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Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

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Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#131

It's part of the reason I haven't bought a car. I'm in my mid 20s and didn't get my license in high school because insurance would have been too expensive (my parents wanted me to pay for it). I think driving is a good life skill so I got my license in my early 20s, but I still have zero desire to own a car. That said, I live in Seattle, where there is good public transportation. Here are my numbers: Parking (I work…

i think those numbers are describing a lifestyle and not what it means to own a car. many people who own a car will not pay that much for parking. especially if you live 5 miles away from work.

assuming you don’t drive to work and park on the street at home your numbers are down to $4100/yr. but your insurance number looks 2x too big, and maintenance i would drop by half, i think more realistic is a about $3,000/yr

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#133
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Move to a different city.

What are some cities with decent enough public transportation and urban planning for pedestrians that also don’t suffer from lack of housing/exhorbitant housing prices? The top cities I can think of that satisfy the former unfortunately also have the latter.

There are also a number of small cities that have decent enough public transportation and are fairly cheap, but fall short on job availability.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#134
post #121

It's part of the reason I haven't bought a car. I'm in my mid 20s and didn't get my license in high school because insurance would have been too expensive (my parents wanted me to pay for it). I think driving is a good life skill so I got my license in my early 20s, but I still have zero desire to own a car. That said, I live in Seattle, where there is good public transportation. Here are my numbers: Parking (I work…

I'm in a similar situation, but from what I gather lifestyle factors heavily into the "do I need/want a car" equation. Kids, for example, usually mandate a car. Outdoor activities or any hobby that requires you haul around a lot of gear can also make having your own transportation a lot more appealing.

That strongly depends on where you live. Kids don't require a car in New York, but I can't imagine living in a suburb of Dallas without one.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#136

I don't get how using lyft/uber as your only form of transportation can be at all cheaper. Let me run some basic math. Uber wants $11.50 to take me home right now. Lyft wants $13.40 $11.50 * 2 = $23/day 23 * 5 = $115/week $115 * 52 weeks = $5980/year (I am ignoring vacation weeks for now.) My yearly cost for car ownership are roughly as follows. (Assuming only work and back.) Insurance(1): $886/year Fuel(2): $292.50…

If you're a young male then insurance alone can approach $300 a month in some areas.

You're also omitting parking, which is a very significant cost in some areas. $150+ a month.

Sure, the numbers don't work for you but surely you can understand not everyone is identical to you.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#137

Wait until these kids start families of their own and can't afford the space they need in a city with great public transit.

> Wait until these kids start families of their own

Maybe they won't. I've talked about this with my wife, and I think we both concluded that cost of living played a subconscious role in my wife deciding not to have kids.

There were other reasons, but that certainly soured the prospect. If I was to poll my coworkers (many of us older with no kids), I'm guessing they'd cite that as a contributing factor.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#138

Living in a small northern Ontario town, I wish we had Lyft or Uber here. Instead, just taxi's (or family) and public transport. Our public transport is based on a center hub topology with the hub being downtown. So if my kid wants to take the bus to work, about kilometer away, it takes 45 minutes half of which is in the wrong direction and involves at least one transfer. Oddly, it takes even longer to get home. Our…

If it’s only a kilometre why not walk? That’s 15 minutes for the average person.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ride sharing drivers can pick up in the area they drop-off, though

Triangle inequality still holds, sorry to say It only makes sense if they are transporting two or more people that would otherwise have used two or more vehicles. But I think that kind of rideshare system is the absolute minority of Uber and Lyft rides.

Perhaps, but with ride sharing you're less likely to make more stops, preferring to get to your destination in one continuous trip.

And if you ditch your car in favour of ride sharing, then you're likely to make less trips overall. You'll think twice before driving somewhere you could otherwise walk, more so than if you owned a car. And you're less likely to make impulse trips that can be avoided (to get a chocolate bar you're craving or something else pointless).

At least, I'd imagine that's the case - as there is the additional time of hailing a ride with one of these services and a more measurable cost to it.

Re: Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll accept that there are reasons for having a car related to child rearing, especially for the first, say, 5-10 years of a child's life. After that, ditch the car and get back to using public transportation or human-powered locomotion. When I was growing up my family had a car, but around middle school it was possible to bike to any school/sports/extracurricular activity within 20 minutes. My parents kept the car f…

The other thing is germs. Even mild germaphobes will never ditch their cars. If you have a kid that is too young to have had all their vaccinations yet, it's a major concern.

zip up their stroller?
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