4 ms·

Sold my car years ago and moved to Boston. I'll never go back to live anywhere that requires me to own a car. I bike or walk everywhere, and what makes me hopef

by kibwen 3y ago

Sold my car years ago and moved to Boston. I'll never go back to live anywhere that requires me to own a car. I bike or walk everywhere, and what makes me hopeful is that biking infrastructure in Boston (and neighboring cities like Cambridge) has improved dramatically in the years since I've been here and just keeps getting better. Google tells me that the average TCO of car ownership in the US was $10,728 in 2022. Between my partner and I, we're saving $20,000 per year not owning a car (and that's assuming a generous expenditure on bicycle TCO). High rents mean nothing when considering how much you save on not needing to own a car.

ghaff 3y ago
Although I think everyone I know who lives in Boston/Cambridge owns a car because they either commute/visit to friends out to the suburbs or do regular weekend activities like hiking or canoeing out in the suburbs/mountains--which can also involve specialized transportation for car-camping etc. You can work around a lot of this but a lot of people don't want to if they can afford it. I don't live in the city but I'd definitely own a car if I did.
- niam 3y ago
  You probably interact with the types of people who are more likely to spend time in the suburbs, by dint of living in a suburb. "Affording" a car in Boston is stressful as hell even beyond the cost, and I wouldn't recommend it. My friends who both live and work in the city don't own cars. I ditched my car when I moved into city limits, and ride an EUC, bike, or train to work. The suburbs would have nothing for me if I didn't have family there. But even there, a weekend pass for the commuter rail costs $10 and can take me as far as Rhode Island if I want.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I'm actually even further out than the conventional suburbs. But, yes, I mostly know people in the city who routinely do hiking and paddling activities that practically require owning vehicles and who routinely get together with friends well outside of city limits. I think most of the people I know who own a car in the city have a dedicated parking space. So, yeah, city people I know have made a deliberate (and expensive) decision to live in the city but maintain the flexibility to drive elsewhere without a lot of friction. People naturally gravitate to lower friction. If activities like getting outside of the city/transit coverage is expensive/a pain you mostly just don't do it.
  - kdmccormick 3y ago
    This is overly black and white IMO. For the million or so of us who live in the "first ring suburbs", e.g. Somerville, it's common to own a car for out-of-the-city trips, but use walking/biking/transit for day to day life and going out on the weekends.
    - niam 3y ago
      Not trying to be black or white about it. I'm not extrapolating my experience, only offering what it is. If I didn't, the prevailing and only observation in this thread would be that it's uncommon to not own a car. And that doesn't match my experience at all, as someone who lives and works here. Though my anecdote is pretty heavily skewed the other direction towards skaters and the types of people who own PEVs.
BluePen7 3y ago
This is the same reason I moved out of the city. Rents are very high because they assume you can live there without a car, but as someone who frequently drove far out of the city I was paying for the worst of both worlds. I agree with your TCO assessment, thanks to pandemic/WFH myself and my partner were able to switch to sharing a car and we saw about 10k in annual savings.
- jefftk 3y ago
  > Rents are very high because they assume you can live there without a car Rents are very high in cities because there's not enough housing for everyone who wants to live there [1] not because of an assumption about car ownership. [1] Ironically, in part because of an assumption that people will have cars, which is one limitation on how dense housing construction is allowed to be.
EricDeb 3y ago
I dislike car culture, but owning a car is not that expensive unless you own a newish one.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
  Yeah I paid $10k for a car 10 years ago, and I spend all-in (insurance, maintenance, gas) about $2k/year on it. Long-run, it probably depreciates by a few hundred dollars a year as well.
- 93po 3y ago
  And buy a new one every few years like some Americans do
residentraspber 3y ago
I LOVE the new bike lanes on the Mass Ave bridge. Total game changer on how often I actually want to bike into Cambridge now. I wish the other sides of the bridge were better for bikes, too, but I'm sure they're coming with the next re-paving/maintenance of those roads.
staringback 3y ago
> Google tells me that the average TCO of car ownership in the US was $10,728 in 2022 Every time I hear this insane number I have a good laugh. I own 3 cars myself and my total cost of ownership is nowhere near that high combined.
- ska 3y ago
  I always have the same gut reaction - then I realize I know people who lose at least 10k every 2-3 years on a new vehicle; one that they are financing and driving 2+ hours a day. So factor in gas and insurance etc., you can see it.
mock-possum 3y ago
ten thousand dollars??? Look I get that I probably don’t do cars the way other people do cars, but like - ten thousand a year? I spend maybe $800 on gas in a year. What are these people doing? Buying a new set of tires every Christmas? Yearly visits to a detailing shop or something?? I mean like no offense but if you guys were spending twenty thousand dollars annually on cars… that’s on you. You don’t need to live that way. I bought my Subaru used ten years ago for $3k, and I’ve managed just fine without spend a small fortune on… whataver it is you were spending yours on.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  Your number seems very you-specific. Back-of-the-envelope math, seems like you drive <7K miles per year, which is less than half of what an average driver does. You are also accounting for $0 in tolls, parking, insurance, repairs or maintenance, registration, inspection, an occasional ticket, etc. I totally believe that it is possible that these are indeed your costs but I'll give you a counter-example. My Highlander was about $50K all in. Let's say I keep it for 10 years, that's $5 per year right there. Insurance is about $1.5K so we're at $6.5K and that's a good deal for around here. If we drive into Manhattan on a weekday, it's about $50 to leave the car in a lot somewhere in Midtown. If I do that just once a month, that's another $600, so we're at $7.1K already. We actually don't put a ton of mileage on and it's a hybrid so our gas costs are about the same as yours. That's $8k. I am leaving out a bunch of other stuff (registration, inspection, tolls - can easily be around $10 to cross into or out of Manhattan, an occasional ticket, parking meters, etc.) I think my car usage scenario is pretty light (wife and I both WFH) compares to most people but I can easily get to $10K for one car based on where we live. Some of this can be avoided (eg sit longer in traffic to avoid a toll road, go slow to avoid tickets, only go into NYC on Sunday when you can get a free spot more easily, could have bought a used car, etc.) - just making it obvious that you can EASILY get to $10K.
  - whateverman23 3y ago
    Half of your cost is your $50k car choice, though, and doesn't include resale value of around $15k (I'm looking at 2013 highlander prices. It's probably more because you chose a bunch of upgrades, see below). Drops your yearly costs by $1.5k right there. Get a reasonable car for $25k-35k and your costs drop significantly. Hell, your $50k number means you chose to have a bunch of upgrades. The base MSRP is $36k, and I'm seeing dealer advertised prices of $37k near me. I have to go all the way up to the "Platinum" tier to find $50k prices.
gruez 3y ago
>Google tells me that the average TCO of car ownership in the US was $10,728 in 2022. Between my partner and I, we're saving $20,000 per year not owning a car (and that's assuming a generous expenditure on bicycle TCO). High rents mean nothing when considering how much you save on not needing to own a car. $10k seems suspiciously high. Maybe that's because everyone is buying overpriced pickups/SUVs? If all you want is a vehicle, you can get this[1] which the site calculates the TCO at $33,858 over 5 years, or $6.8k. I suspect that if you buy used or keep the car for longer (eg. 10-15 years, the average car age is 12.5 years in the US), you can get that number even lower. [1] https://www.kbb.com/toyota/corolla-hybrid/2023/le/?vehicleid=460502&intent=buy-new https://www.kbb.com/toyota/corolla-hybrid/2023/le/?vehicleid...
- yurishimo 3y ago
  My thoughts too. If you buy a car with cash, the only costs are $1k for insurance (or less), $1k for routine maintenance, and fuel. If you have an EV, the fuel costs drop dramatically. But most Americans have a car payment; the average amount totaling over $400/mo. So in that respect, I guess 10k isn’t too far off.
- sushisource 3y ago
  Yeah, I also find that weird. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd love to not have a car and I'm all for public transit/biking/walking, but I bought my car (which I love) - a brand new Focus ST for 28k in 2013. I spend maybe $3k a year on gas and maintenance, insurance etc, (I don't drive much) bringing TCO to ~6k range. If you have to drive a huge amount obviously that's not realistic but for a city like Seattle where you kinda need a car, but only for certain things, it's absolutely possible.
WheatMillington 3y ago
Don't you feel confined to your little area? In the weekend my wife and I drove out to a rural hike, 40mins out of town. I couldn't imagine giving up that kind of convenience and missing those kinds of opportunities. What if you don't live near a pool? Your kids just don't learn to swim? My local pool is a 15 minute drive, but a harrowing cycle route.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  Note OP, but I'll try. In the weekend my wife and I drove out to a rural hike, 40mins out of town. How do local tourists get to that hike? Probably buses or trains, which in decent systems are usually competitive with vehicles. It's how I did hikes in the rural Himalayas and Latin America. What if you don't live near a pool? You build the pools where people live. They live closer together in cities designed before cars. Even rural towns used to be fairly dense and walkable. I picked a random suburb of Boston called Beverly. There are 3 public pools and a number of ponds that may or may not be swimmable. No one is more than approx 1mi from a public pool. Also, commuter cycling should not be harrowing. It becomes harrowing when planners don't properly invest in the infrastructure and mix modes in dangerous ways. Imagine if we did the same thing with planes and used local highways as runways. Narrow the streets to reasonable, 3m lanes and even a 2-lane road can fit a dedicated cycle lane. The streets in my california neighborhood use a horrifying 12m for only 2 travel lanes, yet still can't find room for a cycle path.
  - theamk 3y ago
    I lived in a country like that. The "rural hike" was a Big Deal: you'd wake up early, pack your lunches carefully, take a bus, then train, then another train, and eventually arrive. Then hike for a nice, long time (having hike time < commute time seems such a waste), and go back home the same way. By that time, you'd be pretty exhausted, nothing else "big" would get done this day, and you'd take the next day easy too. And you probably would not want to do this too often.. maybe choose a more boring local park instead. In the dense city, one is likely only half an hour away. Compared to that, now every time I drive to a remote hike it blows my mind how much stuff gets done -- the distance is the same, but it's just a long-ish morning trip. You can hike for a bit, then get back home, get groceries on the way, have lunch, and have the whole evening free. And you are not limited to destinations next to the train line either! (One thing I miss however is the ability to enter into the forest on one train station, and exit on another one. It's pretty nice when you don't have to do a loop)
whymauri 3y ago
I did the math for my aunt recently: she pays more in rent and car expenses living in suburban South Florida (Kendall) for the same square footage I get in Cambridge, MA. Living paycheck to paycheck sandwiched between a super Walmart and the Florida Turnpike, it's not exactly glamorous. She's considering ditching the car and moving north. Gas, maintenance, and car payments are silent killers. Most people equate them to rent and cannot imagine a life where they don't pay for their car.

by kibwen 3y ago

ghaff 3y ago

Although I think everyone I know who lives in Boston/Cambridge owns a car because they either commute/visit to friends out to the suburbs or do regular weekend activities like hiking or canoeing out in the suburbs/mountains--which can also involve specialized transportation for car-camping etc. You can work around a lot of this but a lot of people don't want to if they can afford it. I don't live in the city but I'd definitely own a car if I did.

niam 3y ago
You probably interact with the types of people who are more likely to spend time in the suburbs, by dint of living in a suburb. "Affording" a car in Boston is stressful as hell even beyond the cost, and I wouldn't recommend it. My friends who both live and work in the city don't own cars. I ditched my car when I moved into city limits, and ride an EUC, bike, or train to work. The suburbs would have nothing for me if I didn't have family there. But even there, a weekend pass for the commuter rail costs $10 and can take me as far as Rhode Island if I want.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I'm actually even further out than the conventional suburbs. But, yes, I mostly know people in the city who routinely do hiking and paddling activities that practically require owning vehicles and who routinely get together with friends well outside of city limits. I think most of the people I know who own a car in the city have a dedicated parking space. So, yeah, city people I know have made a deliberate (and expensive) decision to live in the city but maintain the flexibility to drive elsewhere without a lot of friction. People naturally gravitate to lower friction. If activities like getting outside of the city/transit coverage is expensive/a pain you mostly just don't do it.
- kdmccormick 3y ago
  This is overly black and white IMO. For the million or so of us who live in the "first ring suburbs", e.g. Somerville, it's common to own a car for out-of-the-city trips, but use walking/biking/transit for day to day life and going out on the weekends.
  - niam 3y ago
    Not trying to be black or white about it. I'm not extrapolating my experience, only offering what it is. If I didn't, the prevailing and only observation in this thread would be that it's uncommon to not own a car. And that doesn't match my experience at all, as someone who lives and works here. Though my anecdote is pretty heavily skewed the other direction towards skaters and the types of people who own PEVs.

BluePen7 3y ago

This is the same reason I moved out of the city. Rents are very high because they assume you can live there without a car, but as someone who frequently drove far out of the city I was paying for the worst of both worlds. I agree with your TCO assessment, thanks to pandemic/WFH myself and my partner were able to switch to sharing a car and we saw about 10k in annual savings.

jefftk 3y ago
> Rents are very high because they assume you can live there without a car Rents are very high in cities because there's not enough housing for everyone who wants to live there [1] not because of an assumption about car ownership. [1] Ironically, in part because of an assumption that people will have cars, which is one limitation on how dense housing construction is allowed to be.

EricDeb 3y ago

I dislike car culture, but owning a car is not that expensive unless you own a newish one.

fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
Yeah I paid $10k for a car 10 years ago, and I spend all-in (insurance, maintenance, gas) about $2k/year on it. Long-run, it probably depreciates by a few hundred dollars a year as well.
93po 3y ago
And buy a new one every few years like some Americans do

residentraspber 3y ago

I LOVE the new bike lanes on the Mass Ave bridge. Total game changer on how often I actually want to bike into Cambridge now. I wish the other sides of the bridge were better for bikes, too, but I'm sure they're coming with the next re-paving/maintenance of those roads.

staringback 3y ago

> Google tells me that the average TCO of car ownership in the US was $10,728 in 2022 Every time I hear this insane number I have a good laugh. I own 3 cars myself and my total cost of ownership is nowhere near that high combined.

ska 3y ago
I always have the same gut reaction - then I realize I know people who lose at least 10k every 2-3 years on a new vehicle; one that they are financing and driving 2+ hours a day. So factor in gas and insurance etc., you can see it.

mock-possum 3y ago

ten thousand dollars??? Look I get that I probably don’t do cars the way other people do cars, but like - ten thousand a year? I spend maybe $800 on gas in a year. What are these people doing? Buying a new set of tires every Christmas? Yearly visits to a detailing shop or something?? I mean like no offense but if you guys were spending twenty thousand dollars annually on cars… that’s on you. You don’t need to live that way. I bought my Subaru used ten years ago for $3k, and I’ve managed just fine without spend a small fortune on… whataver it is you were spending yours on.

xyzelement 3y ago
Your number seems very you-specific. Back-of-the-envelope math, seems like you drive <7K miles per year, which is less than half of what an average driver does. You are also accounting for $0 in tolls, parking, insurance, repairs or maintenance, registration, inspection, an occasional ticket, etc. I totally believe that it is possible that these are indeed your costs but I'll give you a counter-example. My Highlander was about $50K all in. Let's say I keep it for 10 years, that's $5 per year right there. Insurance is about $1.5K so we're at $6.5K and that's a good deal for around here. If we drive into Manhattan on a weekday, it's about $50 to leave the car in a lot somewhere in Midtown. If I do that just once a month, that's another $600, so we're at $7.1K already. We actually don't put a ton of mileage on and it's a hybrid so our gas costs are about the same as yours. That's $8k. I am leaving out a bunch of other stuff (registration, inspection, tolls - can easily be around $10 to cross into or out of Manhattan, an occasional ticket, parking meters, etc.) I think my car usage scenario is pretty light (wife and I both WFH) compares to most people but I can easily get to $10K for one car based on where we live. Some of this can be avoided (eg sit longer in traffic to avoid a toll road, go slow to avoid tickets, only go into NYC on Sunday when you can get a free spot more easily, could have bought a used car, etc.) - just making it obvious that you can EASILY get to $10K.
- whateverman23 3y ago
  Half of your cost is your $50k car choice, though, and doesn't include resale value of around $15k (I'm looking at 2013 highlander prices. It's probably more because you chose a bunch of upgrades, see below). Drops your yearly costs by $1.5k right there. Get a reasonable car for $25k-35k and your costs drop significantly. Hell, your $50k number means you chose to have a bunch of upgrades. The base MSRP is $36k, and I'm seeing dealer advertised prices of $37k near me. I have to go all the way up to the "Platinum" tier to find $50k prices.

gruez 3y ago

>Google tells me that the average TCO of car ownership in the US was $10,728 in 2022. Between my partner and I, we're saving $20,000 per year not owning a car (and that's assuming a generous expenditure on bicycle TCO). High rents mean nothing when considering how much you save on not needing to own a car. $10k seems suspiciously high. Maybe that's because everyone is buying overpriced pickups/SUVs? If all you want is a vehicle, you can get this[1] which the site calculates the TCO at $33,858 over 5 years, or $6.8k. I suspect that if you buy used or keep the car for longer (eg. 10-15 years, the average car age is 12.5 years in the US), you can get that number even lower. [1] https://www.kbb.com/toyota/corolla-hybrid/2023/le/?vehicleid=460502&intent=buy-new https://www.kbb.com/toyota/corolla-hybrid/2023/le/?vehicleid...

yurishimo 3y ago
My thoughts too. If you buy a car with cash, the only costs are $1k for insurance (or less), $1k for routine maintenance, and fuel. If you have an EV, the fuel costs drop dramatically. But most Americans have a car payment; the average amount totaling over $400/mo. So in that respect, I guess 10k isn’t too far off.
sushisource 3y ago
Yeah, I also find that weird. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd love to not have a car and I'm all for public transit/biking/walking, but I bought my car (which I love) - a brand new Focus ST for 28k in 2013. I spend maybe $3k a year on gas and maintenance, insurance etc, (I don't drive much) bringing TCO to ~6k range. If you have to drive a huge amount obviously that's not realistic but for a city like Seattle where you kinda need a car, but only for certain things, it's absolutely possible.

WheatMillington 3y ago

Don't you feel confined to your little area? In the weekend my wife and I drove out to a rural hike, 40mins out of town. I couldn't imagine giving up that kind of convenience and missing those kinds of opportunities. What if you don't live near a pool? Your kids just don't learn to swim? My local pool is a 15 minute drive, but a harrowing cycle route.

AlotOfReading 3y ago
Note OP, but I'll try. In the weekend my wife and I drove out to a rural hike, 40mins out of town. How do local tourists get to that hike? Probably buses or trains, which in decent systems are usually competitive with vehicles. It's how I did hikes in the rural Himalayas and Latin America. What if you don't live near a pool? You build the pools where people live. They live closer together in cities designed before cars. Even rural towns used to be fairly dense and walkable. I picked a random suburb of Boston called Beverly. There are 3 public pools and a number of ponds that may or may not be swimmable. No one is more than approx 1mi from a public pool. Also, commuter cycling should not be harrowing. It becomes harrowing when planners don't properly invest in the infrastructure and mix modes in dangerous ways. Imagine if we did the same thing with planes and used local highways as runways. Narrow the streets to reasonable, 3m lanes and even a 2-lane road can fit a dedicated cycle lane. The streets in my california neighborhood use a horrifying 12m for only 2 travel lanes, yet still can't find room for a cycle path.
- theamk 3y ago
  I lived in a country like that. The "rural hike" was a Big Deal: you'd wake up early, pack your lunches carefully, take a bus, then train, then another train, and eventually arrive. Then hike for a nice, long time (having hike time < commute time seems such a waste), and go back home the same way. By that time, you'd be pretty exhausted, nothing else "big" would get done this day, and you'd take the next day easy too. And you probably would not want to do this too often.. maybe choose a more boring local park instead. In the dense city, one is likely only half an hour away. Compared to that, now every time I drive to a remote hike it blows my mind how much stuff gets done -- the distance is the same, but it's just a long-ish morning trip. You can hike for a bit, then get back home, get groceries on the way, have lunch, and have the whole evening free. And you are not limited to destinations next to the train line either! (One thing I miss however is the ability to enter into the forest on one train station, and exit on another one. It's pretty nice when you don't have to do a loop)

whymauri 3y ago

I did the math for my aunt recently: she pays more in rent and car expenses living in suburban South Florida (Kendall) for the same square footage I get in Cambridge, MA. Living paycheck to paycheck sandwiched between a super Walmart and the Florida Turnpike, it's not exactly glamorous. She's considering ditching the car and moving north. Gas, maintenance, and car payments are silent killers. Most people equate them to rent and cannot imagine a life where they don't pay for their car.