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I’ve traveled to “car-free” world cities. I’ve traveled to “car-free” small towns. Having cars is just better. It’s just a preference. It’s super weird to me

I’ve traveled to “car-free” world cities. I’ve traveled to “car-free” small towns. Having cars is just better. It’s just a preference. It’s super weird to me that this idea is catching on so fast. Do you know what day-to-day life is like in those areas? It’s expensive. Probably because you can’t travel to competition. And you’re absolutely renting anywhere “car-free.” For a generation being screwed over by housing, some people sure are asking for it.

goosedragons 4y ago
How much money you really saving traveling 10 extra miles to save $5 on groceries in your $30,000 car that costs $2000 a year to insure and $60 a week to fill up?
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  In my experience, your numbers are dramatically off. You haven’t factored in time at all, either.
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    What's dramatically off? Average new car price in the US is $45,000+, average insurance is $1500 a year and will vary by state,location,car,gender,age, etc. Average US commute is 41 miles a day, so I GUESS $60 of gas at $3/gallon is more like 2 two weeks in a modern popular vehicle like a Ford F-150. But yeah, dramatically off. Totally. Its not more of a time savings to drive in a car dependent city. It's certainly not a time savings to check out the competition that's spread out 5 miles apart. I live in a walkable area. Have 3 grocery stores in a 10 minute walk, several bookstores, clothing stores etc. Plenty of competition and I don't have to spend most of the transit time traversing giant parking lots.
    - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
      I didn’t pay anywhere close to that for any of my vehicles. Do you rent? Anyway, doesn’t change that it’s dramatically different than my experience.
      - goosedragons 4y ago
        Do you live in your car? Or do you pay (or did) for somewhere to live on top of that? Or is that also dramatically different from your experience too?
        andrewmcwatters 4y ago
        I'll take that as a "yes." No, I own a home in a major metro. Believe it or not, I can bike to get groceries, but that's uncommon. Most people generally choose not to. They still have a choice here. In a 10-minute walk you have 3 grocery stores. In a 10-minute drive, I have 30 to choose from with specialty stores I haven't even gotten around to exploring yet. There's no comparison whatsoever. You generally don't own a home in a "car-free" city.
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        goosedragons 4y ago
        Why do you think "car-free" cities are homeless? My neighborhood has apartment buildings obviously, but it also has some single family homes and condos which can be bought and owned. Obviously a single family home there is more expensive than one a 40 minute drive out but it's actually still less expensive than a suburb of Toronto or Vancouver. Car-free doesn't just mean just skyscrapers. It just means not-shit design centered around metal boxes instead of people.
        matchbok 4y ago
        A 10 minute drive is not comparable to a 10 minute walk in any way. Not sure where you are getting at with the specialty store thing - the nicest stores are always in cities, either a walk/bus/metro ride away. People in cities do more than ... walk to places. :) What it really comes down to is this: a preference to live/work/etc in and around big-box parking lots and highways (where 70% of the land is parking), or to do the same in walkable neighborhoods with minimal parking (space replaced with more cool stuff).
    - quantumwannabe 4y ago
      Your numbers are an order of magnitude off. No suburban (not rural) American has to drive more than a mile or two to a grocery store, and if they commute by car, there are likely several on their route. They also can drive to far more stores in ten minutes than you can walk to, including time spent parking (which is negligible). Most people buy used cars, and spending more on luxuries isn’t related to the necessary cost of transportation. You’re doing the equivalent of using the price of first-class train tickets to argue that rail is expensive. Your insurance numbers are also very high, and a safe driver driving an average car would be paying half as much. The median commute is ~20 minutes, which is way less than 20 miles due to speed limits and traffic. An F-150 is also not a common commuter vehicle, and pickups are a minority even in truck heavy areas like Texas. Your original comment about price savings being minimal is also wrong; the savings on a single item at Costco is often more than $5 compared to a downtown store.
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- alar44 4y ago
  I paid $2500 for my car. In the 26 years I've been driving I've spent a total of $12k on 5 vehicles. I pick up $150 in groceries, pay $1000/yr for insurance and spend $60 every other week to fill up. Your numbers are complete garbage, try again.
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    Do you think that's remotely near the norm? Average used car price is currently more than double your lifetime spend [0]. Even pre-pandemic it's pretty close. And is that 12k including maintenance? I'm guessing not! [0] https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a40690607/average-used-car-price-is-now-33000-dollars/ https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a40690607/averag...
    - alar44 4y ago
      Maintenance is negligible. A set of used tires can be had for $200. If it's not part of the drivetrain, most fixes can be done in a couple hours for a couple hundred bucks. I've maybe spent $2000 on brakes, tierods, alternators, and starters. I buy cars that are easy to maintain yourself. If I can't fix it, I sell it for parts or junk it. Avg price doesn't matter. You can find plenty of cars in the $3-5k range that are mechanically sound but have aesthetic issues. Imo, buying a brand new car is the biggest waste of money ever.
belorn 4y ago
Car-free small town just sounds weird. If it a small town there isn't much cars to begin with, and people who live there likely need a car to travel to other towns for work or finding shops that have the specific inventory that people need. Living in an small apartment at the city core in a world city is a very different experience. Among other things, those places tend to have subways and people tend to live in quite smaller living space. Unless parking is subsidized, parking costs alone can cost more than rent in a small town, while parking in a small town tend to be free.
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  I’ve seen both ends of the spectrum. There’s not a lot of difference in the feeling of standing around and wanting to go somewhere further than you can walk. It’s really that simple.
- slyall 4y ago
  If it is a "small town" then the actual town itself is likely to be easy to get around without a car. I looked at a local town of 15,000 people and it's only 4km across. You could bike that in 10-15 minutes. As for getting to the next town it would be common to have a railway station (or bus station) with regular trains every 15/20/30 minutes. Easy enough to ride down to the station, hop on a train to the next town or big city. Finally "Car-free" doesn't usually mean zero cars. Many households would still own them. But it does mean that it is reasonably possible not to need one and certainly not for every journey.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  "Car-free small town just sounds weird" Almost no significant urban area is going to be totally car free (unless you're one of a handful of towns/cities across the world - often tourist destinations - where it really is basically impossible to use a car, Venice being the archetypical example), but I've been to small towns in various parts of the world where car usage is far far lower than what we're generally accustomed to in much of the developed world. And they're almost all vastly nicer places to visit than those where the infrastructure dedicated to high-speed automobile travel dwarfs everything else. I imagine those that live there are those that have made peace with a limited-car-usage existence. Some of them aren't even especially dense - it's just a lifestyle choice to make shorter/slower trips mostly (on foot, or by bicycle etc.), and reserve the car for the occasional longer trip into a bigger town for whatever can't be obtained locally.
matchbok 4y ago
It's expensive in those areas because it's a better way of living, and more people want to do it (supply/demand). Nobody is competing to live in cookie-cutter suburbs where you need to drive 30 minutes everywhere - that's why it's cheaper. Suburban infrastructure is also massively subsidized by cities. Also - renting is fine. Housing ownership as an investment vehicle is unsustainable.

goosedragons 4y ago

How much money you really saving traveling 10 extra miles to save $5 on groceries in your $30,000 car that costs $2000 a year to insure and $60 a week to fill up?

andrewmcwatters 4y ago
In my experience, your numbers are dramatically off. You haven’t factored in time at all, either.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  What's dramatically off? Average new car price in the US is $45,000+, average insurance is $1500 a year and will vary by state,location,car,gender,age, etc. Average US commute is 41 miles a day, so I GUESS $60 of gas at $3/gallon is more like 2 two weeks in a modern popular vehicle like a Ford F-150. But yeah, dramatically off. Totally. Its not more of a time savings to drive in a car dependent city. It's certainly not a time savings to check out the competition that's spread out 5 miles apart. I live in a walkable area. Have 3 grocery stores in a 10 minute walk, several bookstores, clothing stores etc. Plenty of competition and I don't have to spend most of the transit time traversing giant parking lots.
  - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
    I didn’t pay anywhere close to that for any of my vehicles. Do you rent? Anyway, doesn’t change that it’s dramatically different than my experience.
    - goosedragons 4y ago
      Do you live in your car? Or do you pay (or did) for somewhere to live on top of that? Or is that also dramatically different from your experience too?
      - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
        I'll take that as a "yes." No, I own a home in a major metro. Believe it or not, I can bike to get groceries, but that's uncommon. Most people generally choose not to. They still have a choice here. In a 10-minute walk you have 3 grocery stores. In a 10-minute drive, I have 30 to choose from with specialty stores I haven't even gotten around to exploring yet. There's no comparison whatsoever. You generally don't own a home in a "car-free" city.
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        goosedragons 4y ago
        Why do you think "car-free" cities are homeless? My neighborhood has apartment buildings obviously, but it also has some single family homes and condos which can be bought and owned. Obviously a single family home there is more expensive than one a 40 minute drive out but it's actually still less expensive than a suburb of Toronto or Vancouver. Car-free doesn't just mean just skyscrapers. It just means not-shit design centered around metal boxes instead of people.
        matchbok 4y ago
        A 10 minute drive is not comparable to a 10 minute walk in any way. Not sure where you are getting at with the specialty store thing - the nicest stores are always in cities, either a walk/bus/metro ride away. People in cities do more than ... walk to places. :) What it really comes down to is this: a preference to live/work/etc in and around big-box parking lots and highways (where 70% of the land is parking), or to do the same in walkable neighborhoods with minimal parking (space replaced with more cool stuff).
  - quantumwannabe 4y ago
    Your numbers are an order of magnitude off. No suburban (not rural) American has to drive more than a mile or two to a grocery store, and if they commute by car, there are likely several on their route. They also can drive to far more stores in ten minutes than you can walk to, including time spent parking (which is negligible). Most people buy used cars, and spending more on luxuries isn’t related to the necessary cost of transportation. You’re doing the equivalent of using the price of first-class train tickets to argue that rail is expensive. Your insurance numbers are also very high, and a safe driver driving an average car would be paying half as much. The median commute is ~20 minutes, which is way less than 20 miles due to speed limits and traffic. An F-150 is also not a common commuter vehicle, and pickups are a minority even in truck heavy areas like Texas. Your original comment about price savings being minimal is also wrong; the savings on a single item at Costco is often more than $5 compared to a downtown store.
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alar44 4y ago
I paid $2500 for my car. In the 26 years I've been driving I've spent a total of $12k on 5 vehicles. I pick up $150 in groceries, pay $1000/yr for insurance and spend $60 every other week to fill up. Your numbers are complete garbage, try again.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  Do you think that's remotely near the norm? Average used car price is currently more than double your lifetime spend [0]. Even pre-pandemic it's pretty close. And is that 12k including maintenance? I'm guessing not! [0] https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a40690607/average-used-car-price-is-now-33000-dollars/ https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a40690607/averag...
  - alar44 4y ago
    Maintenance is negligible. A set of used tires can be had for $200. If it's not part of the drivetrain, most fixes can be done in a couple hours for a couple hundred bucks. I've maybe spent $2000 on brakes, tierods, alternators, and starters. I buy cars that are easy to maintain yourself. If I can't fix it, I sell it for parts or junk it. Avg price doesn't matter. You can find plenty of cars in the $3-5k range that are mechanically sound but have aesthetic issues. Imo, buying a brand new car is the biggest waste of money ever.

belorn 4y ago

Car-free small town just sounds weird. If it a small town there isn't much cars to begin with, and people who live there likely need a car to travel to other towns for work or finding shops that have the specific inventory that people need. Living in an small apartment at the city core in a world city is a very different experience. Among other things, those places tend to have subways and people tend to live in quite smaller living space. Unless parking is subsidized, parking costs alone can cost more than rent in a small town, while parking in a small town tend to be free.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago
I’ve seen both ends of the spectrum. There’s not a lot of difference in the feeling of standing around and wanting to go somewhere further than you can walk. It’s really that simple.
slyall 4y ago
If it is a "small town" then the actual town itself is likely to be easy to get around without a car. I looked at a local town of 15,000 people and it's only 4km across. You could bike that in 10-15 minutes. As for getting to the next town it would be common to have a railway station (or bus station) with regular trains every 15/20/30 minutes. Easy enough to ride down to the station, hop on a train to the next town or big city. Finally "Car-free" doesn't usually mean zero cars. Many households would still own them. But it does mean that it is reasonably possible not to need one and certainly not for every journey.
wizofaus 4y ago
"Car-free small town just sounds weird" Almost no significant urban area is going to be totally car free (unless you're one of a handful of towns/cities across the world - often tourist destinations - where it really is basically impossible to use a car, Venice being the archetypical example), but I've been to small towns in various parts of the world where car usage is far far lower than what we're generally accustomed to in much of the developed world. And they're almost all vastly nicer places to visit than those where the infrastructure dedicated to high-speed automobile travel dwarfs everything else. I imagine those that live there are those that have made peace with a limited-car-usage existence. Some of them aren't even especially dense - it's just a lifestyle choice to make shorter/slower trips mostly (on foot, or by bicycle etc.), and reserve the car for the occasional longer trip into a bigger town for whatever can't be obtained locally.

matchbok 4y ago

It's expensive in those areas because it's a better way of living, and more people want to do it (supply/demand). Nobody is competing to live in cookie-cutter suburbs where you need to drive 30 minutes everywhere - that's why it's cheaper. Suburban infrastructure is also massively subsidized by cities. Also - renting is fine. Housing ownership as an investment vehicle is unsustainable.