
Riding alone in a car is an increasingly unaffordable luxury - theBashShell
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/05/08/riding-alone-in-a-car-is-an-increasingly-unaffordable-luxury
======
rayiner
> When it is given away, drivers overuse available roads, and clog them. The
> waste is colossal. An estimate by INRIX, a consulting firm, suggests that
> the value of time lost to traffic in 2018 in America alone reached $87bn.

Is it "colossal?" The U.S. is a $19 trillion economy with 156 million people
in the labor force. $87 billion is about $557 per person annually, about half
of what people spend on coffee each year:
[https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/american-coffee-habits-spend-
coff...](https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/american-coffee-habits-spend-
coffee/story?id=16923079).

That's actually much lower than I would have thought, considering that traffic
is such a big fact of life. That suggests that measures to reduce traffic may
not be worthwhile.

~~~
jandrese
I mean it's so thoughtless of people to waste time in traffic instead of
teleporting everywhere.

Even if we eliminated cars people still have to get to
work/stores/church/school/home/etc... Mass transit options are more efficient
in many ways than single occupant cars, but only occasionally are they faster.

~~~
alexandercrohde
The point is, if everybody was on a bus there wouldn't BE traffic. There would
be no such thing as a traffic jam, because the road would be 90% empty.

~~~
SerLava
I mean, you would also have millions of people spending 5 hours riding between
bus stops every day.

Cars are a bare necessity due to how badly we fucked up urban planning. And we
fucked it up because we planned around cars.

~~~
rayiner
Do transit advocates have a solution to totally incompetent transit agencies?
When we lived in Wilmington Delaware, we lived in an apartment that was
ostensibly a 7-10 minute bus ride away from my wife's office and a 10 minute
walk to commuter rail for my job in Philadelphia. We had just moved from
Chicago, where we didn't own a car, and assumed we could continue our public-
transit-oriented lifestyle.

We quickly gave up on both, and I ended driving 45 minutes each way, dropping
my wife off at work in the process. The bus would just never come. Bus drivers
would randomly skip stops. The train was regularly late. That was on the
weekday. Once, we tried taking the bus on the weekend to the local mall. After
waiting for 45 minutes (during which time three buses were supposed to have
come), we went back home and got in the car.

(Another anecdote: When I was in law school, I spent a month in the Menlo Park
office of the firm I was working at. Having spent the rest of the summer in
the NYC office--before MTA's total collapse--I figured I'd rent something on
the train line to get between San Jose and Menlo Park. Hah! A commuter train
that runs only every half an hour during peak times? Are you kidding? I ended
up renting a car and driving in every day.

Third anecdote--because I've really used a lot of public transit: When I first
started working in DC, my wife kept working in Delaware. So we moved right
next to Baltimore Penn Station, so she could take the Amtrak up and I could
take MARC/Amtrak down. On paper it's under an hour for her, and about an hour
and fifteen minutes for me between Amtrak and Metro. Hah! For my trip, Amtrak
was routinely 10-15 minutes late, and the trip took 10 minutes more than
scheduled. For her trip, Amtrak was regularly 15+ minutes late. And that was
when it was almost on time. Several times a month there would be 1+ hour
delays.)

That's the reality of public transit for the vast majority of the country.
Chicago is basically the only place left that has public transit that runs
mostly on time and has decent coverage between bus, subway, and commuter rail.
Everywhere else the transit system has either completely broken down (DC, New
York), or doesn't go anywhere (Baltimore, Atlanta, etc.).

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Do transit advocates have a solution to totally incompetent transit agencies?

At best you'll get people saying "the MTA is a corrupt money burner compared
to European rail and we need to fix that" or something along those lines but
that's about it. It makes sense that people aren't in a hurry to point out the
flaws of what they see as a solution to a problem most don't care much about.

~~~
marcosdumay
> It makes sense that people aren't in a hurry to point out the flaws of what
> they see as a solution to a problem most don't care much about.

Well, that's too bad, because if your "solution" is full of dealbreaking
flaws, people won't adopt it. And you will not solve those flaws if you decide
they are best ignored while you push the "solution" around.

Mass transit improvement should be the first thing on the list for people that
are fighting car use.

------
kinkrtyavimoodh
Isn't it the other way round? Driving is increasingly being made affordable on
the backs of basically every other means of transportation, many of which are
the only means available to the poor.

If mandatory parking space regulations etc and other things that spread the
price of what is an extremely private luxury on to the general public were
removed, let's see how affordable driving remains then.

------
olliej
I mean it's also tremendously inefficient, in terms of physical real estate,
throughput, and energy efficiency.

~~~
zaroth
Roads are perhaps the single greatest invention ever, in terms of economic
enabler and value creation, right after the wheel.

Sliced bread is substantially lower on the list.

~~~
braythwayt
Please don't conflate roads with single-occupancy driving. Roads have many
uses, including the facilitation of buses, the delivery of pizza and the
distribution of firefighting equipment.

The subject being discussed here is the use of single-occupancy automobiles,
which not only create all this unproductive time, but also clog the roads for
other uses.

Cars make roads worse, not better.

~~~
fromthestart
What? Cars are what make roads fundamentally useful.

Unless we want to force everyone to live in cities, single occupancy cars are
a necessity, since covering all destinations with public transportation is
impractical, _especially_ suburban/rural environments.

~~~
shkkmo
> Cars are what make roads fundamentally useful.

Roads predate cars by more than order of magnitude so that clearly is not
true.

The issue with single occupancy cars is clearly different in rural vs urban
settings and depends heavily on population density.

Both of the following are true:

Non-car owners in high density areas are subsidizing car owners in those
areas. The lack of a need to pay for usage of those roads increases the cost
of the transportation infrastructure (via increasing the attractiveness of car
ownership and usage).

Dwellers in high density areas are subsidizing dwellers in low density areas.
The lack of a need to pay for usage increases the attractiveness of dwelling
in low density areas.

Nobody is suggesting that forcibly moving everyone to cities or taking away
their cars is needed. However, perhaps people should pay the full costs of
those choices in the interests of encouraging efficiency.

~~~
fromthestart
>Non-car owners in high density areas are subsidizing car owners in those
areas.

Strongly disagree. First off, car ownership is typically expensive in dense
areas, and those with enough income to own vehicles are likely paying more in
taxes toward these subsidies. Further, many, if not most subsidies for roads
come from costs directly associated with ownership, like registration taxes,
gas taxes, and toll fees.

Now it may be true that these fees are not enough to cover the full cost of
roads in the US[1], but if you consider that both road users and non users
derive additional benefits from roads beyond direct use (in the form of
cheaper transportation of goods, emergency services, public transportation),
and that users pay an additional share of taxes that non users don't, then
this subsidy by non users is probably quite small. In any case according to
[1] the overall tax burden, not considering offsets by general benefits of
roads for non users, is only $597 per household.

1.[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/Who%2520Pays%2520for%2520Roads%2520vUS.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjGy_yk64ziAhUQS60KHV5KAsQQFjABegQIBRAB&usg=AOvVaw3ecu5h0MHua3I_XtWqKS8b&cshid=1557350008526)

~~~
shkkmo
> First off, car ownership is typically expensive in dense areas, and those
> with enough income to own vehicles are likely paying more in taxes toward
> these subsidies.

I'll grant there is likely a correlation between the amount of taxes paid and
car ownership. However, isolating segments based on income means that within
each segment, the car owners are being subsidized by the non-car owners.

> Further, many, if not most subsidies for roads come from costs directly
> associated with ownership, like registration taxes, gas taxes, and toll
> fees.

I don't think the numbers support you here, it varies significantly by state
(from 5% to 80% with a mean around 50%) [2]

2\. [https://taxfoundation.org/road-spending-state-funded-user-
ta...](https://taxfoundation.org/road-spending-state-funded-user-taxes-and-
fees-including-federal-gas-tax-revenues)

> In any case according to [1] the overall tax burden, not considering offsets
> by general benefits of roads for non users, is only $597 per household.

That is just the construction and maintenance cost, that same document gives
the following number: "Aside from gas taxes and individuals’ expenditures for
their own driving, U.S. households bear on average an additional burden of
more than $1,100 per year in taxes and other costs imposed by driving."

If you look at my source's prior article (which didn't include federal gas
taxes) the average amount paid is closer to 30%.

So taken together (which may mix incompatible data), a rough estimate of the
subsidy is an average of ~7-800 per household which I would not call "quite
small". I suspect this estimate is somewhat low based on my understanding of
how those two sources calculate costs.

~~~
zaroth
> _Nationwide in 2010, state and local governments raised $37 billion in motor
> fuel taxes and $12 billion in tolls and non-fuel taxes, but spent $155
> billion on highways.[3] In other words, highway user taxes and fees made up
> just 32 percent of state and local expenses on roads. The rest was financed
> out of general revenues, including federal aid._

This did not include $28 billion from the Federal gas tax, so $49 billion
becomes $77 billion.

Looking into the Census data, it _also_ inexplicably doesn’t include $21
billion of “Motor vehicle license” revenue. So we’re up to $98 billion.

It also does not appear to include motor vehicle sales taxes, nor motor
vehicle property taxes.

I can’t find a figure for property tax, but I did find a report that in 2013
sales taxes for new and used vehicles totaled $38.9 billion. We are now
approaching 100%...

An AutoAlliance report calculates in 2013 the auto sector paid $110 billion in
State taxes and $98 billion in Federal taxes. [1] Even this does not include
vehicle property taxes, as the amount is not readibly calculable due to the
sheer number of entries that collect this kind of tax.

By comparison, the report linked from your [2] link did include this;

> _In 2010, state and local governments spent $60 billion on mass transit, ...
> , in turn raising $13 billion in mass transit fares, ..._

Seems like it’s _mass transit_ that’s the one which is heavily subsidized.

[1] - [https://autoalliance.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/Assessme...](https://autoalliance.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/Assessment-of-Tax-Revenue-Generated-by-the-Automotive-
Sector-for-the-Year-2013.pdf)

------
zaroth
Driving is increasingly _affordable_ which will drive a new wave of taxes to
capture the surplus.

A high utilization Tesla Model 3 has costs per mile, including electricity, of
around $0.10-$0.15/mile.

For comparison, the gas tax alone on the average vehicle was about
$0.01-$0.02/mile 10 years ago. (Depends on your state and your MPG)

When that vehicle can drive itself from most Point As to most Point Bs on most
days, public transit doesn’t have prayer of competing.

So new regimes will be needed to fund the roads, but roads are one of the few
good things government does for me. I really like roads. Make more and make
them better, make them smooth and make them smart. Make them safe and make
them fast. And then we will all use them to go out every day and make money.

The good news is we won’t need a lot of new parking spaces in this rapidly
approaching future. But we will need some new forms of taxing driving, and I’m
mostly afraid of the privacy implications.

~~~
prolepunk
> A high utilization Tesla Model 3 has costs per mile, including electricity,
> of around $0.10-$0.15/mile.

> For comparison, the gas tax alone on the average vehicle was about
> $0.01-$0.02/mile 10 years ago. (Depends on your state and your MPG)

> When that vehicle can drive itself from most Point As to most Point Bs on
> most days, public transit doesn’t have prayer of competing.

Basically you're talking about a highly utilized, self-driving electric
vehicle with virtually infinite range.

I believe you're describing Vancouver SkyTrain --
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_\(Vancouver\))

~~~
zaroth
Yes, but replace 53 fixed pickup and drop off locations, with pickup and drop
off “virtually anywhere”.

And replace a fixed timetable schedule and massive upfront capital costs with
perfectly elastic timetables and consumer subsidized capital costs (Tesla
Fleet).

Double the top speed. Add a few zeros to the daily ridership. Add 4 zeros to
the number of vehicles. Etc...

Putting people on _rails_ makes no sense when the electric cars drive
themselves.

~~~
shkkmo
> Putting people on rails makes no sense when the electric cars drive
> themselves.

Um... traffic? Road infrastructure costs? Energy efficiency?

~~~
zaroth
Road cost efficiency increases the more small vehicle traffic you put on it.
Think high speed autonomous caravans.

The cost per mile is already _too low_. That’s the over-demand problem being
discussed in TFA.

Autonomous driving technology will triple existing highway capacity by ~2050
when it becomes illegal to drive non-autonomously. That’s a lot of “free”
infrastructure.

We should not invest billions in light rail that will be unprofitable its
entire life and archaic in 50 years.

~~~
shkkmo
> Road cost efficiency increases the more small vehicle traffic you put on it.
> Think high speed autonomous caravans.

Higher density vehicles (like buses) increase road cost efficiency even more.
For long distances, rail is far more efficient in terms of both energy and
infrastructure cost.

> The cost per mile is already too low. That’s the over-demand problem being
> discussed in TFA.

The article doesn't really have a clear thesis and its (unsupported) title
sort of contradicts that. The best I can tell is that the articles tries to
argue that single-occupancy car trips should (and will) become more expensive
because of no longer being subsidized.

> Autonomous driving technology will triple existing highway capacity by ~2050
> when it becomes illegal to drive non-autonomously. That’s a lot of “free”
> infrastructure.

The wasted space of, and maintenance costs for, that infrastructure makes it
far from "free".

In the short term, the degree to which autonomous cars and ride hailing make
single occupancy car trips more available and affordable is going to increase
the congestion and amount of needed infrastructure.

> We should not invest billions in light rail that will be unprofitable its
> entire life and archaic in 50 years.

The trade-offs of light rail vs. buses is complicated. I highly suspect that
buses, and infrastructure to support buses is often the better choice. That is
especially true given the flexibility we need in the face of a changing
transportation landscape.

That doesn't justify "self-driving cars" mean mass transit "makes no sense".
For some of that mass transit, rail is still the best option.

~~~
zaroth
My point about autonomous driving software increasing highway capacity
granting us "free" infrastructure is not to say the underlying infrastructure
is free (hence the quotes). But when existing infrastructure becomes 3x more
efficient due to private market software development, you have _effectively_
tripled the value of your infrastructure for free.

An inner-city bus ride costs $2.00 and doesn't get me door to door. The cost
of getting to the bus and getting from the bus stop to my actual destination
pushes that, even at minimum wage, probably closer to $5+. That's 30 miles (at
cost) door to door in a hypothetical Tesla RoboTaxi! How can a bus compete
with that?

Yes, a bus is a much more efficient use of space on the road, but it is not
more efficient to the individual riders. Hence the negative externality. But
in reality, the real-world usage (market-share) of buses and light rail is so
negligible as to be almost entirely irrelevant.

"US Passenger Miles" according to the Bureau of Transportation in 2017 for
Highway travel is 5,502,417. That number is in _Millions_. Whoa... That does
include 365,220 labeled "Bus" which appears to be private charter, not public
transit.

In the "Transit" section "Bus" is 19,343 and "Light rail" is 2,795, "Commuter
Rail" is 12,321 million passenger miles.

That means Bus, Light, and Commuter Rail total 34,459 million passenger miles,
which is ~0.6% the number of Passenger-Miles traveled by private vehicles on
the highway.

By the way, for longer rail trips, Amtrak is 6,527 million passenger miles in
2017 (declining year over year) and air travel is 693,818 million passenger
miles and growing year over year. Heck, lets get electrified air travel and
ditch trains for passenger travel as well.

Heavy freight via train will still possibly make sense, although autonomous
trucking will probably steal a lot of market share. For hazardous materials
and national security purposes you probably still need the heavy freight
network to be operational. It would be cooler if the really big stuff all went
via dirigible though.

[1] - [https://www.bts.gov/content/us-passenger-
miles](https://www.bts.gov/content/us-passenger-miles)

~~~
shkkmo
> My point about autonomous driving software increasing highway capacity
> granting us "free" infrastructure is not to say the underlying
> infrastructure is free (hence the quotes). But when existing infrastructure
> becomes 3x more efficient due to private market software development, you
> have effectively tripled the value of your infrastructure for free.

The alternate way of looking at is that you will be paying 3x more in
maintenance and space usage then you need to. By not planning ahead for this
"certainty" you have tripled the amount you need to spend on transportation
infrastructure in the future.

In the intervening 30 years, you will have had to deal with spiking demand
from how self-driving cars reduce the cost of car trips. To prevent having to
build a bunch of infrastructure that will eventually become unneeded, mass
transit is critical to avoid wasting money and space.

We need to ween ourselves off of needing all of this road capacity with usage
and congestion based surge pricing. As self driving cars begin to increase
usage efficiency, we can slowly lower the usage fees charged to self driving
car to further incentivize the transition to self driving cars.

> An inner-city bus ride costs $2.00 and doesn't get me door to door. The cost
> of getting to the bus and getting from the bus stop to my actual destination
> pushes that, even at minimum wage, probably closer to $5+. How can a bus
> compete with that?

By charging a usage fee to push riders to more space and energy efficient
forms of transit.

There are also other improvements that can be made to improve last-mile
transit options. My skateboard does a very good job of this and I expect to
see more scooters.

I also think that autonomous vehicles have a large role to play in helping
with these last-mile trips in less dense areas where the "last-mile" may be
several miles or more and space is at less of a premium.

> the real-world usage (market-share) of buses and light rail is so negligible
> as to be almost entirely irrelevant.

The good thing is that this give us a lot of space to compensate for the
increased demand for transit that self-driving cars will bring.

~~~
zaroth
Whether you look at autonomy as granting the ability to reduce your future
infrastructure development costs, or providing a boost in road capacity
without increasing infrastructure cost, either way autonomy is providing a
massive boost / making infrastructure more efficient and thereby effectively
lowering (possibly halving or more) roadway cost per passenger mile.

Why would the road infrastructure ever become unneeded? It's more needed than
ever with the rise of incredibly cheap, extremely convenient, on-demand
private transportation. The availability of which increases productivity and
drives overall GDP growth and prosperity.

I don't see why it follows that we need to ween ourselves off of roads. Roads
are the backbone of our economy, and more efficient use of roads provides huge
economic benefit. More availability of on-demand low cost private transport is
an amazing benefit to low-income workers.

Usage fees for roads that are being used more efficiently than ever, to try to
drive people to less efficient (for them) modes of transportation, is a recipe
for suppressing growth. It's a regressive tax which disproportionately impacts
the poor.

Scooters are neat. Scooters are "0.1" relative to cars "5,500,000" in the 2017
million-passenger miles table. Maybe that grows 1000x to be a "100". But in a
fully autonomous future, scooters are obsolete and not worth the investment in
designated travel lanes. Creative future designs for super-light autonomous
personal transport will certainly not take the form of a "scooter".

~~~
shkkmo
> It's more needed than ever with the rise of incredibly cheap, extremely
> convenient, on-demand private transportation. The availability of which
> increases productivity and drives overall GDP growth and prosperity

Yes, lowering the costs (in time, money, energy and space) of transit
increases the efficiency of our economy. It also increases the demand for
such.

> Why would the road infrastructure ever become unneeded?

You were the one who said that eliminating non-self-driving cars would triple
the space efficiency (and probably increase the other efficiencies as well).
Are you claiming that this would lead to a commensurate tripling of demand?
Otherwise you are looking at having more road capacity than is needed.

The issue that I see is that the increase of demand spurred by self-driving
cars and robot taxis will happen well BEFORE we reach the point where those
self-driving cars provide increases in traffic capacity (space) efficiency.

This timing mis-match will further exacerbate traffic and parking problems in
major cities (reduced time, energy and space efficiency). These costs fall
directly on those who will increasingly be forced to live further away from
work which will disproportionately impact the poor.

Of course, if you increase usage fees without providing effective mass transit
systems, park-n-rides and last mile solutions then this also serves as a
regressive tax on the poor. This is the problem with simply increasing gas
taxes rather than finding ways to directly tax congestion.

> Usage fees for roads that are being used more efficiently than ever, to try
> to drive people to less efficient (for them) modes of transportation, is a
> recipe for suppressing growth. It's a regressive tax which
> disproportionately impacts the poor.

Without usage fees, self-driving cars will lead to roads being used less
efficiently due to decreased usage of public transit and increased traffic. If
you grant that mass transit is socially more efficient, then increased usage
of that will lead to spurred growth.

It is the optimization of individual efficiency, with its associated
externalized social costs, that will slow economic growth overall. Single
occupant vehicles may be the most efficient choice for the individual, but if
everyone drives, then the use of single occupant vehicles is less efficient
than it would be if fewer people drove. This is the paradox of the "tragedy of
the commons", it doesn't just hurt society but has a direct negative impact on
your individual well being.

> Scooters are great. Scooters are "0.1" relative to cars "5,500,000" in the
> 2017 million-passenger miles table. Maybe that grows 1000x to be a "100".

I think you misunderstand. First I meant a "kick" scooter (or electric kick
style scooter) as opposed to a "small motorcycle" scooter as I suspect you
interpreted. Secondly, I am talking about their use as a "last-mile" option
which you would never expect to account for a large number of passenger-miles
as they are supposed to be used for very short trips and "last-mile" portions
on longer trips.

Edit: As a side note, I doubt we will see the nationwide banning of person-
driven vehicles in our lifetimes. Americans love their cars and I doubt you
will see them taken away easily. I suspect we may see the banning of person-
driven cars in city centers much sooner.

------
mywittyname
I believe the ever-declining affordability of driving is going to decimate
real estate in the US. We have upwards of 80 years worth of home construction
designed almost exclusively around the ability to drive. With the assumption
that cars and fuel would forever be cheap and that the Federal government
would continue to heavily subsidize road construction.

I'm curious to see how people solve this problem. Wealthy people can afford to
move into urban centers to save money on commuting costs, but relatively poor
people will be stuck in the old suburbs. I suspect motorcycle-class vehicles
will begin appearing from upstart manufactures which are effectively single-
or dual-seater three wheelers with closed cabins that are cheap to purchase
and operate.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Another related problem is that these suburbs were planned and financed on a
cash accounting basis, rather than accrual. This means that tax burdens (or
other municipal revenue methods) need to increase to cover the replacement of
aging infrastructure as the relatively wealthy flee the old suburbs.

This was a big factor in the Ferguson riots in 2014, IMO. The city had
significant budgetary pressure that they managed through for-profit policing
(traffic fines a big one), which intensified the racial divide there, and this
is why the budgetary pressure arose.

------
viburnum
“Converting calories to gas, a bicycle gets about three thousand miles per
gallon.”

[https://twitter.com/grescoe/status/1122883766207352832?s=21](https://twitter.com/grescoe/status/1122883766207352832?s=21)

~~~
sdinsn
But "converting" my free time to gas, it gets worse MPG than cars.

~~~
jchrisa
In urban areas like the one I live in, most trips are faster by bike.
Especially considering I always get the closest parking and almost never wait
in a queue.

~~~
robbyking
Where I live now, my bike ride to work is twice as fast as my bus commute, and
in SF, it was about 30% faster. That said, my wife and I are both all season
bike commuters, and because we make almost all of our trips (grocery shopping,
taking our son to school, etc.) by bike, bikeability is a huge factor for us
when we make housing decisions.

Nearly all the public transportation/cycling naysaying I read seems to be from
people who didn't consider (or at least didn't prioritize) non-private
automobile transportation into their housing decision, and typically, it's at
great cost to them[1].

1\.
[http://cityobservatory.org/transportation_housing_affordabil...](http://cityobservatory.org/transportation_housing_affordability/)

------
sandworm101
Unaffordable? Compared to what? Maybe in SF/NY.

I live in an area with nothing, none, nadda, no version of public
transportation that can take me from anywhere near home to anywhere near work.
Setting aside the unusual hours I work, my occasional need to haul stuff that
is awkward on public transport (military stuff), not driving is not an option.

------
Grue3
Nah, it's already more affordable than taxi (through carsharing, at least in
my city), and will be even more affordable when autonomous cars get deployed
(even for people without driving license). Car ownership will be a luxury, but
there will always be a demand for moving from point A to point B alone.

~~~
colechristensen
For a while I was commuting from Mountain View to SF. It was cheaper and
faster for me to drive to the Daly City BART station and park than it was to
take the Caltrain (on which there was usually standing room only). This is
including the purchase price of the car depreciated over the lifetime I expect
to own it, fuel, parking, and maintenance.

------
prolepunk
I find this image to be highly relevant to the discussion.

[https://i2.kym-
cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/016/837/45...](https://i2.kym-
cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/016/837/4581cc8adf783652c6f5829d28aa87f1.png)

A bit a flashback from 1940s and the urgency of arguments at that time about
conserving resources.

------
prolepunk
TLDR

"Driving is bad and economically unsustainable and highly subsidized. Ride
hailing apps take advantage of that to make profits in their bid to displace
service workers (taxi drivers) and usurp their wages. However these companies
may run out of investor money before accomplishing this. A lot of
municipalities are now considering congestion charges. Walking and public
transit may also be an option"

I'm a bit annoyed how the article takes the angle of cheering for Uber and
Lyft while barely mentioning public transit as a solution that doesn't
economically exploit underprivileged people.

------
Kiro
I've stopped taking the car completely due to environmental concerns. I see no
justification unless you absolutely have to.

~~~
happytoexplain
>I see no justification unless you absolutely have to.

That's an extremely broad qualifier for a pretty particular topic. I think
that the vast majority of people either absolutely have to use a car, or can
pretty easily not (or in fact would be inconvenienced by using a car). I think
it is a very small percentage of people who are somewhere in between those two
cases, for whom there is a realistic choice to be made one way or the other.

~~~
firethief
> I think that the vast majority of people either absolutely have to use a
> car, or can pretty easily not (or in fact would be inconvenienced by using a
> car).

I doubt either of those categories exist, yet alone form a dichotomy

~~~
taborj
There are millions of people who absolutely have to have a car. There are lots
of us living in rural - and even suburban - areas where public transportation
is virtually nonexistent.

------
fopen64
The car is the last place you might have some privacy, listen to loud music,
talk to yourself. I take "micro-vacations from marriage" consisting basically
of driving alone a couple days.

The bathroom is arguably the other remaining place for complete privacy, so I
understand completely people that can afford huge bathrooms with magazines,
TV, etc.

