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Taking kids to weekend sport in Australia is not a one-off occasion. It's every Saturday morning. It produces its own peak hour (approx 10am-1pm Sat), focused i
by jaza 3y ago
Taking kids to weekend sport in Australia is not a one-off occasion. It's every Saturday morning. It produces its own peak hour (approx 10am-1pm Sat), focused in certain suburban areas, that's often worse than weekday peak hour in the city centre. It's also really hard to do it without a car. The sport locations can be quite unpredictable (sometimes in your local neighbourhood, sometimes a 2+ hour drive away). They're seldom accessible by public transport. And (in Sydney at least) children under 7 need to be in a car seat in an Uber (but not required in a taxi!), and no Ubers with car seats are available. So it's not only much easier, but also probably fairly cost effective in the long term, to have a second car with 95% of its use being for weekend kids sport.
- burkaman 3y agoRight, but having to use your second car for that trip and only that trip is probably a rare occasion for many families. I imagine the most common cases are two cars that are both used regularly because both parents drive to work, or one primary car that can be used both during the week and for that Saturday morning trip, and the second only for the rare occasion that the primary car is broken or being used for something else. My point is not that nobody needs a second car, my point is that focusing on rarely-used cars is by definition not a major societal issue. What you're describing is a very real issue, and might be more appropriately addressed by improving public transit. Uber's idea of replacing your second car with ridesharing does not work, as you say. Edit: Also note "most of them are in two-person households." So it seems they're mostly focused on couples without kids.