Reading the comments to the story (on the Buzzfeed site), one sees the dichotomy between younger residents and longtime residents. (I've been here about 20 years.)
The latter tend to give all kinds of arguments about why owning a car is necessary, including safety, convenience, and cost. And they may be right -- for them. They live in the hills of a relatively remote area, like La Crescenta or Burbank or Chatsworth, and have Sunday brunch at some place in the Valley, and drive to Costco to fill up a freezer and a garage with goods, and drive to their dentist, doctor, and gym across town as well. It's a whole series of decisions, and it locks down tighter and tighter.
But newer residents are showing that a different way of life is possible, by making all these decisions differently. It's fantastic. It has changed the streetscape a lot, as various local enclaves spring up to offer services within walking or cycling distance, or near to transit.
But the gap between these two lifestyles really makes for some major disconnects around subjects like housing development along thoroughfares, density of development, parking, and bike lanes.
You see this play out with every generation. I read an article recently that incredulously reported that Millenials - the car rejecting generation! - have started buying cars. Of course they have, because they're coming into the age where they get married, have kids and move to the suburbs.
So, you're right, in that this is a young/old split. But don't expect it to persist as the young become old.
EDIT: the more I think about it, the more interested I'll be to see if there is, in fact, a trend in the opposite direction. The suburbs are a total compromise - close to job centers, retail facilities, etc etc, while far enough from city centers to be affordable. The coming era of remote work and efficient delivery services might mean that living further away from the city makes more sense. But there are a lot of caveats in that.
People who are currently 25 own less cars than people who were 25 ten years ago.
People who are currently 30 own less cars than people who were 30 ten years ago.
People who are currently 35 own less cars than people who were 35 ten years ago. (Note, these are the people who at 25 owned more cars than current 25 year olds)
Yes, when the people who are currently 25 turn 35 (aka the millennials age), they will own more cars than they did at 25. But all trends support the idea that they will own less cars than the people who are currently 35.
While not exactly purchases, I like this graph showing every age cohort is less likely to take out a car loan today than in 2003.
And also this graph about how many people have driver's licenses, every age cohort has gone down since 2008. And for young cohorts, it has gone down tremendously since 1983.
I think it's you who are looking at this the wrong way. They wrote:
> That's because young people don't have families.
People who are currently 25 have less babies than people who were 25 ten years ago.
People who are currently 30 have less babies than people who were 30 ten years ago.[0]
People living familyless lives longer means that the cars will come later in their lives. Having children and not have a car is a very tough proposition, considering the volume and mass of babystuff you have to handle.
Of course the cars might not come at all if people continue to chose solitude over offspring.
It sounds like that while there may be a link between "having a family" and "owning a car", should not a delay in "having a family" have a noticeable correlation to a delay in car ownership?
Both of you seem to be describing the same thing in related, correct ways.
Those two facts can be explained, partially, as follows: People are delaying families longer now, as well as having smaller families(which maybe means you can get away with living in an apartment in a city which doesn't require cars). For example, the average age of first-time mothers went from ~21 in the 1970s, to >26 in 2014.
You make great points. To be fair, the effects here could still be reconciled with the parent post about likelihood of car ownership increasing with caring for children if it's also true that younger people are having kids later in life than cohorts that are 10+ years older.
I don't claim this is the case per se, nor that it explains the effects entirely. Just that it's a consideration and it might be unfair to say the thinking is necessarily "in much the wrong way".
Maybe. My daughter (almost four) has spent pretty much her whole life living downtown: Chicago, New Rochelle, Wilmington, Baltimore, DC. When she was a baby we'd take the Metro North to Costco in Port Chester and load the stroller up and go home. We did that even though we had a car.
I don't think you can really extrapolate from generational history here. As recently as the 1940s, most kids were raised in the city or in rural areas. You've got maybe three generations raised in the suburbs. Not exactly ancient history.
It's also worth noting that what the suburbs are is changing to become less car dependent. Lots of people having kids in new developments in Reston, VA, which is a suburb but organized more like the bedroom communities of yore (with a little downtown) than the sprawling subdivisions that prevailed from the 1960s to 1990s.
I'm currently discovering that it's amusingly much easier to live without a car in the city with a family-with-kid than with a family-with-dog. Not a lot of medium-or-larger-sized-dog-friendly public transport that I've found. But if there isn't a good park for your dog to run around in close by, and you don't have a yard cause you live in an apartment... it's suddenly essential to have a car! Same with getting to the vet, etc.
> Why would you want to transport your dog inside the city?
My office has an open dog policy, but I almost never see dogs in the office, and when I do, they're inevitably small (the kinds you can hold on the subway). Meanwhile, on the Mountain View campus, dogs everywhere. You need a car to bring your dog to work with you.
> "And how does that work for people trying to concentrate while working, with barking etc?"
People are considerate enough not to bring poorly-behaved dogs to work. I've run into many dogs around the office and have never had a barking problem - they usually just roam in a small area around their owner/team, quietly.
Pretty much the only time I've heard a dog bark at work was when someone accidentally kicked it...
Amazon also encourages dogs... they have a three strikes policy and lots of warnings. The dog has to be quiet and well behaved to come into the office. Lots of goldens, labs, corgis and bulldogs in the office.
Besides, I don't work at Google. At the companies I did work, when someone brought a dog to work (few times) it was always a problematic situation, people tried to ignore the ruckus, moved to nearby desks etc.
The dogs that come into the office are all well-behaved. It's part of policy, and coworkers aren't jerks. It's still an office, and there's no better way to turn coworkers against you than bringing in a disruptive dog. People are smart enough to know not to bring in a dog that will make enemies.
I like the dog policy, because every so often I have the nice surprise of being able to pet a fluffy dog, at work. In practice it's not so bad as what you're thinking it might devolve into.
I recently just stopped driving into New York City from Westchester. I used to have no qualms about driving for an hour and then taking some 10 minutes to find parking, but there is a better way. The Metro North is 35 minutes to Grand Central and parking is relatively easy, especially when I am going in on an evening. I realized it isn't worth my time to drive in given that I can do other things on the train such as read or write or just close my eyes. As a bonus, I am certainly less stressed when I get where I am going.
Also old cities have different "suburbs" than newer cities. Boston's "streetcar suburbs" were built along public transit first and foremost so they're the perfect blended suburb for families. Nice and quiet but a short train's ride away from downtown.
We commute by bike or transit as a family in Boston through all seasons. We own a car but it sits parked unless we're going on a special weekend trip or something; the car averages 6k miles per year and I'd estimate that Christmas, etc account for about 1/3 of that.
The east cost still has plenty of suburbs, they are just slightly higher density than what you might see surrounding LA or San Diego. See the MD-DC corridor, with almost no public transit except light rail, but townhouses are abundant. People that grew up in LA don't even know what a townhouse is.
> That's because young people don't have families.
I fit that profile. I've lived in LA for >15 years & didn't use my car much.
I now have two small children.
Still don't use my car much.
Groceries? Google Express. Diapers & other random things? Amazon. Taking my son to preschool? I hooked up a trailer to my bike & drop him off on the way to work.
My son loves trains, so taking the Metro is a blast with him. It's maybe a 30 minute walk to the closest stop & from there we can hit the beach, downtown SM, the Science Center & so on.
To be fair we do have a car. Rare is obviously rare, but when it happens, I use the car. Along with trips to home depot or to see a friend on the other side of town.
But honestly, LA is a great to live car free. If you develop your life around a car it naturally becomes hard to remove the car. But if you start off developing your life w/o the car, it's much, much easier to ditch it.
>That's because young people don't have families. You see this play out with every generation. I read an article recently that incredulously reported that Millenials - the car rejecting generation! - have started buying cars. Of course they have, because they're coming into the age where they get married, have kids and move to the suburbs.
If that was the case, you'd see it repeated in every generation, but we don't. People in the 50s and 80s still wanted a car even when they were 16, and bought one as soon as they could afford it.
People in general buy less cars nowadays, and those that do buy, also buy smaller cars increasingly more.
When I got married and had a child, I went from car free to one car. Still a low car lifestyle (commute and grocery shop by bike, prioritized a walkable location during our house search, etc) but my car usage definitely increased.
Still, it increased much less than it otherwise would have because we love getting around without a car and because driving is not a status signal to our peers. I might be wrong, having not lived through previous generations, but I think actively preferring to not drive is relatively common now, and it seems like there used to be some stigma attached to not owning a car that is now utterly absent.
> You see this play out with every generation. I read an article recently that incredulously reported that Millenials - the car rejecting generation! - have started buying cars. Of course they have, because they're coming into the age where they get married, have kids and move to the suburbs.
European prospective: in most cities and towns it is not hard at all to have a family with kids and have no car. Many things are at walking distance and for the rest there is a widespread public transportation network.
The only people that _need_ cars are those living in rural areas or on the new suburbia-style boroughs born along secondary highways (new development of the last 50 years).
I'm in Norway living in a decent sized city (for Norway). The public transportation is great here, and taking a baby or toddler on the bus doesn't seem to be an issue at all. People often don't take young children out of their strollers.
Now, off in the countryside, it seems that public transportation thins out (though isn't non-existent), and more people have cars. Usually small-to-medium sized front wheel drive cars, families usually have a 4 door model.
Yep, the same millennials who swear they'll never move to the suburbs, do just that once they find a spouse and realize that a 2br in the burbs is SO much cheaper. And the schools are so good!
As with other developed countries, the number of people choosing to not have children keeps going up. It's not a default thing you can assume that people - even married couples - will inevitably do.
Reminds me of teens/early 20s who say they won't marry and/or have kids and save up to retire before 40... wonder how many don't end up with a kid and a mortgage by then.
I used to say such things to my mother 20 years ago - mostly about the children. My words were more that I wouldn't do it before 30, and then it was a maybe. (I never have wanted children, honestly).I told her any man I married would just have to be happy with that.. She swore I'd change my mind. I still don't have children. I'm 38, and will remain childless. My husband is fine with this.
But I do think most folks that say such things wind up with long-term relationships (legal marriage isn't as attractive with many) and a child or two when they are 25-30, either by accident or something changes when their mind stops developing.
If you actually want data on this, not just confirmation of your own bias that family=cars, here's a cohort analysis of driver's licensure and car ownership rates: http://nexus.umn.edu/papers/Cohorts.pdf
I think even families may be shedding cars. Maybe not BOTH cars, but I know at least two families that have gone from two car households down to one car households.
Car free is tough, but using a car less is entirely possibly in a lot of places. All you need is a bit of infrastructure, and a bit less zoning, so that you can live close to other things.
Then it becomes a "right tool for the job" situation. We had a car in Italy, but regularly rode our bikes, or took public transportation for various things.
I don't live in LA, so my situation might only partially comparable. but there are quite a few things that make it possible for me not to own a car that my parents didn't have access to. For example car sharing/ride hailing services that were not available 20 years ago, delivery services that didn't exist in that form. Electric cargo bikes make it feasible to carry medium loads without too much physical effort.
I can quite well imagine not buying a car for the next decade and instead rely on a combination of all of the above, something that would have been very hard for my parents generation.
I've been hearing that "young people don't have families" explanation since all my friends were young people who didn't have families, but the long-promised exodus to the suburbs continues not to materialize. If anything, we've all been clustering more and more closely together. The people with kids want to be around other people with kids, but we all want to be around our friends. If people can't afford a house on their own, they're far more likely to find another family and set up a co-housing arrangement than to exile themselves to the suburbs.
Totally agree, I have heard demographers say that basically millennial's are a bigger group than the baby boomers and will have as big if not bigger economic impact. Yes they have delayed families and home ownership but this is because of financial hardship related to the great recession. But make no mistake, these people will have families and will buy houses and cars and couches an all that. I recall the good ole hippie generation was going to be living in communes and sharing free love and all that crap. What did they end up doing again? Oh yeah, they eventually had to get jobs, got married, had kids, moved out of the city etc.
The issue with delivery services is they rely on the density of city populations... In the Phoenix area most of said services don't exist, and many that have tried have failed. It's a pretty stark contrast to more dense cities, and even locally Tempe has a lot more options than the greater Phoenix area does.
I also hope that similar ride sharing systems take deeper hold in Phoenix... Personally, I really enjoy driving, so seeing traffic become less dense (currently not nearly as bad as the coastal cities by any means) would be nice.
I definitely see in Norway that people across generations use car less often. One can argue that rise of payed roads, higher and higher fees to enter cities etc. contributes to that. However, those measures are implemented by politicians who are elected by grown ups with cars, as they are more likely to vote.
Yeah, it's hilarious. All that's happened is millennials have delayed child bearing due to financial pressures / infantalization / choice. I know I'm already sick of car-free life and ready to go to a healthier mix of public transportation, walking and driving.
I'm an anecdote. Wife and 3 kids (the oldest is 3 1/2) and about a year ago I sold my truck so we're down to 1 SUV for the family.
I was able to do this because the office space I moved in to is only 4mi from our house so I ride my bicycle or my motorcycle. I know a motorcycle is technically cheating in a way, but it gets 45mpg, means I never have to ride share, and costs me 1/6th as much to insure as the $55k truck did.
We live about 14mi south of downtown Portland- which has pretty good public transport, but means we've got pretty piss poor options if you don't want to spend 2+ hours getting downtown.
My gym is 2 blocks from the office, we chose our suburb neighborhood because there's literally a dozen parks and playgrounds within walking/biking distance for toddlers.
We, as a family, absolutely need the car for 99% of things. Me, as a 34 year old guy going about his daily non-family business, can get by even in the 'burbs without a car.
On the other hand, I can report of my childhood (born '96) in a German mid-sized city where we almost always used the bus, despite our family having two cars.
The first car was only used by dad who worked in another city with – at that time – no train line existing yet, and the second car was only used whenever we’d go camping or buy large amounts of groceries.
We kids by ourselves always used bike or bus, and when we with our parents went to the city, or shopping, it almost always was bus, too.
Not very strong evidence. Essentially, it says that Millennials are more likely to buy a car in the next 12 months than people 30-50 and people 50+...right because presumably such other groups already own cars?
Exactly - it really depends on where you live/work, but LA's a surprisingly nice city for cycling in. It almost never rains, the Bus's all have bicycle carriers for emergency punctures/Hollywood, and the cars are rarely going fast enough to be a problem. The bicycle theft problem is also much less than usual, since not that many know how to ride a bicycle.
> [...] since not that many know how to ride a bicycle.
Come on, seriously? It gives a pretty poor image of the average american. Manual transmission? Don't know how to use that. Bicycle? What is that thing?
I bet this means that people don't know how to get from A to B on a bicycle, rather than, you know, being able to pedal a bicycle in a straight line, and keep the thing upright.
For example: which streets are the best to take? What's legal/illegal to do? (sidewalks OK? "I DON'T KNOW? I'M SCARED TO RIDE ON THE ROAD/NOT ON THE ROAD") Where do I lock up this thing? What happens at night - do I need lights? What kind of light? What do I do if it start raining? Oh no? What do I do about my wheel - the tires not holding air!
These are topics not always taught to you... ever by... anyone. Especially the legal aspects of bicycle rights on the road. That leads to all sorts of arguments about what bikes can/cannot do and creates a horrible opposing relationship with cyclists and other road users. As a motorist, if you don't ride a bike as an adult, you may have NO idea what a cyclist is allowed to do on the road, but the same can be said about a cyclist that's JUST getting into riding a bike. They'll make all sorts of mistakes, and put themselves in bad situations, often angering other users of the road. How long is that going to last, until that bike is back in the back of the garage?
What's the solution? Seek out a support group of cyclists to help you.
I'm kind of surprised. I live in France and spent my time growing up in the countryside. I was aware of common cycling regulations, all the do and don't, by the time I was in 5th grade.
I know biking in a city is very different from biking on a road in the middle of nowhere. And, even I, prefer to avoid crowded circulations and difficult crossings, because those other road users are pesky assholes (at least in Paris) when it comes to sharing anything with pedestrians, cyclists, or even other motorized vehicles. Kudos to cyclists support groups!
When I rode in France - once on a two-month tour through the country, and once living in Paris, I was incredibly shocked at how aware motorists were to cyclists. Motorists would drive fast around me, but I wasn't worried that their intentions were maligned. Coming back to the States, and I had to readapt to being much more defensive.
In short: it's just embedded in the French culture. France has le Tour, we have football.
Switzerland takes this to a whole 'nother level, saying nothing about the Netherlands, Denmark, etc.
In the States, I feel very much like an enemy on the road. I mean, I'm just riding my bike to work.
I can't agree with this sentiment enough, you have to ride defensively on the road, you're seen as a second class citizen, and drivers don't act with the same respect as they do other cars. However, I've never lived in France so I have nothing to compare to.
It's essentially class warfare, when cars are seen as a symbol of wealth, status and mobility. It's not car vs. bike. It's the status quo vs. a competing idea that, if it takes root, unearths a value system based on owning and using an expensive personal item that devalues precipitously as soon as it's driven off the lot, adds a hefty environmental cost, etc: the automobile. And that upheaval is going to cost powerful people money.
Also look at: public transportation.
It's no wonder that higher economic mobility people have chosen essentially a private town car company (or at least a virtual one, that undermines things like workers rights) to replace personal car ownership (at least partly so) and not a bicycle or public transportation. The illusion of the status quo is still there - except that it's enhanced, as you're paying a premium for someone else to do the stressful work for you.
As an American that has explored Europe, it's just not the same thing. Trains are amazing, people flaunting wealth by buying enormous cars is seen as a faux pas. City centers are turning into car-free zones. Being simply a pedestriann isn't see as a backwards thing. Cycling is taken much more seriously and things like safety regulations and road-side checks are a Thing.
This extensive list of skills is exactly why cycling is a lifestyle choice/hobby, not an effective method of transportation.
Car ownership isn't much better.
Lyft/Uber? I tap a button, get in the car, then appear at my destination.
I don't have to spend mental cycles on accidents, vehicle failures, weather, navigation, insurance, licensing, fuel, equipment, tiredness, sobriety, clothing, locks, road laws, time of day, road debris, other road users, parking, safety of my vehicle when I'm not around, maintenance, vehicle condition and cleanliness, transportation politics, etc.
Instead, I can live my life. It's actually quite liberating.
> This extensive list of skills is exactly why cycling is
> a lifestyle choice/hobby, not an effective method of
> transportation.
>
> Car ownership isn't much better.
But that's it, isn't it? There's an investment in time/energy you have to make. Is the investment worth it for you?
> Instead, I can live my life. It's actually quite liberating.
For me, being car-free is very liberating. There's just more pluses to using a bike for my primary transportation.
Where have you lived that cycling is not an effective method of transportation? All of your arguments can be exactly adapted for Uber/Lyft, and even if I were to do that it doesn't mean ride sharing is an ineffective method of transportation.
I assure you in MOST of the rest of the world cycling is a very effective method of transportation.
Don't know where the parent is from but I live in a largish Canadian city. Using a bike for primary travel is not viable except for short leisure/weekend errands. I even live in the part of town where biking would be the most viable.
1) the city isn't built for biking. It's long distances between where people work and their homes. Not many live downtown like other large cities.
2) you can only do it for six months of the year. The other six are too cold.
Do I understand you correctly that you _only_ get around via Uber/Lyft? That seems expensive or at the least, very boring because you don't get out much.
Really, I think the minimum knowledge needed to use a bike for transportation is quite small. Walk into a local bike shop, list your needs/abilities, pay money, and start riding a bike. When you stop, use the u-lock they gave you to lock up the frame. Every week, put some air in the tire and recharge your lights. If something breaks, take it back to the shop.
>Do I understand you correctly that you _only_ get around via Uber/Lyft?
Back in Europe at least, I know several of people who use taxis for all their getting around -- with the occasional subway ride thrown in.
And those are people that get around a lot, though that's mostly true for above a certain income source and usually on creative professions (directors, composers, journalists, etc. -- kind of like people whose work doesn't necessitate commuting every day to some office, and who couldn't afford a 24/7 personal chauffeur, but could still pay for 2-5 taxi rides per day).
Uber/Lyft, aircraft, and walking for short distances, yes. I realize now that I live in very walkable areas, so I have a little more variety available than people in the suburbs.
That said, this post was intended to encourage people to think about the future of transportation, not saying that everyone should immediately switch to Lyft/Uber.
Car/bike ownership will certainly make sense for some people for quite some time, even after we have fully autonomous vehicles. But I maintain that cycling is more recreation than an effective method of everyday transportation, and it is frustrating to see the biking contingent pushing it as a transportation option to encourage public expenditure on their recreational needs.
> This extensive list of skills is exactly why cycling is a lifestyle choice/hobby, not an effective method of transportation.
> Car ownership isn't much better.
I suspect the list for car ownership would look much longer, actually. It's just that the skills necessary for car ownership are taught much more effectively because of the prevalence of driving in our society.
The parent poster was saying bikes are less likely to get stolen in LA because nobody knows how to ride--I don't think that's true at all. Most people who steal bikes just want to sell it for money. I heard SF had a huge bike theft problem and was working to reduce stolen bikes in the second-hand market instead of attacking thefts directly. They also added a stolen bike registry to make recovery more seamless. Maybe LA has something similar and that's reducing thefts? I still see evidence of bike thefts in LA (parts of bikes or empty chains locked to things).
More to your point, Los Angeles has free bike safety courses for varying levels all over town. They start with "learn to ride," "interested in riding a bike for daily trips, but are concerned about safety," and "confident city cycling." I think they also give out free safety equipment like helmets, lights, and reflectors.
That's awesome, and I'm glad to hear it. For me, it was first taught in after-school clubs (bicycle club!). I can't thank the local bike shop enough for pointing me in the right direction.
As an adult, I joined a lot of social circles that centered around having fun, and riding bikes. I also got into things like Critical Mass, and the local bike messenger racing scene. It felt like we were all helping each other to survive out there. A lot has changed in 10 years, and I'm very grateful for that. Just having a public bike sharing program present and very easy to access has really changed people's perceptions.
When I was a kid in the USA (Torrance, CA which is in Los Angeles County) the police came to our elementary school once a year for a bicycle information day, where they'd talk about bike safety rules and even had a little rolling road to test your brakes on. Most of my friends rode their bikes to school. So it doesn't seem completely unheard of.
Before I lived in LA, I lived in Boston. I still have the rather nice pair of wire cutters that were left behind rather hastily when I came back to get my bicycle at the stand after being in a shop for about 3 minutes. Now that is a city with a bicycle theft problem.
But military histories quite often comment how most of the GI's had much better mechanical skills that their British counterparts, and how baseball pitching was instrumental in their superior grenade use. (Cricket bowling just doesn't teach quite the right skills there.)
Despite being one of the most homogeneous species on the planet, everybody is different. I agree it was rather cruel of the local council to stick a magic roundabout right outside Heathrow's car hire[1], to add to the driving on the wrong side/manual transmission nightmare, but at least it let's people know what they're in for.
> I agree it was rather cruel of the local council to stick a magic roundabout right outside Heathrow's car hire[1]
The inverted pentagram shape (facing east) of that thing was made on purpose, right? It seems, somebody on the city council just wanted to summon a massive demon :)
Just for clarifacation: I live in Northern Europe, but am American.
The manual transmissions? Part of this is the lack of requirement for driver training to teach folks. The other bit of this is that most folks don't have access to manual transmissions. A great deal of cars don't even offer the option. I was fortunate enough to learn to drive one years ago, but not all are. This is really simple lack of availability.
Ancedote: My spouse and I own a (older) 4 door sedan. It has a manual transmission. Now, the brand isn't sold in the states, but many similarly sized vehicles are. In the US, this class of vehicle isn't generally available with a manual transmission - if it is available at all. Usually, the only cars with the options are the smallest cars, trucks, or luxury vehicles.
Average American in a Norman Rockwell painting, maybe. A lot of kids grow up these days without learning how to ride a bike. We just learn to drive early.
And I've never encountered a non-smug argument against automatic transmission.
I'm from the UK, and automatics are pretty rare here. If you do your driving test in an automatic, your license is annotated so you can only drive automatics, so people do it in manuals instead; and then, of course, they buy a manual, because they're cheaper.
So my first experience with an automatic gearbox was on a holiday to the US. And I loathed it. It felt like all the controls were connected to the road via rubber bands --- everything seemed to happen a couple of seconds after I moved the controls. If that had been my only experience of an automatic, then I too would be saying how horrible they were.
But then, much, much later I tried driving a hybrid with a CVT automatic gearbox. (I can't even remember what it was now.) And it was... amazing. It felt just right. There was no lag, there was no uncomfortable feeling of being in the wrong gear. It was like it was reading my mind. I put this down to being an expensive hybrid with lots of low-end torque from the electric motor, but then just this year I drove a Nissan X-Trail, also with CVT, and it was just as good.
So I'm willing to say: not all automatic gearboxes are the same.
The CVT in my wife's Honda is surprisingly good. No "sag and surge" due to shifting. It just keeps going (with an engine RPM proportional to the throttle amount) as you hit the freeway onramp.
Her car has a bigger engine than my Prius (also with a CVT as well as the motor/generator), though. My car does very well around town, being quite peppy in the 0 to 30 range, but a bit more doggish getting up to freeway speed. But it makes a good daily driver otherwise.
Traditional automatics seem to change gears and re-clutch slowly. The 5 speed on my old small pickup was fun to drive, once I learned how to do it years ago :-)
That rubber-band feeling is exactly what CVTs are known for around here. Maybe you got one the whole time? Of course, rental cars have the most terrible engines no matter what.
The fastest gear switching is on DSG/DCT engines, or electric cars which don't have gears in the first place. Both of those should beat a manual car in speed and mileage.
BTW, as an American who can't drive manual or ride a bike, and grew up in a city which didn't even have sidewalks, I recommend this as a great way to become a computer expert.
> And I've never encountered a non-smug argument against automatic transmission.
Manual are cheaper and ubiquitous. If you want an automatic car in Europe, you pay premium on a new car, and a very large premium each time you rent a car.
I'm not sure how that works for second hand cars - there are less but less people interested too, so not sure where the balance tip. In any case, automatic car tend to be expensive cars to begin with (BMW Series 5, ...) - you won't find as easily a regular joe car that is automatic.
Manuals are the same price in the US as automatics (or are more expensive) and are harder to find. Buying a new manual doesn't make economic sense here anymore. It's purely for the fun.
Manuals are the same price in the US as automatics (or are more expensive)
This is absolutely false. Not every car is offered with manual transmission, but cars that can be configured with both are almost always cheaper with a manual. I cannot recall every seeing a case where it was the more expensive option.
Manuals should be cheaper because they're cheaper for manufacturers to make. Unfortunately, in the US they've become a niche product that doesn't move very well, so you're going to get a lot more resistance on price when you're haggling with the dealer.
My girlfriend's car got stolen a few years back. When I asked the cop how much this happens locally he asked me what I drive, and when he found out my car had a manual transmission he laughed and said nobody would steal my car - the kinds of people who steal mass market cars don't know how to drive a manual any more.
Manual transmissions are almost always a custom order. You can walk into any dealer and ask that $800 be knocked off and chances are you will get it. But this only applies to the cars on the lot, which are almost always automatic.
If you are lucky the dealer might have a cancelled order on the lot with a manual transmission.
That's the purchase price. In the US, the market for manual transmission cars is smaller and so unless you plan on driving it into the ground, that manual transmission could very well end up costing the same.
On top of that, automatic transmission cars are more fuel efficient, so the operating costs might be a wee bit lower.
Is it smug to enjoy the perception of having more control over the vehicle's performance?
What's funny to me is the observation that only low end and high end cars have had manual transmissions. I started out with a low end Honda and either had to give it up or jump to a high end vehicle a decade later. I bought a second hand Audi to keep going with a manual at the time.
Is it smug to enjoy the perception of having more control over the vehicle's performance?
Enjoy it all you like, as long as you keep it to yourself. The point was about the argument, not the enjoyment. But "perception" is correct. After driving a '16 Corvette (Mom's) and a '15 BMW 428 (rental), I'm convinced that a manual transmission is good only for nostalgia or a mis-placed sense that one can do better with a manual. With double-clutch transmissions attached to an eight speed gearbox, I am now the bottleneck in the equation. I've played with the flappy paddles and concluded, "meh, who am I kidding, the computer can do this better and faster than I can". Let alone having to push a foot pedal and move a lever. To add insult to injury, a lot of cars I've looked at get better mileage with the auto than the manual. sigh
In conclusion, those with the smug attitude along the lines of "a real driver would drive a manual" can stuff it, the machines have won. There's no more need to manually shift the gears than there is to manually advance the ignition with a lever on the steering column. That said, four out of five vehicles in our house have manuals (the Leaf doesn't have a transmission at all), but were I to buy a modern performance car today it would have one of them there fancy DCT eight speed autos.
As for the mid-range being auto-only, makes a bit of sense to me. Low-end offers manuals for economy. High-end for performance, even if it's not entirely accurate these days. Mid-range? You mean the people that just want to drive to work in some thing other than an econo-box? Yeah, I guess they'd go auto since they're not trying to save money nor are they really "into" cars.
Not at all smug to enjoy it, but smug to judge other people who don't care about that and just want their car to take care of shifting gears on its own.
Automatic transmission cars are not popular in the UK. I've never really understood why, but I get the impression that they are considered to be expensive, unreliable and somehow offering poor performance or fuel economy. I've never owned one (there aren't many for sale) and so I wouldn't know whether such opinions have any basis in fact. However, IIRC passing the driving test in an automatic only allows the driving of automatics whereas passing it in a manual allows driving all cars, so driving lessons are conducted in manual cars.
It is slightly amusing that my current manual car has a display I can't turn off which tells me when it thinks I should change gear. The software which issues these instructions can tell when I am trying to accelerate rapidly or navigate hills and changes its instructions accordingly, so it might as well be changing the gears for me.
6 or 7 years ago I owned my only automatic after a few mostly poor experiences hiring, especially in the US. It was pleasant enough in traffic jams, but everywhere else it was compromised - it'd change gear when I'd prefer it didn't, preferred to drive like a limousine driver (slow, and very steady, slow gentle changes) to such an extent that I had to keep it permanently in sport mode, though it was far from sporty.
The book figures said it gave just about the same economy as the manual version, but real life use gave me far further from those than I ever remember experiencing with a manual.
I'll never have another unless it is a sporty thing with 8 speed, paddles and a prancing horse on the bonnet.
In all the "automatics" I drove, American as well as Japanese models (the latter only several Hondas), I had no problem to know and control very precisely when the shift up or down would occur. I would drive up a hill and I knew exactly if I pressed down just a millimeter more the care would shift, which I delayed from happening until the ascend got less steep. That level of control was easy to get with only a little bit of experience with the specific car/transmission.
Oh you could certainly affect the point of change with position of right foot. But that makes for as much of a compromise. Now you might have to back off mid turn instead.
I suspect I'd have noticed or cared far less if more of my vehicles hadn't been sports and I'd bought more mobile sofas, driving accordingly. :)
Overall I prefer the lazy V8 approach to avoiding gearchanges - have vast torque on tap.
The only time I recall wishing I had one was when I was driving through London (normally something I avoid at all costs) and got stuck in very slow traffic for about two hours.
Last time I looked up the claims that autos have better fuel economy, all I saw were manufacturer ratings being quoted. I'd love to see a real-world study of real drivers.
I know that personally I can tell I'm a much worse driver in an auto. I'm lazy - so in a manual that means paying extra attention to lights and the traffic so I can engine brake and coast more and avoid stopping and starting from first. In an auto I'm simply lazy period so I end up driving more stop-and-go. I wonder how much of an outlier I am.
> IIRC passing the driving test in an automatic only allows the driving of automatics whereas passing it in a manual allows driving all cars, so driving lessons are conducted in manual cars.
Somebody else mentioned this too. In the US, there are different driving tests for manual and automatic cars. It would be plausible to me that passing the test in an automatic meant a license that was restricted to automatics, but I just looked over my license and didn't see anything obvious. The "restrictions" section says only "corrective lenses".
However... I can't drive a manual transmission. I know I can't, and that's why I don't try. It's completely superfluous to restrict my license; I suffer the harm of trying to drive one.
And similarly, if you're not planning to drive manual, there is no benefit to having a license that says you can. If you can't drive manual, there's really no benefit to having a license that says you can. The benefit comes from having the skill, not the license. If you could, like me, get a license that allowed you to drive manual cars without knowing how, would you go out and start driving them without knowing how?
The license is less saying that you have sufficient skill to operate the vehicle in question, and far MORE saying that you are aware of geo-spatial relations and laws related to being legally responsible for operating such a vehicle.
Just like having a permit saying you can legally own firearms would not mean that you are in any way proficient at their use; just that you know when you should and shouldn't use them.
OK, but my point is, it doesn't make any sense to learn how to drive manual so that you can get a license permitting you to drive manual. If you didn't bother to learn, you wouldn't need the license.
But somehow multiple people are presenting the license as a reason to learn to drive manual when you otherwise wouldn't. Logically, that doesn't work.
This isn't an argument that everyone will care about, but it is a legitimate one for some: manual transmissions are much easier/cheaper to repair/rebuild.
The question seems to be which you'd care to replace first: clutch or rebuild the tranny? So I've been told, anyway. I've driven manuals all my life and don't recall replacing a clutch in anything I've owned, car or motorcycle. Come to think of it, of the few auto trannies I've had I don't recall having to get those rebuilt, either. And I've owned some hard-ridden vehicles, so maybe I'm just easy on tranny parts.
The tranny has to be removed in either case, so it's a question of what's easier once the tranny's out. For me, I'm happy to put a clutch in. I haven't the first clue how an auto tranny works Well, I have an idea of the principal, but no working knowledge of what those little check balls and the like do.
I wore the clutch out on the first manual I had in just over 6 years (too much slipping out slowly, I'm sure). After that, it went another 15 years or so before other reasons made the clutch/tranny life moot. Replacing a clutch is quite a bit cheaper, though, than rebuilding an entire automatic tranny.
I have, because just recently someone tried to convince me it's just plain impossible to go at slow speeds (<10mph) in a car.
And apparently that's very difficult when you don't have the clutch to moderate speed, or so I was told. It might just be that American drivers aren't used to going in any sense slow at all.
(But those damn bikers, always zipping by! By the cries, you must think cyclists in America have some magic potion that makes them go 50mph instead of, you know, <=20mph peak)
Well, it isn't impossible, but automatics vary on ease of this. Most automatics will move forward without pressing on the gas if they are in driving gear. Some do this faster than 10mph. Going less than idling speed requires fancy brakework.
It is much easier with a manual transmission. It isn't going forward with some power from you. Ease up on the clutch a bit and give just a bit of gas and you have no problems.
My 1999 Rover 75 has an automatic transmission and I have no trouble driving slowly (if I must). Never had any trouble driving cars in the US either (many visits over the last 20 years) and quite a lot of that was pretty slow (freeway from Raleigh to RDU on a Friday afternoon can be pretty much walking speed sometimes).
You must live in a different part of LA than I did. I spent a summer bike-commuting from Santa Monica along Wilshire Blvd to UCLA. It sucked. The cars were mostly going 50, the right lane was dangerous because of the 405 on-ramp and off-ramp, and the sidewalk was a slalom course of lamp posts.
The only real alternate route was to wind through Brentwood and around the VA cemetery. It was long, slow, and had its own hazard: there was a plant by the cemetery that made little spiky seeds that would deflate tires.
The Big Blue Bus was decent, but somehow longtime Angelenos in the early 2000s didn't believe that people who owned cars belonged on the bus.
Hollywood is hillier than Van Nuys, which brings me to ask, what is it like exactly to go over the hill (i.e. go between Downtown LA and The Valley) on a bike?
If you ride a bike regularly for exercise the ride itself wouldn't be too extreme because the hills are not that steep for a fit cyclist, but for those of us who only ride in the flats it'd be a brutal ride over the hills. That said even if you're fit, the main roads that go over the hills are not particularly bicycle friendly because usually it's either cars sitting in traffic or cars driving aggressively because there's a break in the traffic or cars driving aggressively trying to beat the traffic.
There are a few less-trafficked routes but those are windy with Waze drivers driving, you guessed it, aggressively.
If you go west of the major LA hills to Topanga and above Malibu there is a vibrant weekend cyclist community that only has to deal with... aggressive drivers in fashionable cars out joy riding (I jest somewhat but that area is one of the most popular with serious and casual cyclists (lotta spandex up in that piece!)).
I suspect the breakdown is not only between younger and longtime residents, but also between those who have or don't have a family (i.e., children) at home. My perception and experience is that parents need vehicles of a more permanent nature and drive far more frequently/extensively than non-parents.
What's really insane to me is that all the walkable cities are out East and get run over by a glacier for half the year. If there's anywhere where walking and biking and taking transit should be preferred it's LA. It's beautiful almost year round.
...except for the hills and, depending on your point of view, lurking vagrants/robbers/poopers. Some of us prefer our walks without the aroma of fresh human feces.
My friend got cancer so I lent her my car and haven't been driving for a few months now, I grew up here in LA so its always been seen as a disaster to not have a car. but even to get to music gigs it hasn't been a problem. I do use uber for some things but because I live close to a metro station its easy to get to downtown and then take any of the lines to get up to general areas, then if I need to get to a more remote place I uber over from the station. The combination of Uber/Lyft and the stations enables me to get anywhere I need to go in LA without a car, even late night recording sessions in Hollywood, I live in a good location so its not costly to use Uber for the times when I have to be out later than the train runs.
If I may ask, how does Uber/Lift work for musicians who play larger instruments? I'm a double bassist. For now, playing music is pretty much my main use of a car.
Have been here for 7 years and also see the split between transplants and those that grew up here and are just used to horrendous commutes.
I drive though and wish I didn't. The start to my day has been far less stressful when taking a train, bus, or carpooling. I've kept my car around because the nature of working in LA means that you might go from working one mile from home to somewhere all the way across the city. People say 'live closer to work' but it's kind of hard when you have an area you like living in at a (relatively) affordable price.
This ties in with the families/homeowners. Work moves, or closes down, and you might end up having to drive where it goes or where you can get a job. It's hard to live centrally and public transit is still in its infancy here.
The subway is getting expanded, though I feel the hub and spoke pattern doesn't help us as a city, and the stations are too widely spread apart to make it worthwhile to walk to. The buses...well, it would take me an hour, with one change, to make it 2.5 miles to where my work currently is. That's if it comes on time (which it never does). There aren't dedicated bus lanes, and people would protest if they cut down a lane on some of the major streets to make it so.
Biking is an option but I'm not really into the risk over reward with that at this time. Too many people I know have been doored or hit by cars (at least one a hit and run). Police don't enforce traffic laws and that makes it less safe for cars, bikes, and pedestrians.
Lyft/Uber have been a godsend though. Whether carpooling to other places in the city, and sometimes to work (my coworkers all leave at different times so it's hard to do regularly), and especially for safe nights out, everyone in my age group (mid-20s to 30s) heavily use the apps. I only use Lyft due to having some moral opposition to Uber, plus their drivers always seem better and not just former taxi drivers (who were shit when they were taxi drivers). I used to take taxis prior to the apps but always had trouble with them showing up at scheduled times and knowing where to actually go.
So, for now, I'll drive to work and feel a little guilty. I'll take Lyft and the subway when necessary. Still a sharp nope to the buses.
I live in nyc and owning a car is totally worth it. Today I drove to costco and sams club for some shopping. Tomorrow I'll drive to the jfk airport to pick up family. The freedom and convenience I get from it makes owning a car great. Even in NYC. Sure, I can go without a car but frankly it is a pain in the ass to go to costco or to the airport without. Convenience is my highest priority and owning a car is very convenient.
There is a third group of people to which I belong: Don't use car for normal work life but use it for weekend adventures.
I'm a bike commuter during the week but on weekends I drive more than 100 miles one way. Doing this with Uber or zipcar was cost prohibitive but I did consider it and even try it.
I did this (avoided buying a car in lieu of Uber/Lyft) my first year in Palo Alto/Menlo Park.
I lived in Hew York before coming out West so I was strongly inclined not to own a car, I didn't even bother replacing my drivers license after being pickpocketed 5 years ago. Using Uber frequently was actually pretty enjoyable. My ride was only about 15 min/$12. each way (sometimes I'd bike), and the drivers were usually interesting to talk to. Last year I did end up buying a car. With payments, insurance, parking, and gas thrown in (and the fact that I take Caltrain to get into SF or other cities), the economics really didn't make sense for me to buy a car, but it did improve quality of life in terms of just having more impulse to go out and drive to places, whereas with relying on Uber/Lyft, the thought of the money transaction for every ride discourages me from using it except for pragmatic reasons (yes, even though owning a car is more expensive in the long run).
I can relate. I'm seriously considering getting a "BahnCard 100", the flatrate offer of the German railway service (all trains and public transit in 100 cities included). It would set me back about 4000 euros a year, which is much more than I would usually pay for mobility. But once the money is spent, it will likely push me into more frequent weekend trips to cool places.
There are people living inside the train with a Bahncard 100 similar to the van people in the US. For example her: http://www.tyatravel.com/en/about/
A Bahncard 100 is a really nice perk you often get when working for a bigger German company. The company saves taxes and gets a discount, the employee gets unlimited free transportation.
For private use, it is hard to justify. You have to travel quite a lot to beat the price of a Bahncard 25/50 using special offers combined with local public transit flatrate ticket. Depends on where you live of course, but I think I would have to visit about 2 cities every week using special offer tickets, to reach the Bahncad 100 costs. It gets much more expensive, though, when you decide to travel very spontaneously and don't like to take trains at unusual times, which I prefer. Different story of course if you live in the South/North and want to visit the North/South regularly.
I understand the psychological aspect, but I mean if you live near a major airport, 4000 Euro buys a whole lot of weekend trips via budget airlines all over Europe, not just within Germany.
But the friction is even higher with air travel. The beauty of BC100 is the spontaneity of just getting on a train and not having to think about tickets (or queue for security).
There used to be a "Deutschlandpass", pretty much a one-month version of BC100 during summer, that cost some 300€ for young people. I did that with friends a few years back and it was great. We'd do tons of spontaneous things. You know that thing where most exchange students have been to more places in your own country than you've been? That ticket was the best (and cheapest) way to fix that :)
They didn't offer it this year. Instead there was a "Sommer-Ticket", 4 rides for 96€ for ≤ 26 yr olds, which doesn't even come close. Compared to the 269€ (349€ for >26yrs) that the Deutschlandpass cost, and considering how much I used mine in 2013 (26 out of the 30 days, about half of which more than one ride), that's not even funny.
Yes, this sheer human irrationality is an impediment to sensible progress.
I know, and you know, that a car just does not make sense mathematically. You can Uber/Lyft whenever it’s too difficult to walk. But emotionally, and I feel it too, turning the ride into a transaction makes it something you have to consider carefully. With a car, the payments, the insurance, the gas, are all disconnected from the idea of taking a specific trip. As a result, since I don’t have a car, I very rarely go anywhere that I can’t bike.
Now, combine this with so many people who can’t look at this mathematically, and say that life without a car is impossible, and we get very poor housing and transportation policies being supported all over the Bay Area.
I just did the math for my car, which is a 2006 Honda CR-V, under the assumption that the car will have no resale value. My cost per mile over the 10 years I've had it has been about $0.75. The costs were the purchase price, yearly registration and license fees, insurance, gasoline, regular oil changes and other minor schedule maintenance, a couple scheduled major services, new tires, and a few unscheduled fixes (new battery, light bulbs).
That's less than what Google is telling me Uber changes per mile, so at first glance it looks like for me that a car does make sense mathematically.
It depends on where you use the car. If you have free parking everywhere, that is effectively a government subsidy of urban sprawl and traffic. More crowded places charge for parking. In San Francisco, parking downtown is like $20 per day. And that’s if you leave it in an attended lot. Feeding the meter is so annoying.
Also, there is time spent in traffic. And fossil fuels are just stupid bad to use, so your $4 per gallon assumption is another hidden subsidy. But these don’t affect your personal finances, so they’re fine to leave out.
I didn't track it. I just took total mileage, divided by miles per gallon (I've got a ScanGauge II [1], which tells me each time I fill up what my miles per gallon on my previous fill up was), multiplied by $4/gallon. I picked $4/gallon because I'm pretty sure it never got higher than that here over the last 10 years (or if it did, it was only briefly), and I was trying to make sure I'd err on the side of higher prices.
I should probably do the same thing, and plug in some "average" of Prius MPG too just for kicks and complication [I trend toward complication before I simplify].
> You can Uber/Lyft whenever it’s too difficult to walk.
Not with kids you can't, because then you need car seats. Things like the Ride Safer Vests help a bit, but now you're having to lug those around. And if your kids are small enough, they must be in a rear-facing seat no matter what.
In practice, this means that for a family with more than one child there's a multi-year period when Uber/Lyft/taxis are basically non-viable. With one child, you may be able to limit this period to a year or two (e.g. in California the rear-facing seat requirement goes up through age 2).
While true, it's also not uncommon for one parent to take the kids somewhere and the other to pick them up. It may be possible to do that with one car or it may not depending on geography and where the adults need to be before/after having the kids in the car.
Simple concrete example that is quite common: one parent takes the toddler to daycare and then heads to work and works later than the other parent. The other parent starts work earlier and picks up the toddler on the way home from work. This can work with one car if their jobs are located close enough that they can switch which one has the car. But if not, this is really hard to do without two cars.
I assume you are referring to parking requirements.
Even if you can go without a car 99% of the time (like by using ZipCar), the one day you want to bring home a large appliance or piece of furniture, monthly Costo haul, etc. what are you going to do if there is no place to safely/legally stop within several blocks?
One thing I noticed about the references to costco throughout this thread, is that people only go there to buy a full overs-zed shopping cart full of supplies.
Maybe I'm just weird, but I walk there weekly and it's the only grocery store I use. Going early in the morning on weekends or an hour before closing weeknights means I can get from my apt and back with groceries in an hour.
When setting up a new apartment, in addition to the big stuff, I always find myself bringing home ~5 carloads of stuff from Target and Home Depot. Does that just explode into several dozen bicycle trips, or do you also use taxis for that? Where do they unload?
Within the city centre, but not on a large road, they will double-park if there isn't a space for loading nearby. Outside the centre, there will almost always be a parking space available.
26% of people use private cars to get to work in Copenhagen, and few of these people are driving to the city centre -- parking is too difficult. That means a badly parked delivery van isn't as much of a problem as it might be in other cities. At least, so long as it's not blocking a cycle lane.
Danish apartments tend not to have much furniture. It's the Scandinavian, minimalist style. I don't think many people would make dozens of bicycle trips; they'd either have, rent or borrow a car, or use taxis. Students might be an exception, but they don't have much space. You couldn't have fitted 5 carloads of stuff in my student apartment, especially in addition to the big stuff.
I can answer based on the Boston area. It's not that Boston is consistently perfect for walking and biking, but it's awful for driving, so the car-free life is pretty appealing.
I guess you could describe what delivery trucks do as "double parking". It's far from the worst traffic sin and you quickly learn not to follow a delivery truck on a one-lane street. Delivery drivers tend to be a lot better at solving this constraint problem than me in a Zipcar, anyway.
If you're moving, the best thing to do is to reserve street space for a box truck or moving truck in advance. Or you can wing it and just be in the way (a popular choice in September, when many new people move in).
I wonder if an Uber subscription might get around that transaction barrier. For example, a $100/month plan gives you up to a 100 Uber travel miles per month. Similar to how phone plans give you a certain amount of talk time minutes.
It would probably end up being far more about a min/dollars rate, since the time operating the vehicle and human (presently) driving it are both costs in time and not inherently in distance.
Approximating some numbers...
60 miles / hour (2 gallons and lets call that 10 USD for ease of accounting)
5 USD mis overhead (and profit)
15 USD driver wage (while working)
30 dollars an hour is about 0.50 USD / Min.
That's probably the absolute floor: I've not left much room in there for profit, insurance, vehicle costs... idle time of work units, travel to/from endpoints.
I suspect that 1 dollar / min is a reasonable fee, if quite aggravating for cities like Seattle / Bellevue.
LA resident here. Got rid of my car 2 years ago and haven't looked back. A big difference for me is that I hate driving - especially here. The stress of it really got to me.
Financially, I'm not sure that I actually 'save' money. I live within 100yds of a ton of bars and restaurants, and a 5 minute walk to Trader Joes/Metro. I Uber most places but also take the Metro to DTLA and Santa Monica pretty often.
The whole car payment/insurance/gas/maintenance costs for sure are more than what I pay to Uber/Metro but what I'm not sure how to value the 'cost of walking.' I definitely pay a premium for my location and I often wonder, if I lived in a less convenient area (had to drive to groceries, far from Metro) if I'd be able to not have a car. Because as it stands, car costs < uber/metro/rent premium
In our case, it did: we spent six weeks in LA, and we paid a good $500 extra to live in a townhouse that had a grocery store, mall and park within walking distance. What we spent extra on the location (I think) we made up in not having to pay for a long term car rental.
If we were doing this long term and had to weigh against buying a car, I think the math would have worked out differently.
I feel like if the premium wasn't there, due to sufficient competition among buildings and/or walkable areas OUTSIDE of the downtown cores (sub-nodes?) that it would be more viable for people to make that choice.
LA is a different place because of Uber. LA lost it's amazing public transit system over 40 or so years from like ~1935 to ~1975. Now they are slowly building it back, probably just in time for it to be obsoleted by automated cars given how long it's taking them.
Uber certainly helps deal with the lack of public transportation but the other big issue is LA is HUGE! My sister lives in Glendora (far east side of LA) I was staying in Venice Beach. It's about 45 miles. And that's not even one side of the LA metro area to the other, that's just LA itself. On Uber that would be ~$55 or so. A similar distance on the train system in Tokyo would be $10-$20 depending on how many different companies' trains you have to use.
Of course it might still be cheaper than a owning a car if you're not making the long trips often.
Given enough density, transit will never be "obsoleted by automated cars". It might be true in the suburbs where transit is highly inefficient and road space abundant relative to the population. But automated or not, cars are still an order of magnitude or two less space efficient than mass transit for moving people around.
A rail line can move as much as 20 car lanes today. Even if you double the space efficiency of cars with automation (a long shot considering you still need to accommodate for pedestrians, cycles...), transit will keep being vastly more efficient.
Automated cars will optimize parking and make on demand transit more affordable in the suburbs, but it will not solve transportation in dense cities.
LA is a dense place on average. The greater LA is more dense than the greater NY.
Automated vehicles will come in a range of sizes, from 2-seat pods to, at least, mini-bus sizes.
Currently we have about the worst utilization of vehicles possible. Drivers drive alone, and park their cars for long intervals. This is why one can claim that trains move enough people to fill 20 car lanes. At the other end of the spectrum, diesel busses are noisy, smokey, need a professional driver, and go from underutilized to packed, depending on time of day.
A mix of automated vehicles will be able to much more closely approach optimal load factors at all times of day. 6 or 8 passengers can ride in a car-sized automated vehicle. That makes streets a lo-capex alternative to rail.
With bigger vehicles, it becomes very impractical to not run them on a fixed route. Pairing people together works well enough, given enough demand, on UberPool and Lyft Line, it's inefficient for the bus sized vehicles you need to use street space efficiently. You need to pair routes while maintaining an acceptable waiting time.
Automated or not, mass transit is just geometrically way more efficient, there's no way around it in dense urban environments.
Your argument might be valid for a mid-sized american city, or a suburb, but it doesn't work for a european city, or even a dense american downtown.
> Automated or not, mass transit is just geometrically way more efficient
Actually diesel busses are only "efficient" when they are full. They're barely as efficient as single occupant cars just on fuel use when you factor in the bus running underutilized much of the day. That's not counting the cost of the driver, and assuming bus capex is efficient.
So even a commute-sharing system like that being tested in Waze would be more efficient than busses.
The bus is only "underutilized much of the day" in low density areas where automated on-demand cars would make sense. In cities like San Francisco or New York, or even Los Angeles, buses are relatively full even in the middle of the day.
Buses take as much space as 3 cars. Even if you can manage to optimize everything perfectly to pack 4 people in these cars at all time, you only move 12 people using the same amount of road of a bus transporting 60 to 90 people, much more in articulated vehicles. There is just not enough room in dense cities.
You have to consider the overall efficiency of a bus network, not one particular trip. In urban centers where buses are run on frequency, not timetable, a transit line is attractive because it runs often. People take the bus in rush hours in part because they know they can depend on it all day. These seemingly low-efficiency trips where the bus is half empty are actually very important to the overall efficiency of the network, because they induce demand.
The case for transit is a space argument, not a fuel argument. Mass transit is simply the most space efficient way of moving people around.
> probably just in time for it to be obsoleted by automated cars given how long it's taking them.
Uber/Lyft are still very much premium products. People earning minimum wage cannot afford to Uber to and from work every day, so they will be relying on public transport for a long time yet.
There are people who take multiple busses with a travel time of over an hour to commute less than ten miles. Peole who can't afford a car and/or don't have a valid license. If an uberpool costs five dollars, it can be a viable option for these workers and significantly raise their quality of life.
LA Metro opened up the Expo Line, a light rail between downtown LA and Santa Monica, in May as part of its effort to wean people off car ownership. When it began running, Uber ran a promotion for $5 off Pool rides to or from Expo line stations. For ride-hail companies, partnering with public transportation agencies to market themselves as companion services can increase mutual ridership. Kan, Lyft’s LA general manager, said three of the top 10 destinations for Lyft rides are metro stations.
If this trend continues and becomes more common, it has potential to really change transportation in LA. LA Metro is working on expanding the rail lines but there's always the "last mile" problem (not literally 1 mile, but usually last few miles to get/from rail station to destination). UberPool/Lyft Line can be the solution for this and the more people use it, the better solution it becomes.
Makes more sense in what way? Sure a bus is more efficient, but it's less convenient.
Getting people to take a train for the majority of their journey is far more efficient than having them drive because the bus doesn't stop outside their door exactly when they want it.
Although I can't help wondering if it would eventually become worthwhile to run a full size bus as a carpool taxi vehicle.
But it is not as if those 50 people with a last-mile problem live all within a few blocks of a single street going in one direction from the transit terminal. The people with last-mile problems, really two or three miles, are scattered all over the place, and for that a ride service works a lot better.
Santa Monica resident here. Last year my commuting motorcycle was stolen. During the insurance and replacement process I rented a car for 3 months. About 6 months later my new bike was damaged and out for repairs for almost as long, but that time I chose to not rent a car and just Uber everywhere, including to and from work in Playa Vista every day. The two periods came out to about equivalent costs, with greatly increased convenience and less hassle due to never caring about parking or having a few drinks after work. I didn't take any long trips out of town, but for getting around it was great.
I haven't owned a car since I moved to LA 4 years ago, it's pretty great.
I wonder why not more people own motorcycle or a scooter there. Is this the summer heat or just a cultural thing? Because otherwise it would be very convenient with that traffic and parking situation.
I moved to Los Angeles about four months ago and was surprised how little I drive. Uber and Lyft are insanely cheap here when using the pool/line options. I've taken 10 mile trips for $4! The metro is great too if you live near a line.
Certain parts of the city are easier without a car than others. A lot of it comes down to how far you live from work too. I walk to work everyday (10 minutes) and there's a plethora of stores in my area to walk to and shop at.
I'm about to sell my car and I'm not sure if I'll be getting another anytime soon.
This was very different from my own experiences living and working in LA in the late 90s and early 2000s. The buses were a joke, the Metro had terrible coverage, and the traffic was consistently terrible.
FWIW I was living near Arcadia/Covina and commuting to Santa Monica. What area of LA did you live and work in to have such a nice commute?
I live and work in Pasadena with a metro stop across the street from my apartment.
Your commute was definitely a tough one! A big issue I've noticed is that a lot of people work in west LA, but the housing prices are so high that most can't afford to live there. This also leads to much higher traffic for commuting in that direction.
That is quite a nice area to work/commute from. I hear they're extending the gold line down to El Monte--that would have made my life a lot easier at the time.
I certainly hope LA has strong, long term plans to improve the commuting/traffic situation for the area.
Of course, that commute is about 40 miles straight through downtown. Somewhat like commuting from Stamford, CT to Brooklyn. Or across the whole of London (say, Beaconsfield to Romford).
While this is true, there are a lot of people who commute to LA from as far as San Bernadino by car. As another commenter mentions, there's a ton of work to be had in LA with very little in the way of nearby housing in the price range of someone who's often driven (pardon the pun) to commuting by car.
At the end of the day I gave up on the job that required that commute--it was very stressful and not worth my health. It makes me wonder how many other people are effectively locked out of job markets in LA because they don't have cost and time effective ways of commuting there.
It looks like a lot of people here are arguing that this is happening or possible, with the rather limiting constraint that you're in or around West LA. It being an older neighborhood, has more density which doesn't exist in many of the post-World War II neighborhoods with Irvine being a good example of this. The Uber map for better wait times seems unsurprisingly biased to being around tourist areas like Santa Monica, Disneyland or Huntington Beach.
I suppose it depends on what you're definition of Los Angeles is, but if you argue that Thousand Oaks or Chino Hills is considered "Los Angeles", then this argument doesn't really hold water. The urban sprawl was built on the assumption of commuting and 2-3 hour commutes are not unusual around here. I realize LA might be a bit of an anomaly, but you can drive from Santa Monica to San Bernardino before you've really "left" the city and trying to argue that a carless life is really going to happen using this definition is a bit suspect.
> People in Los Angeles Are Getting Rid Of Their Cars
Instead, they’re riding Uber and Lyft to work.
Commuting is one thing, but cars are often necessary for other things (for instance, going hiking/skiing on weekends) where public transportation/uber isn't an option.
I wonder what is the recommended solution for this. In my case for instance, rental wouldn't be cheaper than owning a car. There's a car sharing service in my city but again, not significantly cheaper than owning the car.
I'm in the same boat. I need a car for going on hunting and hiking trips in the weekend, and will soon be upgrading to a 4wd.
Buses just don't offer the same time convenience, and don't go to the right places, they're also a lot slower than a car. Rental cars are more expensive than maintaining my own car, and I just park my car out of town at my brother's place to save on parking.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I recently bought a car, mainly to make weekend hikes easier to do. I rent it out on GetAround the other 80% of the time when I'm not using it.
Last year in LA (lived in mdr for 3 months), I rented cars for the trips. Did Zipcar one weekend to Reagan and Enterprise 19.99 weekend for a climbing trip.
If you're overnighting a couple times a month, maybe it's less cost effective. A person might also might have 1 of 3 buddies that has a car for these trips (I used this for surfing)
There are a lot of car haters voicing their hate but if you already hate cars, don't drive. That's not why people in LA are getting rid of their cars (if they are).
There is an introvert/extrovert angle here also. A car is completely private. You can go anywhere in your pajamas in total asocial mode with a car, and I wonder if that's why so many people are in their Pajamas at Ralphs. A car service requires contact with strangers.
I am in LA and I tried getting a bike once, but it was impossible. Road conditions are horrible, and I had nowhere to park my new mango colored bike comfortably. People would yell "nice bike" from their cars, and it was uncomfortable. And everyone I knew who rode a bike had multiple accident stories. If some idiot is going to hit me or suddenly open their door, I want to be in a car.
For me, Tokyo is the perfect train city. Fukuoka is the perfect bicycle city. And LA is still the perfect car city. But if you hate to drive, now you have options. It used to be you had none!
Right? I burst out laughing when I read that line. So it's gotta to be about seven or eight people, since it's "More than a half-dozen". Can't be be close to twelve, or else it'd read "Nearly a dozen".
This article does not back up it's claim. The article includes some anecdotes, and some data of Uber/Lyft becoming more popular, but does not include anything to indicate that car ownership is declining in significant amounts.
I'd like articles on this subject to at least mention two other significant costs:
Impact on jobs:
Unless and until Uber starts treating their workers fairly (treating them like employees and allowing them some negotiating power over their own livelihoods) not only is it bad for those workers and working people in general, but it's also bad for the country, which has to cover health care and other needs for those workers. Does anyone know how Lyft does in that regard?
Climate impact:
* Buying a new car creates the impact of mining raw materials, processing them, manufacturing, shipping, etc. I have no idea what that impact is.
* For purposes of the trip itself, I think using standard taxi/Uber/Lyft services probably increases climate impact over a personal car: The ride-hailing cars drive around empty part of the time, waiting for rides; your personal car is parked when you don't use it. Otherwise, whether you are in someone else's car or your own for the trip, the impact is the same (unless your car is more/less efficient than the ride-hailing car)
* Sharing rides, such as in trains, buses, carpool, UberPool, etc., obviously is much more efficient. I suspect the more people in the vehicle, the more efficient it is: Trains beat buses beat carpools, but I really don't know that.
> * For purposes of the trip itself, I think using standard taxi/Uber/Lyft services probably increases climate impact over a personal car: The ride-hailing cars drive around empty part of the time, waiting for rides; your personal car is parked when you don't use it. Otherwise, whether you are in someone else's car or your own for the trip, the impact is the same (unless your car is more/less efficient than the ride-hailing car)
When demand is low, the driver will take the car home and park it anyway. I think for climate impact, ride sharing more efficiently amortizes the fixed cost of manufacturing the car over the trips taken, since a single Uber driver and car can more than one owner-operated car. Also, the profit motive of the Uber driver incentivizes fuel efficient cars.
As far as climate impact goes, I think the long-term idea is on-demand, self-driving electric cars that get their energy from wind and solar.
Remember, the present system, which is destroying the climate, has many parts, so you have to change most or all of them to really fix things. But the parts will not be changed all at once. So for each component you need something new that will sell on its own, but also fit into the new overall pattern you want to get to eventually. What the transportation-on-demand companies are doing is a good example of this.
On-demand helps with mass transit because it solves the last-mile problem.
On-demand self-driving cars are cheaper to use than on-demand with a paid driver, so more people will use them, which cuts the total number of cars needed. As you say, that means less energy expended on building cars. It also means less energy for road construction and maintenance, and less city parking. Less city parking means more density, which cuts transportation costs.
I forgot to say in my OP that the new pattern would also include extensive car pooling, which on-demand makes possible and I am guessing that self-driving makes somewhat easier.
We cover insurance, but often not the realities of liability. Insurance has deductibles and limits. And often, people who get in accidents under insure (no collision / comprehensive) and postpone repairs to their own cars.
I also live car-free in Los Angeles. It is not that I don't want a car, I have just been too lazy to buy one. Money is not an issue and I have a dedicated parking spot that sits empty. I live by the Metro, so I can get to DTLA/Hollywood pretty easy. Live in walkable neighborhood, so I can walk to get groceries, with Amazon providing the rest. Even when I had a car in other locales, I would still use Amazon for various things.
I am an avid cyclist, yet I never commute anywhere by bicycle. I should look into getting a commuter bike. My current bike is too expensive to be used for commuting.
"If there’s anything as frustrating as driving in LA, it’s parking there: The city issues more than 2.5 million parking citations each year, raking in $165 million."
So in a way the city relies on people owning cars and statistical probability that its residents will periodically lose in the "great parking game."
Parking tickets are a form of soft tax and not having to pay this tax is not insignificant. From the following article:
"The price of a ticket for overstaying a meter steadily rose from $40 in 2006 to $63 in 2012, and officials have repeatedly acknowledged that the purpose was to bring in cash. This year, the city expects parking tickets to generate about $161 million in revenue."
That was 4 years ago. I wasn't able to find a current figure but generally those number only increase over time.
And it's not just meters. There are also street cleaning violation tickets that are $75 each. For those not familiar with LA. Street cleaning happens in residential areas. Twice a week( day for each side of the street)the available parking capacity is effectively cut in half. Even though the cleaning only takes place during a two hour window. Many residents will park in the early evening and then won't use their car again so they don't lose their spot for the following day. Time spent trying to find a spot to park the night before street cleaning is a quality of life issue. Sadly anyone who has watched a street sweeping machine in LA could attest to their dubious effectivity for actual cleaning purposes.
So an addition to the soft taxes applied in the form of parking tickets, theres a cognitive load and stress I suppose you could add to the calculations outlined in the article.
The question is what happens if(when?) ride sharing and car services are so successful that they begin to erode hundreds of millions of dollars the city obviously depends on. Then what?
Having recently moved to LA from the east coast, and hoping to stay put for awhile, I've really appreciated the interest in finding new ways of dealing with transportation in the city. It may be a generational issue, as some have said, but that doesn't need to be the case. Perhaps the current enthusiasm can find its way into housing and zoning policy and make a lasting change in a city that seems to have reached the limits of what sort of population and density can actually be sustained in an everybody-owns-a-car scenario.
I was an intern at Google Venice for the summer, and it was definitely cheaper for me to take Uber pool to work every day (especially since I lived with my parents). It would have been ~35 a day to rent a car, or ~20 a day for Uber pool, without the added stress of driving.
seriously? people giving up their cars in LA? Oh, sure, I believe that buzzfeed was able to find 3 people who gave up their cars. But what do the statistics say about LA car ownership?
My car mostly sits in front of our house in LA. Last month I rented it out to an Uber driver for 2 weeks, which paid for the most recent engine work it required.
Its one of the major ways people are rent seeked. Gas, insurance, maintenance, loan, loan interest, etc. Exploitation overdrive. And most people dont have a choice.
Cars, housing, education and medicine are massive rent seeking areas sucking people dry and I cant wait until all of these are subverted by new systems.
Decimate may have had an archaic definition like that (even then, the jury's still out), but the modern definition of "destruction of a substantial portion of" has been well accepted even in academia.
Unless we want to start using words only in their original, millenia-old definitions can we drop this thing every time someone uses decimation in the "wrong" way?
So do you also object to people referring to things as "gigantic" or "microscopic" which aren't in the order of a gigametres or a micrometres respectively?
From your own link: "Because the etymological sense of one-tenth remains to some extent, decimate is not ordinarily used with exact fractions or percentages: Drought has destroyed (not decimated) nearly 80 percent of the cattle."
Yes, because "decimate" means greatly reduced rather than eliminated, so the example would be like saying "Drought has greatly reduced 80 of cattle" which doesn't make much sense.
The latter tend to give all kinds of arguments about why owning a car is necessary, including safety, convenience, and cost. And they may be right -- for them. They live in the hills of a relatively remote area, like La Crescenta or Burbank or Chatsworth, and have Sunday brunch at some place in the Valley, and drive to Costco to fill up a freezer and a garage with goods, and drive to their dentist, doctor, and gym across town as well. It's a whole series of decisions, and it locks down tighter and tighter.
But newer residents are showing that a different way of life is possible, by making all these decisions differently. It's fantastic. It has changed the streetscape a lot, as various local enclaves spring up to offer services within walking or cycling distance, or near to transit.
But the gap between these two lifestyles really makes for some major disconnects around subjects like housing development along thoroughfares, density of development, parking, and bike lanes.