Over five years the three commutes separate mostly before anyone moves: driving's cost is set by the car it needs, transit's by a fare it pays twice a day, cycling's by almost nothing — and pricing your travel time is what can put them back in a different order.

Strip out time and the ranking barely moves with distance: the purchase price net of resale and the fixed annual charges are already committed on day one, while the per-kilometre and per-trip terms only tilt the slope.

Once an hour of commuting is worth more than about $15, time is the largest line in the full cost of every mode, and the slow mode stops being the cheap one.