Cubao Park n’ Ride – P50 Fixed Fee Parking in Cubao

The Smart Araneta Center Coliseum recently finished constructing a multi-level parking catering to those who want to park their cars then ride the MRT or bus to work. It is a closed parking facility with rotating security guards.  The fixed parking rate is P50 from 6am to 11pm. Corresponding overnight fees will be charged for cars left after 11pm. It’s a 5-10 minute walk from the parking lot towards the cubao MRT station or the cubao LRT station and vice versa – the parking building is actually somewhat in the middle of farmer’s mall and gateway. It is beside the coliseum itself so just ask any guard in the area to point you to the right direction (I couldn’t find a decent map to show the location). The set-up similar to the one offered in Trinoma. At 6:45am the parking is still quite spacious so you don’t have to worry about losing space. Although if you’re riding the MRT then you’ll have to be at the station by at least 6:30am to avoid the massive pile-up for the train. Alternatively you can ride the bus as well.

I’ve just started working in Makati and I know how ridiculously high the parking fees are not to mention the gas and the traffic I have to deal with each and every day. If I brought a car and parked in Makati, I would be spending nearly P60,720 a year just for my travel to work!! It is an insanely high expense for someone with mediocre income. If instead I parked in Cubao and commuted to Makati via the mrt or bus, I would still be spending around P31,545 a year but that’s nearly 50% more in savings  – still a high expense but one I’d rather live with.

That’s P32k more per year that I could use to buy more clothes, buy new gadgets, spend on food trips, travel to other countries or more importantly save and compound over the rest of my life. P32k growing at a conservative 1.5% CAGR (which is a bad investment considering an average inflation of 3%) would give me P42k in 20 years or a return on my original investment of 32%. The number seem small but consider saving P32k a year and adding that to the investment each year or imagine saving P32M and having P42M by 20 years because of your savings (scale makes a lot of difference and we still haven’t considered inflation).

Still there are some other important things that I considered than just the blatant cost savings and those are safety, security, convenience, time and comfort. I needed to give some in order to take some. Riding the MRT can be very inconvenient, uncomfortable, stressful and tiring. A tiring day at work can turn into exhaustion when you are constantly pushing and securing space for yourself. You may lose time (which is our most important asset), security and comfort. By parking at Cubao, I am already considering that there would be some days requiring me to work overtime to an average of 8pm. By this time I could still ride the train and still safely get back to my home from Cubao rather than having to ride the jeep to my home late at night – which is a riskier prospect by all accounts.

If you are constantly finding yourself more negatively affected then bringing a car to Makati instead would be the better option especially if it starts to adversely affect your health. Balance is key. You do want to save more money for the future but you don’t want it at the expense of your health, security, work-life balance and family. That being said if I were earning significantly more then I would definitely consider bringing the car.

To get to the P60,720 cost of traveling to Makati, I used an online distance calculator (found here http://mapsof.net/distance-calculator/philippines) to estimate the distance from my house to the office building (x2 since we travel to and from). I know my car has an average mileage of 8km/L then I calculated for the estimated P/km. I assumed a P100 parking fee and 20 days of work per month. Same goes with the computation for the cost of travelling to Cubao but with parking at P50 and assuming a bus ride in the morning and train ride in the evening.