> Walking everywhere is nice as long as you know exactly where you want to live, you don't care about space, and can afford high rent.
Taking this piece by piece:
> can afford high rent
From the article: "The average working adult in Atlanta’s suburbs now drives 44 miles a day."
The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That's a huge amount of rent money--but I think driving expenses are spread out, less visible, and less predictable, which leads people to underestimate them.
> you don't care about space
Yeah, this is a tougher one, although you can get a surprising amount of space in walkable and transit-able areas--for example, neighborhoods in Portland manage to combine great walkability with quite a bit of space and single-family homes. (It's worth mentioning that these residential streets are laid out in a grid pattern without many cul de sacs.) But yeah, commuting does allow us to live where land is cheap, so if you really need a lot of private space, you might need to live further out.
> you know exactly where you want to live
Well, it depends, doesn't it--the denser your area, the more options you'll have within walking distance. I very much doubt that I have more options within a 15-minute drive of my Orange County apartment than I would within a 15-minute drive in a typical urban center. On the other hand, without a car, my options in Orange County are extremely limited. A city like Boston, where other modes of transport preceded and then occasionally took precedence over the car, has great amenities (including Fortune 500 companies, startup communities, and global research universities). You just don't need to drive to them.
Lastly, the article isn't about "walking everywhere." It's about being able to walk to a grocery store safely and conveniently. It's perfectly possible to walk to the corner store every few days, but hop in the car when you need to travel longer distances.
It's worth considering that the 55 cents per mile average probably includes the cost of the car... if you're paying $500 a month for a car payment, and you need a car, even half as much, you still have to pay $500 for the payment... meaning if you spend half as much in gas, you're now at $600/month and paying >90 cents per mile, it's all relative. You only really save on the cost of a vehicle if you already own it (no payments) are lucky enough to have minimal maintenance costs, and/or can otherwise eliminate a vehicle payment. Gasoline is generally a fraction of the cost of owning/operating a car.
That said, I tend to live pretty centrally located mainly to make my commute easier, if I could also have nearby (within a 5-7 minute walking distance) shopping etc, I'd really like it. The Phoenix area added light rail (my apartment is actually really close to a stop), but only a limited number of places I need to go are along a nearby route.
Of course, I am pretty lazy... I've been parking farther away on purpose to get more walking in when I go places, including work.
Most people with a car probably have at least one of car payments (because it is relatively new) or high maintenance costs (because it is relatively old). Driving a car less won't lower your payments. It will bring down maintenance costs, and can lower insurance.
> The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month.
That doesn't really reflect my experience unless we're talking about really inefficient vehicles. I drive 45 miles a day. It costs me about $140 a month in gas.
Your insurance costs are higher when you have a longer commute.
Your oil needs to be changed more frequently.
Wear-and-tear on your car is almost certainly correlated with miles driven, meaning maintenance, repairs, and replacement occur more frequently.
Cars ownership is about more than just the cost of fuel (which is cheap in the U.S. compared to the rest of the world). Sure, maybe the IRS rate is a bit high, but it seems the intention is to compensate for the average cost of ownership per mile, not the marginal cost to drive a mile. Don't trivialize it by pretending to be ignorant.
My insurance costs haven't changed much based on my commute. Oil changes can be amortized to about $12 a month. We're still not anywhere on the same planet as the $700 figure. If wear and tear are adding up to $600 a month when you're only driving 45 miles a day, it sounds like your car is effectively dead and needs to be replaced.
You can forget those costs, because I'm talking about the difference between my car sitting in the driveway except for weekend trips and my car driving 45 miles per day. That cost is the same in either case, so it doesn't matter to the comparison.
In terms of costs that directly arise from miles driven, I can't think of any that add up to 200% of my gas expenses. Like, even if you're replacing a $200 part every single month (which should not be happening), that still doesn't work out to the numbers you're citing, and the numbers you're citing are still less than the numbers I was objecting to.
You forgot to factor insurance, wear and tear on the car, and the cost of your own time that you spend in traffic - you are never getting those minutes back.
This is about the marginal cost of commuting farther versus differences in rent, so fixed costs like insurance and intangibles like time do not factor into the equation. I agree that long commutes suck, but that's not the question here.
Where I'm from, insurance cost goes up if you use it for commuting. Pleasure use means you use it less than 10 days a month and less than 6 for getting to work and back. So that's not fixed. Time is not intangible - you can count the difference in minutes. You don't need to convert minutes to dollar value because they have intrinsic value on their own.
Taking this piece by piece:
> can afford high rent
From the article: "The average working adult in Atlanta’s suburbs now drives 44 miles a day."
The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That's a huge amount of rent money--but I think driving expenses are spread out, less visible, and less predictable, which leads people to underestimate them.
> you don't care about space
Yeah, this is a tougher one, although you can get a surprising amount of space in walkable and transit-able areas--for example, neighborhoods in Portland manage to combine great walkability with quite a bit of space and single-family homes. (It's worth mentioning that these residential streets are laid out in a grid pattern without many cul de sacs.) But yeah, commuting does allow us to live where land is cheap, so if you really need a lot of private space, you might need to live further out.
> you know exactly where you want to live
Well, it depends, doesn't it--the denser your area, the more options you'll have within walking distance. I very much doubt that I have more options within a 15-minute drive of my Orange County apartment than I would within a 15-minute drive in a typical urban center. On the other hand, without a car, my options in Orange County are extremely limited. A city like Boston, where other modes of transport preceded and then occasionally took precedence over the car, has great amenities (including Fortune 500 companies, startup communities, and global research universities). You just don't need to drive to them.
Lastly, the article isn't about "walking everywhere." It's about being able to walk to a grocery store safely and conveniently. It's perfectly possible to walk to the corner store every few days, but hop in the car when you need to travel longer distances.