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That's because young people don't have families. You see this play out with every generation. I read an article recently that incredulously reported that Mille

• andys627 10y ago
  Sources?
  • untog 10y ago
    I can't even remember if this was the article I read, but a quick Google of "millennials buying cars" returns: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/forget-stereotypes-millennials-are-buying-cars-survey-says-n553066 http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/forget-stereotypes-mil...
    • noobermin 10y ago
      Not very strong evidence. Essentially, it says that Millennials are more likely to buy a car in the next 12 months than people 30-50 and people 50+...right because presumably such other groups already own cars?
  • manyxcxi 10y ago
    I'm an anecdote. Wife and 3 kids (the oldest is 3 1/2) and about a year ago I sold my truck so we're down to 1 SUV for the family. I was able to do this because the office space I moved in to is only 4mi from our house so I ride my bicycle or my motorcycle. I know a motorcycle is technically cheating in a way, but it gets 45mpg, means I never have to ride share, and costs me 1/6th as much to insure as the $55k truck did. We live about 14mi south of downtown Portland- which has pretty good public transport, but means we've got pretty piss poor options if you don't want to spend 2+ hours getting downtown. My gym is 2 blocks from the office, we chose our suburb neighborhood because there's literally a dozen parks and playgrounds within walking/biking distance for toddlers. We, as a family, absolutely need the car for 99% of things. Me, as a 34 year old guy going about his daily non-family business, can get by even in the 'burbs without a car.
    • kuschku 10y ago
      On the other hand, I can report of my childhood (born '96) in a German mid-sized city where we almost always used the bus, despite our family having two cars. The first car was only used by dad who worked in another city with – at that time – no train line existing yet, and the second car was only used whenever we’d go camping or buy large amounts of groceries. We kids by ourselves always used bike or bus, and when we with our parents went to the city, or shopping, it almost always was bus, too.
• dajohnson89 10y ago
  Yep, the same millennials who swear they'll never move to the suburbs, do just that once they find a spouse and realize that a 2br in the burbs is SO much cheaper. And the schools are so good!
  • TillE 10y ago
    As with other developed countries, the number of people choosing to not have children keeps going up. It's not a default thing you can assume that people - even married couples - will inevitably do.
  • tzs 10y ago
    State Farm Insurance has an amusing TV ad about the things young people say they will never do: https://youtube.com/watch?v=O1Z91YkPatw https://youtube.com/watch?v=O1Z91YkPatw
  • sotojuan 10y ago
    Reminds me of teens/early 20s who say they won't marry and/or have kids and save up to retire before 40... wonder how many don't end up with a kid and a mortgage by then.
    • dsfyu404ed 10y ago
      happy wife happy life...
    • Broken_Hippo 10y ago
      I used to say such things to my mother 20 years ago - mostly about the children. My words were more that I wouldn't do it before 30, and then it was a maybe. (I never have wanted children, honestly).I told her any man I married would just have to be happy with that.. She swore I'd change my mind. I still don't have children. I'm 38, and will remain childless. My husband is fine with this. But I do think most folks that say such things wind up with long-term relationships (legal marriage isn't as attractive with many) and a child or two when they are 25-30, either by accident or something changes when their mind stops developing.
• dajohnson89 10y ago
  Yep, the same millennials who swear they'll never move to the suburbs, do just that once they find a spouse and realize that a 2br in the burbs is SO much cheaper. And the schools are so good!
• Xylakant 10y ago
  I don't live in LA, so my situation might only partially comparable. but there are quite a few things that make it possible for me not to own a car that my parents didn't have access to. For example car sharing/ride hailing services that were not available 20 years ago, delivery services that didn't exist in that form. Electric cargo bikes make it feasible to carry medium loads without too much physical effort. I can quite well imagine not buying a car for the next decade and instead rely on a combination of all of the above, something that would have been very hard for my parents generation.
• IvyMike 10y ago
  I think even families may be shedding cars. Maybe not BOTH cars, but I know at least two families that have gone from two car households down to one car households.
• dba7dba 10y ago
  Having kids totally requires having a car. Just try walking around with diaper bag while holding a 15 lbs baby. Or 2.
  • icebraining 10y ago
    If by "car" you mean "baby carriage", then sure. Weird definition, though.
• rayiner 10y ago
  Maybe. My daughter (almost four) has spent pretty much her whole life living downtown: Chicago, New Rochelle, Wilmington, Baltimore, DC. When she was a baby we'd take the Metro North to Costco in Port Chester and load the stroller up and go home. We did that even though we had a car. I don't think you can really extrapolate from generational history here. As recently as the 1940s, most kids were raised in the city or in rural areas. You've got maybe three generations raised in the suburbs. Not exactly ancient history. It's also worth noting that what the suburbs are is changing to become less car dependent. Lots of people having kids in new developments in Reston, VA, which is a suburb but organized more like the bedroom communities of yore (with a little downtown) than the sprawling subdivisions that prevailed from the 1960s to 1990s.
  • monkmartinez 10y ago
    East coast is definitely different than west coast in terms of density. Come out west and you will see suburbs.
    • tcoppi 10y ago
      The east cost still has plenty of suburbs, they are just slightly higher density than what you might see surrounding LA or San Diego. See the MD-DC corridor, with almost no public transit except light rail, but townhouses are abundant. People that grew up in LA don't even know what a townhouse is.
  • partisan 10y ago
    I recently just stopped driving into New York City from Westchester. I used to have no qualms about driving for an hour and then taking some 10 minutes to find parking, but there is a better way. The Metro North is 35 minutes to Grand Central and parking is relatively easy, especially when I am going in on an evening. I realized it isn't worth my time to drive in given that I can do other things on the train such as read or write or just close my eyes. As a bonus, I am certainly less stressed when I get where I am going.
    • deleted 10y ago
• enoch_r 10y ago
  When I got married and had a child, I went from car free to one car. Still a low car lifestyle (commute and grocery shop by bike, prioritized a walkable location during our house search, etc) but my car usage definitely increased. Still, it increased much less than it otherwise would have because we love getting around without a car and because driving is not a status signal to our peers. I might be wrong, having not lived through previous generations, but I think actively preferring to not drive is relatively common now, and it seems like there used to be some stigma attached to not owning a car that is now utterly absent.
• Frondo 10y ago
  Well, heh, anecdotally I know a few families with young kids with no cars. Medium-sized Pacific Northwest cities (Seattle and Portland). Of course, plural of anecdote and all that, but I'd be curious if there's any actual data on the trend. Know of some?
  • jchrisa 10y ago
    Carfree Portland cargo bike family of 4. I spent part of my no-car dividend on an electric longboard. :)
• davidw 10y ago
  Car free is tough, but using a car less is entirely possibly in a lot of places. All you need is a bit of infrastructure, and a bit less zoning, so that you can live close to other things. Then it becomes a "right tool for the job" situation. We had a car in Italy, but regularly rode our bikes, or took public transportation for various things.
• honkhonkpants 10y ago
  If you actually want data on this, not just confirmation of your own bias that family=cars, here's a cohort analysis of driver's licensure and car ownership rates: http://nexus.umn.edu/papers/Cohorts.pdf http://nexus.umn.edu/papers/Cohorts.pdf
  • mturmon 10y ago
    Actual data, not just anecdotes, nice work.
• cylinder 10y ago
  Yeah, it's hilarious. All that's happened is millennials have delayed child bearing due to financial pressures / infantalization / choice. I know I'm already sick of car-free life and ready to go to a healthier mix of public transportation, walking and driving.
  • icebraining 10y ago
    What's healthier about it?
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• wdr1 10y ago
  > That's because young people don't have families. I fit that profile. I've lived in LA for >15 years & didn't use my car much. I now have two small children. Still don't use my car much. Groceries? Google Express. Diapers & other random things? Amazon. Taking my son to preschool? I hooked up a trailer to my bike & drop him off on the way to work. My son loves trains, so taking the Metro is a blast with him. It's maybe a 30 minute walk to the closest stop & from there we can hit the beach, downtown SM, the Science Center & so on. To be fair we do have a car. Rare is obviously rare, but when it happens, I use the car. Along with trips to home depot or to see a friend on the other side of town. But honestly, LA is a great to live car free. If you develop your life around a car it naturally becomes hard to remove the car. But if you start off developing your life w/o the car, it's much, much easier to ditch it.
• coldtea 10y ago
  >That's because young people don't have families. You see this play out with every generation. I read an article recently that incredulously reported that Millenials - the car rejecting generation! - have started buying cars. Of course they have, because they're coming into the age where they get married, have kids and move to the suburbs. If that was the case, you'd see it repeated in every generation, but we don't. People in the 50s and 80s still wanted a car even when they were 16, and bought one as soon as they could afford it. People in general buy less cars nowadays, and those that do buy, also buy smaller cars increasingly more.
• cowsandmilk 10y ago
  You are looking at this in much the wrong way. Here's the real trend: People who are currently 25 own less cars than people who were 25 ten years ago. People who are currently 30 own less cars than people who were 30 ten years ago. People who are currently 35 own less cars than people who were 35 ten years ago. (Note, these are the people who at 25 owned more cars than current 25 year olds) Yes, when the people who are currently 25 turn 35 (aka the millennials age), they will own more cars than they did at 25. But all trends support the idea that they will own less cars than the people who are currently 35. While not exactly purchases, I like this graph showing every age cohort is less likely to take out a car loan today than in 2003. http://public.tableau.com/profile/joe.cortright#!/vizhome/CarLoanOriginations/Dashboard2 http://public.tableau.com/profile/joe.cortright#!/vizhome/Ca... And also this graph about how many people have driver's licenses, every age cohort has gone down since 2008. And for young cohorts, it has gone down tremendously since 1983. http://public.tableau.com/profile/joe.cortright#!/vizhome/DriversLicenseAge/DriversLicenseAge http://public.tableau.com/profile/joe.cortright#!/vizhome/Dr...
  • oh_sigh 10y ago
    Those two facts can be explained, partially, as follows: People are delaying families longer now, as well as having smaller families(which maybe means you can get away with living in an apartment in a city which doesn't require cars). For example, the average age of first-time mothers went from ~21 in the 1970s, to >26 in 2014. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/01/14/462816458/average-age-of-first-time-moms-keeps-climbing-in-the-u-s http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/01/14/46281645...
  • abpavel 10y ago
    I think it's you who are looking at this the wrong way. They wrote: > That's because young people don't have families. People who are currently 25 have less babies than people who were 25 ten years ago. People who are currently 30 have less babies than people who were 30 ten years ago.[0] People living familyless lives longer means that the cars will come later in their lives. Having children and not have a car is a very tough proposition, considering the volume and mass of babystuff you have to handle. Of course the cars might not come at all if people continue to chose solitude over offspring. [0] http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=fertility-and-birth-rates http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=fertility-and-birth-r...
• tracker1 10y ago
  The issue with delivery services is they rely on the density of city populations... In the Phoenix area most of said services don't exist, and many that have tried have failed. It's a pretty stark contrast to more dense cities, and even locally Tempe has a lot more options than the greater Phoenix area does. I also hope that similar ride sharing systems take deeper hold in Phoenix... Personally, I really enjoy driving, so seeing traffic become less dense (currently not nearly as bad as the coastal cities by any means) would be nice.
• gioele 10y ago
  > You see this play out with every generation. I read an article recently that incredulously reported that Millenials - the car rejecting generation! - have started buying cars. Of course they have, because they're coming into the age where they get married, have kids and move to the suburbs. European prospective: in most cities and towns it is not hard at all to have a family with kids and have no car. Many things are at walking distance and for the rest there is a widespread public transportation network. The only people that _need_ cars are those living in rural areas or on the new suburbia-style boroughs born along secondary highways (new development of the last 50 years).
  • mattmanser 10y ago
    Actual European perspective: Your country is different from other European countries. Here all my friends with young kids are buying 4x4s and people carriers as taking a baby and a toddler on the bus is a bit of a nightmare.
    • Broken_Hippo 10y ago
      Or maybe Your country or region is different. I'm in Norway living in a decent sized city (for Norway). The public transportation is great here, and taking a baby or toddler on the bus doesn't seem to be an issue at all. People often don't take young children out of their strollers. Now, off in the countryside, it seems that public transportation thins out (though isn't non-existent), and more people have cars. Usually small-to-medium sized front wheel drive cars, families usually have a 4 door model.
• fpoling 10y ago
  I definitely see in Norway that people across generations use car less often. One can argue that rise of payed roads, higher and higher fees to enter cities etc. contributes to that. However, those measures are implemented by politicians who are elected by grown ups with cars, as they are more likely to vote.
• lootsauce 10y ago
  Totally agree, I have heard demographers say that basically millennial's are a bigger group than the baby boomers and will have as big if not bigger economic impact. Yes they have delayed families and home ownership but this is because of financial hardship related to the great recession. But make no mistake, these people will have families and will buy houses and cars and couches an all that. I recall the good ole hippie generation was going to be living in communes and sharing free love and all that crap. What did they end up doing again? Oh yeah, they eventually had to get jobs, got married, had kids, moved out of the city etc.
• marssaxman 10y ago
  I've been hearing that "young people don't have families" explanation since all my friends were young people who didn't have families, but the long-promised exodus to the suburbs continues not to materialize. If anything, we've all been clustering more and more closely together. The people with kids want to be around other people with kids, but we all want to be around our friends. If people can't afford a house on their own, they're far more likely to find another family and set up a co-housing arrangement than to exile themselves to the suburbs.