11 ms·

Driving is more expensive than you think (2020)

110 points by throw0101a 3y ago

throw0101a 3y ago
Cost break down for the state of Massachusetts, the area covered: > Using publicly available data, the authors put the annual public tab at $35.7 billion, which amounts to about $14,000 for every household in the state. Those that do own vehicles pony up an additional $12,000 on average in direct costs.
- Someone 3y ago
  I think the public massively funds personal car usage, but don’t think it’s as high as portrayed here. Also FTA: “Beyond those for individual drivers, road maintenance, snow removal, and policing, there are less-obvious ones, such as those associated with […] lost productivity from sitting in traffic” All other things staying equal, those costs may increase when replacing cars with something else (e.g. bicycles and public transport) “The team also went through the overall state budget and those of various agencies like the Department of Conservation and Recreation to calculate all the money going to roads” Part of those costs are for transporting goods (e.g. to shops), or for maintenance due to wear from public transport. There also are costs that won’t fully go away if people stop driving cars (for example, they may get stuff delivered bro their homes instead of fetching it themselves. That may induce fewer public costs, but it won’t induce zero public costs)
  - civilitty 3y ago
    The whole road cost argument doesn’t make sense to me. The problem is density, not mode of transport - we all need roads! The common denominator access requirement for all housing is a fire truck and ambulance for safety and delivery trucks to make space livable with bulky items like furniture, which also account for most of the wear and tear. The money nondrivers pay in taxes for roads aren’t a subsidy to drivers, it’s the cost they pay for the safety and convenience we expect from modern civilization
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      You need a lot more road for everyone to have individual cars than you do just for deliveries and emergency vehicles. http://lncarden.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/3/6/28369831/1419566_orig.png http://lncarden.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/3/6/28369831/1419566_...
      - ghaff 3y ago
        I don't see the data outside of GIS databases, but I'd be willing to bet that in a lot of (most?) places a significant majority of roads [ADDED: total mileage] are 2 lane roads to home and business endpoints. Add in the fact that you're going to have an interstate/etc. highway system even if you only had truck traffic and the wider roads are mostly denser suburbia main routes and areas within cities.
    - Timshel 3y ago
      Less traffic might mean you don't need a 4 lanes road and less maintenance maybe ? You don't think it would impact budget ?
      - civilitty 3y ago
        I’m sure it would impact the budget but based on the state of roads here in California, the vast majority of the damage seems to be from trucks. A lot of those four lane roads can’t be sized down without blocking emergency vehicles’ basic mobility. They’re sized for worst case scenarios and at least in my small hometown, for example, meant to allow large numbers of emergency vehicles to move quickly between suburban sprawls in case of large fire or earthquake.
        Timshel 3y ago
        Yes truck does most of the dammage on specific axes and they probably could be limited to even less, you don't need 40t trucks in city center. Unless you are on a narrow one way street (not common in the us I believe) I would say that congestion is the limiting factor for emergency vehicule mobility. And there is quite a lot of study that wider street do not reduce congestion.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- tim333 3y ago
  Those average direct costs seem rather high. I think I spend more like $3000/yr for quite a nice car.
  - spicymaki 3y ago
    > I think I spend more like $3000/yr for quite a nice car. You are lucky! Currently the average cost of a new car is ~$48k. Not including fuel, if I priced out a car to around $40k and took a loan at 5% interest for five years. I would already be looking at about $10k a year. Add in insurance, fuel, excise tax, registration, inspection, etc. it would go up to ~$13k for the first 5 years. My fifteen year old car costs about $6,000 for me this year (with repairs, oil changes, and fuel costs, insurance, etc.). If I lived in an urban environment with good transit like NYC it would cost me about $2k-$3k a year in commuter costs if I traveled by bus and subway every day round trip.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    As someone who has owned cars for decades and drives them basically until they're not economical to keep running, that seems low. Just simple division (no time value of money) for a new $40K car for 10 years is $4K/yr. Maybe you bought used and didn't spend too much more on maintenance and maybe even got a bit of a trade-in but I think that's in the ballpark. $1K/year for insurance is probably low for more urban people. Excise tax/registration/inspection probably a few hundred more. And even a fairly modest 5K miles per year is about $700/yr. just in fuel at today's prices. And add at least something for oil changes and other maintenance even if just routine.
    - jjav 3y ago
      > a new $40K car for 10 years is $4K/yr Well no, because the new 40K car doesn't evaporate after 10 years. You can sell it for some money or just keep using it longer to bring your yearly average down. Also nobody needs a new 40K car. If you can afford it want to enjoy that, have fun. But if you're trying to bring transportation costs down, buy a used 10K car and drive that one for ten years.
  - throw0101a 3y ago
karmakaze 3y ago
The headline seems to conflate roads with driving, as in a personal vehicle. Roads also support the transportation of goods as well as public transportation and bike lanes. Even if we had zero personal vehicles we'd still build many roads, so the cost difference is what should be reported with this headline.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  There are of course rails for transporting goods.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Many people prefer to buy groceries at the grocery store rather than pick them up at the rail depot. As GP observes, moving freight by rail doesn’t eliminate roads.
    - crote 3y ago
      How about designing neighborhoods in such a way that there is a grocery store within a 15-minute walk from your house? And place a school next to it, so you can grab some groceries when you drop off your kid. That'd already massively reduce the amount of driving required, as you suddenly no longer need to drive a few miles for your groceries. And because you don't arrive by car the grocery store doesn't need a huge parking lot either.
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        This subthread is about “how would the grocery store fill its shelves without roads?” more than it is “how could we avoid the final driving by grocery customers?”
        crote 3y ago
        The roads are mostly filled with cars, though. If we only needed roads for trucks to stock stores, we could get rid of 90% of them. Nobody is proposing getting rid of all roads, they clearly have value. People are just proposing making it possible to live without requiring a car for something as basic as grocery shopping. As long as cities are built from a car-centric perspective first, they will require a car to live in.
Gehinnn 3y ago
Personally I'm all against cars, but I don't see why these unexpected costs don't apply to public transport as well. The noise of trains also reduces the value of the properties next to the tracks.
- jgoodhcg 3y ago
  Busy roads aren’t as noisy or more dangerous though.
  - stirbot 3y ago
    Trains are more dangerous? One predictable, well mainted vehicle operated by a professional versus many cars?
    - jgoodhcg 3y ago
      I think cars are more dangerous for that exact reason. I was being sarcastic in saying that roads filled with lots of cars aren't as dangerous or noisy.
    - muro 3y ago
      Trains can't break quickly.
- defrost 3y ago
  In Australian cities walking distance to train stations increases property value.
  - mushbino 3y ago
    It does in the US too.
    - crote 3y ago
      A big problem in the US is that many developers still view trains as an extension to driving. The result is that they end up building a huge car park next to the train station, with low-density suburbia around it. Many other countries essentially end up building a suburban core around the commuter train station, with high-density housing, shops, and midrise office buildings.
unixhero 3y ago
I make enough money, so I don't care about the cost. It is budgeted in. It is a necessity.
- airza 3y ago
  The problem is that it's not budgeted in : most municipal governments are crumping under the weight of supporting all of the infrastructure needed to support everyone living far apart and going places via car
- 0xfaded 3y ago
  Ironically it isn't budgeted in, almost all road infrastructure is underfunded and falling apart. Not to mention the externalized cost to the environment. The worst part is that poor people pay more land tax per area than rich people, so you are likely being subsidized by people who don't make enough money. I live in America and make enough money to spend part of my year in various cities across Europe. It saddens me to think that the average American can't imagine how good life can be with fewer cars.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  You also don't care about the costs to other people, the poor, society, and the environment. Too bad there are so many careless people like you.
  - unixhero 3y ago
    I live in a country where the population density is low, settlement is sparse and the winters are gnarly. Distances are huge and not owning a car is for me out of the question. I have been to Singapore. It is a sort of utopia when it comes to mass transit and public transport in general. I suggest people move there if they want to live in a world technically devoid of cars. A future without indivual personal transport is one I do not personally, want, will vote for or can support. This goes to the core of individual freedom. Yes people from outside the US also care deeply about individual rights.
DonHopkins 3y ago
Another unquantifiable but costly expense is stress and its effects on your health and sanity: taking your life into your own hands every time you drive, and no matter how careful and skilled you are, a careless idiot could come along and wipe you out at any moment.
- dudul 3y ago
  Ok. Some rando can also push you on the track as the subway comes in. I think last year it was close to 100 deaths on the subway in NYC. It's pretty much the same amount of pedestrians who died in a car accident. Not saying it's completely equivalent. A lot of these were probably suicides and all, but let's not pretend subways are a magical utopia full of unicorns.
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    You're really stretching and hallucinating to miss the point. Did I mention magic or unicorns? Look up the facts instead of just making shit up and trying to put your crazy words into other people's mouths. https://nypost.com/2023/04/02/nyc-subway-track-deaths-soar-driven-by-social-media-dares/ https://nypost.com/2023/04/02/nyc-subway-track-deaths-soar-d... >In fact, it’s startling the number of deaths underground could even begin to rival the number of deaths above ground, where unlicensed and drunk drivers speed and take fast turns. >What’s going on? Of 1,365 known subway-track incidents in 2022 (most of which didn’t end in death), about 15% were accidental falls or medical emergencies, a new MTA analysis finds. >A thankfully surprisingly low number — fewer than 10% — was suicides or suicide attempts. >An even smaller percentage was assaults — that is, people being pushed to the tracks. (Though with pushes to the tracks comprising three of last year’s 10 subway murders, a 30-year high, a small percentage is too many.) >In most cases — well more than two-thirds — people ended up on the tracks voluntarily. >In 20% of total cases, people were clearly mentally ill (but not attempting suicide); in another 10% or so, people were drugged or drunk. >And in nearly half of total trespassing cases, the MTA or NYPD found people just walking the tracks — walking to homeless encampments on MTA property, writing graffiti, just . . . wandering about. >Two such trespassers were graffiti writers from France; they died under a Brooklyn train last April. >And some “accidents” — more and more — are subway surfers. >Two 15-year-old surfers have been killed in the past four months, and another 15-year-old lost his arm this year. The numbers you pulled out of your ass are so extremely off from the reality. https://jknylaw.com/new-york-car-accident-lawyer/statistics https://jknylaw.com/new-york-car-accident-lawyer/statistics >How Many Car Accidents Are There in NYC Every Year? >It depends on the year. In 2019, there were a total of 134,224 car accidents in New York City. In 2020, the year of a raging pandemic, reported collisions declined by roughly 50%, for a total of 88,323. In 2021, a year still largely influenced by COVID, accidents increased to a total of 97,059. As of October 2022, there have been 52,341 car accidents year-to-date in the Big Apple based on preliminary data. >So, despite the fact that NYC came to a near-halt in 2020, there was still an average of 303 car accidents on the city’s streets every single day that year. And things have only gotten worse since then – although it is too early to tell for 2022. [...] >How Many Accidents in NYC Are Fatal? >Every year, hundreds of people are killed in car accidents in New York City: 2019: 211 car accident fatalities 2020: 235 car accident fatalities 2021: 245 car accident fatalities >The years 2020 and 2021 saw a slight surge in the share of fatal crashes, despite a drop in the total number of collisions. [...] >How Often Are Pedestrians Involving New York Traffic Accidents? >In 2021, 8.9% of all motor vehicle accidents in the city involved a pedestrian. >That year, there were a total of 8,693 pedestrian accidents. 7,205 caused an injury, while the remaining 125 were fatal. >Brooklyn is the most dangerous borough for pedestrians, while Staten Island is the safest: Brooklyn: 2,956 pedestrian accidents (34.0%) Queens: 2,002 pedestrian accidents (23.0%) Bronx: 1,748 pedestrian accidents (20.1%) Manhattan: 1,740 pedestrian accidents (20.0%) Staten Island: 247 pedestrian accidents (2.8%) Statistically speaking, about 3 out of every 5 pedestrian accidents take place in Brooklyn or Queens. Why do you resort to making stuff up when it's so easy to just look it up, thus so easy to prove you're wrong? What's your motivation to lie in such an easily exposed way? Where are your citations proving anyone ever claimed subways are a magical utopia full of unicorns?
codekansas 3y ago
I moved to NYC a year ago and I really don't like using the MTA. It's dirty, chronically delayed, and randomly alternates between swelteringly hot and freezing cold. Getting anywhere here takes half an hour. Outside of a few choice streets, bike infrastructure is abysmal. Riding the train feels like you're schedule is at the mercy of the whims of some random MTA employee or a weirdo who pull the emergency brake and it makes me wish I had a car again. I used to be much more sympathetic to these types of articles when I lived in Seattle. Buses in Seattle were generally quite nice and more predictable (Google maps would usually give you a good estimate on your arrival time). Biking was a much nicer experience. I think cities looking to make better public transit should copy the Seattle model rather than the NYC model.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Aside from walking, getting around Manhattan is probably somewhat painful generally. It's a city that it would take a lot to get me to live there full-time although that's true to a lesser degree of most cities. Cities like Seattle and Boston have generally OK public transit. But pretty much everyone I know personally (tends towards older) in Boston still owns a car because they do frequent weekend activities and regularly visit friends outside the city.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    > Cities like Seattle and Boston have generally OK public transit. But pretty much everyone I know personally (tends towards older) in Boston still owns a car because they do weekend activities and regularly visit friends outside the city. I (French) lived in Boston for 9 months and I was pleasantly surprised how good the city is for cycling, there was not that many dedicated infrastructures (except along the Charles river, which still help a lot) but the reasonable density of the left bank means there's lots of small streets with very few cars and you can go pretty easily from one place to another: I was commuting from center Somerville to Chinatown and except during the few months with 2 meters of snow everywhere, cycling was much more pleasant and faster than public transport, and I would never have considered driving a car there given the cost and traffic.
fer 3y ago
My mom's (then) boyfriend sold his car back in '96. He was a science man but not on a particularly number-hard field (veterinarian). He still ran the numbers. I was too young to fully understand but basically accounting for every cost it was cheaper to call a cab or rent a car for every situation that actually requires a private vehicle, plus it saved loads of time overall (repairs, maintenance, checks, cleaning...) and headaches in general. The discussion stuck to me, and I'm always amazed at how it became a realization for so many people decades after. Granted, this was Western Europe where public transit is ages ahead of most of the US.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Since the privatization of public transport it has declined considerably, especially in rural areas. This is one of the reasons why I think things like public transport should always be a government affair and never be run at a profit.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    In Ireland about a decade ago we privatised about 15% of the existing Dublin bus network. And... no-one noticed; the old state monopoly and the new private company now run buses under the livery of a new state organisation, TFI, which sets fares and dictates routes. Quite why the private company wanted anything to do with this is slightly unclear to me. The incentive for Dublin Bus was... possibly simplification of operations? They seem to have taken the opportunity to more or less entirely get rid of their single decker buses. But, so far so... good? It's working surprisingly well so far, though I do find the routes operated by the private company a little less reliable than the Dublin Bus ones. It probably helped that this was done as part of an overall expansion, not just a re-allocation; Dublin Bus lost about 15% of its fleet but got replacements; AFAIK it kept all its drivers.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Nice to see a success story. Here in NL it is the other way around. We used to have fantastic public transport, and then, since the 90's ever expanding privatization which means that 100's of local bus lines have been cancelled and the only places that have good public transport are the places that need them the least. Old people in rural areas are in real trouble, more so because the same has happened to healthcare which in turn led to a whole wave of hospital closures. And that doesn't seem to have ended. Highly annoying because it was those old people in the first place that helped to pay for all of the infra we use daily. The end result of 4 liberal conservative cabinets in sequence.
wsc981 3y ago
It’s nice they look at the costs, but it would be fair to also look at the positive effects of roads for economies, that value probably greatly outweighs the costs for many roads. Goods need to be transported anyways and in many situations there might not be alternatives for roads (e.g. transport food to grocery stores). Let’s also not forget that economists often state that in a bad economy it can be a good idea to invest in infrastructure (including roads) as it provides employment and can help boost the economy after the economy has recovered from a recession, due to better logistics. Certainly a country like The Netherlands benefits a lot from it’s high quality infrastructure. Makes it very quick and easy to transport goods from a harbor like Rotterdam to Germany.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  NL is an easy case to make though: super densely populated so there is a large tax base for such projects. Doing the same in the United States, Canada or Eastern Europe is a completely different proposition from a financial point of view.
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    Calculating exactly how many roads are “necessary” to create a thriving society is very difficult. For example, we need some amount of farms in rural areas, so we need at a minimum roads to those cars. But we probably also don’t want to force farmers to live completely isolated, so farmers need some amount of rural community. Stores, schools etc… then we need fire, police, water, power. And all of those things require roads for access and maintenance. Then add in the fact that none of this is centrally planned, and that there’s a definite need for redundancy.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    Netherlands (1100/sqm) has a lower population density than New Jersey (1200) The entire eastern seaboard from Boston down to Washington has a population of 50 million and a density of 900/sqm, 3 times the density of France, and 50% higher than Germany, and similar to Benelux (1000/sqm, 30 million) The "America is big" argument doesn't really apply when you look at regions. Southern California is similar density to Italy and Switzerland.
kkfx 3y ago
Whats the cost of the surrounding needed to have a moderately effective collective transport (improperly named public, since it's generally private, subsidized by the public since being economically untenable)? Let's start from the need of density. In the past cities was a nightmare but a need, in the modern era they was the motor of any civilization since they was the place where ideas can be exchanged and so evolve, where most enterprises and customers and workers co-exist. But after the first logistic revolution in the '80s most productions have gone outside the city, in entirely artificial distopic district build around mega-factories, where worker's live, but not where customers live, without really exchange of ideas being "isolated big factories". With TLC/IT (bad) evolution we finally got enough bandwidth and work models to work remotely, exchange ideas remotely, the new agorà is on the internet (BBS, nntp news, then the web). So? So, well, cities once needed for many reasons do exists only for very few reasons, the most prominent is being kind of labor camps for poor who live to work, to earn enough to pay services they need to live. Unable to substantially improve their condition since costs suck most of their earning. In that sense the cost of public transport is the cost of keeping up a decadent gigantic structure: the city. A shared cost with some other cleptocratic business, but nothing else. This cost is HUGE. Some, let's say McKinsey dream flying cars https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-report.pdf https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... and while I'm less optimistic in timetable and scalability terms that's the cheaper theoretical evolution we can hope for. Because IF we will been able to reach a point where we can move anything by air then we can give up roads who are one of the most expensive logistic infra we need anyway for low density area, far less expensive but since so many road not less expensive than the hyper expensive high speed and high capacity roads links between cities. IF we will reach such goal (and I'm pretty convinced not so fast, but we will) than the best density balance will be leaving and working spread in vast areas in small buildings, perhaps with just few district for things that we still can't do at smaller scale. As we chosen to go from mainframe to cluster, for mega-ship and mega-plane to smaller ones, so we will do for living. Collective transportation does not fit AT ALL despite the contrary interested propaganda.
junaru 3y ago
Question for those thinking car infrastructure costs too much etc: How many kids do you have? The way i see it all arguments for reducing reliance on cars comes from people in metropolitan areas enjoying single life and not planning for a family. Giving the way my generation is with money the hostility most likely comes not from ideological reasons but simply because we are unable to afford them altogether thus it's being masked as some honorable cause instead of petty spite.
- epistasis 3y ago
  As the parent of two kids, I really don't understand this at all, much less the idea that it's some sort of trump card against lower car lifestyles. Have you actually considered what a car does to your life? Think how much better your life would be if you didn't have to worry about cars killing your children, as it's one of the biggest sources of child death. Imagine the freedom if your kids could go to sports practice, to school, to music lesson, without you driving them everywhere. People in he Us have some sort of Stockholm Syndrome with cars. Their are our captor but we seem to love them still.
  - junaru 3y ago
    Number of kids and population count of your town please. Thank you.
    - epistasis 3y ago
      I grew up in a small rural town where people were not slaves to cars because you could get around with or without a car. Now I'm in a suburb, and the closest services are about a mile away, so everyone is dependent on a car. I can get most of my day done on bike, and the kids definitely prefer bikes to the car, but as they get older and have needs further out we will be car dependent again But it doesn't have to be that way. Transit can fill that gap when you want something bigger than a small rural town. However, cars have been baked into most of our suburban design in a way that transit can not grow to fill that gap. We have planned our entire suburban areas around the idea of being stuck in a car for all needs. My partner and I would honestly prefer a city, but cities have also been planned to keep as many people out as possible, so very few new apartments get built, and when they are built, it's usually almost entirely single and two bedroom apartments because there's such a huge backlog of demand to live in cities. There is a better life possible, but US law has made it illegal to build.
graycat 3y ago
Deleted.
- dudul 3y ago
  "wait until the snow melts". How long have you been living in your bubble? You do realize in some parts of the country it would mean waiting for 6 to 7 months before driving again?
  - graycat 3y ago
    I lived in Ohio from 1980 to 1985 and NYS until 2020. There was lots of cold weather and snow. Waiting until the snow melted was fine advice, quite reasonable.
- crote 3y ago
  Most people don't buy a month's worth of groceries at once, though. When there is a grocery store right next to the train station, you just get what you need for the next two or three days when you pass the store during your daily commute.
Kretinsky 3y ago
I enjoy dense and quality mass transportation, which is often faster and cheaper in large cities. However, the trigger that made me buying a car was to start having kids. Between groceries, medical visits and leisure, it started to be very, very complex to manage it without a car. Most public transportation infrastructure is hostile to strollers and babies; you don't want to see a crackhead do his thing next to your newborn (classic in the french subway); peak hour in a bus is hell with a baby; taxis often won't take you if you don't have a child seat, which is quite inconvenient, etc etc. Until we solve those problems, and I believe we won't, then I'll use my car.
- kennywinker 3y ago
  Cargo ebikes can make a lot of this work if you live in a city, tho the more kids you have the harder that gets
  - Kretinsky 3y ago
    Cargo ebikes are very dangerous for kids, and you can't sit a 0-3 year old in it. It can't be used in winter. Aside from this, in many european cities, it will get stolen if you leave it in the street a bit too long. Main problem currently is with bikes, where I live (Riga). Everyone rides on the sidewalk, making it a very dangerous place for pedestrians and kids. I would be keen to forbid bikes in the city center (and electric scooter), as bikers really can't seem to understand that they should go on the road.
    - pseudocomposer 3y ago
      Do you think banning bikes would be easier/less costly to enforce/better for your community than making it safer for cyclists to share the road with cars (which is usually why cyclists ride on sidewalks in a given area)? If a ban was established on bikes, but not cars, to parts of your city where people need to go, and cyclists continued to go to the places they needed to go… what would enforcement of that ban look like? Pulling them off their bikes?
jakeinspace 3y ago
I desperately want to sell my car. I live in a city with decent public transit by NA standards (Montreal), and can get to my suburban office by train. The main hangup is visiting my family across the border in rural Pennsylvania, there’s not a feasible way to get there which wouldn’t require a relative spending 2+ hours to pick me up from a bus or train station. That, and being able to go camping on short notice.
clircle 3y ago
It could cost 60 or 100 or 200 Billion, but I still need to take my kids places...
galleywest200 3y ago
I have too many outside hobbies (camping) to ditch my car completely. You cannot take a dog, flammable cooking gas, and a canoe on public transport. I am fine with the idea of banning cars in certain parts of cities and requiring cities (at least downtown) be walkable.
nottheengineer 3y ago
People often forget an important part of investing into trains instead of cars: It makes it so the people who don't want to drive don't have to. And since the people who just drive because they have to are usually not the best drivers, that would make travelling a much more pleasant experience. It's a good thing even for the people who love cars.
throwawa14223 3y ago
I'm incredibly pro-car but it's nice to have real numbers so the externalities can be effectively paid for.

110 points by throw0101a 3y ago

Cost break down for the state of Massachusetts, the area covered: > Using publicly available data, the authors put the annual public tab at $35.7 billion, which amounts to about $14,000 for every household in the state. Those that do own vehicles pony up an additional $12,000 on average in direct costs.

Someone 3y ago
I think the public massively funds personal car usage, but don’t think it’s as high as portrayed here. Also FTA: “Beyond those for individual drivers, road maintenance, snow removal, and policing, there are less-obvious ones, such as those associated with […] lost productivity from sitting in traffic” All other things staying equal, those costs may increase when replacing cars with something else (e.g. bicycles and public transport) “The team also went through the overall state budget and those of various agencies like the Department of Conservation and Recreation to calculate all the money going to roads” Part of those costs are for transporting goods (e.g. to shops), or for maintenance due to wear from public transport. There also are costs that won’t fully go away if people stop driving cars (for example, they may get stuff delivered bro their homes instead of fetching it themselves. That may induce fewer public costs, but it won’t induce zero public costs)
- civilitty 3y ago
  The whole road cost argument doesn’t make sense to me. The problem is density, not mode of transport - we all need roads! The common denominator access requirement for all housing is a fire truck and ambulance for safety and delivery trucks to make space livable with bulky items like furniture, which also account for most of the wear and tear. The money nondrivers pay in taxes for roads aren’t a subsidy to drivers, it’s the cost they pay for the safety and convenience we expect from modern civilization
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    You need a lot more road for everyone to have individual cars than you do just for deliveries and emergency vehicles. http://lncarden.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/3/6/28369831/1419566_orig.png http://lncarden.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/3/6/28369831/1419566_...
    - ghaff 3y ago
      I don't see the data outside of GIS databases, but I'd be willing to bet that in a lot of (most?) places a significant majority of roads [ADDED: total mileage] are 2 lane roads to home and business endpoints. Add in the fact that you're going to have an interstate/etc. highway system even if you only had truck traffic and the wider roads are mostly denser suburbia main routes and areas within cities.
  - Timshel 3y ago
    Less traffic might mean you don't need a 4 lanes road and less maintenance maybe ? You don't think it would impact budget ?
    - civilitty 3y ago
      I’m sure it would impact the budget but based on the state of roads here in California, the vast majority of the damage seems to be from trucks. A lot of those four lane roads can’t be sized down without blocking emergency vehicles’ basic mobility. They’re sized for worst case scenarios and at least in my small hometown, for example, meant to allow large numbers of emergency vehicles to move quickly between suburban sprawls in case of large fire or earthquake.
      - Timshel 3y ago
        Yes truck does most of the dammage on specific axes and they probably could be limited to even less, you don't need 40t trucks in city center. Unless you are on a narrow one way street (not common in the us I believe) I would say that congestion is the limiting factor for emergency vehicule mobility. And there is quite a lot of study that wider street do not reduce congestion.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
tim333 3y ago
Those average direct costs seem rather high. I think I spend more like $3000/yr for quite a nice car.
- spicymaki 3y ago
  > I think I spend more like $3000/yr for quite a nice car. You are lucky! Currently the average cost of a new car is ~$48k. Not including fuel, if I priced out a car to around $40k and took a loan at 5% interest for five years. I would already be looking at about $10k a year. Add in insurance, fuel, excise tax, registration, inspection, etc. it would go up to ~$13k for the first 5 years. My fifteen year old car costs about $6,000 for me this year (with repairs, oil changes, and fuel costs, insurance, etc.). If I lived in an urban environment with good transit like NYC it would cost me about $2k-$3k a year in commuter costs if I traveled by bus and subway every day round trip.
- ghaff 3y ago
  As someone who has owned cars for decades and drives them basically until they're not economical to keep running, that seems low. Just simple division (no time value of money) for a new $40K car for 10 years is $4K/yr. Maybe you bought used and didn't spend too much more on maintenance and maybe even got a bit of a trade-in but I think that's in the ballpark. $1K/year for insurance is probably low for more urban people. Excise tax/registration/inspection probably a few hundred more. And even a fairly modest 5K miles per year is about $700/yr. just in fuel at today's prices. And add at least something for oil changes and other maintenance even if just routine.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > a new $40K car for 10 years is $4K/yr Well no, because the new 40K car doesn't evaporate after 10 years. You can sell it for some money or just keep using it longer to bring your yearly average down. Also nobody needs a new 40K car. If you can afford it want to enjoy that, have fun. But if you're trying to bring transportation costs down, buy a used 10K car and drive that one for ten years.
- throw0101a 3y ago

karmakaze 3y ago

The headline seems to conflate roads with driving, as in a personal vehicle. Roads also support the transportation of goods as well as public transportation and bike lanes. Even if we had zero personal vehicles we'd still build many roads, so the cost difference is what should be reported with this headline.

JKCalhoun 3y ago
There are of course rails for transporting goods.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Many people prefer to buy groceries at the grocery store rather than pick them up at the rail depot. As GP observes, moving freight by rail doesn’t eliminate roads.
  - crote 3y ago
    How about designing neighborhoods in such a way that there is a grocery store within a 15-minute walk from your house? And place a school next to it, so you can grab some groceries when you drop off your kid. That'd already massively reduce the amount of driving required, as you suddenly no longer need to drive a few miles for your groceries. And because you don't arrive by car the grocery store doesn't need a huge parking lot either.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      This subthread is about “how would the grocery store fill its shelves without roads?” more than it is “how could we avoid the final driving by grocery customers?”
      - crote 3y ago
        The roads are mostly filled with cars, though. If we only needed roads for trucks to stock stores, we could get rid of 90% of them. Nobody is proposing getting rid of all roads, they clearly have value. People are just proposing making it possible to live without requiring a car for something as basic as grocery shopping. As long as cities are built from a car-centric perspective first, they will require a car to live in.

Gehinnn 3y ago

Personally I'm all against cars, but I don't see why these unexpected costs don't apply to public transport as well. The noise of trains also reduces the value of the properties next to the tracks.

jgoodhcg 3y ago
Busy roads aren’t as noisy or more dangerous though.
- stirbot 3y ago
  Trains are more dangerous? One predictable, well mainted vehicle operated by a professional versus many cars?
  - jgoodhcg 3y ago
    I think cars are more dangerous for that exact reason. I was being sarcastic in saying that roads filled with lots of cars aren't as dangerous or noisy.
  - muro 3y ago
    Trains can't break quickly.
defrost 3y ago
In Australian cities walking distance to train stations increases property value.
- mushbino 3y ago
  It does in the US too.
  - crote 3y ago
    A big problem in the US is that many developers still view trains as an extension to driving. The result is that they end up building a huge car park next to the train station, with low-density suburbia around it. Many other countries essentially end up building a suburban core around the commuter train station, with high-density housing, shops, and midrise office buildings.

unixhero 3y ago

I make enough money, so I don't care about the cost. It is budgeted in. It is a necessity.

airza 3y ago
The problem is that it's not budgeted in : most municipal governments are crumping under the weight of supporting all of the infrastructure needed to support everyone living far apart and going places via car
0xfaded 3y ago
Ironically it isn't budgeted in, almost all road infrastructure is underfunded and falling apart. Not to mention the externalized cost to the environment. The worst part is that poor people pay more land tax per area than rich people, so you are likely being subsidized by people who don't make enough money. I live in America and make enough money to spend part of my year in various cities across Europe. It saddens me to think that the average American can't imagine how good life can be with fewer cars.
DonHopkins 3y ago
You also don't care about the costs to other people, the poor, society, and the environment. Too bad there are so many careless people like you.
- unixhero 3y ago
  I live in a country where the population density is low, settlement is sparse and the winters are gnarly. Distances are huge and not owning a car is for me out of the question. I have been to Singapore. It is a sort of utopia when it comes to mass transit and public transport in general. I suggest people move there if they want to live in a world technically devoid of cars. A future without indivual personal transport is one I do not personally, want, will vote for or can support. This goes to the core of individual freedom. Yes people from outside the US also care deeply about individual rights.

DonHopkins 3y ago

Another unquantifiable but costly expense is stress and its effects on your health and sanity: taking your life into your own hands every time you drive, and no matter how careful and skilled you are, a careless idiot could come along and wipe you out at any moment.

dudul 3y ago
Ok. Some rando can also push you on the track as the subway comes in. I think last year it was close to 100 deaths on the subway in NYC. It's pretty much the same amount of pedestrians who died in a car accident. Not saying it's completely equivalent. A lot of these were probably suicides and all, but let's not pretend subways are a magical utopia full of unicorns.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  You're really stretching and hallucinating to miss the point. Did I mention magic or unicorns? Look up the facts instead of just making shit up and trying to put your crazy words into other people's mouths. https://nypost.com/2023/04/02/nyc-subway-track-deaths-soar-driven-by-social-media-dares/ https://nypost.com/2023/04/02/nyc-subway-track-deaths-soar-d... >In fact, it’s startling the number of deaths underground could even begin to rival the number of deaths above ground, where unlicensed and drunk drivers speed and take fast turns. >What’s going on? Of 1,365 known subway-track incidents in 2022 (most of which didn’t end in death), about 15% were accidental falls or medical emergencies, a new MTA analysis finds. >A thankfully surprisingly low number — fewer than 10% — was suicides or suicide attempts. >An even smaller percentage was assaults — that is, people being pushed to the tracks. (Though with pushes to the tracks comprising three of last year’s 10 subway murders, a 30-year high, a small percentage is too many.) >In most cases — well more than two-thirds — people ended up on the tracks voluntarily. >In 20% of total cases, people were clearly mentally ill (but not attempting suicide); in another 10% or so, people were drugged or drunk. >And in nearly half of total trespassing cases, the MTA or NYPD found people just walking the tracks — walking to homeless encampments on MTA property, writing graffiti, just . . . wandering about. >Two such trespassers were graffiti writers from France; they died under a Brooklyn train last April. >And some “accidents” — more and more — are subway surfers. >Two 15-year-old surfers have been killed in the past four months, and another 15-year-old lost his arm this year. The numbers you pulled out of your ass are so extremely off from the reality. https://jknylaw.com/new-york-car-accident-lawyer/statistics https://jknylaw.com/new-york-car-accident-lawyer/statistics >How Many Car Accidents Are There in NYC Every Year? >It depends on the year. In 2019, there were a total of 134,224 car accidents in New York City. In 2020, the year of a raging pandemic, reported collisions declined by roughly 50%, for a total of 88,323. In 2021, a year still largely influenced by COVID, accidents increased to a total of 97,059. As of October 2022, there have been 52,341 car accidents year-to-date in the Big Apple based on preliminary data. >So, despite the fact that NYC came to a near-halt in 2020, there was still an average of 303 car accidents on the city’s streets every single day that year. And things have only gotten worse since then – although it is too early to tell for 2022. [...] >How Many Accidents in NYC Are Fatal? >Every year, hundreds of people are killed in car accidents in New York City: 2019: 211 car accident fatalities 2020: 235 car accident fatalities 2021: 245 car accident fatalities >The years 2020 and 2021 saw a slight surge in the share of fatal crashes, despite a drop in the total number of collisions. [...] >How Often Are Pedestrians Involving New York Traffic Accidents? >In 2021, 8.9% of all motor vehicle accidents in the city involved a pedestrian. >That year, there were a total of 8,693 pedestrian accidents. 7,205 caused an injury, while the remaining 125 were fatal. >Brooklyn is the most dangerous borough for pedestrians, while Staten Island is the safest: Brooklyn: 2,956 pedestrian accidents (34.0%) Queens: 2,002 pedestrian accidents (23.0%) Bronx: 1,748 pedestrian accidents (20.1%) Manhattan: 1,740 pedestrian accidents (20.0%) Staten Island: 247 pedestrian accidents (2.8%) Statistically speaking, about 3 out of every 5 pedestrian accidents take place in Brooklyn or Queens. Why do you resort to making stuff up when it's so easy to just look it up, thus so easy to prove you're wrong? What's your motivation to lie in such an easily exposed way? Where are your citations proving anyone ever claimed subways are a magical utopia full of unicorns?

codekansas 3y ago

I moved to NYC a year ago and I really don't like using the MTA. It's dirty, chronically delayed, and randomly alternates between swelteringly hot and freezing cold. Getting anywhere here takes half an hour. Outside of a few choice streets, bike infrastructure is abysmal. Riding the train feels like you're schedule is at the mercy of the whims of some random MTA employee or a weirdo who pull the emergency brake and it makes me wish I had a car again. I used to be much more sympathetic to these types of articles when I lived in Seattle. Buses in Seattle were generally quite nice and more predictable (Google maps would usually give you a good estimate on your arrival time). Biking was a much nicer experience. I think cities looking to make better public transit should copy the Seattle model rather than the NYC model.

ghaff 3y ago
Aside from walking, getting around Manhattan is probably somewhat painful generally. It's a city that it would take a lot to get me to live there full-time although that's true to a lesser degree of most cities. Cities like Seattle and Boston have generally OK public transit. But pretty much everyone I know personally (tends towards older) in Boston still owns a car because they do frequent weekend activities and regularly visit friends outside the city.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > Cities like Seattle and Boston have generally OK public transit. But pretty much everyone I know personally (tends towards older) in Boston still owns a car because they do weekend activities and regularly visit friends outside the city. I (French) lived in Boston for 9 months and I was pleasantly surprised how good the city is for cycling, there was not that many dedicated infrastructures (except along the Charles river, which still help a lot) but the reasonable density of the left bank means there's lots of small streets with very few cars and you can go pretty easily from one place to another: I was commuting from center Somerville to Chinatown and except during the few months with 2 meters of snow everywhere, cycling was much more pleasant and faster than public transport, and I would never have considered driving a car there given the cost and traffic.

fer 3y ago

My mom's (then) boyfriend sold his car back in '96. He was a science man but not on a particularly number-hard field (veterinarian). He still ran the numbers. I was too young to fully understand but basically accounting for every cost it was cheaper to call a cab or rent a car for every situation that actually requires a private vehicle, plus it saved loads of time overall (repairs, maintenance, checks, cleaning...) and headaches in general. The discussion stuck to me, and I'm always amazed at how it became a realization for so many people decades after. Granted, this was Western Europe where public transit is ages ahead of most of the US.

jacquesm 3y ago
Since the privatization of public transport it has declined considerably, especially in rural areas. This is one of the reasons why I think things like public transport should always be a government affair and never be run at a profit.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  In Ireland about a decade ago we privatised about 15% of the existing Dublin bus network. And... no-one noticed; the old state monopoly and the new private company now run buses under the livery of a new state organisation, TFI, which sets fares and dictates routes. Quite why the private company wanted anything to do with this is slightly unclear to me. The incentive for Dublin Bus was... possibly simplification of operations? They seem to have taken the opportunity to more or less entirely get rid of their single decker buses. But, so far so... good? It's working surprisingly well so far, though I do find the routes operated by the private company a little less reliable than the Dublin Bus ones. It probably helped that this was done as part of an overall expansion, not just a re-allocation; Dublin Bus lost about 15% of its fleet but got replacements; AFAIK it kept all its drivers.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Nice to see a success story. Here in NL it is the other way around. We used to have fantastic public transport, and then, since the 90's ever expanding privatization which means that 100's of local bus lines have been cancelled and the only places that have good public transport are the places that need them the least. Old people in rural areas are in real trouble, more so because the same has happened to healthcare which in turn led to a whole wave of hospital closures. And that doesn't seem to have ended. Highly annoying because it was those old people in the first place that helped to pay for all of the infra we use daily. The end result of 4 liberal conservative cabinets in sequence.

wsc981 3y ago

It’s nice they look at the costs, but it would be fair to also look at the positive effects of roads for economies, that value probably greatly outweighs the costs for many roads. Goods need to be transported anyways and in many situations there might not be alternatives for roads (e.g. transport food to grocery stores). Let’s also not forget that economists often state that in a bad economy it can be a good idea to invest in infrastructure (including roads) as it provides employment and can help boost the economy after the economy has recovered from a recession, due to better logistics. Certainly a country like The Netherlands benefits a lot from it’s high quality infrastructure. Makes it very quick and easy to transport goods from a harbor like Rotterdam to Germany.

jacquesm 3y ago
NL is an easy case to make though: super densely populated so there is a large tax base for such projects. Doing the same in the United States, Canada or Eastern Europe is a completely different proposition from a financial point of view.
- sarchertech 3y ago
  Calculating exactly how many roads are “necessary” to create a thriving society is very difficult. For example, we need some amount of farms in rural areas, so we need at a minimum roads to those cars. But we probably also don’t want to force farmers to live completely isolated, so farmers need some amount of rural community. Stores, schools etc… then we need fire, police, water, power. And all of those things require roads for access and maintenance. Then add in the fact that none of this is centrally planned, and that there’s a definite need for redundancy.
- ta1243 3y ago
  Netherlands (1100/sqm) has a lower population density than New Jersey (1200) The entire eastern seaboard from Boston down to Washington has a population of 50 million and a density of 900/sqm, 3 times the density of France, and 50% higher than Germany, and similar to Benelux (1000/sqm, 30 million) The "America is big" argument doesn't really apply when you look at regions. Southern California is similar density to Italy and Switzerland.

kkfx 3y ago

Whats the cost of the surrounding needed to have a moderately effective collective transport (improperly named public, since it's generally private, subsidized by the public since being economically untenable)? Let's start from the need of density. In the past cities was a nightmare but a need, in the modern era they was the motor of any civilization since they was the place where ideas can be exchanged and so evolve, where most enterprises and customers and workers co-exist. But after the first logistic revolution in the '80s most productions have gone outside the city, in entirely artificial distopic district build around mega-factories, where worker's live, but not where customers live, without really exchange of ideas being "isolated big factories". With TLC/IT (bad) evolution we finally got enough bandwidth and work models to work remotely, exchange ideas remotely, the new agorà is on the internet (BBS, nntp news, then the web). So? So, well, cities once needed for many reasons do exists only for very few reasons, the most prominent is being kind of labor camps for poor who live to work, to earn enough to pay services they need to live. Unable to substantially improve their condition since costs suck most of their earning. In that sense the cost of public transport is the cost of keeping up a decadent gigantic structure: the city. A shared cost with some other cleptocratic business, but nothing else. This cost is HUGE. Some, let's say McKinsey dream flying cars https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-report.pdf https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... and while I'm less optimistic in timetable and scalability terms that's the cheaper theoretical evolution we can hope for. Because IF we will been able to reach a point where we can move anything by air then we can give up roads who are one of the most expensive logistic infra we need anyway for low density area, far less expensive but since so many road not less expensive than the hyper expensive high speed and high capacity roads links between cities. IF we will reach such goal (and I'm pretty convinced not so fast, but we will) than the best density balance will be leaving and working spread in vast areas in small buildings, perhaps with just few district for things that we still can't do at smaller scale. As we chosen to go from mainframe to cluster, for mega-ship and mega-plane to smaller ones, so we will do for living. Collective transportation does not fit AT ALL despite the contrary interested propaganda.

junaru 3y ago

Question for those thinking car infrastructure costs too much etc: How many kids do you have? The way i see it all arguments for reducing reliance on cars comes from people in metropolitan areas enjoying single life and not planning for a family. Giving the way my generation is with money the hostility most likely comes not from ideological reasons but simply because we are unable to afford them altogether thus it's being masked as some honorable cause instead of petty spite.

epistasis 3y ago
As the parent of two kids, I really don't understand this at all, much less the idea that it's some sort of trump card against lower car lifestyles. Have you actually considered what a car does to your life? Think how much better your life would be if you didn't have to worry about cars killing your children, as it's one of the biggest sources of child death. Imagine the freedom if your kids could go to sports practice, to school, to music lesson, without you driving them everywhere. People in he Us have some sort of Stockholm Syndrome with cars. Their are our captor but we seem to love them still.
- junaru 3y ago
  Number of kids and population count of your town please. Thank you.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    I grew up in a small rural town where people were not slaves to cars because you could get around with or without a car. Now I'm in a suburb, and the closest services are about a mile away, so everyone is dependent on a car. I can get most of my day done on bike, and the kids definitely prefer bikes to the car, but as they get older and have needs further out we will be car dependent again But it doesn't have to be that way. Transit can fill that gap when you want something bigger than a small rural town. However, cars have been baked into most of our suburban design in a way that transit can not grow to fill that gap. We have planned our entire suburban areas around the idea of being stuck in a car for all needs. My partner and I would honestly prefer a city, but cities have also been planned to keep as many people out as possible, so very few new apartments get built, and when they are built, it's usually almost entirely single and two bedroom apartments because there's such a huge backlog of demand to live in cities. There is a better life possible, but US law has made it illegal to build.

graycat 3y ago

Deleted.

dudul 3y ago
"wait until the snow melts". How long have you been living in your bubble? You do realize in some parts of the country it would mean waiting for 6 to 7 months before driving again?
- graycat 3y ago
  I lived in Ohio from 1980 to 1985 and NYS until 2020. There was lots of cold weather and snow. Waiting until the snow melted was fine advice, quite reasonable.
crote 3y ago
Most people don't buy a month's worth of groceries at once, though. When there is a grocery store right next to the train station, you just get what you need for the next two or three days when you pass the store during your daily commute.

Kretinsky 3y ago

I enjoy dense and quality mass transportation, which is often faster and cheaper in large cities. However, the trigger that made me buying a car was to start having kids. Between groceries, medical visits and leisure, it started to be very, very complex to manage it without a car. Most public transportation infrastructure is hostile to strollers and babies; you don't want to see a crackhead do his thing next to your newborn (classic in the french subway); peak hour in a bus is hell with a baby; taxis often won't take you if you don't have a child seat, which is quite inconvenient, etc etc. Until we solve those problems, and I believe we won't, then I'll use my car.

kennywinker 3y ago
Cargo ebikes can make a lot of this work if you live in a city, tho the more kids you have the harder that gets
- Kretinsky 3y ago
  Cargo ebikes are very dangerous for kids, and you can't sit a 0-3 year old in it. It can't be used in winter. Aside from this, in many european cities, it will get stolen if you leave it in the street a bit too long. Main problem currently is with bikes, where I live (Riga). Everyone rides on the sidewalk, making it a very dangerous place for pedestrians and kids. I would be keen to forbid bikes in the city center (and electric scooter), as bikers really can't seem to understand that they should go on the road.
  - pseudocomposer 3y ago
    Do you think banning bikes would be easier/less costly to enforce/better for your community than making it safer for cyclists to share the road with cars (which is usually why cyclists ride on sidewalks in a given area)? If a ban was established on bikes, but not cars, to parts of your city where people need to go, and cyclists continued to go to the places they needed to go… what would enforcement of that ban look like? Pulling them off their bikes?

jakeinspace 3y ago

I desperately want to sell my car. I live in a city with decent public transit by NA standards (Montreal), and can get to my suburban office by train. The main hangup is visiting my family across the border in rural Pennsylvania, there’s not a feasible way to get there which wouldn’t require a relative spending 2+ hours to pick me up from a bus or train station. That, and being able to go camping on short notice.

clircle 3y ago

It could cost 60 or 100 or 200 Billion, but I still need to take my kids places...

galleywest200 3y ago

I have too many outside hobbies (camping) to ditch my car completely. You cannot take a dog, flammable cooking gas, and a canoe on public transport. I am fine with the idea of banning cars in certain parts of cities and requiring cities (at least downtown) be walkable.

nottheengineer 3y ago

People often forget an important part of investing into trains instead of cars: It makes it so the people who don't want to drive don't have to. And since the people who just drive because they have to are usually not the best drivers, that would make travelling a much more pleasant experience. It's a good thing even for the people who love cars.

throwawa14223 3y ago

I'm incredibly pro-car but it's nice to have real numbers so the externalities can be effectively paid for.