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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

#211

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

hgomersall wrote: post #173
Tade0 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps because real estate/rent is simply too expensive anywhere closer.

Whenever I've heard people make that argument, what they actually mean is "The huge house I want to live in I can afford if I spend an hour a day in the car, oh and people that live in the cities should not make it harder for me to pursue such a path by restricting car usage. Externalities be damned, won't someone think of my being unable to afford a 5 bedroom house with a big garden in the city".

>> Perhaps because real estate/rent is simply too expensive anywhere closer.

> Whenever I've heard people make that argument, what they actually mean is "The huge house I want to live in I can afford if I spend an hour a day in the car...."

Or it's because it would require 3x-6x their income to afford to live anyplace closer. A major factor of employee shortages is exactly that. There are no homes within 50 mi (often much further) of that job that can be afforded with those wages.

We live 45mi out from a (until recently, inexpensive) US metro area and we require 4 incomes to cover basic expenses.

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

#212

Post by mihaic »

Besides the financial and environmental reasons, I see cars as being misaligned with a frictionless culture that the young are used to.

It's a real hassle to drive, park and do maintenance/accreditation/insurance on a car that most people simply accept because that's the way things are done. Honestly, I'm 35 and I've always felt car-culture reminded me of smokers in the 60s: it's terrible overall but most people can't seem to see the problems since it's so widespread.

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

#213

Post by lotsofpulp »

hgomersall wrote: post #173
Tade0 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps because real estate/rent is simply too expensive anywhere closer.

Whenever I've heard people make that argument, what they actually mean is "The huge house I want to live in I can afford if I spend an hour a day in the car, oh and people that live in the cities should not make it harder for me to pursue such a path by restricting car usage. Externalities be damned, won't someone think of my being unable to afford a 5 bedroom house with a big garden in the city".

It is both the desire to not live in an apartment, but rather have a detached single family house with a garage and backyard, and also a desire to live away from people below your socioeconomic level and near people at or above your socioeconomic level (referred to as “good schools”).

If Americans were okay with living in Tokyo sized abodes, then there would be sufficient density for sufficient housing and job opportunities to exist in a region that could support sufficient public transit.

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

#214

Post by mcv »

WeylandYutani wrote: post #206
yourusername wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's 138 trains per day between Amsterdam and The Hague. It's faster to take the train than to drive on that trip If you're going from the Hague central station to Amsterdam central station, sure. Now plan a more typical commute from say the Hague Wateringen to the over Amstel industrial estate (It takes two times as as driving) Play around with real life scenarios. Say you're going from Amsterdam Osdorp to your…

They did research on this: people actually ENJOY being stuck in traffic. So it doesn't really matter if mass transit is fast, cheap, reliable. You have to make owning a car impossible. Take away parking spaces, block roads into the city, increase taxation.

Well I don't. I strongly prefer travelling by train, even if it takes longer, because that's more time I can read or do something else productive. Cars are terrible for that.

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

#215

Post by iso1631 »

mcv wrote: post #165
davidMC1982 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because his partner works 60km in the opposite direction?

It's generally better to live close to one person's workplace than right in between the two.

Modern advice is to move jobs every 2-3 years. You want to move house every 2-3 years? Move the kids schools every 2-3 years?

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

#216

Post by BrandonS113 »

rexpress wrote: post #120
BrandonS113 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to spend a few months in Holland for work. We we left with the problem of what do do on the weekends. You can't rent bikes if you are not Dutch, and visiting the lovely villages and other places Holland is full of is a time consuming exercise in futility unless one has a car. A train is great for Rotterdam-Hague-Amsterdam, not so good for visiting the Bosch museum in 's-Hertogenbosch. Holland has a great road s…

I've rented bikes in the Netherlands several times as a UK citizen, but perhaps in different areas. Part of the reason the Netherlands is the perfect place for a car owner is that so many people are able to go by bike instead, freeing up space on the roads.

Yes, private bike rental firms are happy to take my money. But they are not common. But the public OV are ubiquitous and more strict.

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

#217

Post by jcranmer »

kensai wrote: post #103
digdugdirk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace the words "the car" with "good public transit" and your last paragraph makes equal if not more sense. There's different ways of living a life, and the current trend shouldn't be seen as car demonization. I see it more as a new generation seeing the current US car-centric society and pushing for a better (for the life they want to live) alternative.

It depends where you live. Good public transit is unfortunately the exception in many places and not the rule. Cars are still needed in many use cases.

> Good public transit is unfortunately the exception in many places and not the rule.

This is a fixable problem. The biggest issue is...

> Cars are still needed in many use cases.

... the people who say this and, as a result, block any attempt to improve public transit whatsoever. Even worse, some are apt to frame it a "war on cars" because they're spending money on transportation that's not going to cars.

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

#218

Post by david-gpu »

wara23arish wrote: post #168
david-gpu wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine having toddlers, having to do heavy groceries, and living in a place with difficult landscape or challenging weather. Imagine having a neurological disease or some other disability. I tick all of those boxes and never had a car. I live in the city, walking and using public transit. Toddlers love to walk and to be carried in the stroller. Cars from the suburbs are a constant inconvenience for us living in in…

You should advocate to build ivory walls around where you live and only allow people rich enough to live in the city to come in. Im sorry for the snark but your comment seems out of touch and elitist.

Where I live, it is rich people who live in the suburbs and the people in the inner city are largely those to poor to afford the suburbs.

So perhaps with this new context you can rethink where my comment was coming from.

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

#219

Post by tombert »

Aged 32. One of the biggest reasons I moved to NYC about 8 years ago was because I hated driving. I’m not good at it, gas and insurance is expensive, and you can’t do much in parallel when driving.

Taking the train everywhere has its issues but I would much rather deal with those than a car.

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

#220

Post by rootusrootus »

afunctionof wrote: post #136
BizarreByte wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, a well off person in a well functioning city has little if any reason to own a car and can get away without one. You can get away without one, that is if you don’t mind sharing transit with violent junkies in any North American city. Transit can be down right terrifying to use these days.

I would be interested in seeing a graph comparing the rate of automobile fatalities to the rate of public transit fatalities.

I'm not sure what value there would be in that comparison. Cars and public transit are not filling the same role in society, regardless of how often that claim is made on HN. And that's completely ignoring the counterfactual of how mortality overall would change if we actually tried to make public transit fill all the roles cars have today.
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