3 ms·

The car is a textbook case of catastrophically bad scaling. For sporadic use (errands, long trips, leisure) it's amazing. For daily commuting (60 miles per day,

The car is a textbook case of catastrophically bad scaling. For sporadic use (errands, long trips, leisure) it's amazing. For daily commuting (60 miles per day, plus parking) it's horrible. Space-consuming, polluting, expensive (except cheap relative to, e.g., Amtrak because no one uses the latter) and unsafe when abused to the point that cars are (operated while drunk, while seriously ill, or at unreasonable speeds given congestion). The problem is that people, individually, don't want to give up the freedom. It's "other drivers" that are the problem. Add to this the fact that so few people can use other means of transportation-- those have fallen into ruin.

dopamean 13y ago
This is why I love zipcar. I use it just for the odd times when I need a car. Which is rare.
jaibot 13y ago
Don't forget the perverse incentives of mandated "free" parking, resulting in every pedestrian, cyclist, and transit user subsidizing everyone who parks somewhere (in addition to the horrible sprawl effects).
- svantana 13y ago
  Exactly. Even in places that are generally enamoured with free markets, you never see this. It would be fun to see market-priced parking in places like Manhattan - what would happen?
  - jaibot 13y ago
    A sudden interest in reforming the taxi medallion system.
  - ams6110 13y ago
    Parking is not market-priced in Manhattan? Are there any major cities where it is free? When I lived in Chicago it certainly wasn't. Parking in the Loop was $10-$20/day (this was 15 years ago) if you just did it ad-hoc, you could buy monthly passes and save a bit, but it certainly wasn't free and as far as I know it wasn't subsidized. All the extra taxes, costs, and inconvenience of owning a car in an major urban area is one of the big reasons why I will never live in such a place again.
    - wink 13y ago
      Here in Munich, Germany you pay something like 6-10 EUR to park in the city centre for the time you're working, that is 8-10h. There are still some free spots, the more you leave the center, the more easily you find them. Less than 10 years ago it was much easier to find a free one in the center as well.
mwfunk 13y ago
I generally agree, but would add that if someone's daily commute is 60 miles a day, regardless of how they get to work, there's something catastrophic about that as well. I don't know what to attribute it to, but for any metropolitan area where 60 miles of commuting is the norm, there are problems which go way beyond the means by which the residents get to work.
- lttlrck 13y ago
  You can attribute it to property prices.
damon_c 13y ago
People like their freedom but possibly a bigger problem is the cost of commuter rail. The car is by far the cheapest way to commute to the city from the suburbs. For example, a peak hours train ticket on the busiest commuter train in the U.S., the Long Island Railroad, is between $8 and $17.50 each way [1]. From the more distant suburbs (1.25 hours on the train) where the housing is cheaper, it costs $35 round trip. That's enough for about 9 gallons of gas which would suffice for at least 2-3 round trips. There are monthly tickets which save significant amounts, but then we're asking people to spend $350 a month up front which is no fun for someone whose take home pay is a little more than that per week. They prefer the small payments for a tank of gas. If we want rail to be the choice people make, it needs to be financially easier to make that choice. [1] http://web.mta.info/lirr/about/TicketInfo/Fares03-13.htm http://web.mta.info/lirr/about/TicketInfo/Fares03-13.htm

dopamean 13y ago

This is why I love zipcar. I use it just for the odd times when I need a car. Which is rare.

jaibot 13y ago

Don't forget the perverse incentives of mandated "free" parking, resulting in every pedestrian, cyclist, and transit user subsidizing everyone who parks somewhere (in addition to the horrible sprawl effects).

svantana 13y ago
Exactly. Even in places that are generally enamoured with free markets, you never see this. It would be fun to see market-priced parking in places like Manhattan - what would happen?
- jaibot 13y ago
  A sudden interest in reforming the taxi medallion system.
- ams6110 13y ago
  Parking is not market-priced in Manhattan? Are there any major cities where it is free? When I lived in Chicago it certainly wasn't. Parking in the Loop was $10-$20/day (this was 15 years ago) if you just did it ad-hoc, you could buy monthly passes and save a bit, but it certainly wasn't free and as far as I know it wasn't subsidized. All the extra taxes, costs, and inconvenience of owning a car in an major urban area is one of the big reasons why I will never live in such a place again.
  - wink 13y ago
    Here in Munich, Germany you pay something like 6-10 EUR to park in the city centre for the time you're working, that is 8-10h. There are still some free spots, the more you leave the center, the more easily you find them. Less than 10 years ago it was much easier to find a free one in the center as well.

mwfunk 13y ago

I generally agree, but would add that if someone's daily commute is 60 miles a day, regardless of how they get to work, there's something catastrophic about that as well. I don't know what to attribute it to, but for any metropolitan area where 60 miles of commuting is the norm, there are problems which go way beyond the means by which the residents get to work.

lttlrck 13y ago
You can attribute it to property prices.

damon_c 13y ago

People like their freedom but possibly a bigger problem is the cost of commuter rail. The car is by far the cheapest way to commute to the city from the suburbs. For example, a peak hours train ticket on the busiest commuter train in the U.S., the Long Island Railroad, is between $8 and $17.50 each way [1]. From the more distant suburbs (1.25 hours on the train) where the housing is cheaper, it costs $35 round trip. That's enough for about 9 gallons of gas which would suffice for at least 2-3 round trips. There are monthly tickets which save significant amounts, but then we're asking people to spend $350 a month up front which is no fun for someone whose take home pay is a little more than that per week. They prefer the small payments for a tank of gas. If we want rail to be the choice people make, it needs to be financially easier to make that choice. [1] http://web.mta.info/lirr/about/TicketInfo/Fares03-13.htm http://web.mta.info/lirr/about/TicketInfo/Fares03-13.htm