7 ms·

The End of Car Culture

52 points by llamataboot 13y ago

rosser 13y ago
I know it has a great deal to do with this city, but since I moved to San Francisco, I've found myself using my car so rarely that every time I pull back into my garage, I need to disconnect one of my battery terminals, or I'll have a dead battery the next time I need to drive somewhere.
BadassFractal 13y ago
For urban dwellers blessed with proper public transportation and a good Walk Score, a car is a huge headache and drain on finances. They simply all need to go and be replaced with extremely efficient, clean and safe transit systems. Nobody enjoys sitting in traffic for hours a day commuting. Nobody enjoys wasting time on maintenance. Nobody enjoys the process of acquiring the vehicle. At the very least, car sharing is a step in the right direction. Eventually as the Google car becomes reality, I hope that the # of cars on the roads is reduced to a bare minimum and we don't need to drive / pay people to drive any longer, and free up a lot of human talent to do something more productive.
- unimpressive 13y ago
  >and free up a lot of human talent to do something more productive. Or starve, as the case may be.
  - Volpe 13y ago
    Wealth redistribution could solve that problem.
    - prostoalex 13y ago
      After the redistribution is all finalized and completed, who controls the prices of goods that one can finally buy with this newfound wealth?
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    Mincome. That won't be the only thing driving a post-jobs future, so we'll have to deal with it anyway.
- vishaldpatel 13y ago
  New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia are towns with the best walk-score in America. For various reasons, it is still much cheaper to live in the suburbs and commute into the city than to live in San Francisco. I wonder how the other walkable cities are fairing. Perhaps when people buy homes, they tend to not buy a new car at the same time - prior to the housing crisis, many people bought lots of homes. Then the market collapsed and they lost their money, further reducing the number of new cars bought. Oddly enough, some 2000-model-year used Hondas and Toyotas did not depreciate in value between 2010 and 2013 because the used car market heated up.
  - sempergumbi 13y ago
    Used Hondas and Toyotas did not depreciate 2010-2013 because the Cash-for-Clunkers débâcle reduced the supply of used cars, keeping up their price. The suggestion that destroying operational vehicles would be a net gain for the economy is an excellent illustration of the broken window fallacy. Cash-for-clunkers helped middle and upper-middle class people, including some friends of mine, who wanted to buy new cars. The cost of the program was born mostly by poor people, as is often the case.
    - cpursley 13y ago
      Don't you just love central planning? It's always the poor that it hurts the most.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  > Nobody enjoys sitting in traffic for hours a day commuting. Nobody enjoys wasting time on maintenance. Nobody enjoys the process of acquiring the vehicle. Maybe not, but some of us find it vastly preferable to being crammed in with others on public transport. So don't tar everyone with your particularly preferences thanks.
  - veemjeem 13y ago
    I guess one has to balance the time spent in traffic and being crammed with others in public transport. Here in the bay area, one can get stuck on 101 for 2 hours when it would take only 40 minutes via Caltrain. I'm sure quite a few people would rather save 1.5 hours every day being crammed in with others.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      Caltrain also has seats most of the time. The worst is that you might have to sit next to someone...cry me a river.
      - veemjeem 13y ago
        Not to mention the amount of time spent circling city blocks in SF to find parking. I hate myself every time I need to drive to SF and find street parking. I remember spending 30 minutes circling blocks around pacific heights to find street parking, only for the purposes of eating at a restaurant near there.
      - potatolicious 13y ago
        One of the more depressing things is that the conversation around transit is so frequently: "But... [horrified whisper] other people!"
    - Domenic_S 13y ago
      Well, 40 minutes not counting getting to the train, waiting for the train, exiting the station, getting to your car & driving from the station home.
- axuaq 13y ago
  Give me a public transportation system that runs on time, doesn't spread disease, doesn't have punk kids who confront you for no reason, is safe, and has sane time schedules and I'll be happy. Until then, I'll always prefer driving/walking/biking/anything. Unfortunately, I'm in a situation where I can't drive now, and I have to deal with an awful San Francisco public transit system that does 0 of the things I listed.
  - nemothekid 13y ago
    Is driving really safer than public transit?
    - potatolicious 13y ago
      In San Francisco? Probably yeah. Some of the routes are extremely rough, especially at night. On many bus routes the conditions can be positively third world. Graffiti everywhere - seats, floors, windows. Human excrement. Urine. Addicts. Homeless. MUNI buses are one of the less fortunate places you can find yourself anywhere. Having lived there in the past, I can sympathize with residents who want to drive, or take Ubers everywhere. The public transit in the city can be a very foul experience - though this is largely a reflection of the city rather than the system itself.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      I will note that the concern is not that your bus will crash- it is that you will be mugged and/or shot.
      - scarmig 13y ago
        Actually, the number of people physically killed by a Muni bus annually is significant: IIRC, there's a small but non-negligible (single digits) number of people who are run over and killed by Muni every year. We focus on crime, because it's easy to lash out at order breaking down and can relate to being harassed by the small percentage of Muni riders who can genuinely be considered subhuman refuse. In reality, though, SF has several times as many annual traffic casualties (around 3000, from some rudimentary Googling) as crimes reported on Muni (around 1000). That latter figure has some factors that may suggest undercounting (it's reported crimes, and I can see how people might have so little faith in Muni that they don't bother reporting it) but also some that suggest overcounting (it includes fare violations and eating on the bus). Muni certainly needs to be cleaned up, but let's not get ahead of ourselves: you're much more likely to die via automobile in SF than being shot or stabbed on the Muni. I wouldn't be surprised if you're more likely to be killed being hit by a Muni than murdered on the Muni.
andyl 13y ago
The end of car culture can't come soon enough.
- sowrong 13y ago
  this article is wrongheaded in many, many ways. The crux of the problem is that cars are designed and produced ahead of what is actually wanted and desired without concern whether there is actually an impedence mismatch with what consumers want in a car. For example, modular design in cars no longer exists. You can't find a car anywhere that can be transformed with add-ons between a commuter car to a weekender car to a car for hauling things to a car for being sporty. The same is true with manual transmission, you can't find it on the market ANYWHERE. For tinkerers, you can't get information about your car's computer chips or any kind of API that could serve a buyer's use, not someone elses. Not only that, you pay a lot of money for a car, and then find out that it's easily hackable, by anyone except the rightful owner. People love cars, and definitely prefer them to public transformation, which is unreliable at best, but there just aren't any cars on the market that match what consumers want.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    What? When was the last time a car could be converted from a sports car to a capable tow vehicle with an add-on? You can bolt a tow hitch on just about any car, but tow vehicle/sports car/commuter/weekender runs so much deeper than that- at least if you want it to be better than "poor" in all of the above categories. The same is true with manual transmission, you can't find it on the market ANYWHERE. Patently false. Manual transmissions are not as common as automatics, and certain vehicles no longer offer a manual transmission, but they can still be found in many different vehicles.
    - sowrong 13y ago
      "certain vehicles no longer offer a manual transmission" Exactly right.
      - 13y ago
jseliger 13y ago
There is an interesting intersection between this piece, the first comment by BadassFractal, and Philip Greenspun's recent post about Denmark's bike infrastructure: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/06/17/danish-happiness-bicycle-infrastructure/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/06/17/danish-happine... : Because a bicycle can be used safely on every segment of almost any trip it becomes much more practical to dispense with car ownership and its $9100 annual bleed (according to AAA). The 24-hour metro, excellent intracity buses, and frequent trains other parts of Denmark complement the utility of bicycles in situations involving miserable weather and/or long distances. . . . The way that we have things set up in the U.S. contributes to our higher per-capita GDP, but it does not make us better off. For example, if you think that a trip by bicycle will be unsafe due to a lack of bike lanes and take a car, you will burn gasoline, maintenance, and depreciation on that car, thereby boosting the measured GDP compared to if you had used your muscle power (not figured into GDP). If you then sign up for a gym membership and personal training to get rid of the fat that you’ve accumulated during all of these car-instead-of-bike trips, that boosts GDP though at the end of the process you will be no thinner or fitter than if you had biked. If you get hit by a car the GDP can easily be boosted by $25,000. You will buy a new bicycle. The car will need bodywork. You may be concerned about your health and get an MRI done at one of the world’s most expensive MRI clinics. Your MRI will be read by one of the world’s highest paid radiologists. What the radiologist says will be read to you, for a GDP-boosting fee, by one of the world’s highest paid neurologists.
josht 13y ago
My dads tire and wheel business is screwed. 40+ years in the business, and it has dwindled down to practically nothing.
- meritt 13y ago
  Uhh, there are still plenty of cars last time I checked. Help your dad adapt to modern age and he'll do just fine.
nostromo 13y ago
One thing missed by most of these post-auto stories: transit used to be sooo boring, and no longer is. I'm old enough to remember riding the bus before mp3 players and smart phones. Your only options were to read or to bring a CD player. Walkmans (Walkmen?) were a pain: batteries got expensive, and carrying more than 1 or 2 CDs was a pain, so you ended up listen to a few tracks over and over. Newspapers and books were good, but not as stimulating as the internet or email or Words With Friends. I still remember waiting for the train with no music, nothing to read, and nobody to talk to; it was excruciating. Nowadays, I prefer transit to driving, even when it's a bit longer, because I can just zone out on my iPhone the whole way.
- Apocryphon 13y ago
  What about chatting with fellow passengers? What happened to simple human interaction?
  - mertd 13y ago
    Small talk with strangers every single day would get boring extremely fast.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  I wish I could say this about transit in Beijing. The subways are so crowded you barely get to sit down, perhaps you would have enough room to fiddle with your smartphone if only there was signal for it in the tunnel (damn China Unicom), and standing for 45 minutes kind of sucks. Taxi!
  - discodave 13y ago
    That's an economic issue, the roads in beijing are most likely croweded too and to boot most of those people are using public transport because they can't afford cars. (I am using genaralisations about China to make these statements)
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
neutronicus 13y ago
I don't know, man. I live in Colorado, in a super bike-friendly city, and I'm buying a car. Can't take public transportation to a campground. Can't take public transportation to a mountain bike trail. Public transportation for skiing is a huge pain in the ass.
- HaloZero 13y ago
  But will you ride it daily to work? I think an argument isn't that nobody needs cars but more people will be relying on them less and the total # of hours spent driving them will be reduced.
  - qu4z-2 13y ago
    Indeed. As you carry on in that direction, hiring a car when necessary may become much more attractive compared to the upkeep on a car you only use occasionally.
    - neutronicus 13y ago
      I belong to a non-profit carshare, and that shit adds up fast, especially if you want a car for a whole day.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- arnoooooo 13y ago
  You can rent when you need it. For the amount a car costs you each year, you can rent a car or take a taxi a good number of times.
Yhippa 13y ago
Right now I'm stuck in the suburbs and the city I live in just doesn't have good public transportation and probably won't ever. There is one scenario that I'm looking forward to that could make my life easier. What if Google or another company perfects self-driving cars? You could have "cars" that are basically motorized shopping carts. You go online and register your car with a particular store. Your car could drive from store to store having the workers load everything for you. If a lot of people use this it could be efficient since these self-driving vehicles drive optimally and won't get into accidents and will cooperate with each other to get to where they're going. This way I can spend more time doing what I want and less time stuck in traffic and more time doing what I want. Basically it's automating a set of tasks you used to do with a car. I hope that day comes very soon.
- rglullis 13y ago
  Wouldn't this usage fall in the "better mouse-trap" model? Instead of having your car driving around, it would be much better to have businesses' trucks and vans going to customers. This way, companies get a better distribution process, parking lots become a thing of the past, you get to reduce your car usage... and perhaps this even makes it viable to have car-sharing companies working in the suburbs.
shalmanese 13y ago
For me, this is where lyft is so exciting. It used to be, if you could depend on walking/biking/public transit for 90% of your usage, you either still had to get a car for the other 10% or suffer a 10% downgrade in lifestyle. Services like lyft perfectly patch over that hole. The cost of taking lyft indiscriminately is still less than owning and maintaining a car and the time I spend waiting for a lyft is counterbalanced by the time I would have spent parking.
fragsworth 13y ago
> When adjusted for population growth, the number of miles driven in the United States peaked in 2005 and dropped steadily thereafter The reason for this is more directly "The Internet" than they suggest. Nearly everything that used to require you to drive somewhere is now done online. You order products off Amazon today.
obeleask 13y ago
As a car guy, maybe I am biased, but: 1) Where are the data/charts behind this statement: "Part of the explanation certainly lies in the recession, because cash-strapped Americans could not afford new cars, and the unemployed weren’t going to work anyway. But by many measures the decrease in driving preceded the downturn and appears to be persisting now that recovery is under way. " If the whole premise of the article is that this is more than just something related to the recession, shouldn't we be able to see that data for ourselves, and the justification should be more than a passing statement. The wording of "by many measures" also makes it sound like the author is cherry picking metrics to make his point. I'd also like to see the car usage compared to unemployment rates for the same age group. Overall, I just don't believe the validity of the claim without seeing more data. 2) As the author says "Whether members of the millennial generation will start buying more cars once they have kids to take to soccer practice and school plays remains an open question." I'm not sure it is an open question. When you're single and can live near where you work, it's reasonable to get on without a car. Then life changes, and you need a car. 3) If there is an actual drop-off in car usage, then it could be because we likely are at an inflection point of some significant changes in the industry. The two big ones being electric cars with Tesla leading the way, and the second one being self-driving cars with Google leading the way. We might just be seeing a temporary drop as people reject the "old" way, and as these two new technologies take-off and become more mainstream, so again will car usage .
DanBC 13y ago
There's still a few billion people with no transport who will be buying vehicles soon. I really freaking hope we've sorted out some better engine than internal combustion. But even batteries might be tricky - how much rare earth metal do you need for a billion electric vehicles? The problem with Beijing population all driving cars isn't so much that they're driving cars - it's weird of me to demand they still ride bicycles - but that they mostly drive badly made badly maintained cars. Also, this is the kind of thing where international travel helps you see other perspectives. The first 'drive through mailbox' I saw was in the US. At Gilroy Outlets I would see someone leave one store, get in their car, drive 20 yards to be outside the next store, get out, go shopping, get back in their car, drive 50 yards to the next store they wanted to visit, and so on. I have no idea if that's common in the US, but I saw it in a few different malls in CA. It kind of freaked me out. (I understand if these people have a disability that makes walking painful or whatnot. That wasn't obvious from looking at them. Maybe they just hate the smell of garlic?)

52 points by llamataboot 13y ago

I know it has a great deal to do with this city, but since I moved to San Francisco, I've found myself using my car so rarely that every time I pull back into my garage, I need to disconnect one of my battery terminals, or I'll have a dead battery the next time I need to drive somewhere.

BadassFractal 13y ago

For urban dwellers blessed with proper public transportation and a good Walk Score, a car is a huge headache and drain on finances. They simply all need to go and be replaced with extremely efficient, clean and safe transit systems. Nobody enjoys sitting in traffic for hours a day commuting. Nobody enjoys wasting time on maintenance. Nobody enjoys the process of acquiring the vehicle. At the very least, car sharing is a step in the right direction. Eventually as the Google car becomes reality, I hope that the # of cars on the roads is reduced to a bare minimum and we don't need to drive / pay people to drive any longer, and free up a lot of human talent to do something more productive.

unimpressive 13y ago
>and free up a lot of human talent to do something more productive. Or starve, as the case may be.
- Volpe 13y ago
  Wealth redistribution could solve that problem.
  - prostoalex 13y ago
    After the redistribution is all finalized and completed, who controls the prices of goods that one can finally buy with this newfound wealth?
- Zigurd 13y ago
  Mincome. That won't be the only thing driving a post-jobs future, so we'll have to deal with it anyway.
vishaldpatel 13y ago
New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia are towns with the best walk-score in America. For various reasons, it is still much cheaper to live in the suburbs and commute into the city than to live in San Francisco. I wonder how the other walkable cities are fairing. Perhaps when people buy homes, they tend to not buy a new car at the same time - prior to the housing crisis, many people bought lots of homes. Then the market collapsed and they lost their money, further reducing the number of new cars bought. Oddly enough, some 2000-model-year used Hondas and Toyotas did not depreciate in value between 2010 and 2013 because the used car market heated up.
- sempergumbi 13y ago
  Used Hondas and Toyotas did not depreciate 2010-2013 because the Cash-for-Clunkers débâcle reduced the supply of used cars, keeping up their price. The suggestion that destroying operational vehicles would be a net gain for the economy is an excellent illustration of the broken window fallacy. Cash-for-clunkers helped middle and upper-middle class people, including some friends of mine, who wanted to buy new cars. The cost of the program was born mostly by poor people, as is often the case.
  - cpursley 13y ago
    Don't you just love central planning? It's always the poor that it hurts the most.
6d0debc071 13y ago
> Nobody enjoys sitting in traffic for hours a day commuting. Nobody enjoys wasting time on maintenance. Nobody enjoys the process of acquiring the vehicle. Maybe not, but some of us find it vastly preferable to being crammed in with others on public transport. So don't tar everyone with your particularly preferences thanks.
- veemjeem 13y ago
  I guess one has to balance the time spent in traffic and being crammed with others in public transport. Here in the bay area, one can get stuck on 101 for 2 hours when it would take only 40 minutes via Caltrain. I'm sure quite a few people would rather save 1.5 hours every day being crammed in with others.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Caltrain also has seats most of the time. The worst is that you might have to sit next to someone...cry me a river.
    - veemjeem 13y ago
      Not to mention the amount of time spent circling city blocks in SF to find parking. I hate myself every time I need to drive to SF and find street parking. I remember spending 30 minutes circling blocks around pacific heights to find street parking, only for the purposes of eating at a restaurant near there.
    - potatolicious 13y ago
      One of the more depressing things is that the conversation around transit is so frequently: "But... [horrified whisper] other people!"
  - Domenic_S 13y ago
    Well, 40 minutes not counting getting to the train, waiting for the train, exiting the station, getting to your car & driving from the station home.
axuaq 13y ago
Give me a public transportation system that runs on time, doesn't spread disease, doesn't have punk kids who confront you for no reason, is safe, and has sane time schedules and I'll be happy. Until then, I'll always prefer driving/walking/biking/anything. Unfortunately, I'm in a situation where I can't drive now, and I have to deal with an awful San Francisco public transit system that does 0 of the things I listed.
- nemothekid 13y ago
  Is driving really safer than public transit?
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    In San Francisco? Probably yeah. Some of the routes are extremely rough, especially at night. On many bus routes the conditions can be positively third world. Graffiti everywhere - seats, floors, windows. Human excrement. Urine. Addicts. Homeless. MUNI buses are one of the less fortunate places you can find yourself anywhere. Having lived there in the past, I can sympathize with residents who want to drive, or take Ubers everywhere. The public transit in the city can be a very foul experience - though this is largely a reflection of the city rather than the system itself.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    I will note that the concern is not that your bus will crash- it is that you will be mugged and/or shot.
    - scarmig 13y ago
      Actually, the number of people physically killed by a Muni bus annually is significant: IIRC, there's a small but non-negligible (single digits) number of people who are run over and killed by Muni every year. We focus on crime, because it's easy to lash out at order breaking down and can relate to being harassed by the small percentage of Muni riders who can genuinely be considered subhuman refuse. In reality, though, SF has several times as many annual traffic casualties (around 3000, from some rudimentary Googling) as crimes reported on Muni (around 1000). That latter figure has some factors that may suggest undercounting (it's reported crimes, and I can see how people might have so little faith in Muni that they don't bother reporting it) but also some that suggest overcounting (it includes fare violations and eating on the bus). Muni certainly needs to be cleaned up, but let's not get ahead of ourselves: you're much more likely to die via automobile in SF than being shot or stabbed on the Muni. I wouldn't be surprised if you're more likely to be killed being hit by a Muni than murdered on the Muni.

andyl 13y ago

The end of car culture can't come soon enough.

sowrong 13y ago
this article is wrongheaded in many, many ways. The crux of the problem is that cars are designed and produced ahead of what is actually wanted and desired without concern whether there is actually an impedence mismatch with what consumers want in a car. For example, modular design in cars no longer exists. You can't find a car anywhere that can be transformed with add-ons between a commuter car to a weekender car to a car for hauling things to a car for being sporty. The same is true with manual transmission, you can't find it on the market ANYWHERE. For tinkerers, you can't get information about your car's computer chips or any kind of API that could serve a buyer's use, not someone elses. Not only that, you pay a lot of money for a car, and then find out that it's easily hackable, by anyone except the rightful owner. People love cars, and definitely prefer them to public transformation, which is unreliable at best, but there just aren't any cars on the market that match what consumers want.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  What? When was the last time a car could be converted from a sports car to a capable tow vehicle with an add-on? You can bolt a tow hitch on just about any car, but tow vehicle/sports car/commuter/weekender runs so much deeper than that- at least if you want it to be better than "poor" in all of the above categories. The same is true with manual transmission, you can't find it on the market ANYWHERE. Patently false. Manual transmissions are not as common as automatics, and certain vehicles no longer offer a manual transmission, but they can still be found in many different vehicles.
  - sowrong 13y ago
    "certain vehicles no longer offer a manual transmission" Exactly right.
    - 13y ago

jseliger 13y ago

There is an interesting intersection between this piece, the first comment by BadassFractal, and Philip Greenspun's recent post about Denmark's bike infrastructure: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/06/17/danish-happiness-bicycle-infrastructure/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/06/17/danish-happine... : Because a bicycle can be used safely on every segment of almost any trip it becomes much more practical to dispense with car ownership and its $9100 annual bleed (according to AAA). The 24-hour metro, excellent intracity buses, and frequent trains other parts of Denmark complement the utility of bicycles in situations involving miserable weather and/or long distances. . . . The way that we have things set up in the U.S. contributes to our higher per-capita GDP, but it does not make us better off. For example, if you think that a trip by bicycle will be unsafe due to a lack of bike lanes and take a car, you will burn gasoline, maintenance, and depreciation on that car, thereby boosting the measured GDP compared to if you had used your muscle power (not figured into GDP). If you then sign up for a gym membership and personal training to get rid of the fat that you’ve accumulated during all of these car-instead-of-bike trips, that boosts GDP though at the end of the process you will be no thinner or fitter than if you had biked. If you get hit by a car the GDP can easily be boosted by $25,000. You will buy a new bicycle. The car will need bodywork. You may be concerned about your health and get an MRI done at one of the world’s most expensive MRI clinics. Your MRI will be read by one of the world’s highest paid radiologists. What the radiologist says will be read to you, for a GDP-boosting fee, by one of the world’s highest paid neurologists.

josht 13y ago

My dads tire and wheel business is screwed. 40+ years in the business, and it has dwindled down to practically nothing.

meritt 13y ago
Uhh, there are still plenty of cars last time I checked. Help your dad adapt to modern age and he'll do just fine.

nostromo 13y ago

One thing missed by most of these post-auto stories: transit used to be sooo boring, and no longer is. I'm old enough to remember riding the bus before mp3 players and smart phones. Your only options were to read or to bring a CD player. Walkmans (Walkmen?) were a pain: batteries got expensive, and carrying more than 1 or 2 CDs was a pain, so you ended up listen to a few tracks over and over. Newspapers and books were good, but not as stimulating as the internet or email or Words With Friends. I still remember waiting for the train with no music, nothing to read, and nobody to talk to; it was excruciating. Nowadays, I prefer transit to driving, even when it's a bit longer, because I can just zone out on my iPhone the whole way.

Apocryphon 13y ago
What about chatting with fellow passengers? What happened to simple human interaction?
- mertd 13y ago
  Small talk with strangers every single day would get boring extremely fast.
seanmcdirmid 13y ago
I wish I could say this about transit in Beijing. The subways are so crowded you barely get to sit down, perhaps you would have enough room to fiddle with your smartphone if only there was signal for it in the tunnel (damn China Unicom), and standing for 45 minutes kind of sucks. Taxi!
- discodave 13y ago
  That's an economic issue, the roads in beijing are most likely croweded too and to boot most of those people are using public transport because they can't afford cars. (I am using genaralisations about China to make these statements)
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

neutronicus 13y ago

I don't know, man. I live in Colorado, in a super bike-friendly city, and I'm buying a car. Can't take public transportation to a campground. Can't take public transportation to a mountain bike trail. Public transportation for skiing is a huge pain in the ass.

HaloZero 13y ago
But will you ride it daily to work? I think an argument isn't that nobody needs cars but more people will be relying on them less and the total # of hours spent driving them will be reduced.
- qu4z-2 13y ago
  Indeed. As you carry on in that direction, hiring a car when necessary may become much more attractive compared to the upkeep on a car you only use occasionally.
  - neutronicus 13y ago
    I belong to a non-profit carshare, and that shit adds up fast, especially if you want a car for a whole day.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
arnoooooo 13y ago
You can rent when you need it. For the amount a car costs you each year, you can rent a car or take a taxi a good number of times.

Yhippa 13y ago

Right now I'm stuck in the suburbs and the city I live in just doesn't have good public transportation and probably won't ever. There is one scenario that I'm looking forward to that could make my life easier. What if Google or another company perfects self-driving cars? You could have "cars" that are basically motorized shopping carts. You go online and register your car with a particular store. Your car could drive from store to store having the workers load everything for you. If a lot of people use this it could be efficient since these self-driving vehicles drive optimally and won't get into accidents and will cooperate with each other to get to where they're going. This way I can spend more time doing what I want and less time stuck in traffic and more time doing what I want. Basically it's automating a set of tasks you used to do with a car. I hope that day comes very soon.

rglullis 13y ago
Wouldn't this usage fall in the "better mouse-trap" model? Instead of having your car driving around, it would be much better to have businesses' trucks and vans going to customers. This way, companies get a better distribution process, parking lots become a thing of the past, you get to reduce your car usage... and perhaps this even makes it viable to have car-sharing companies working in the suburbs.

shalmanese 13y ago

For me, this is where lyft is so exciting. It used to be, if you could depend on walking/biking/public transit for 90% of your usage, you either still had to get a car for the other 10% or suffer a 10% downgrade in lifestyle. Services like lyft perfectly patch over that hole. The cost of taking lyft indiscriminately is still less than owning and maintaining a car and the time I spend waiting for a lyft is counterbalanced by the time I would have spent parking.

fragsworth 13y ago

> When adjusted for population growth, the number of miles driven in the United States peaked in 2005 and dropped steadily thereafter The reason for this is more directly "The Internet" than they suggest. Nearly everything that used to require you to drive somewhere is now done online. You order products off Amazon today.

obeleask 13y ago

As a car guy, maybe I am biased, but: 1) Where are the data/charts behind this statement: "Part of the explanation certainly lies in the recession, because cash-strapped Americans could not afford new cars, and the unemployed weren’t going to work anyway. But by many measures the decrease in driving preceded the downturn and appears to be persisting now that recovery is under way. " If the whole premise of the article is that this is more than just something related to the recession, shouldn't we be able to see that data for ourselves, and the justification should be more than a passing statement. The wording of "by many measures" also makes it sound like the author is cherry picking metrics to make his point. I'd also like to see the car usage compared to unemployment rates for the same age group. Overall, I just don't believe the validity of the claim without seeing more data. 2) As the author says "Whether members of the millennial generation will start buying more cars once they have kids to take to soccer practice and school plays remains an open question." I'm not sure it is an open question. When you're single and can live near where you work, it's reasonable to get on without a car. Then life changes, and you need a car. 3) If there is an actual drop-off in car usage, then it could be because we likely are at an inflection point of some significant changes in the industry. The two big ones being electric cars with Tesla leading the way, and the second one being self-driving cars with Google leading the way. We might just be seeing a temporary drop as people reject the "old" way, and as these two new technologies take-off and become more mainstream, so again will car usage .

DanBC 13y ago

There's still a few billion people with no transport who will be buying vehicles soon. I really freaking hope we've sorted out some better engine than internal combustion. But even batteries might be tricky - how much rare earth metal do you need for a billion electric vehicles? The problem with Beijing population all driving cars isn't so much that they're driving cars - it's weird of me to demand they still ride bicycles - but that they mostly drive badly made badly maintained cars. Also, this is the kind of thing where international travel helps you see other perspectives. The first 'drive through mailbox' I saw was in the US. At Gilroy Outlets I would see someone leave one store, get in their car, drive 20 yards to be outside the next store, get out, go shopping, get back in their car, drive 50 yards to the next store they wanted to visit, and so on. I have no idea if that's common in the US, but I saw it in a few different malls in CA. It kind of freaked me out. (I understand if these people have a disability that makes walking painful or whatnot. That wasn't obvious from looking at them. Maybe they just hate the smell of garlic?)