Another one of those topics of conversation that I like to debate: is it cheaper to get around with your own private car? A lot of people claim that owning a car and using it for everything is much cheaper than the alternatives, which is a combination of train, buses and publicly shared cars. To me it feels that people tend to claim this because they consider their car itself as 'free'. Because you pay for it regardless whether you use it. Then people might compare the cost of fuel with a train ticket and (to me: incorrectly) judge their car to be cheaper. So let's do the math in full.

This will be tough, because what are you comparing really? What kind of trips should you expect to make?

Cost of an average car

I do love statistic. Let's start by investigating what the Dutch pay on average for their cars and what else you might accomplish with that same amount. A direct statistic for how much a Dutch person spends on their car is not available, so let's try to approach it ourselves.

For the average car, let's take a Volkswagen Polo. Gasoline, manual, 5 doors, built 2016 with 100'000 at the counter when purchased. This sounds like the kind of car an average young family might want to buy. This car will make 11'200 km per year on average. We could expect the car to fall apart entirely at 275'000 km, providing us with (275'000 km - 100'000 km) / 11'200 km/year ≈ 15 years. We buy it for €10'000 (seemingly the average on Autoscout24 right now).

Let's see the cost estimate of this per month. Things like road taxes, insurance (although the no-claim discount needs to be estimated) and cost of gas we can determine pretty accurately. Maintenance is the hardest one. I did a pretty rough grab at €900 per year, which seems reasonably according to some random sources online. We take the average cost of gasoline of 2025 (as of writing the price is unusually high).

My total is about €3'700 per year, or about €0.33 per km. Now, that number covers owning the car and using it. In case you consider the car ownership a given, then it leaves you with €0.16 per km. More on that later.
The Dutch organization ANWB has a nifty online calculator to determine how much you should expect to pay per year for a given car. Entering our imaginary Volkswagen Polo and usage we get €4'800 per year. This is about 30% more than my own calculation, mostly because the ANWB thinks both depreciation and maintenance/repairs are more expensive than I thought. In my experience these kind of budget calculators overestimate costs, so we can continue with my €311, knowing that it should at least be in the right ballpark.

Also note how the complete cost per kilometer (including ownership) is easily 3 times the cost of just the fuel.

And finally a really, really big catch: these numbers assume only a driver in the car. With every passenger the cost per person per kilometer go down proportionally, since that little extra weight won't significantly increase the cost of the trip.

Cost of the train

The train would be central as an alternative to going by car. Unfortunately it's hard to pin the exact price per km by train, because prices vary by track, transporter, time of day, discounts, subscriptions, etc. Also, which number of kilometers do we even take? As-the-crow-flies, the car equivalent, or do we count the exact track length?
Let's just start somewhere by taking random sections, using NS and seeing the full price cost per km (on the average between map and roads distances). And just 2nd class of course.

If we average that we get 26 cents per km, taking only two significant digits because this number is only a poor representation. This beats our average car ownership of 33 cents per km (especially the ANWB average of 43 cents) by a good margin. For those of you who refuse to consider the cost of the ownership of the car in the price per kilometer, this still roughly ties with the ANWB estimate of 24 cents, but it loses against my personal estimate of 18 cents.

Now here comes what I think is the big kicker: you often won't need to pay full price for any NS train trips. Through their Flex subscriptions you can always get some kind of big discount. The king of all subscriptions ("altijd vrij") will set you back €399.99 per month, but allows for limitless travel. This monthly payment is actually similar to the ANWB cost estimate of owning and using a car (though my own estimate for a car is cheaper).

Example: Weekend Getaways

Let's say you make one return trip every weekend of about an hour worth of traveling. You would keep the "NS Weekend Vrij" subscription for €39.50 a month and that would be all.
Now for the car. That train trip (looking at Amersfoort-Rotterdam connection) might be 80 km. That would bring the equivalent train cost to €39.50 / 4 / 80km = 12.3 cents / km. That beats all of our car cost estimates, unless you start sharing the car: starting with two people in the car (with the ANWB mileage-only cost estimate) you tie in terms of cost and with four people in the car you would even justify the most pessimistic estimate of the entire car ownership.

Another alternative: Carsharing

In order to sometimes use a car, you don't need to necessarily own one. Rental cars have of course been around for ages, but they are not really convenient for a random Sunday outing because it involves a formal booking procedure and you would need to pick it up from the shop. But now there are a couple of charsharing platform around too, like MyWheels and Greenwheels. There is also SnappCar, although that resembles more a traditional car rental service, just from other consumers.
These short-term rentals mean to make it easy to just grab a car close by, without requiring too much planning.

As for the rates, MyWheels starts at €3.22/h + €0.33/km and GreenWheels has €3,85/h + €0,42/km. Though both have monthly subscription models that give big discounts on each trip. Together they have about 7'500 cars placed throughout our cities.
And they combine wonderfully with the train: I might first travel 2 hours by train and then do the last 15 minutes with a shared car to some destination that might not have a proper bus line.

Let's make an attempt by bringing the cost back to euros per kilometer, like we have done so far. If we take a MyWheels and we average 50km/h over the rental period (including time spent at the destination) that amounts to about €0,40 / km (dominated by just the price per km). Note that gas is included in the rental.
That is actually really close to the cost of full car ownership!

And while we're on the subject.

Pros & Cons

We should probably address another obvious item: traveling by car and train is just not the same, and that plays a huge role too.

Pros of a car:

• Complete scheduling freedom: no waiting for, rushing to or missing a departure.
• Baggage: bringing stuff is much easier as you won't have to carry it across stations.
• And the main one, freedom in destination: we have been comparing the train now, but trains only go to so many places. If you need to be somewhere where no trains stop, you will need to find a bus, take an OV fiets or take a shared car.

Pros of the train:

• Comfort: you don't need to be driving and you can do whatever you want instead
• Predictable costs: if you car just dies you must pay a lot for a new one, while for the train you always know what you'll pay

Ideology

Another aspect that plays a huge role for me personally: choosing to forgo owning a car is a way to help shape our society. It's not just a matter of money. Taking a car over a train and especially over taking the bike is much more polluting, that will be obvious. But cars and our car-centered way of live has deformed the way we organize our cities. So much space in our residential areas has been sacrificed to roads and parking space. If we could replace even a small portion of that with more green and public space we could be so much happier.
Most mornings I am biking past a huge line of stationary traffic, all individual drivers in their 1'000+ kg steel beasts, and I think to myself: 'after centuries of development, how is this the best mode of transport we could think of'?

Maybe right now it is not financially attractive to replace your car with bikes, public transport and ride shares. However, if we continue to rely exclusively on our cars, the alternatives won't get better either. We as consumers must take an initiative and demonstrate what we want and the facilities will follow suit.

Conclusion

Let's see what else we could get for the €300 / month for a car:

That still gives a lot of possibilities. And frankly, if you tailor this to what works for you it might be much cheaper still.

I have to admit that this post has turned into a collection of random tidbits, so a real conclusion is hard to draw. In the end the situation and routine of every individual will be quite different.
Still, I hope to make a point that although owning a car feels like the default for all of us, it has no reason to need to be. Alternatives are there that are in the end better for all of us and without necessarily costing more.