6 ms·

Yes, this sheer human irrationality is an impediment to sensible progress. I know, and you know, that a car just does not make sense mathematically. You can Ub

by Decade 10y ago

Yes, this sheer human irrationality is an impediment to sensible progress. I know, and you know, that a car just does not make sense mathematically. You can Uber/Lyft whenever it’s too difficult to walk. But emotionally, and I feel it too, turning the ride into a transaction makes it something you have to consider carefully. With a car, the payments, the insurance, the gas, are all disconnected from the idea of taking a specific trip. As a result, since I don’t have a car, I very rarely go anywhere that I can’t bike. Now, combine this with so many people who can’t look at this mathematically, and say that life without a car is impossible, and we get very poor housing and transportation policies being supported all over the Bay Area.

superuser2 10y ago
I assume you are referring to parking requirements. Even if you can go without a car 99% of the time (like by using ZipCar), the one day you want to bring home a large appliance or piece of furniture, monthly Costo haul, etc. what are you going to do if there is no place to safely/legally stop within several blocks?
- revelation 10y ago
  You only have a "monthly Costco haul" because you are stuck in a car-dominated mindset where you drive however many miles to get to that Costco. I buy fresh weekly...
  - burger_moon 10y ago
    One thing I noticed about the references to costco throughout this thread, is that people only go there to buy a full overs-zed shopping cart full of supplies. Maybe I'm just weird, but I walk there weekly and it's the only grocery store I use. Going early in the morning on weekends or an hour before closing weeknights means I can get from my apt and back with groceries in an hour.
- Symbiote 10y ago
  In Denmark, Ikea has "furniture taxis" so you can take what you've bought home with you. I've not seen the same service arranged by other stores, but the taxi companies can be called. (Ikea doesn't run the taxis, it's a local company.) Or you can ask for a normal delivery, but of course you'd need to be at home. Furniture and many large appliances don't fit in typical cars anyway.
  - superuser2 10y ago
    Where do they stop? Do they just double park? When setting up a new apartment, in addition to the big stuff, I always find myself bringing home ~5 carloads of stuff from Target and Home Depot. Does that just explode into several dozen bicycle trips, or do you also use taxis for that? Where do they unload?
    - rspeer 10y ago
      I can answer based on the Boston area. It's not that Boston is consistently perfect for walking and biking, but it's awful for driving, so the car-free life is pretty appealing. I guess you could describe what delivery trucks do as "double parking". It's far from the worst traffic sin and you quickly learn not to follow a delivery truck on a one-lane street. Delivery drivers tend to be a lot better at solving this constraint problem than me in a Zipcar, anyway. If you're moving, the best thing to do is to reserve street space for a box truck or moving truck in advance. Or you can wing it and just be in the way (a popular choice in September, when many new people move in).
    - Symbiote 10y ago
      Within the city centre, but not on a large road, they will double-park if there isn't a space for loading nearby. Outside the centre, there will almost always be a parking space available. 26% of people use private cars to get to work in Copenhagen, and few of these people are driving to the city centre -- parking is too difficult. That means a badly parked delivery van isn't as much of a problem as it might be in other cities. At least, so long as it's not blocking a cycle lane. Danish apartments tend not to have much furniture. It's the Scandinavian, minimalist style. I don't think many people would make dozens of bicycle trips; they'd either have, rent or borrow a car, or use taxis. Students might be an exception, but they don't have much space. You couldn't have fitted 5 carloads of stuff in my student apartment, especially in addition to the big stuff.
tzs 10y ago
I just did the math for my car, which is a 2006 Honda CR-V, under the assumption that the car will have no resale value. My cost per mile over the 10 years I've had it has been about $0.75. The costs were the purchase price, yearly registration and license fees, insurance, gasoline, regular oil changes and other minor schedule maintenance, a couple scheduled major services, new tires, and a few unscheduled fixes (new battery, light bulbs). That's less than what Google is telling me Uber changes per mile, so at first glance it looks like for me that a car does make sense mathematically.
- drdeadringer 10y ago
  I'm in process of doing the same calculation, but without the cost of gas [I never tracked that metric].
  - tzs 10y ago
    I didn't track it. I just took total mileage, divided by miles per gallon (I've got a ScanGauge II [1], which tells me each time I fill up what my miles per gallon on my previous fill up was), multiplied by $4/gallon. I picked $4/gallon because I'm pretty sure it never got higher than that here over the last 10 years (or if it did, it was only briefly), and I was trying to make sure I'd err on the side of higher prices. [1] https://scangauge.com/shop/scangaugeii/ https://scangauge.com/shop/scangaugeii/
    - drdeadringer 10y ago
      I should probably do the same thing, and plug in some "average" of Prius MPG too just for kicks and complication [I trend toward complication before I simplify]. Thanks!
- Decade 10y ago
  It depends on where you use the car. If you have free parking everywhere, that is effectively a government subsidy of urban sprawl and traffic. More crowded places charge for parking. In San Francisco, parking downtown is like $20 per day. And that’s if you leave it in an attended lot. Feeding the meter is so annoying. Also, there is time spent in traffic. And fossil fuels are just stupid bad to use, so your $4 per gallon assumption is another hidden subsidy. But these don’t affect your personal finances, so they’re fine to leave out.
bzbarsky 10y ago
> You can Uber/Lyft whenever it’s too difficult to walk. Not with kids you can't, because then you need car seats. Things like the Ride Safer Vests help a bit, but now you're having to lug those around. And if your kids are small enough, they must be in a rear-facing seat no matter what. In practice, this means that for a family with more than one child there's a multi-year period when Uber/Lyft/taxis are basically non-viable. With one child, you may be able to limit this period to a year or two (e.g. in California the rear-facing seat requirement goes up through age 2).
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  Even if you have one car for a family that size, that's still less than a typical middle-class American family that would have one for each adult.
  - bzbarsky 10y ago
    While true, it's also not uncommon for one parent to take the kids somewhere and the other to pick them up. It may be possible to do that with one car or it may not depending on geography and where the adults need to be before/after having the kids in the car. Simple concrete example that is quite common: one parent takes the toddler to daycare and then heads to work and works later than the other parent. The other parent starts work earlier and picks up the toddler on the way home from work. This can work with one car if their jobs are located close enough that they can switch which one has the car. But if not, this is really hard to do without two cars.

by Decade 10y ago

superuser2 10y ago

I assume you are referring to parking requirements. Even if you can go without a car 99% of the time (like by using ZipCar), the one day you want to bring home a large appliance or piece of furniture, monthly Costo haul, etc. what are you going to do if there is no place to safely/legally stop within several blocks?

revelation 10y ago
You only have a "monthly Costco haul" because you are stuck in a car-dominated mindset where you drive however many miles to get to that Costco. I buy fresh weekly...
- burger_moon 10y ago
  One thing I noticed about the references to costco throughout this thread, is that people only go there to buy a full overs-zed shopping cart full of supplies. Maybe I'm just weird, but I walk there weekly and it's the only grocery store I use. Going early in the morning on weekends or an hour before closing weeknights means I can get from my apt and back with groceries in an hour.
Symbiote 10y ago
In Denmark, Ikea has "furniture taxis" so you can take what you've bought home with you. I've not seen the same service arranged by other stores, but the taxi companies can be called. (Ikea doesn't run the taxis, it's a local company.) Or you can ask for a normal delivery, but of course you'd need to be at home. Furniture and many large appliances don't fit in typical cars anyway.
- superuser2 10y ago
  Where do they stop? Do they just double park? When setting up a new apartment, in addition to the big stuff, I always find myself bringing home ~5 carloads of stuff from Target and Home Depot. Does that just explode into several dozen bicycle trips, or do you also use taxis for that? Where do they unload?
  - rspeer 10y ago
    I can answer based on the Boston area. It's not that Boston is consistently perfect for walking and biking, but it's awful for driving, so the car-free life is pretty appealing. I guess you could describe what delivery trucks do as "double parking". It's far from the worst traffic sin and you quickly learn not to follow a delivery truck on a one-lane street. Delivery drivers tend to be a lot better at solving this constraint problem than me in a Zipcar, anyway. If you're moving, the best thing to do is to reserve street space for a box truck or moving truck in advance. Or you can wing it and just be in the way (a popular choice in September, when many new people move in).
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    Within the city centre, but not on a large road, they will double-park if there isn't a space for loading nearby. Outside the centre, there will almost always be a parking space available. 26% of people use private cars to get to work in Copenhagen, and few of these people are driving to the city centre -- parking is too difficult. That means a badly parked delivery van isn't as much of a problem as it might be in other cities. At least, so long as it's not blocking a cycle lane. Danish apartments tend not to have much furniture. It's the Scandinavian, minimalist style. I don't think many people would make dozens of bicycle trips; they'd either have, rent or borrow a car, or use taxis. Students might be an exception, but they don't have much space. You couldn't have fitted 5 carloads of stuff in my student apartment, especially in addition to the big stuff.

tzs 10y ago

I just did the math for my car, which is a 2006 Honda CR-V, under the assumption that the car will have no resale value. My cost per mile over the 10 years I've had it has been about $0.75. The costs were the purchase price, yearly registration and license fees, insurance, gasoline, regular oil changes and other minor schedule maintenance, a couple scheduled major services, new tires, and a few unscheduled fixes (new battery, light bulbs). That's less than what Google is telling me Uber changes per mile, so at first glance it looks like for me that a car does make sense mathematically.

drdeadringer 10y ago
I'm in process of doing the same calculation, but without the cost of gas [I never tracked that metric].
- tzs 10y ago
  I didn't track it. I just took total mileage, divided by miles per gallon (I've got a ScanGauge II [1], which tells me each time I fill up what my miles per gallon on my previous fill up was), multiplied by $4/gallon. I picked $4/gallon because I'm pretty sure it never got higher than that here over the last 10 years (or if it did, it was only briefly), and I was trying to make sure I'd err on the side of higher prices. [1] https://scangauge.com/shop/scangaugeii/ https://scangauge.com/shop/scangaugeii/
  - drdeadringer 10y ago
    I should probably do the same thing, and plug in some "average" of Prius MPG too just for kicks and complication [I trend toward complication before I simplify]. Thanks!
Decade 10y ago
It depends on where you use the car. If you have free parking everywhere, that is effectively a government subsidy of urban sprawl and traffic. More crowded places charge for parking. In San Francisco, parking downtown is like $20 per day. And that’s if you leave it in an attended lot. Feeding the meter is so annoying. Also, there is time spent in traffic. And fossil fuels are just stupid bad to use, so your $4 per gallon assumption is another hidden subsidy. But these don’t affect your personal finances, so they’re fine to leave out.

bzbarsky 10y ago

> You can Uber/Lyft whenever it’s too difficult to walk. Not with kids you can't, because then you need car seats. Things like the Ride Safer Vests help a bit, but now you're having to lug those around. And if your kids are small enough, they must be in a rear-facing seat no matter what. In practice, this means that for a family with more than one child there's a multi-year period when Uber/Lyft/taxis are basically non-viable. With one child, you may be able to limit this period to a year or two (e.g. in California the rear-facing seat requirement goes up through age 2).

TheCoelacanth 10y ago
Even if you have one car for a family that size, that's still less than a typical middle-class American family that would have one for each adult.
- bzbarsky 10y ago
  While true, it's also not uncommon for one parent to take the kids somewhere and the other to pick them up. It may be possible to do that with one car or it may not depending on geography and where the adults need to be before/after having the kids in the car. Simple concrete example that is quite common: one parent takes the toddler to daycare and then heads to work and works later than the other parent. The other parent starts work earlier and picks up the toddler on the way home from work. This can work with one car if their jobs are located close enough that they can switch which one has the car. But if not, this is really hard to do without two cars.