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Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

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Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#101

Post by saalweachter »

sliverstorm wrote: post #80
potatolicious wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There a dramatic amount of understatement here. "A little less walkable" is untrue. Meandering suburban layouts are dramatically less walkable - we're not talking about even the same order of magnitude. Here's a commonly cited diagram of the difference in walkability between a grid layout and a sprawl-suburb. Both of these are real places, not hypothetical illustrations: http://hbr.org/hb/article_assets/hbr/1005/F100…

See, now you are arguing there are ways to do it better , and I agree. But that doesn't prove sprawling suburbs were designed under the influence of classism. That's really the key thing I disagree with. Are you ceding that part? As for "a little less walkable", that was me hedging my speech because I don't know exactly how walkable the worst offenders are, and I consider "how much less walkable" to be tangential to…

I don't think every person who moved to or built a suburb over the last 50-odd years was acting with explicitly racist motivations, but he's basically just describing "White flight": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#102

Post by maxerickson »

chc wrote: post #96
enoch_r wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Walking everywhere is nice as long as you know exactly where you want to live, you don't care about space, and can afford high rent. Taking this piece by piece: > can afford high rent From the article: "The average working adult in Atlanta’s suburbs now drives 44 miles a day." The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That…

> The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That doesn't really reflect my experience unless we're talking about really inefficient vehicles. I drive 45 miles a day. It costs me about $140 a month in gas.

Do you think it is reasonable to ignore the other costs involved with owning a vehicle?

I figure gas is ~1/3 or less of my overall costs (and I've had good luck with maintenance on an older car that I don't carry collision insurance on)

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#103

Post by Kluny »

chc wrote: post #96
enoch_r wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Walking everywhere is nice as long as you know exactly where you want to live, you don't care about space, and can afford high rent. Taking this piece by piece: > can afford high rent From the article: "The average working adult in Atlanta’s suburbs now drives 44 miles a day." The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That…

> The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That doesn't really reflect my experience unless we're talking about really inefficient vehicles. I drive 45 miles a day. It costs me about $140 a month in gas.

You forgot to factor insurance, wear and tear on the car, and the cost of your own time that you spend in traffic - you are never getting those minutes back.

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#104

Post by alttag »

chc wrote: post #96
enoch_r wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Walking everywhere is nice as long as you know exactly where you want to live, you don't care about space, and can afford high rent. Taking this piece by piece: > can afford high rent From the article: "The average working adult in Atlanta’s suburbs now drives 44 miles a day." The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That…

> The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That doesn't really reflect my experience unless we're talking about really inefficient vehicles. I drive 45 miles a day. It costs me about $140 a month in gas.

Your insurance costs are higher when you have a longer commute.

Your oil needs to be changed more frequently.

Wear-and-tear on your car is almost certainly correlated with miles driven, meaning maintenance, repairs, and replacement occur more frequently.

Cars ownership is about more than just the cost of fuel (which is cheap in the U.S. compared to the rest of the world). Sure, maybe the IRS rate is a bit high, but it seems the intention is to compensate for the average cost of ownership per mile, not the marginal cost to drive a mile. Don't trivialize it by pretending to be ignorant.

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#105

Post by chc »

Kluny wrote: post #103
chc wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That doesn't really reflect my experience unless we're talking about really inefficient vehicles. I drive 45 miles a day. It costs me about $140 a month in gas.

You forgot to factor insurance, wear and tear on the car, and the cost of your own time that you spend in traffic - you are never getting those minutes back.

This is about the marginal cost of commuting farther versus differences in rent, so fixed costs like insurance and intangibles like time do not factor into the equation. I agree that long commutes suck, but that's not the question here.

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#106

Post by officemonkey »

dankoss wrote: post #90
officemonkey wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chicago nails this. The grid road network throughout the entire city means there is regular N-S and E-W bus service every half mile or so. And there are business districts in pretty much every neighborhood. This happens is areas of low housing density (single-family homes in Jefferson Park) and high density (high-rises in Lincoln Park.)

Hmm, my experience has been that most places in Chicago are far quicker to drive than take public transit. And since many jobs have moved out of the city center to places like Naperville and Schaumburg, it is very difficult to find public transit options for a commute or reverse commute unless you happen to live within walking distance of Metra. If you can live and work entirely in the city limits, public transit mig…

I'm only talking about the city of Chicago. Once you get past the innermost (ie: oldest) suburbs (Evanston, Park Ridge, Oak Park, Cicero) you're in Suburban hell.

I'd say your experience is primarily with the suburbs, not the city.

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#107

Post by chc »

alttag wrote: post #104
chc wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That doesn't really reflect my experience unless we're talking about really inefficient vehicles. I drive 45 miles a day. It costs me about $140 a month in gas.

Your insurance costs are higher when you have a longer commute. Your oil needs to be changed more frequently. Wear-and-tear on your car is almost certainly correlated with miles driven, meaning maintenance, repairs, and replacement occur more frequently. Cars ownership is about more than just the cost of fuel (which is cheap in the U.S. compared to the rest of the world). Sure, maybe the IRS rate is a bit high, but i…

My insurance costs haven't changed much based on my commute. Oil changes can be amortized to about $12 a month. We're still not anywhere on the same planet as the $700 figure. If wear and tear are adding up to $600 a month when you're only driving 45 miles a day, it sounds like your car is effectively dead and needs to be replaced.

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#108

Post by tracker1 »

enoch_r wrote: post #77
ynniv wrote: post #10

The article mentions that Atlantic Station sits on a large parking deck, but doesn't explore how its 7,200 parking spaces can make an otherwise small outdoor mall very busy at popular times. Cars remove you from your immediate surroundings, but they also enable you to temporarily be part of a community physically distant from where you live. The answer to why Atlantans drive so much is not that they are lazy, but tha…

> Walking everywhere is nice as long as you know exactly where you want to live, you don't care about space, and can afford high rent. Taking this piece by piece: > can afford high rent From the article: "The average working adult in Atlanta’s suburbs now drives 44 miles a day." The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That…

It's worth considering that the 55 cents per mile average probably includes the cost of the car... if you're paying $500 a month for a car payment, and you need a car, even half as much, you still have to pay $500 for the payment... meaning if you spend half as much in gas, you're now at $600/month and paying >90 cents per mile, it's all relative. You only really save on the cost of a vehicle if you already own it (no payments) are lucky enough to have minimal maintenance costs, and/or can otherwise eliminate a vehicle payment. Gasoline is generally a fraction of the cost of owning/operating a car.

That said, I tend to live pretty centrally located mainly to make my commute easier, if I could also have nearby (within a 5-7 minute walking distance) shopping etc, I'd really like it. The Phoenix area added light rail (my apartment is actually really close to a stop), but only a limited number of places I need to go are along a nearby route.

Of course, I am pretty lazy... I've been parking farther away on purpose to get more walking in when I go places, including work.

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#110

Post by [deleted] »

chc wrote: post #96
enoch_r wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Walking everywhere is nice as long as you know exactly where you want to live, you don't care about space, and can afford high rent. Taking this piece by piece: > can afford high rent From the article: "The average working adult in Atlanta’s suburbs now drives 44 miles a day." The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That…

> The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That doesn't really reflect my experience unless we're talking about really inefficient vehicles. I drive 45 miles a day. It costs me about $140 a month in gas.

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