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Cars Kill Cities

progressivetransit.wordpress.com

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Re: Cars Kill Cities

#51

Post by dionidium »

gress wrote: post #7

The post is right, and even more so for developing world cities that emerged before cars were around. However the post is also naive. Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather, and are much less tiring than trying to lug bags from one place to another on buses or other public transport. They also place far fewer constraints on when you can travel. Of course it's possible to structure…

Everybody knows this is true, of course. I live three miles from work. To get here this morning I could have walked 3 blocks to the light rail station near my apartment, then another 4 or so blocks from the destination station to my office. This is pretty convenient, especially in St. Louis, where the vast, vast majority of residents don't have options nearly that good.

But I didn't do it. It was 16F degrees when I left the house this morning. I drove my car.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#52

Post by msandford »

dllthomas wrote: post #36
tdees40 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odd thing to me about cars is that people pick the most unusual use cases and then buy their cars off of that. So my dad likes to haul plywood once in a while, so he bought a pick-up. But 99.99% of the time he could use a subcompact. Likewise everyone knows people who have two kids and buy a van/SUV because they want an extra seat or two. You can always rent a car if you get into these sorts of situations, and it…

It may not be unreasonable if the overhead to rent is high. It's coming down, though I have no idea what ranges are "too high" or where things currently stand relative to that.

It's not even the monetary cost of renting, it's the time cost. If I have a pickup truck the time cost for me to buy something off of CL is driving there, inspecting it and then buying it. Done.

If I have to rent a pickup to transport it back then I've got two choices. I can either rent the vehicle prior to looking at the item or after I decide to buy it for sure. If I always-rent then I'll kill at least 2hrs per CL purchase due to having to go to somewhere to rent said vehicle. If I rent-after-inspection I'll save those 2hrs when I don't buy at the expense of making two trips every time I do buy. Neither one is an attractive option.

Two hours according to what they pay me is no joke in terms of cash so in either case if this happens say twice a month I've paid for the total difference between owning a subcompact and a pickup truck: note, gas, insurance, etc.

I don't actually own a pickup truck and most of the time the things I pick up fit in my Forester just fine. But it's not unreasonable to make such a decision when you think through how much of a disaster it is to try and rent a vehicle on a semi-regular basis.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#53

Post by GuiA »

jowiar wrote: post #12
GuiA wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving electric cars that people pay for on a subscription model (rather than ownership) are the future I'd like to see. I hope it happens during my lifetime.

Taxis are a reasonable "turking" of this concept.

True; although one major problem is that for n taxis, you have to pay for n cars and n human salaries, and human salaries end up being the biggest proportion in the final price.

How much will the cost be reduced when we don't have to pay for human drivers anymore? Will we see 50$ a month (2013 dollars) plans for 50 hours of "chauffeuring"? (a quick google search shows that the average american spends ~40h driving a year)

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#54

Post by tedsanders »

jseliger wrote: post #34

If you're interested in this topic, Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking and Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City are both worth reading. The former explains how "free" parking isn't really free and how it distorts a lot of behavior, and the latter is about what cities are good for and how to build healthy cities in general. Personally, I wonder why people would want to own a car if they can avoid it: htt…

*Donald Shoup

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#55

Post by GuiA »

zalew wrote: post #50
jseliger wrote: post #34

If you're interested in this topic, Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking and Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City are both worth reading. The former explains how "free" parking isn't really free and how it distorts a lot of behavior, and the latter is about what cities are good for and how to build healthy cities in general. Personally, I wonder why people would want to own a car if they can avoid it: htt…

> The High Cost of Free Parking convince me that 800 pages is worth it (reviews so far haven't).

They're not worth it. You should spend the time that it would take you to read this book doing some high yield activity instead, like trading stocks or growth hacking your startup. Anything less than that just isn't worth the trouble.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#56

Post by sliverstorm »

nilkn wrote: post #48
astrodust wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather... If only there was such a thing as a car that you could call on-demand, make use of when you wanted it, and then got rid of it when you were done. Even better, what about one that comes with a driver? A crazy idea, I know. If you live in the right neighborhood, a car is a nuisance. I can go somewhere and just walk right in. I don't have to…

The following page estimates the true cost of car ownership at approximately $1.38/mile: http://commutesolutions.org/external/calc.html That's still quite a bit cheaper than taxi fares or the minimum $2.75 that Uber charges. Assuming that you spend $20k on purchasing the car, you'd make up for the cost of the car in just under 15,000 miles driven compared to taking Uber at the quoted rate.

Yeah, I don't really understand why people figure that self-driving cars/taxis/Uber/ZipCar would ever be cheaper per mile. They pay to operate their vehicles same as you do, except they also need to have some profit on top.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#57

Post by tedsanders »

zalew wrote: post #50
jseliger wrote: post #34

If you're interested in this topic, Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking and Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City are both worth reading. The former explains how "free" parking isn't really free and how it distorts a lot of behavior, and the latter is about what cities are good for and how to build healthy cities in general. Personally, I wonder why people would want to own a car if they can avoid it: htt…

> The High Cost of Free Parking convince me that 800 pages is worth it (reviews so far haven't).

I read most of it, and I can say with mild confidence that it's probably not worth your time. A few years after reading it, I remember the thesis of the book but not much more.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#58

Post by Tiktaalik »

jstalin wrote: post #35
Anechoic wrote: post #21

FYI, the author of that post address self-driving cars in his next post: http://progressivetransit.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/self-driv...

That betrays the basic attitude of these anti-car folks. It's not the cars, but the freedom to live where you want that they detest.

People can live where they want, but I'm critical of having to subsidize the excessive amount of infrastructure necessary for the lifestyle choice of unnecessarily travelling very large distances. For me it's even worse because I live in a region where the terrain requires a lot of bridges.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#59

Post by lambda »

jowiar wrote: post #12
GuiA wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving electric cars that people pay for on a subscription model (rather than ownership) are the future I'd like to see. I hope it happens during my lifetime.

Taxis are a reasonable "turking" of this concept.

Taxis are a lot more expensive than self-driving cars. The driver takes something like 60% of the fare you pay for a taxi; I'm sure insurance eats up another sizeable chunk, and if self-driving cars are ever allowed on the streets, they will have to be safer than human drivers, and thus will have lower insurance costs. Furthermore, eliminating the driver means that you could use even smaller, cheaper cars, or fit more people or belongings per car, making self-driving cars more efficient.

Taxis drivers also really frustrating to deal with (the majority in my city, at least); I can't count the number of taxi drivers who haven't been able to find my house, so I've had to play phone tag with dispatch while waiting 45 minutes for a cab that should have been there in 10, then finally hike down the hill, get in, and had them start the meter while they drove up it to pick up my belongings.

Re: Cars Kill Cities

#60

Post by rayiner »

nilkn wrote: post #48
astrodust wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather... If only there was such a thing as a car that you could call on-demand, make use of when you wanted it, and then got rid of it when you were done. Even better, what about one that comes with a driver? A crazy idea, I know. If you live in the right neighborhood, a car is a nuisance. I can go somewhere and just walk right in. I don't have to…

The following page estimates the true cost of car ownership at approximately $1.38/mile: http://commutesolutions.org/external/calc.html That's still quite a bit cheaper than taxi fares or the minimum $2.75 that Uber charges. Assuming that you spend $20k on purchasing the car, you'd make up for the cost of the car in just under 15,000 miles driven compared to taking Uber at the quoted rate.

I think the point is that you can live near transit and take advantage of cabs as needed and still come out ahead. When we lived in Chicago, my wife and I would take cabs all the time, especially on weekends or when the weather was bad. I think we spent maybe $100-200/month on cab fare. Now I have a car, and spend $150/month on insurance, $200+/month on parking, $300/month on gas. Averaged over the year, consumables (tires, brakes) and maintenance probably cost $100/month. And it's a paid off car, so I'm not even counting the car payment!
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