planes were things that only existed on books as far as my life was concerned. I grew in remote country side where the only means of transport was a bus. In my village there were two buses that were great blessing to the village. They were owned by the rich people in the village but had given it to two employees to operate them. They were the main systems of communication between the village and the city. They left the village early in the morning and came back in the evening. If they take you to town, you have to wait until evening so that they can take you back to village. If you plan to go to town, you must be at the bus stage at the schedule time of departure, if you happen to delay and departure time pass you before you arrive on bus stage, you must postpone your journey until next day. It was one way we learnt strict discipline in time management. There operations was like today’s air transport, if you have many laggages to carry to the city or any other place, you must book a space with the bust one day before.
You see when you are born in poverty, you don’t need to study a degree in economy to be an economist, you are naturally one by birth because you learn how to manage scarcity and optimize whatever resource within your reach.
Poor poor considers cost minimization over any other benefit or convenience. If you are traveling, you pick the cheapest means available to move you from place A to place B. Buses were the cheapest available means of transport and I wondered why people in person cars were that wasteful. One gallon of petrol should move 5 people not one!, So I thought. But now that I have manged to increase my income and get myself out of extreme poverty, I see things differently.
I have realized that time saving and convenience are much more important than using more resources.
So most of the time I prefer personal car to bus or train.