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I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. The reason people keep buying cars after prices rise 57% in a decade: the extra $10,000 amortized over 10 years is le

I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. The reason people keep buying cars after prices rise 57% in a decade: the extra $10,000 amortized over 10 years is less than living even 1 year near the things you drive to. Things you drive to includes your parking space! It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a dense urban development. What more needs to be said? Live in the suburbs if you have a car. Fortunately bridge and toll community members are insensitive to these changes. They see no problems with 2 hours of schlepping, $16 of tolls and $25 parking to drink $0.50 of vodka priced at $17 at a downtown bar. If they were sensitive to these issues, that behavior would have ceased much sooner than a pandemic-induced shock to their routines. That said, I don't see anything wrong with the suburban lifestyle, I am a product of it. Instead of focusing on issues like parking costs, which cities can never beat suburbs at because suburbs have essentially infinite land, cities should fix their education systems, because they can realistically beat suburbs on the concentration of human capital. My community would be far more appreciative of that than bullshit about parking spots.

tomatocracy 3y ago
> It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a dense urban development. Public transport can be good but it's never that good. I live in zone 1 (ie very centrally) in London and there are still many journeys where it is quicker and cheaper for me to drive than to take any kind of public transport. This is true for longer journeys (going outside London) especially but surprisingly it's also true for quite a few short journeys (even going a couple of miles) - it depends a lot on the layout of the public transport network and the roads, and this is before considering journeys where I might want to bring bulky or heavy things with me which are basically impossible to do by public transport. I end up driving enough that the cost of car ownership vs short term rentals makes sense in pure economic terms but the convenience difference of ownership vs short-term rental is also pretty big.

tomatocracy 3y ago

> It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a dense urban development. Public transport can be good but it's never that good. I live in zone 1 (ie very centrally) in London and there are still many journeys where it is quicker and cheaper for me to drive than to take any kind of public transport. This is true for longer journeys (going outside London) especially but surprisingly it's also true for quite a few short journeys (even going a couple of miles) - it depends a lot on the layout of the public transport network and the roads, and this is before considering journeys where I might want to bring bulky or heavy things with me which are basically impossible to do by public transport. I end up driving enough that the cost of car ownership vs short term rentals makes sense in pure economic terms but the convenience difference of ownership vs short-term rental is also pretty big.