zlacker

>>amathe+(OP)
I've purposefully chosen, and paid the higher rent for, an apartment that's on the greenbelt in my city and close to work so that I can use my car less. As a couple we still own two cars but really only use them to transport our dog to trailheads. The exercise pays dividends, and at just over two miles from work it takes maybe three minutes longer getting to work than driving to a parking garage.

I feel fortunate to make enough money to easily afford the rent, but it's insane that in most places you need a high paying job to escape needing a car. Refugee and low-income housing here is clustered around major streets like six-lane one-way transport corridors. Unless they work downtown or close to a stop on one of the few bus lines that run frequently and reliably, they need cars. Usually the cheapest they can afford, which likely means they need to spend money they don't have to get them passing emissions tests at registration time, deal with breakdowns, high insurance premiums, etc.

It doesn't help that most of the planned transit improvements seemingly are focused on greenification of buses rather than just getting more buses on the road to expand routes, make lines frequent enough to use for commuting, etc.

My city did pass some new zoning codes which heavily cut back on parking requirements, I'm excited to see how that (slowly) pans out. I expect more high-capacity parking structures to go up, fewer surface lots. People might need to walk further or explore other last-mile options, I have hope that will turn people's eyes towards non-vehicle transportation improvements.

>>putnam+3b
Isn't the reason the rent is higher because you can forego a car? For example, the average monthly car payment for a used car is supposedly $526[0] and insurance $168[1]. So if you get rid of that, you can afford nearly $700 more per month in rent (assuming you can still qualify by having household monthly gross income of 3x the rent).

So, in your case, you only really need to make more to afford a walkable lifecycle if you still want to own a car and have the option to use it to drive to places outside of your walking distance. Of course, completely moving to a lifestyle where all travel is public trasit and airport-based is tough to achieve, but it could be a worthwhile price to pay depending on how often you travel and where (since the time investment is also high for cars in the U.S. with how far apart each city is from the next).

0: https://www.bankrate.com/loans/auto-loans/average-monthly-ca...

1: https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-cost-of-car-i...

>>judge2+zg
If you are rich the payment might be $500. The poor are buying used cars for $5000 and keeping it for a few years, so lets knock that down to $250/month (including maintenance). Their insurance is cheaper as well (if they even bother with it...). You can get your monthly costs even lower if you know how to buy a reliable car that you maintain yourself (or for free by friends/family) - which the poor are likely to do.

>>bluGil+dr1
Until you're poor you don't realize how cheaply you can keep a vehicle running, nor how many people are just driving around without insurance, license, and various other "necessities".

>>bombca+ot1
Isn't it illegal to drive without auto insurance? (At least, in California?)

>>jvican+Gv1
This is the secret underbelly to the car-centric design of the US. People drive illegally all the time. They drive over legal BAC limits, they drive without insurance, they drive unlicensed, they don't pay parking tickets, they drive looking down at their phones and not at the road.

When you're poor and you live in an area completely unserved by public transit and you lose your license because you can't afford to pay parking tickets, are you really going to stop driving and lose your job and become homeless?

We have statistics to show what unlicensed and uninsured driver crash and fatality rates are like and they're a lot higher than the rest of the cohort, but there's still a sizable part of the US population that does all of these things and still uses the same public road infrastructure as everyone else, often out of lack of alternatives.