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Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

economist.com

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Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#221

Post by revscat »

BizarreByte wrote: post #98
micromacrofoot wrote: post #21

of course they are, cars are expensive, dangerous, and dirty… traffic is miserable, maintenance is expensive, you can’t trust anyone else on the road… a car might be the worst thing I own but I live in a place where I couldn’t eat or get to the doctor’s office without one

> maintenance is expensive This is largely just nonsense for a lot of modern cars. I’m at 80k in 4 years and have only done oil changes and tyres. My mother only had her first “big” repair on her car at 140k after 10 years. Cars are more reliable than they’ve ever been.

Now add the cost of gas/petrol. For the average American that’s $3000/year.

> more reliable

So what? They are still a cost that is forced upon us. I don’t want a car. Yet I have to have one whether I like it or not.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#222

Post by chasely »

fleddr wrote: post #109
wffurr wrote: post #10

There's 138 trains per day between Amsterdam and The Hague. It's faster to take the train than to drive on that trip. Driving in either city in an exercise in frustration. Why would anyone in a rich country with a high functioning rail system like The Netherlands want to drive? I don't know how many rich countries that describes, but I lived happily for years in Boston in the USA without a car. I have one now but onl…

The US anti-car narrative often refers to the Netherlands as some kind of beacon of proper public infrastructure, whilst not knowing a damn thing about it. First, let's establish that the Netherlands is a car country. We have 11 million cars on a population of 17 million. On a typical day, 1 million people use public transport. Cars are the norm, not trains or bicycles. Public transport is rarely faster, not even in…

The Netherlands ranks 36th on the list of cars per capita [0]. This is higher than I thought it would be but it's still quite a ways away from the countries I would consider to be car-centric like the US and Canada (ranked 6th and 8th, respectively).

I also found this plot interesting relating vehicles and GDP [1], though the data seems outdated compared to the first link.

I'd also guess, though I can't find the data, that the US is one the highest cars per capita rates in its cities. Outside of NYC and Chicago, there is a real lack of public transport infrastructure in most US cities.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_... [1]

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#223

Post by nerdchum »

wffurr wrote: post #10

There's 138 trains per day between Amsterdam and The Hague. It's faster to take the train than to drive on that trip. Driving in either city in an exercise in frustration. Why would anyone in a rich country with a high functioning rail system like The Netherlands want to drive? I don't know how many rich countries that describes, but I lived happily for years in Boston in the USA without a car. I have one now but onl…

Are dogs allowed on the trains?

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#224

Post by bluGill »

jononomo wrote: post #159
speeder wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a car country. São Paulo has more car than population, and has so many cars that their area summed is bigger than the area of all streets in the city. It is so many cars that sometimes walking 1 hour to your workplace is faster than a car route where you can spend 2, 3 hours to go to a neighborhood next to yours during rush hour. So many cars that the city became also the city with most helicopters, becau…

Does São Paulo have more cars than people even if you include children? Surely there must also be an underclass of very poor or homeless people who do not own cars. What accounts for the fact that there are more cars than people? Is it common for a household of four (mother, father, son, daughter) to own five or six cars?

I don't know Brazil, but based on what I know of the US I wouldn't be surprised. A couple will often own 3 cars, 2 daily drivers and one for some other odd task (truck, or the sports car) that is used as a backup. It will be one car per kid of driving age, though most kids are not old enough to drive. Then there are work cars, which for tax/legal reasons can't be used for personal trips so those who have them will also have a personal car for non-work trips. There are people who keep a car at their vacation house. Rental cars also add a fair number of cars. Plus collectors who have a dozen cars that they only drive to shows. It all adds up.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#225

Post by sumtechguy »

mft_ wrote: post #61

Eh, this is a very city-centric view. As discussed many times past, including on HN, if you live in or near a major city, and in a country or area which prioritises goood public transport, you can get by admirably --even better-- without a car. As soon as you move even a little away from the metropolis, and/or to somewhere that doesn't prioritise good public transport, access (at least) to a car becomes close to a ne…

I live in a city with light rail and busses everywhere. Everything I want to do in this city is 20-30 min driving. Put the bus/train into it? Make that 1-2 hours or longer if I have to transfer. Then hope whatever I want is near a train/bus stop. I have traded money for time. The cost of my car buys me time. If I did not value my time I would use the public transportation more. The places near my work if I wanted to 'walk to work' cost nearly 3x-4x what I am currently paying. So I have to trade off some time for money. It takes a balance of what you want and can afford. It mostly depends on how you see time and the options afforded to you by where you live and can afford. But mostly depending on how you see these two sentences 'there are 24 hours in a day to do whatever I want' or 'there are only 24 hours in a day and that is not enough'.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#226

Post by mcv »

robertlagrant wrote: post #135
Retric wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swapping trains can take a while, but until self driving works you can’t do much while driving. And even with self driving simply getting up and stretching, grabbing a bite to eat, or even just going to the bathroom requires you to stop making progress for a while. Driving has several advantages, but getting stuck in traffic is extremely unpleasant in ways that similar delays on other forms of travel don’t really rep…

> getting stuck in traffic is extremely unpleasant in ways that similar delays on other forms of travel don’t really replicate But you also don't have to take a 3 hour coach ride because the driver or other staff's union is striking. It's just you and your car.

But that's again because these trains are run for profit, cutting every corner they can, and underpaying their employees. I'd prefer to see trains nationalised and run as national infrastructure with the goal of luring more commuters into mass transit. Because that will mean enormous savings in pollution, traffic jams, noise, and road maintenance.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#227

Post by maxsilver »

overthemoon wrote: post #174

I'm an aging millennial, but on a purely personal level, when I lived in a city with good public transit, I was a lot happier, most of the time. I really like stepping off the train and the bus and being on my own two feet, the walking exercise, not being chained to this thing I have to worry about. I hate driving, I hate parking, I hate owning a car--the maintenance, the ongoing cost of fuel and insurance, all of it…

> but even then, I don't get the emotional association of freedom that previous generations did. I don't know what's different, although I have some guesses. Money, I'm sure, but there's something that's nagging me about it.

I'd argue it's a combination of money and aging infrastructure. Money is the big one (cars used to be a lot cheaper, both to buy and to maintain. Incomes for most used to be much higher). Infrastructure is another, in a lot of places, they haven't meaningfully upgraded any of the public driving transportation infrastructure since the 1950s to 1970s, so a lot of infrastructure is handling car volumes 200% to 600% higher than they were ever engineered for.

In Michigan, there's still very much a lot of "fun/freedom" around cars. But our population has been pretty flat this entire time (+/-2% pop change YoY since the 1960s), so even though the infrastructure is old, it's usually appropriately sized for the population in all but the newest-growth places. If you live in, say Seattle, you very much don't get that experience, public vehicle transit infrastructure has not kept up at all, and so driving is artificially a lot more of a painful burden there.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#228

Post by GiorgioG »

david-gpu wrote: post #132
GiorgioG wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass transit isn't without its own inconveniences: "In 2017, the average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Toronto, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 96 minutes. 34% of public transit riders ride for more than two hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 14 minutes, while 10% of riders wait for over twenty minutes on aver…

Proving my point, because something like 80% of the land in Toronto is zoned for single-family housing. The Toronto metropolitan area is one massive sprawling suburb. How would these numbers look like if we had more dense walkable neighborhoods? No need to speculate, simply look at similar statistics from places like Montreal.

Not everyone wants to live in dense housing. I grew up in Buffalo and spent many many hours on the QEW driving family to/from Pearson Intl. Every ride up there I'd be in awe of the number of cranes in the sky as new (I assumed) residential buildings were going up around Toronto.

It seems like high density developments are a thing in the GTA: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/02/07/gta-communities-worry... and like everything else they are not without their own problems.

I grew up in a single-family home, and also spent a year in an apartment in France as a kid and while it was more walkable...it wasn't better or worse - it was just different.

People have choices, if they want to live in a more walkable city, they can relocate to one. If enough people vote with their feet, the cities will have to adapt. It seems like the people living in the 80% single-family zoned areas of Toronto are not unhappy/inconvenienced enough with the state of things to leave.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#229

Post by bamboozled »

overthemoon wrote: post #174

I'm an aging millennial, but on a purely personal level, when I lived in a city with good public transit, I was a lot happier, most of the time. I really like stepping off the train and the bus and being on my own two feet, the walking exercise, not being chained to this thing I have to worry about. I hate driving, I hate parking, I hate owning a car--the maintenance, the ongoing cost of fuel and insurance, all of it…

the maintenance, the ongoing cost of fuel and insurance, all of it.

Not sure if rich people worry about this, which is what the article is about, rich people.

Agree wit everything else you said though.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#230

Post by throwaway894345 »

hgomersall wrote: post #127
fleddr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US anti-car narrative often refers to the Netherlands as some kind of beacon of proper public infrastructure, whilst not knowing a damn thing about it. First, let's establish that the Netherlands is a car country. We have 11 million cars on a population of 17 million. On a typical day, 1 million people use public transport. Cars are the norm, not trains or bicycles. Public transport is rarely faster, not even in…

I think the question that anyone that rejects cars would ask is "why do you choose to live 60km from your work?".

I lived 5 miles away from my downtown office in Chicago. My apartment was 5 minutes from the train and my office was 1 minute on the other side. There were no connections, so this is an ideal public transit situation. It still took 40+ minutes each way versus 20 minutes by car during rush hour or ~10-15 outside of rush hour.

This is the third largest US city and one with comparably few major thoroughfares (compared to many other large US cities). It seems that it’s just really hard for public transit to beat cars at any distance.

Moreover, lots of people are constrained on where they can work and live. I think a lot of the anti-car rhetoric in America seems to assume everyone is a healthy, childless, young urban professional who aspires to live in the densest habitat he can find, and this is a very unrealistic portrait of Americans.

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