4 ms·

I live in Los Angeles, I have sold my car and now take UberX everywhere. I have a number of reasons for this: 1) I am not a great driver. I learned to drive in

by earino 12y ago

I live in Los Angeles, I have sold my car and now take UberX everywhere. I have a number of reasons for this: 1) I am not a great driver. I learned to drive in a rural area where the dynamics of sharing the road were simply different. It's not fun for me to drive in LA. 2) Parking in this town is a challenge. 3) I telecommute. 4) When I go on a long-drive vacation, I simply rent a car. For me and my family, in our calculations, for a family with a telecommuter in Los Angeles, UberX is well worth it. We don't have to worry about parking when we get somewhere, we don't have to worry about maintenance, and when we do want to go on a long road trip, we simply rent a nice big car that makes sense for that particular trip.

majormajor 12y ago
LA is also a very bipolar town, car-wise. If you have a 5+ mile commute, it's going to be way worse than the same distance in most US cities, because of the traffic. But the flip side is that there is far more density to the LA suburbs than most anywhere else in the country—it's hard to even use the same word to describe suburban LA (7K/sqmile average for the whole urbanized area per Wikipedia, with parts significantly higher) as, say, suburban DFW, where the population density is half that for Dallas proper alone, let alone all the suburbs. So if you live near where you work, you can bike or walk or bus and there's a decent chance you'll be in walking or biking distance of some shops and restaurants as well. And then the occasional Uber or cab for longer trips (or just bumming off of friends who have cars) is extremely practical. But if you don't telecommute, being able to live near where you work is something that's a lot easier for those without a family. And then those Ubers would add up fast! (The other thing I've anecdotally noticed since moving to LA, is that the willingness to sit in traffic for an hour each way to commute seems way higher in LA natives than in transplants—and the reverse is true of the willingness to pay the premium to live close to work and avoid that.)

by earino 12y ago

majormajor 12y ago

LA is also a very bipolar town, car-wise. If you have a 5+ mile commute, it's going to be way worse than the same distance in most US cities, because of the traffic. But the flip side is that there is far more density to the LA suburbs than most anywhere else in the country—it's hard to even use the same word to describe suburban LA (7K/sqmile average for the whole urbanized area per Wikipedia, with parts significantly higher) as, say, suburban DFW, where the population density is half that for Dallas proper alone, let alone all the suburbs. So if you live near where you work, you can bike or walk or bus and there's a decent chance you'll be in walking or biking distance of some shops and restaurants as well. And then the occasional Uber or cab for longer trips (or just bumming off of friends who have cars) is extremely practical. But if you don't telecommute, being able to live near where you work is something that's a lot easier for those without a family. And then those Ubers would add up fast! (The other thing I've anecdotally noticed since moving to LA, is that the willingness to sit in traffic for an hour each way to commute seems way higher in LA natives than in transplants—and the reverse is true of the willingness to pay the premium to live close to work and avoid that.)