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On the other side of that, "hiring an Uber" even several times a month to do a longer trip that you can't manage in any other way is much cheaper than any owner

by taeric 3y ago

On the other side of that, "hiring an Uber" even several times a month to do a longer trip that you can't manage in any other way is much cheaper than any ownership situation for the same cars. Heck, you almost certainly save in recovered space from not owning the car. Going down the path, though, as someone that has extensively used public transit in every US city I've lived in for my adult life, I'm curious how you envision "more like public transit" looking? I get that you wanted better use of "car time", but I also have to confess I don't really know what that means. Even public transit is mostly a place for you to maybe read a book. If you are super hyper and have a long commute, you can consider some programming/drawing/writing. Most anything else, though, will be pretty difficult to pull off in a highly confined space.

samstave 3y ago
I was a daily biker in San Francisco for more than a decade... no car.... I had ZIPCAR and one month I took one on a trip and on several other excursions - and the bill for ZIPCAR that month was $850. for like minimal time... NO WAY was that "an affordable option"
- taeric 3y ago
  You would be surprised what people are regularly paying for a car. 850 is probably on par with what the parking/storage costs alone are. Those are almost certainly "priced in" to most houses, but there is no reason you couldn't work to reclaim a lot of that space. More, I don't know enough about ZIPCAR to know how they price in the costs to refill the vehicle between drivers, but depending on how the fuel was managed, that is a 20% chunk of that, easy. Concretely, googling "average monthly car payment", shows that "The average car payment for a new vehicle is $725 monthly, according to first-quarter 2023 data from Experian." So, not as incomparable as I could hope it is.
- tbdenney 3y ago
  $850 / $12 hour (current hourly rate for Honda CRV in SF) = 70 hours. I wouldn't call that minimal time for a month. Is there a more affordable option for on-demand car rental in SF than $12/hour all-inclusive? Seems quite reasonable to me.

by taeric 3y ago

samstave 3y ago

I was a daily biker in San Francisco for more than a decade... no car.... I had ZIPCAR and one month I took one on a trip and on several other excursions - and the bill for ZIPCAR that month was $850. for like minimal time... NO WAY was that "an affordable option"

taeric 3y ago
You would be surprised what people are regularly paying for a car. 850 is probably on par with what the parking/storage costs alone are. Those are almost certainly "priced in" to most houses, but there is no reason you couldn't work to reclaim a lot of that space. More, I don't know enough about ZIPCAR to know how they price in the costs to refill the vehicle between drivers, but depending on how the fuel was managed, that is a 20% chunk of that, easy. Concretely, googling "average monthly car payment", shows that "The average car payment for a new vehicle is $725 monthly, according to first-quarter 2023 data from Experian." So, not as incomparable as I could hope it is.
tbdenney 3y ago
$850 / $12 hour (current hourly rate for Honda CRV in SF) = 70 hours. I wouldn't call that minimal time for a month. Is there a more affordable option for on-demand car rental in SF than $12/hour all-inclusive? Seems quite reasonable to me.