8 ms·

Millennials Lead the Trend to Less Driving. Will It Last?

42 points by hispanic 13y ago

jryan49 13y ago
I'm a Millennial. I went to college in a city, and happened to just stay (halfly because I'm sick of suburbia). I use public transit to go everywhere. I make enough money to buy a car, but I don't need it.
superuser2 13y ago
With expensive safety features and the increasing cost of college, we are no longer in a world where most middle-class teenagers could realistically save up for and purchase a (reasonably safe) car. My parents wouldn't want me in something without a strong frame, airbags, ABS, and traction control. That puts the minimum cost of safe car at more like $5,000 than $500. If I ever see that much money in one place (I haven't), it'll go straight to my tuition bill. No way could my family justify spending that much on my entertainment. And even if it never needed repairs, I doubt I'd break even on driving to a minimum-wage job for 2-3 years. Owning and taking pride in our cars is not a part of life for teenagers in my town like it was for my parents in the 60s and 70s. Things have changed, and I think college and car ownership costs are a major factor.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Well, cars and college have certainly both become relatively much more expensive over time, but why are you mentioning what your parents would or would not want you to drive? Owning a car for the sake of owning a car is blessedly less "cool" in high school though, which I think has a lot to do with it as well. Just as much as the money aspect at least, I've seen teens manage to put thousands of dollars into cars when I was growing up just because that was their hobby. For them, their job supported the car, not the other way around.
  - freehunter 13y ago
    If your parents are helping you buy a car in any way, you're at the mercy of what they approve of. Parents can also make life difficult for you if you're not following their recommendations, especially if you're still at their mercy for financial support. The teens you speak of are not the youths he speaks of. You're talking of teens without other financial obligations, living off their parents. He speaks of youths trying to make it on their own.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Sorry, I forget that there are teens out there where parents are able to help them buy a car, or remain financially involved once the kid is out the door.
      - pessimizer 13y ago
        The teens who spend all of the money from their job on their car are teens who are entirely supported by their parents. Many parents would expect that some of the wages that the child earns go towards offsetting the child's own cost. Some parents may even insist that the wages more than offset the upkeep of the child, and go towards helping support other children in the family (lots of single parent households.)
- bluedino 13y ago
  I don't think $5,000 is a reasonable minimum for a car. Depending on your area you should be able to find something that's reliable for $2,000, even if it's not a Volvo.
  - VLM 13y ago
    Disagree. I live in a low cost of living area and the cheapest car sold by the local Carmax is $8K. Yes I know carmax isn't the cheapest place and they don't sell the dumpiest cars, but not by a factor of 4x... Cash for clunkers really screwed over the lower and lower-middle classes WRT transportation. As a side question, the $8K special is a '07 with 112K miles... Doesn't that imply a continuous equivalent average velocity since manufacture of something like three miles per hour, 24x7x365? That's crazy, almost like passenger jet aircraft that spend most of their life in the air. Now thats some owner who is not abandoning the car owner lifestyle or whatever. The math seems to estimate out to around seventy or eighty mile per day commute, maybe. Wowsers.
    - bluedino 13y ago
      > I live in a low cost of living area and the cheapest car sold by the local Carmax is $8K. You can buy used cars on craigslist, or go around looking for ones on the side of the road or in parking lots for sale. And a 2007 model year car came out in 2006, now it's 2013, so that car has been around for 7 years. 112,000/7 = 16,000 miles per year which isn't out of the ordinary. Most people put between 12-15,000 miles a year on a vehicle.
    - incision 13y ago
      >I live in a low cost of living area and the cheapest car sold by the local Carmax is $8K. The cheapest car sold by my local Carmax is $10K. At a glance, the cheapest cars they sell anywhere are in the 7-10K range. That's how a used car dealer works. They buy cars for $3K, run them through a carwash then sell them for $8K. The classifieds are full of decent/good cars in the $2-5K range.
    - brazzy 13y ago
      > three miles per hour, 24x7x365? That's crazy, Average velocity is a pretty braindead figure here. How about an average of 1.5 hours of use per day at an average velocity of 48 mph? Doesn't sound so crazy any more.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  That's a rather strong definition of reasonably safe. I will certainly push back on traction control, in situations where it impacts safety more than handling, a teenager will generally have the flexibility to just stay off the road (which is even safer). ABS is a little more in the middle, but a safe driving mentality will provide a lot more safety than ABS, so I probably wouldn't look at it as make or break for a teenager car. All cars have reasonably strong frames. Safer modern vehicles generally gain some of that safety by crumpling, which they do by being weaker than their predecessors. A Model T would bounce off a tree at moderate speed...
  - caw 13y ago
    My first car had airbags, but not ABS. My parents wanted me to get something with ABS, but the opportunity came up to buy the car for $800 (auto repair shop repo'd it after customer didn't pay bill). Repos aren't always a good deal though. My sister's second car was a repo that ended up needing almost $2k in repairs on top of the purchase price.
  - superuser2 13y ago
    I live in the Wisconsin, where snow and ice do make safety features that improve handling a bit more important than they might be in the Valley. A safe driving mentality only goes so far when the roads are coated in ice for the several months. By strong frame I mean a car that hasn't been in a serious collision yet.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      I learned to drive in the U.P.
- pnathan 13y ago
  I would not hesitate to purchase a clunker for a child so that they could find a job, both in high school and in college.
  - raverbashing 13y ago
    This Today's 'sheltered youth' doesn't cease to amaze me. Your $500 car is safe (ok, maybe the $1000). It's not a VW bus, it's safe. Get out, get a job, go to college. Drive around. Sheesh Unless you live in an area with good public transport, so in this case dumping the car is an option.
    - pnathan 13y ago
      It amazes me that all these safety features are considered required, and that the bar is so high. Yes, they'd be nice, but people managed to survive prior to the safety features being engineered.
      - lmm 13y ago
        Except for those that didn't.
      - brazzy 13y ago
        Not all of them did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...
        raverbashing 13y ago
        Well 2012 number is around 10 deaths per 100,000 habitants. In 1990 it was 17 per 100k. These are rates comparable to 1925 (while the number of cars was still in rapid ascent) Now, I don't know if there is a statistic of that, but it seems to me the main contributor to your road safety is yourself. So don't speed, don't DUI, know the limitations of your vehicle and you should be pretty safe even driving a car from 1990.
- BruceIV 13y ago
  When I turned 16 (within the past decade), Dad spent $1400 and bought a 12 year old old Mazda hatchback - the thing was completely gutless and didn't even have a stereo, let alone airbags and traction control (ABS, maybe, I feel like it's been pretty much standard for years now). Many of my classmates had similarly worthless cars - "reasonably safe" has a lot more to do with the driver than the vehicle (admittedly, young drivers tend to be stupid, but safer cars will just make them more reckless (at least at the macro level)).
freehunter 13y ago
>It’s not entirely clear, though, exactly why this has happened Really? It's not clear why miles traveled has gone down since 2004? Line up these graphs for the last 10 years [1]. Or perhaps this one [2]. Gas prices are at record levels since 2004, and unemployment among the 16-24 year old population has skyrocketed. It's not any wonder why millennials are driving less. They can't afford to drive more. The rising cost of college is putting even more strain on the pocketbooks of the young work force. The article seems to want to attribute this trend to one source and no more than one source. The real world doesn't work that way. [1] http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx [2] http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/22/the-global-youth-unemployment-crisis/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/22/the-global-...
- Anechoic 13y ago
  The article seems to want to attribute this trend to one source and no more than one source. ? The article calls gas prices twice as well as other economic problems as reasons for the decline. For example: "Researchers have not yet been able to disaggregate how much of our current decline in driving has been attributable to gas prices, or the economy, or changing attitudes toward car ownership or urban living"
  - freehunter 13y ago
    It does say that, yes. It also says that it's not known why, and it says that further up the article than any facts. They're implying that because researchers are looking at multiple factors they have yet to filter it down to one specific cause. I'm not discounting the researchers. I'm discounting the article, and their false sense of mystery behind this trend.
    - scott_s 13y ago
      I don't think that implication is the author's intention. I read that as an opening to say "researchers are still investigating the causes", not "researchers have not yet found the cause."
  - 13y ago
alloftheabove 13y ago
Will they also lead the trend in riding in cars that drive themselves?
- jeffasinger 13y ago
  Maybe, but my theory is that this stems from a couple of factors: 1) Higher driving costs, and lower incomes/ higher unemployment. 2) Less appeal of consumerist lifestyle 3) Preference for walkable neighborhoods 4) Strong avoidance of situations that involve drinking and driving Only the last one is a case that they'll be interested in self driving cars.
chasb 13y ago
Also: In 2010, the median marriage age was over 26 for women and over 28 for men. More and more young people are staying in cities, where cars are much less necessary. http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/09/next-big-question-facing-cities-will-millennials-stay/3229/ http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/09/ne...
saintx 13y ago
I have a license, and my wife has a car, but I don't drive. Haven't, with some exceptions on vacations and long road trips, since about 1998. Having grown up in a rural community where driving was compulsory, I made it a goal, upon moving to a large city to attend University, that I would live close to grocery stores, restaurants, and my workplace so that I could walk and ride my bicycle to work and class. It was a conscious lifestyle choice, and I still adhere to it, 15 years later. Side benefits are immense. I walk or ride somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 miles each year. Overall, the pedestrian commute energizes me in the morning, and helps me quickly recover and decompress at the end of the day. The money that would otherwise go into a second vehicle, fuel, insurance, and maintenance instead goes toward higher quality food.
- VLM 13y ago
  "I walk or ride somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 miles each year." "The money that would otherwise go into a second vehicle" I don't think you're going to like the math very much. 700 miles divided by 4 mph which is real slow for a bike (maybe up a hill?) or real fast for a walker, times maybe $100/hr as a consultant, equals about $17500/yr or about $1450 per month. You can rent a decent new Porsche 911 for about one grand per month as per leasetrader, so ... More realistically selections of vehicle and billable rate scale hand in hand. Or if you like a cost basis, my cost per mile has averaged under fifty cents per mile for my car so you're talking about around a buck per day, which buys like one organic apple around here. Which is better for you than no organic apples. I'm just saying the extra food probably isn't enough to fatten you up. Note I walk about most nights after dinner and also after lunch. For health, and fun. Have to be realistic that neither of us are saving any money doing so. Long term medical bills, maybe.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Only if you bill your walking hours at a consultant's rate, which is silly. I'm making more than both of you if you calculate it that way by sleeping an hour less a night while playing World of Warcraft.
  - mlwarren 13y ago
gavinlynch 13y ago
Sure it'll last. Until they have children.
- bearmf 13y ago
  Because it is impossible to have children without a car. Right!
  - gavinlynch 13y ago
    That's correct. It's just solid, non-debatable science. :p But seriously, unless you have the perfect storm of public transportation systems and public schooling systems, you're either getting a car to shuttle your kids to school or you move to the suburbs for better public schooling. Of course there are exceptions. I'm talking trends, as this article is.
  - brazzy 13y ago
    Didn't you know? In the USA, Child Protection Services will rescue kids from homes so broken that they have no car!
- rayiner 13y ago
  Have a kid, live in the suburbs, haven't driven my car since maybe February, ever since we discovered that there was a COSTCO on the train line.
- rangibaby 13y ago
  Just a data point, but I am 23 and have a three year-old son. I haven't owned a car since high school. We get around by subway and bicycle. When I started working (19) I used to fantasize about buying a new car, but everything about them is a total money hole. You have to pay for somewhere to park it (just parking on the street is illegal in my city), then car tax, then insurance, then gas... I guess I am blessed to live in a city (Nagoya) that is quite bikeable and has an adequate public transit system.
- jeffasinger 13y ago
  I've been seeing a big trend amongst my peers to chose to live in walkable areas. When someone announces they are getting a new place, they often excitedly list the places nearby that they can walk to. Even if you have kids, if you're walking somewhere, a car isn't as important. Sure, they may have cars, but they might not use them for every trip.
petercooper 13y ago
I hope so. Clearer roads for those of us who like driving. Vrrrrooom!
bjterry 13y ago
In the unknowable category, it seems like the availability of self-driving cars will drastically change the cost-benefits ratio of driving and could easily lead to a dramatic increase. Are you really going to want to fly from San Francisco to Los Angeles, spending 2+ hours in transit time, when you could get in your personal car, browse the internet or read a newspaper for the 6 hours you'd spend driving? I strongly suspect that any theories that we will be driving less will go out the window in the next decade or two.
- freehunter 13y ago
  Proponents of self driving cars seem to be forgetting the story that electric cars are telling us right now. People (en masse) will choose the immediately cheaper and more entrenched option. Maybe an electric car will save you hundreds on your gas and maintenance bills. But it's also $5000 more upfront. So people are not buying electric cars, even with all the studies showing that a great number of people will not lose anything by being range-limited. Will self-driving cars cost as much as gasoline cars? As much as electric cars? Or will they cost more than both option? So pulling numbers out of my ass: who is going to be buying a $50,000 self driving car when they can get the electric option for $40,000 and the gas option for $35,000? We can't even get them to buy electric.
  - bjterry 13y ago
    That is a true point for the first years that self-driving cars exist, but it is not true on the timescale of a couple decades. The first Tesla Roadster was delivered in July of 2009, and they are going to ship 20,000 cars this year (compare with 5 million light vehicle sales in the last 12 months, for the sake of honesty in statistics), in an environment where their car is at a significant disadvantage due to lack of infrastructure. The first self-driving car will be expensive, but eventually it won't be, and eventually it will have a huge impact on people's driving habits. Unless everyone stars telecommuting, which is a social change that will probably happen slower than technological changes, I don't see how miles driven per year would reasonably go down.

42 points by hispanic 13y ago

I'm a Millennial. I went to college in a city, and happened to just stay (halfly because I'm sick of suburbia). I use public transit to go everywhere. I make enough money to buy a car, but I don't need it.

superuser2 13y ago

With expensive safety features and the increasing cost of college, we are no longer in a world where most middle-class teenagers could realistically save up for and purchase a (reasonably safe) car. My parents wouldn't want me in something without a strong frame, airbags, ABS, and traction control. That puts the minimum cost of safe car at more like $5,000 than $500. If I ever see that much money in one place (I haven't), it'll go straight to my tuition bill. No way could my family justify spending that much on my entertainment. And even if it never needed repairs, I doubt I'd break even on driving to a minimum-wage job for 2-3 years. Owning and taking pride in our cars is not a part of life for teenagers in my town like it was for my parents in the 60s and 70s. Things have changed, and I think college and car ownership costs are a major factor.

mpyne 13y ago
Well, cars and college have certainly both become relatively much more expensive over time, but why are you mentioning what your parents would or would not want you to drive? Owning a car for the sake of owning a car is blessedly less "cool" in high school though, which I think has a lot to do with it as well. Just as much as the money aspect at least, I've seen teens manage to put thousands of dollars into cars when I was growing up just because that was their hobby. For them, their job supported the car, not the other way around.
- freehunter 13y ago
  If your parents are helping you buy a car in any way, you're at the mercy of what they approve of. Parents can also make life difficult for you if you're not following their recommendations, especially if you're still at their mercy for financial support. The teens you speak of are not the youths he speaks of. You're talking of teens without other financial obligations, living off their parents. He speaks of youths trying to make it on their own.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Sorry, I forget that there are teens out there where parents are able to help them buy a car, or remain financially involved once the kid is out the door.
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      The teens who spend all of the money from their job on their car are teens who are entirely supported by their parents. Many parents would expect that some of the wages that the child earns go towards offsetting the child's own cost. Some parents may even insist that the wages more than offset the upkeep of the child, and go towards helping support other children in the family (lots of single parent households.)
bluedino 13y ago
I don't think $5,000 is a reasonable minimum for a car. Depending on your area you should be able to find something that's reliable for $2,000, even if it's not a Volvo.
- VLM 13y ago
  Disagree. I live in a low cost of living area and the cheapest car sold by the local Carmax is $8K. Yes I know carmax isn't the cheapest place and they don't sell the dumpiest cars, but not by a factor of 4x... Cash for clunkers really screwed over the lower and lower-middle classes WRT transportation. As a side question, the $8K special is a '07 with 112K miles... Doesn't that imply a continuous equivalent average velocity since manufacture of something like three miles per hour, 24x7x365? That's crazy, almost like passenger jet aircraft that spend most of their life in the air. Now thats some owner who is not abandoning the car owner lifestyle or whatever. The math seems to estimate out to around seventy or eighty mile per day commute, maybe. Wowsers.
  - bluedino 13y ago
    > I live in a low cost of living area and the cheapest car sold by the local Carmax is $8K. You can buy used cars on craigslist, or go around looking for ones on the side of the road or in parking lots for sale. And a 2007 model year car came out in 2006, now it's 2013, so that car has been around for 7 years. 112,000/7 = 16,000 miles per year which isn't out of the ordinary. Most people put between 12-15,000 miles a year on a vehicle.
  - incision 13y ago
    >I live in a low cost of living area and the cheapest car sold by the local Carmax is $8K. The cheapest car sold by my local Carmax is $10K. At a glance, the cheapest cars they sell anywhere are in the 7-10K range. That's how a used car dealer works. They buy cars for $3K, run them through a carwash then sell them for $8K. The classifieds are full of decent/good cars in the $2-5K range.
  - brazzy 13y ago
    > three miles per hour, 24x7x365? That's crazy, Average velocity is a pretty braindead figure here. How about an average of 1.5 hours of use per day at an average velocity of 48 mph? Doesn't sound so crazy any more.
maxerickson 13y ago
That's a rather strong definition of reasonably safe. I will certainly push back on traction control, in situations where it impacts safety more than handling, a teenager will generally have the flexibility to just stay off the road (which is even safer). ABS is a little more in the middle, but a safe driving mentality will provide a lot more safety than ABS, so I probably wouldn't look at it as make or break for a teenager car. All cars have reasonably strong frames. Safer modern vehicles generally gain some of that safety by crumpling, which they do by being weaker than their predecessors. A Model T would bounce off a tree at moderate speed...
- caw 13y ago
  My first car had airbags, but not ABS. My parents wanted me to get something with ABS, but the opportunity came up to buy the car for $800 (auto repair shop repo'd it after customer didn't pay bill). Repos aren't always a good deal though. My sister's second car was a repo that ended up needing almost $2k in repairs on top of the purchase price.
- superuser2 13y ago
  I live in the Wisconsin, where snow and ice do make safety features that improve handling a bit more important than they might be in the Valley. A safe driving mentality only goes so far when the roads are coated in ice for the several months. By strong frame I mean a car that hasn't been in a serious collision yet.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    I learned to drive in the U.P.
pnathan 13y ago
I would not hesitate to purchase a clunker for a child so that they could find a job, both in high school and in college.
- raverbashing 13y ago
  This Today's 'sheltered youth' doesn't cease to amaze me. Your $500 car is safe (ok, maybe the $1000). It's not a VW bus, it's safe. Get out, get a job, go to college. Drive around. Sheesh Unless you live in an area with good public transport, so in this case dumping the car is an option.
  - pnathan 13y ago
    It amazes me that all these safety features are considered required, and that the bar is so high. Yes, they'd be nice, but people managed to survive prior to the safety features being engineered.
    - lmm 13y ago
      Except for those that didn't.
    - brazzy 13y ago
      Not all of them did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...
      - raverbashing 13y ago
        Well 2012 number is around 10 deaths per 100,000 habitants. In 1990 it was 17 per 100k. These are rates comparable to 1925 (while the number of cars was still in rapid ascent) Now, I don't know if there is a statistic of that, but it seems to me the main contributor to your road safety is yourself. So don't speed, don't DUI, know the limitations of your vehicle and you should be pretty safe even driving a car from 1990.
BruceIV 13y ago
When I turned 16 (within the past decade), Dad spent $1400 and bought a 12 year old old Mazda hatchback - the thing was completely gutless and didn't even have a stereo, let alone airbags and traction control (ABS, maybe, I feel like it's been pretty much standard for years now). Many of my classmates had similarly worthless cars - "reasonably safe" has a lot more to do with the driver than the vehicle (admittedly, young drivers tend to be stupid, but safer cars will just make them more reckless (at least at the macro level)).

freehunter 13y ago

>It’s not entirely clear, though, exactly why this has happened Really? It's not clear why miles traveled has gone down since 2004? Line up these graphs for the last 10 years [1]. Or perhaps this one [2]. Gas prices are at record levels since 2004, and unemployment among the 16-24 year old population has skyrocketed. It's not any wonder why millennials are driving less. They can't afford to drive more. The rising cost of college is putting even more strain on the pocketbooks of the young work force. The article seems to want to attribute this trend to one source and no more than one source. The real world doesn't work that way. [1] http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx [2] http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/22/the-global-youth-unemployment-crisis/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/22/the-global-...

Anechoic 13y ago
The article seems to want to attribute this trend to one source and no more than one source. ? The article calls gas prices twice as well as other economic problems as reasons for the decline. For example: "Researchers have not yet been able to disaggregate how much of our current decline in driving has been attributable to gas prices, or the economy, or changing attitudes toward car ownership or urban living"
- freehunter 13y ago
  It does say that, yes. It also says that it's not known why, and it says that further up the article than any facts. They're implying that because researchers are looking at multiple factors they have yet to filter it down to one specific cause. I'm not discounting the researchers. I'm discounting the article, and their false sense of mystery behind this trend.
  - scott_s 13y ago
    I don't think that implication is the author's intention. I read that as an opening to say "researchers are still investigating the causes", not "researchers have not yet found the cause."
- 13y ago

alloftheabove 13y ago

Will they also lead the trend in riding in cars that drive themselves?

jeffasinger 13y ago
Maybe, but my theory is that this stems from a couple of factors: 1) Higher driving costs, and lower incomes/ higher unemployment. 2) Less appeal of consumerist lifestyle 3) Preference for walkable neighborhoods 4) Strong avoidance of situations that involve drinking and driving Only the last one is a case that they'll be interested in self driving cars.

chasb 13y ago

Also: In 2010, the median marriage age was over 26 for women and over 28 for men. More and more young people are staying in cities, where cars are much less necessary. http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/09/next-big-question-facing-cities-will-millennials-stay/3229/ http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/09/ne...

saintx 13y ago

I have a license, and my wife has a car, but I don't drive. Haven't, with some exceptions on vacations and long road trips, since about 1998. Having grown up in a rural community where driving was compulsory, I made it a goal, upon moving to a large city to attend University, that I would live close to grocery stores, restaurants, and my workplace so that I could walk and ride my bicycle to work and class. It was a conscious lifestyle choice, and I still adhere to it, 15 years later. Side benefits are immense. I walk or ride somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 miles each year. Overall, the pedestrian commute energizes me in the morning, and helps me quickly recover and decompress at the end of the day. The money that would otherwise go into a second vehicle, fuel, insurance, and maintenance instead goes toward higher quality food.

VLM 13y ago
"I walk or ride somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 miles each year." "The money that would otherwise go into a second vehicle" I don't think you're going to like the math very much. 700 miles divided by 4 mph which is real slow for a bike (maybe up a hill?) or real fast for a walker, times maybe $100/hr as a consultant, equals about $17500/yr or about $1450 per month. You can rent a decent new Porsche 911 for about one grand per month as per leasetrader, so ... More realistically selections of vehicle and billable rate scale hand in hand. Or if you like a cost basis, my cost per mile has averaged under fifty cents per mile for my car so you're talking about around a buck per day, which buys like one organic apple around here. Which is better for you than no organic apples. I'm just saying the extra food probably isn't enough to fatten you up. Note I walk about most nights after dinner and also after lunch. For health, and fun. Have to be realistic that neither of us are saving any money doing so. Long term medical bills, maybe.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Only if you bill your walking hours at a consultant's rate, which is silly. I'm making more than both of you if you calculate it that way by sleeping an hour less a night while playing World of Warcraft.
- mlwarren 13y ago

gavinlynch 13y ago

Sure it'll last. Until they have children.

bearmf 13y ago
Because it is impossible to have children without a car. Right!
- gavinlynch 13y ago
  That's correct. It's just solid, non-debatable science. :p But seriously, unless you have the perfect storm of public transportation systems and public schooling systems, you're either getting a car to shuttle your kids to school or you move to the suburbs for better public schooling. Of course there are exceptions. I'm talking trends, as this article is.
- brazzy 13y ago
  Didn't you know? In the USA, Child Protection Services will rescue kids from homes so broken that they have no car!
rayiner 13y ago
Have a kid, live in the suburbs, haven't driven my car since maybe February, ever since we discovered that there was a COSTCO on the train line.
rangibaby 13y ago
Just a data point, but I am 23 and have a three year-old son. I haven't owned a car since high school. We get around by subway and bicycle. When I started working (19) I used to fantasize about buying a new car, but everything about them is a total money hole. You have to pay for somewhere to park it (just parking on the street is illegal in my city), then car tax, then insurance, then gas... I guess I am blessed to live in a city (Nagoya) that is quite bikeable and has an adequate public transit system.
jeffasinger 13y ago
I've been seeing a big trend amongst my peers to chose to live in walkable areas. When someone announces they are getting a new place, they often excitedly list the places nearby that they can walk to. Even if you have kids, if you're walking somewhere, a car isn't as important. Sure, they may have cars, but they might not use them for every trip.

petercooper 13y ago

I hope so. Clearer roads for those of us who like driving. Vrrrrooom!

bjterry 13y ago

In the unknowable category, it seems like the availability of self-driving cars will drastically change the cost-benefits ratio of driving and could easily lead to a dramatic increase. Are you really going to want to fly from San Francisco to Los Angeles, spending 2+ hours in transit time, when you could get in your personal car, browse the internet or read a newspaper for the 6 hours you'd spend driving? I strongly suspect that any theories that we will be driving less will go out the window in the next decade or two.

freehunter 13y ago
Proponents of self driving cars seem to be forgetting the story that electric cars are telling us right now. People (en masse) will choose the immediately cheaper and more entrenched option. Maybe an electric car will save you hundreds on your gas and maintenance bills. But it's also $5000 more upfront. So people are not buying electric cars, even with all the studies showing that a great number of people will not lose anything by being range-limited. Will self-driving cars cost as much as gasoline cars? As much as electric cars? Or will they cost more than both option? So pulling numbers out of my ass: who is going to be buying a $50,000 self driving car when they can get the electric option for $40,000 and the gas option for $35,000? We can't even get them to buy electric.
- bjterry 13y ago
  That is a true point for the first years that self-driving cars exist, but it is not true on the timescale of a couple decades. The first Tesla Roadster was delivered in July of 2009, and they are going to ship 20,000 cars this year (compare with 5 million light vehicle sales in the last 12 months, for the sake of honesty in statistics), in an environment where their car is at a significant disadvantage due to lack of infrastructure. The first self-driving car will be expensive, but eventually it won't be, and eventually it will have a huge impact on people's driving habits. Unless everyone stars telecommuting, which is a social change that will probably happen slower than technological changes, I don't see how miles driven per year would reasonably go down.