721–730 of 835 posts
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Average car price doesn't make sense to compare to marginal car price. A new Corolla is still 21k.
That moves the monthly cost from $780 to $650. That's still an expensive proposition.
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…
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I worked with a guy who had two kids and no car. They rode their bikes everywhere, always. He insisted on it. I think his wife was miserable lol. But his kids seemed to like it!
Bringing home groceries on a bike for a family of 4 in the rain sounds awful. Though today grocery delivery isn't too bad, I suppose.
Rain or snow doesn't really matter either; that's what fenders and a jacket are for, and in any case it rarely rains heavily non-stop, but comes in waves, so I can just wait until the rain pauses for a little while.
It's great fun, actually. I hate getting groceries by car now.
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Cars are mostly less fun to drive around in, now. They used to be bigger, with nice wide & deep seats, and they had way better visibility. Plus more were convertibles. Now they're smaller, with thick heavy safety beams providing much worse visibility, and there aren't many convertibles around. There are exceptions, but they're mostly fun for the driver , not passengers. And they're usually expensive. Plus, at-home en…
You missed the biggest problem of all - traffic. Driving can be quite fun, but sitting in traffic is not. Because "everyone" has a car now, there's traffic everywhere to make LA freeways jealous. Sitting as a passenger in a car that's barely moving isn't the worst - we have infinite distraction boxes to play with, but the driver has no such toy to play with, so they have to make do with podcasts. Which are often quit…
Save the manual transmissions!
I joke mostly, but I'm convinced it's the only thing keeping me engaged while stuck in traffic sometimes.
If it wasn't for that, I'd have been distracted by a squirrel and love tapped something by now. Traffic is boring.
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…
As a former chicago resident who lived near a station, that wasn't my experience. In the time it took to walk down to the station and wait to get onto a train, I could already be at most restaurants and stores if I used a car in the suburbs. Also groceries became a huge ordeal. There's a lot of time overhead with public transit and unfortunately subways attract a lot of sketchy beggars and rude folk.
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…
Well. There's your problem.
The idea of travelling 60km to work is a very modern phenomenon. Like a lot of people you've built your life around car travel. It's hard to get back from that.
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> Public transport sucks, not sure why so many people people like it. Public transport sucks in the US, but that's just because the US has a weird hostility towards it, so doesn't properly invest in it. There's nothing about it that makes it have to suck.
We’re not hostile to it and we have good or at least adequate public transit in a lot of major cities. We just don’t need it everywhere. I live in a very suburban town and can’t imagine that many people would really want to take it. My town skews heavily Mormon (large families) and elderly. That is not going to get much ridership yet some people still keep proposing light rail extension to my town.
I don't think this is actually true. I can think of two cities that have decent public transit: New York (so I hear, I haven't been there) and Chicago. I've been to a lot of the other cities, including many who have won awards for their public transit, and I would call the best of those "poor".
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Driving is not like being at home because it requires active focus and continuous observation of an evolving social situation where other people’s decisions could cost lives. If sitting on a train is like being in a hostel, then driving is like doing tedious office work in a cubicle. I’d rather hang out at the hostel.
Maybe for you but not for everyone. I’ve been driving for almost 30 years, consistently speed well above the speed limit, text and drive, and probably all of the other no nos that some people preach. Still never been in an accident or been pulled over and I pretty much am zoned out whenever I drive.
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…
It really is a "the grass is bleaker on the other side" situation. As a public transport person I feel weirdly constrained by the idea that a day's itinerary will inevitably have to see me return to wherever the car is parked, impossible to do spontaneous things like walk a few stops, ride with an acquaintance or something like that that would eventually take me home, but not return to some previous stage. With a car…
I always enjoyed reminding my car-enslaved colleagues, "I never have to park the bus."
People fail to notice for all the time (and distance) spent walking back to retrieve their car. It always felt like such a victory to hop on and off busses, taking care of four or five errands, and never once having to retrace my steps.