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.
You can probably lose one.
When the wife and I left the Bay Area for the midwest we kept only one car. It simplified moving and if we needed another we could get one in the midwest.
Soon we'll have been a single-car family for two years.
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...
Apart from Uber or hitching a ride from a friend, there's no good transportation option to our airport but I get your point. I think in most cases, given the option between a walkable (to work and restaurants) neighborhood and no car (and no good public transit), and suburbia with a car, most people would choose suburbia. Ease of getting groceries, ease of access to recreation, etc. What's really missing is the transit investment.
Old cars are a Prius for interstate trips, and an early 2000s Outback for camping/interstate trips where we need to bring more things with. Prius got severely damaged in our parking lot and I used the insurance payout to help with a down payment on a Crosstrek, which will eventually replace the Outback as well.
I feel bad for taking up the (free) parking space, but the cost of ownership of the Outback when infrequently used is something like a $40 insurance premium every six months. That's another benefit of not driving much -- low mileage and safe driver insurance discounts.
And though insurance is officially "tied to the car" it's really tied to the driver; you can't drive more than one car at a time anyway so the third, fourth, tenth vehicle adds less and less.
This can be a working strategy if you don't have a dollar to your name (whomever you hit won't be able to squeeze blood out of a stone), and never intend to have a dollar to your name, but is generally ill-advised for someone in the middle-class, who has money and assets to lose.
Pretty much illegal everywhere in the US except for a few weird outliers. I think there’s one southern state that lets you have a bond instead of insurance?
Take something as far back as New York in the 60s depicted in _Mad Men_: Don Draper commutes by train. He lives a little away from the station, but that’s hardly something a well-timed local bus couldn’t easily bridge.
Many people still do today. It’s the same thing in most capitals where I’ve lived, and those big enough to be featured in movies. Suburbanites commute to London, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Chicago, Tokyo, Moscow, Delhi, Peking, Shanghai, and every large China city by local train. I know places where people don’t, but I can’t think of a single place where that’s not a nightmare.
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.
If you never get pulled over, or you know some tricks, you slide by.
lets knock that down to $250/month
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/average-...
Saying something like "New York" immediately invalidates the rest of your comment as New York (City) is one of the few areas with meaningful public transit.
We worship cars here. Cars are like Freedom Jesus. If you do anything to mess with cars you are a filthy communist who should die according to the general public.
Important note here: US public transit use is way down from pre-pandemic levels and might never recover [1]. I've spoken to several city transit representatives about this and they're looking for ways to green and downsize their buses as a result of low demand. Adding more buses not only doesn't help if there aren't enough passengers, it makes things worse because buses are massively expensive (think quarter million dollars each), need expensive drivers and maintenance, etc. That's money that cities could be spending on things like improving housing instead.
Saying something like "New York" immediately invalidates the rest of your
comment as New York (City)
If I worked in Boston/Cambridge, I could (and sometimes do) take the train in a similar manner though it takes me 90-120 minutes each way depending upon destination.
And to get your car registered in most states, you usually only have to pass an emissions test, have a valid license, and have proof of insurance at the time that you register the car.
This means that 11 out of 12 months, you get to drive around without insurance.
Every suburb I have lived in has been walkable for the main items (grocery, bar, getting to public transit). If you want to live in the suburbs and walk you have to make that your priority but it is very doable.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/banking/data-2023-savings...
(Used) car prices continue to climb.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/05/15/new-use...
Subprime auto loans continue to be fairly popular, Investopedia is claiming about 40% of used car loans are subprime.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/subprime_auto_loans.asp https://www.consumerreports.org/car-financing/many-americans...
So, no, rich people aren't driving these ballooning loans they're going to the working poor. The excruciatingly poor don't own cars. Defaults were ticking up leading into the pandemic, people are simply living beyond their means at this point. Cars are expensive and have been getting more and more expensive.
I think you can do this in most states; I know you can in my state (MA).
I'm not against public transit. I just understand the reality of the United States. If it helps the poors or minorities with tax dollars we don't do it here.
The most common is "farm implement operated incidentally over a highway".
> Every suburb I have lived in has been walkable for the main items (grocery, bar, getting to public transit).
Every suburb I have ever lived in or been to has not been walkable for any items. No bar, no restaurant, no store, no public transit. There were also no bike lanes nor any sidewalks. I live where I can afford to be within reasonable distance to employment. I don't have control beyond that to decide to live elsewhere.
Actually, making cars efficient doesn’t work as soon as you reach a certain scale, and I suspect that scale is less than 40k people.
* Insurance: $640
* Registration: $51
* Repairs: $200
* Depreciation: $300
* Opportunity cost (assuming a 6% ROI on the $10k): $600
All in cost (excluding gas): $1790
At the time, I was comparing the cost of owning a car vs using car2go, uber, etc for a few trips a month. In the end, it basically just showed that owning a car wasn't all that expensive, and the convenience was WELL worth it.
My current car is worth ~$5k, and these numbers are actually a fairly good representation of my costs over the past few years. I take it in once a year to get the oil changed, and do other small repairs, but otherwise it just kinda.. works. Parking and other costs from living in a city might swing this calculus a bit more, but at the end of the day, you don't need a brand new car, and a modest 10 year old car can drive well, without costing you very much.
I think you are right that cars are reaching a certain tipping point of efficiency but they still beat the public transit in most categories.
Mass transit has the issue in that it tries to serve too many masters. Should it be faster (more expensive, serving few people)? Should it be serving the less wealthy (more stops, less money)? By trying to appease too many groups of people it tends to miss both marks.
There are literally several plot points in mad men where he drives drunk back from the city.