Wildfire season is here again
And how much rent can you save by flying to Vancouver?
If you see wildfire smoke, no need to be alarmed: It’s just the dormant fires from a few months ago waking up again. It’s a normal occurance, just a few months earlier than usual because as you may have noticed we haven’t been getting a lot of snow. So little, in fact, that the B.C. Winter Games in Quesnel have cancelled their winter sports competitions except the ones they can do on dry land or indoors. But it’s not just winter events getting cancelled! The Fort St. John airshow is off because they just can’t see how they can plan an event with the high chance of more fires this year. The future! What a time to be alive.
A commute in the sky
CTV published a story about a UBC student who has opted to live with his parents in Calgary because flying to his classes in Vancouver, one day a week, is cheaper than it would be to rent a place there unless he moved far enough out of town that the commute would be roughly the same, anyways.
This math has finally spurred me on to do something I’ve wanted to for a while, which is to figure out how frequently you could fly to Vancouver from Prince George and still come out ahead, monetarily. There are early and late enough flights in the day that you can get a full day of work/study/play in without needing to get overnight accomodation, so logistically it’s viable, so the real question is the math.
For my purposes, I’m using the annual Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation report, which aggregates the cost of living for different types of units in cities across the country and was just updated at the end of January. Let’s go with a few different types of units (by the way, if these seem low it’s because this includes long-term rentals that may not be as high as new listings):
Bachelor/month
Prince George: $770
Vancouver: $1,486
Difference: $716
1 bedroom/month
Prince George: $989
Vancouver: $1,696
Difference: $707
2 bedroom/month
Prince George: $1,218
Vancouver: $2,181
Difference: $963
So depending on your situation, safe to say we’re looking at at least $700 in savings a month if you were to live in Prince George.
Heading over to Google flights, I’m seeing a pretty wide range of prices for th enext couple of months — as high as $600 if I’m trying to book for this weekend and as low as $260 if I leave next week.
Looking ahead, it evens out a bit more — for March, we’re in the $300-$400 range and it largely stays there until July when it moves above $400-$500 for the summer.
That amounts to maybe a maximum of two trips a month where you’re coming out about even — more, if you’re going at peak times, less if you manage to get seat sales or start racking up those points to get free flights. It doesn’t work out for a weekly commute but if you’re someone who just wants to enjoy life in a bigger city or need to meet with clients on a semi-regular basis, the economics are there. And that’s if you’re paying for a place here — for a student living at home who needs to go in to class once a week the math fully works out — four $350 flights a month come out to less than a bachelor pad in Vancouver, let alone a two-bedroom.
Now imagine if we had high-speed trains!
Quick news:
The first homicide of the year has been recorded, after the victim of a January shooting died.
The city put out a fact check on what it does to help people during extreme heat/cold events, which largely seems to amount to put out lists of places operated by the province and non-profits, plus distributing provincial money and increasing bylaw patrols.
Wildfire mitigation work begins next week in the Vanway area.
Five athletes be inducted in to Prince George Sports Hall of Fame.
Prince George needs volunteers for city’s accessibility committee.
Ice oval, ski trails should be ready for Prince George Iceman.
Tonight’s Coldnsap (two separate shows):
And Saturday!
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