5 ms·

Having let go of my car years ago and having never missed it, I feel that car ownership is still not cheap enough to make sense, and we can do better. I realiz

Having let go of my car years ago and having never missed it, I feel that car ownership is still not cheap enough to make sense, and we can do better. I realize that if you live out in the countryside or in the suburbs, the car is your lifeline. But for city folk cars are a luxury. You can walk everywhere you need, you can use Instacart and Amazon to handle groceries and shopping, and, if you're lucky, you can work on distributed teams. You never need to get behind the wheel, and even then you're better off getting a Lyft. $250/mo for a parking spot where random people can still scratch up, dent or break into your car. $100-200 for insurance, $x for gas, $300+ for financing or leasing a car, $y for repairs and maintenance, $z for tickets and parking meters.. This stuff adds up. If you only need the car occasionally, let's say a couple of times a month on the weekends, then this system is horribly inefficient. Of course you end up paying more for living close to work in say.. downtown Seattle, NYC, SF, LA etc... but the tradeoff is to move to the burbs, shave off $1000 from your rent, and instead spend that same amount on your car, in addition to now having to sit in traffic jams for an hour or two every day? No, thanks. I'm hoping networks of press-a-button-on-phone-receive-car systems like Zipcar keep expanding. Seems like their growth has been sub-linear at best this last few years.

ghaff 6y ago
Many city folks I know do (normally) still go to visit friends and attend events in the suburbs on a regular basis. And they head well outside the city frequently--2-3 times a month on weekends. Even though it doesn't make direct economic sense, if you can afford it, it may make sense in terms of convenience given the hassle of renting a car on a regular basis. Especially if you have specific vehicle requirements for sport activities. I know quite a few people in that position. The ZipCar model seemed like it was going to be a big deal at one point. But it seems to have been too much of a niche between Uber and occasional traditional rentals. (I know a couple of folks who use it and they find it a bit of a hassle.)
- BadassFractal 6y ago
  You're hitting the nail on the head here though: it's currently still inconvenient to have access to the kind of vehicle you want on a moment's notice. Getting a car through a traditional rental company is excruciating, and services like Zipcar and Maven are still not snappy enough. Their inventories tend to be limited in many places too, compounding the issue. I'm hoping someone manages to make this as effortless as calling an Uber. Otherwise the alternative is that $10k/y expense on a rapidly depreciating asset you're not really using.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Part of the problem is that demand is spiky. A lot of people are going to want these rentals on weekends. So, for a reliable on-demand weekend rental, you're probably going to spend a decent chunk of a weekly rental fee if this became common. What more tends to happen in practice is that urban folk who decide not to own a car just minimize activities that require one unless they can can draft off friends.
  - nomel 6y ago
    > $10k/y expense $10k/y seems very high. Are parking fees $5k/year or something, or frequently buying a new car for some reason?
    - Marsymars 6y ago
      Average cost of car ownership in the US is in the $10k/yr range: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/cost-car-ownership.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/cost-car-ownersh...
      - nomel 6y ago
        And the average sugar intake is 65 lbs/year. You don't have to eat that many cookies, just as you don't have to spend that much on a car if you don't want to. They're including new cars (20-30% value gone in the first year) and large vehicles like SUVs and trucks (Ford F series is the best selling vehicle in America) in those statistics, along with average mileage (13k/y) numbers for average fuel and maintenance costs, which would be much less for a minimal use vehicle.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > $10k/y seems very high. Are parking fees $5k/year or something At $10/work-day parking ($2,600/year), the remainder is under 13k miles at the IRS standard mileage rate, which is presumably a reasonable actual total expense rate.
  - maxsilver 6y ago
    > Otherwise the alternative is that $10k/y expense on a rapidly depreciating asset You don't have to run out and buy a brand-new Tesla just to own a car. Most people own nice reliable vehicles for half that price. I drive a 2013 Chevy Volt, on pure electricity most of the time, and my TCO is only ~$6k/yr (including gas, insurance, maintenance, registration, car payment + interest, electricity to charge it, fancy winter tires every two years, etc). Frankly, even that expense was a bit of a luxury. If I hadn't been so obsessed with EV's, I probably could have easily shaved $1,000/yr off that price with zero effort.
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  Being in the city makes public transport much more useful. At least where I am virtually all public transport lines have one end in the city and one end in the suburbs. So if you are in the suburbs you can get to the city and if you are in the city you can get to anywhere.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Getting from commuter rail stations to suburban locations is often difficult even with Uber/Lyft. In any case, even with relatively good commuter rail--I'm about a 7 minute drive from a station--it's basically useless for evening activities. Outside of rush hour it runs about every 90 minutes. And this is a good commuter rail system.
    - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
      At least where I am the bus stop is never more than 30 minutes walking from wherever I want go. If I am visiting a suburb I am never in a rush and a 30 minute walk is quite nice.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        There's effectively no public transit out where I live. I mean, there's some sort of regional transit presumably for poor people who don't own cars but it's not really practical otherwise. The one time I looked on Google Maps, it would have taken me 4 hours to get into the city, including walking along a busy street with no sidewalks, to get to a bus to take a train. And this is about an hour drive.
        Polylactic_acid 6y ago
        Stories like this make me feel that large chunks of the US are fundamentally broken. I just find it interesting that Americans assume that public transport is impossible rather than their current layout was designed purely for car transport and that it can be fixed.
jatgoodwin 6y ago
I started using public transit in Denver for about 3-4 years then got infected by bedbugs 3 times from it. Stopped using it and I've been fine since. I'm willing to pay pretty much anything to avoid public transit especially now there's something worse than bedbugs going around.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I would take covid and the associated possibility of death over bed bugs.
- jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
  That is wild. I have never got anything and I have used it all my life. Is Denver's system that unclean?
  - webdood90 6y ago
    Denver's system is actually quite good, except for their staffing issues. I think this is an extreme anecdote which I find hard to believe the RTD at fault for.
  - bediger4000 6y ago
    I live in Denver. I've ridden the bus to work off and on for the last 15 years. I've never heard of anyone getting bedbugs from RTD buses. A few sanitary issues, yes, but not bedbugs, and not systematic issues. The service has mostly gotten better the entire time. Buses are relatively up-to-date, and within the last 3 years, RTD put in real time GPS bus tracking. Very helpful
cbhl 6y ago
Anecdotally, I feel like Zipcar has been shrinking, not growing, ever since they got bought out by Avis (the #2 traditional car rental company). On the other hand, Lyft is now trying to get into the car rentals game...
- ghaff 6y ago
  I've never used them but know people who do. I suspect Uber/Lyft cut a big chunk out of the market between traditional rentals and awful cabs/public transit. The middle still exists--want a vehicle for a few hours to make a bunch of stops/drive a relatively far distance. But it's definitely a niche.
clairity 6y ago
absolutely. i also haven't had a personal car for years, instead renting, scootering, biking, mass-transiting, and ride-hailing. i'm just waiting for someone in the on-demand transportation sector to realize that the killer app for self-driving is not 100% level 5 autonomous driving, but a service that can self-drive to you from a cheap parking lot/structure and return to it after a trip. (to be fair, i think many do realize this and are working on it already.)
maxsilver 6y ago
> But for city folk cars are a luxury Cars aren't a luxury. Being a "city folk" at all is the luxury. Being able to afford a place, where you can outsource all of your errands to poor people, is the luxury. Being able to live in a place where "you can walk everywhere you need" is a luxury. (Not just in location and housing, but in job flexibility and leisure time, and in safety). Having the lifestyle flexibility to completely re-write your entire life around extreme high expense and very limited options, is the luxury. > shave off $1000 from your rent, and instead spend that same amount on your car, in addition to now having to sit in traffic jams for an hour or two every day? No, thanks. For a regular average American, it's more like "pay ~$400/month TCO to own a car, to save $1200/month off your rent". Generally speaking, no one actually spends money on a car, because unless you've made a terrible mistake (or are especially poor), a car earns you more money than it costs. And that's before you get to all the other benefits -- (cheaper housing, larger housing, higher-quality housing, safer transportation, free personal distancing, disease-resistance) -- most of which are especially relevant now that we live in a never-ending-pandemic society.
- zip1234 6y ago
  At least around me, people buy houses that are not in walkable places not because they can't afford somewhere else. It is because they can get some massive new house with a huge yard and gas is cheap so long commutes are fine. We subsidize roads so much that they can drive 30 minutes/30 miles to work every day and back. Meanwhile there are houses that are 1/3 of the price that are only a few miles away from their work but they are also smaller houses.
  - o-__-o 6y ago
    Interesting, can you leave the source where you determined we subsidize roads so people can move to wealthier neighborhoods? Because last I checked, we subsidize roads so big trucks can drive on them every day. If we didn't have trucks and buses, our roads would easily last 100 years.
    - zip1234 6y ago
fnord77 6y ago
I have been doing the no-car thing for a couple years. I am very sick of it. Will be buying a car pretty soon. The thing I hate about doing zipcar / getaround / etc. is the amount of time and hassle I have to spend making sure the car isn't damaged and reporting it BEFORE I hop in and drive off.
- josuepeq 6y ago
  Exactly. In my early 20s, living in Cincinnati, I used to hate the stress of being tethered to car maintenance and ownership. So I moved into “The City” (Chicago, then SF) and got rid of my car. Well, that worked great in my able bodied youth days. At some point in my early 30s, frustration with having complete dependence on someone else (MUNI/BART, Uber, Lyft) or worrying about having rentals available to get me from point A to point B became too much of a burden; too much of a time suck. At some point spending an hour a day total on transportation aggravation made the suburbs look appetizing. I told myself I would never settle for that commute again. Staying in the city, I bought a car. I still hate maintaining cars, and EVs don’t require very much long term maintenance. Going EV simplified getting a car. Renting in western San Francisco, everybody has a garage. It’s all suburbanesque mid century tract housing. Parking at home is not a problem. What is? A 30 minute walk to Forest Hill station or :15 minute bus ride to Forest Hill station. By driving myself, In 15 minutes I could be in Civic Center without having somebody from Stockton get lost In SF In their rental Nissan Sentra with loud sales bro taking a conference call in a Uber Pool. I can say the convenience of living in the city with a car is unparalleled. In (especially western) San Francisco, the transportation infrastructure is geared toward driving. Hearing that BART stops at 9 PM now reinforces the practicality of my decision.
Polylactic_acid 6y ago
I find it funny how this comment is downvoted. It seems like he heavily American userbase of this site finds it inconceivable that life can go on without cars because their local system doesn't support it. I currently do not own a car and don't really feel any desire to get one. I had to change my lifestyle slightly, cycling and PT is not a drop in replacement for a car but I feel the things I have let go are less important than the things I have gained. I find that sitting in traffic is a huge negative on my mental health, working from home currently has made me much happier and if work tries to drag me back to the office I'll be looking for a new job.
perl4ever 6y ago
"in addition to now having to sit in traffic jams for an hour or two every day" I think you're taking for granted that everyone who lives and works in the general area of a city is commuting to the very center from a long way away. My reaction is "well, don't do that!" I briefly worked in the DC area, and I still had a 10-15 minute commute as I am used to. That's because I was living a few miles from the center, in NOVA, and going outwards another mile or two in the morning. Right now, I'm living just barely within the city limits of a smaller city, so technically you could say it's not a suburb, but practically it is, and again, my commute is (or was) about 10 minutes. Any time you actually are living downtown in a significant urban area, it seems like a luxury to me, wouldn't you expect rents to be expensive when housing is competing with office space and fancy restaurants? I was able to afford that in Richmond, but in major, desirable cities, there's no way.

ghaff 6y ago

Many city folks I know do (normally) still go to visit friends and attend events in the suburbs on a regular basis. And they head well outside the city frequently--2-3 times a month on weekends. Even though it doesn't make direct economic sense, if you can afford it, it may make sense in terms of convenience given the hassle of renting a car on a regular basis. Especially if you have specific vehicle requirements for sport activities. I know quite a few people in that position. The ZipCar model seemed like it was going to be a big deal at one point. But it seems to have been too much of a niche between Uber and occasional traditional rentals. (I know a couple of folks who use it and they find it a bit of a hassle.)

BadassFractal 6y ago
You're hitting the nail on the head here though: it's currently still inconvenient to have access to the kind of vehicle you want on a moment's notice. Getting a car through a traditional rental company is excruciating, and services like Zipcar and Maven are still not snappy enough. Their inventories tend to be limited in many places too, compounding the issue. I'm hoping someone manages to make this as effortless as calling an Uber. Otherwise the alternative is that $10k/y expense on a rapidly depreciating asset you're not really using.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Part of the problem is that demand is spiky. A lot of people are going to want these rentals on weekends. So, for a reliable on-demand weekend rental, you're probably going to spend a decent chunk of a weekly rental fee if this became common. What more tends to happen in practice is that urban folk who decide not to own a car just minimize activities that require one unless they can can draft off friends.
- nomel 6y ago
  > $10k/y expense $10k/y seems very high. Are parking fees $5k/year or something, or frequently buying a new car for some reason?
  - Marsymars 6y ago
    Average cost of car ownership in the US is in the $10k/yr range: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/cost-car-ownership.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/cost-car-ownersh...
    - nomel 6y ago
      And the average sugar intake is 65 lbs/year. You don't have to eat that many cookies, just as you don't have to spend that much on a car if you don't want to. They're including new cars (20-30% value gone in the first year) and large vehicles like SUVs and trucks (Ford F series is the best selling vehicle in America) in those statistics, along with average mileage (13k/y) numbers for average fuel and maintenance costs, which would be much less for a minimal use vehicle.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > $10k/y seems very high. Are parking fees $5k/year or something At $10/work-day parking ($2,600/year), the remainder is under 13k miles at the IRS standard mileage rate, which is presumably a reasonable actual total expense rate.
- maxsilver 6y ago
  > Otherwise the alternative is that $10k/y expense on a rapidly depreciating asset You don't have to run out and buy a brand-new Tesla just to own a car. Most people own nice reliable vehicles for half that price. I drive a 2013 Chevy Volt, on pure electricity most of the time, and my TCO is only ~$6k/yr (including gas, insurance, maintenance, registration, car payment + interest, electricity to charge it, fancy winter tires every two years, etc). Frankly, even that expense was a bit of a luxury. If I hadn't been so obsessed with EV's, I probably could have easily shaved $1,000/yr off that price with zero effort.
Polylactic_acid 6y ago
Being in the city makes public transport much more useful. At least where I am virtually all public transport lines have one end in the city and one end in the suburbs. So if you are in the suburbs you can get to the city and if you are in the city you can get to anywhere.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Getting from commuter rail stations to suburban locations is often difficult even with Uber/Lyft. In any case, even with relatively good commuter rail--I'm about a 7 minute drive from a station--it's basically useless for evening activities. Outside of rush hour it runs about every 90 minutes. And this is a good commuter rail system.
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    At least where I am the bus stop is never more than 30 minutes walking from wherever I want go. If I am visiting a suburb I am never in a rush and a 30 minute walk is quite nice.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      There's effectively no public transit out where I live. I mean, there's some sort of regional transit presumably for poor people who don't own cars but it's not really practical otherwise. The one time I looked on Google Maps, it would have taken me 4 hours to get into the city, including walking along a busy street with no sidewalks, to get to a bus to take a train. And this is about an hour drive.
      - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
        Stories like this make me feel that large chunks of the US are fundamentally broken. I just find it interesting that Americans assume that public transport is impossible rather than their current layout was designed purely for car transport and that it can be fixed.

jatgoodwin 6y ago

I started using public transit in Denver for about 3-4 years then got infected by bedbugs 3 times from it. Stopped using it and I've been fine since. I'm willing to pay pretty much anything to avoid public transit especially now there's something worse than bedbugs going around.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
I would take covid and the associated possibility of death over bed bugs.
jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
That is wild. I have never got anything and I have used it all my life. Is Denver's system that unclean?
- webdood90 6y ago
  Denver's system is actually quite good, except for their staffing issues. I think this is an extreme anecdote which I find hard to believe the RTD at fault for.
- bediger4000 6y ago
  I live in Denver. I've ridden the bus to work off and on for the last 15 years. I've never heard of anyone getting bedbugs from RTD buses. A few sanitary issues, yes, but not bedbugs, and not systematic issues. The service has mostly gotten better the entire time. Buses are relatively up-to-date, and within the last 3 years, RTD put in real time GPS bus tracking. Very helpful

cbhl 6y ago

Anecdotally, I feel like Zipcar has been shrinking, not growing, ever since they got bought out by Avis (the #2 traditional car rental company). On the other hand, Lyft is now trying to get into the car rentals game...

ghaff 6y ago
I've never used them but know people who do. I suspect Uber/Lyft cut a big chunk out of the market between traditional rentals and awful cabs/public transit. The middle still exists--want a vehicle for a few hours to make a bunch of stops/drive a relatively far distance. But it's definitely a niche.

clairity 6y ago

absolutely. i also haven't had a personal car for years, instead renting, scootering, biking, mass-transiting, and ride-hailing. i'm just waiting for someone in the on-demand transportation sector to realize that the killer app for self-driving is not 100% level 5 autonomous driving, but a service that can self-drive to you from a cheap parking lot/structure and return to it after a trip. (to be fair, i think many do realize this and are working on it already.)

maxsilver 6y ago

> But for city folk cars are a luxury Cars aren't a luxury. Being a "city folk" at all is the luxury. Being able to afford a place, where you can outsource all of your errands to poor people, is the luxury. Being able to live in a place where "you can walk everywhere you need" is a luxury. (Not just in location and housing, but in job flexibility and leisure time, and in safety). Having the lifestyle flexibility to completely re-write your entire life around extreme high expense and very limited options, is the luxury. > shave off $1000 from your rent, and instead spend that same amount on your car, in addition to now having to sit in traffic jams for an hour or two every day? No, thanks. For a regular average American, it's more like "pay ~$400/month TCO to own a car, to save $1200/month off your rent". Generally speaking, no one actually spends money on a car, because unless you've made a terrible mistake (or are especially poor), a car earns you more money than it costs. And that's before you get to all the other benefits -- (cheaper housing, larger housing, higher-quality housing, safer transportation, free personal distancing, disease-resistance) -- most of which are especially relevant now that we live in a never-ending-pandemic society.

zip1234 6y ago
At least around me, people buy houses that are not in walkable places not because they can't afford somewhere else. It is because they can get some massive new house with a huge yard and gas is cheap so long commutes are fine. We subsidize roads so much that they can drive 30 minutes/30 miles to work every day and back. Meanwhile there are houses that are 1/3 of the price that are only a few miles away from their work but they are also smaller houses.
- o-__-o 6y ago
  Interesting, can you leave the source where you determined we subsidize roads so people can move to wealthier neighborhoods? Because last I checked, we subsidize roads so big trucks can drive on them every day. If we didn't have trucks and buses, our roads would easily last 100 years.
  - zip1234 6y ago

fnord77 6y ago

I have been doing the no-car thing for a couple years. I am very sick of it. Will be buying a car pretty soon. The thing I hate about doing zipcar / getaround / etc. is the amount of time and hassle I have to spend making sure the car isn't damaged and reporting it BEFORE I hop in and drive off.

josuepeq 6y ago
Exactly. In my early 20s, living in Cincinnati, I used to hate the stress of being tethered to car maintenance and ownership. So I moved into “The City” (Chicago, then SF) and got rid of my car. Well, that worked great in my able bodied youth days. At some point in my early 30s, frustration with having complete dependence on someone else (MUNI/BART, Uber, Lyft) or worrying about having rentals available to get me from point A to point B became too much of a burden; too much of a time suck. At some point spending an hour a day total on transportation aggravation made the suburbs look appetizing. I told myself I would never settle for that commute again. Staying in the city, I bought a car. I still hate maintaining cars, and EVs don’t require very much long term maintenance. Going EV simplified getting a car. Renting in western San Francisco, everybody has a garage. It’s all suburbanesque mid century tract housing. Parking at home is not a problem. What is? A 30 minute walk to Forest Hill station or :15 minute bus ride to Forest Hill station. By driving myself, In 15 minutes I could be in Civic Center without having somebody from Stockton get lost In SF In their rental Nissan Sentra with loud sales bro taking a conference call in a Uber Pool. I can say the convenience of living in the city with a car is unparalleled. In (especially western) San Francisco, the transportation infrastructure is geared toward driving. Hearing that BART stops at 9 PM now reinforces the practicality of my decision.

Polylactic_acid 6y ago

I find it funny how this comment is downvoted. It seems like he heavily American userbase of this site finds it inconceivable that life can go on without cars because their local system doesn't support it. I currently do not own a car and don't really feel any desire to get one. I had to change my lifestyle slightly, cycling and PT is not a drop in replacement for a car but I feel the things I have let go are less important than the things I have gained. I find that sitting in traffic is a huge negative on my mental health, working from home currently has made me much happier and if work tries to drag me back to the office I'll be looking for a new job.

perl4ever 6y ago

"in addition to now having to sit in traffic jams for an hour or two every day" I think you're taking for granted that everyone who lives and works in the general area of a city is commuting to the very center from a long way away. My reaction is "well, don't do that!" I briefly worked in the DC area, and I still had a 10-15 minute commute as I am used to. That's because I was living a few miles from the center, in NOVA, and going outwards another mile or two in the morning. Right now, I'm living just barely within the city limits of a smaller city, so technically you could say it's not a suburb, but practically it is, and again, my commute is (or was) about 10 minutes. Any time you actually are living downtown in a significant urban area, it seems like a luxury to me, wouldn't you expect rents to be expensive when housing is competing with office space and fancy restaurants? I was able to afford that in Richmond, but in major, desirable cities, there's no way.