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This viewpoint makes sense for dense urban areas where space really is at a premium, but most of the united states is sparse and land is relatively cheap. > Ow

This viewpoint makes sense for dense urban areas where space really is at a premium, but most of the united states is sparse and land is relatively cheap. > Owning a car isn't just the $10-12k average annual expense but also things like paying a double-digit percentage more for housing to get off-street parking I'm very skeptical of these figures. $10-12K is more than I'll pay for my brand new Tesla, and it's a hell of a lot less than that when you amortize those figures over its expected lifetime. Yeah, there's also the cost of fuel and maintenance, but I'm very skeptical that these costs added onto the car payment bring the cost up to $10k on average. Moreover, the average cost isn't very useful--it's influenced by people like me and people even wealthier than me who can afford to splurge. It doesn't tell you anything about the actual cost required to own and maintain a car--chip shortage aside, a used Toyota Camry with decent miles probably costs about $10-15k total and amortized over its ~20 year lifetime including fuel and maintenance it's probably on the order of $2k/year. And of course, if we're worried about people who can't afford that, as with anything, the government can subsidize those people. Similarly, off-street parking isn't an issue outside of large cities (virtually everyone else has a driveway, and the minimum viable cost of maintaining a driveway isn't anywhere near $1k/year). Ultimately, this conversation illustrates one of the major problems with federalizing infrastructure. You get people from urban centers making policies based on incorrect assumptions about other areas of the country.

Retric 5y ago
Older cars in rural areas can be a lot cheaper to own. But, ~10k/year is normal in a city. Don’t forget ~100$/month in insurance, 100-200+$/month parking, ~50-100+$/month property taxes, 100-200$/month in fuel etc. Not everyone needs to pay tolls but those add up extremely quickly.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  That's the whole point--the economics of urban, suburban, and rural areas vary widely. It doesn't make sense to impose policies which assume urban economics on suburban and rural areas, but that's what tends to happen when you federalize things.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Every state has similar breakdowns so you can say the same thing at the state level. Alaska is thought of as open wilderness with 1.2 people per square mile, but 40% of the state live in inside Anchorage and 54% live in it’s metro area. That’s quite similar to New York State with 44% living inside NYC. So, I am not sure what you’re feeding about national policy here.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      That seems like a good argument in favor of localizing. I do agree that urbanization is increasingly presenting challenges with respect to governance at the state and federal levels, however. I think there are good reasons to push the responsibility up to the state level though—e.g., places with low density may lack the funds for even critical infrastructure and are too sensitive to small or short-lived fluctuations in population. But all states are collectively large enough to afford their own critical infrastructure.
acdha 5y ago
> I'm very skeptical of these figures. $10-12K is more than I'll pay for my brand new Tesla, and it's a hell of a lot less than that when you amortize those figures over its expected lifetime. Here's the source: https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/average-annual-cost-of-new-vehicle-ownership https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/average-annual-cost-... The big things people forget is the cost of insurance in addition to consumables and depreciation. > Ultimately, this conversation illustrates one of the major problems with federalizing infrastructure. You get people from urban centers making policies based on incorrect assumptions about other areas of the country. Note that the vast majority of the population lives in areas where this is an issue. The number of people who are truly rural is a lot smaller than the number of people who live in cities or their suburbs and still end up paying for things like parking. My position isn't that someone should _ban_ cars but that we stop heavily subsidizing them and start factoring in pollution, too. There a ton of problems which could be solved quickly by market pressure but we've been really resistant to that as a society because it means rethinking the dominant view of the American ideal from the 20th century. A suburban house costs more due to all of the infrastructure requirements amortized over fewer residents but a lot of policy decisions have allowed people not to see that until the maintenance bill eventually comes due.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  > Here's the source The headline stipulates "new vehicles" and the figure it cites is $9,282 (outside of the $10-12K range). The article isn't dated, but I assume it's referencing some time period during the pandemic in which car prices are unusually inflated due to supply chain issues--the figure for a normal year is almost certainly going to be lower than this (at least when adjusting for inflation). This is even less useful than the overall average car payment since it's even more biased toward affluent Americans. > The big things people forget is the cost of insurance in addition to consumables and depreciation. Yeah, I forgot insurance too, but that's $1200/year for my brand new Tesla in a major metropolitan city. I'm pretty sure full coverage for our hypothetical used Camry is going to be closer to $300/year, bringing the figure up to the ~$2300/year range (still a far cry from $10-12K). > Note that the vast majority of the population lives in areas where this is an issue. The number of people who are truly rural is a lot smaller than the number of people who live in cities or their suburbs and still end up paying for things like parking. Agreed that the majority of Americans are either suburban or rural; I'm skeptical that suburban land costs resemble urban land costs; however, regarding your claim that off-street parking costs upwards of $1000/year, according to Bloomberg the total cost of urban land for an average parking space is only $2000k (obviously there's costs for paving and maintaining, but I doubt the total costs come close to $1k/year averaged across the country). Ultimately, my point is: "your figures seem off by an order of magnitude". > My position isn't that someone should _ban_ cars but that we stop heavily subsidizing them and start factoring in pollution, too. Fully agree that we should factor in pollution, but why stop at car ownership? We should factor in the cost of pollution to everything, via border-adjusted carbon pricing.

Retric 5y ago

Older cars in rural areas can be a lot cheaper to own. But, ~10k/year is normal in a city. Don’t forget ~100$/month in insurance, 100-200+$/month parking, ~50-100+$/month property taxes, 100-200$/month in fuel etc. Not everyone needs to pay tolls but those add up extremely quickly.

throwaway894345 5y ago
That's the whole point--the economics of urban, suburban, and rural areas vary widely. It doesn't make sense to impose policies which assume urban economics on suburban and rural areas, but that's what tends to happen when you federalize things.
- Retric 5y ago
  Every state has similar breakdowns so you can say the same thing at the state level. Alaska is thought of as open wilderness with 1.2 people per square mile, but 40% of the state live in inside Anchorage and 54% live in it’s metro area. That’s quite similar to New York State with 44% living inside NYC. So, I am not sure what you’re feeding about national policy here.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    That seems like a good argument in favor of localizing. I do agree that urbanization is increasingly presenting challenges with respect to governance at the state and federal levels, however. I think there are good reasons to push the responsibility up to the state level though—e.g., places with low density may lack the funds for even critical infrastructure and are too sensitive to small or short-lived fluctuations in population. But all states are collectively large enough to afford their own critical infrastructure.

acdha 5y ago

> I'm very skeptical of these figures. $10-12K is more than I'll pay for my brand new Tesla, and it's a hell of a lot less than that when you amortize those figures over its expected lifetime. Here's the source: https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/average-annual-cost-of-new-vehicle-ownership https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/average-annual-cost-... The big things people forget is the cost of insurance in addition to consumables and depreciation. > Ultimately, this conversation illustrates one of the major problems with federalizing infrastructure. You get people from urban centers making policies based on incorrect assumptions about other areas of the country. Note that the vast majority of the population lives in areas where this is an issue. The number of people who are truly rural is a lot smaller than the number of people who live in cities or their suburbs and still end up paying for things like parking. My position isn't that someone should _ban_ cars but that we stop heavily subsidizing them and start factoring in pollution, too. There a ton of problems which could be solved quickly by market pressure but we've been really resistant to that as a society because it means rethinking the dominant view of the American ideal from the 20th century. A suburban house costs more due to all of the infrastructure requirements amortized over fewer residents but a lot of policy decisions have allowed people not to see that until the maintenance bill eventually comes due.

throwaway894345 5y ago
> Here's the source The headline stipulates "new vehicles" and the figure it cites is $9,282 (outside of the $10-12K range). The article isn't dated, but I assume it's referencing some time period during the pandemic in which car prices are unusually inflated due to supply chain issues--the figure for a normal year is almost certainly going to be lower than this (at least when adjusting for inflation). This is even less useful than the overall average car payment since it's even more biased toward affluent Americans. > The big things people forget is the cost of insurance in addition to consumables and depreciation. Yeah, I forgot insurance too, but that's $1200/year for my brand new Tesla in a major metropolitan city. I'm pretty sure full coverage for our hypothetical used Camry is going to be closer to $300/year, bringing the figure up to the ~$2300/year range (still a far cry from $10-12K). > Note that the vast majority of the population lives in areas where this is an issue. The number of people who are truly rural is a lot smaller than the number of people who live in cities or their suburbs and still end up paying for things like parking. Agreed that the majority of Americans are either suburban or rural; I'm skeptical that suburban land costs resemble urban land costs; however, regarding your claim that off-street parking costs upwards of $1000/year, according to Bloomberg the total cost of urban land for an average parking space is only $2000k (obviously there's costs for paving and maintaining, but I doubt the total costs come close to $1k/year averaged across the country). Ultimately, my point is: "your figures seem off by an order of magnitude". > My position isn't that someone should _ban_ cars but that we stop heavily subsidizing them and start factoring in pollution, too. Fully agree that we should factor in pollution, but why stop at car ownership? We should factor in the cost of pollution to everything, via border-adjusted carbon pricing.