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I only get groceries once a week too, and indeed I carry everything and don't have a car. Even when it's freezing cold outside. How do I manage?
First, I don't have a family (yet, anyway!), so I only have to buy food for one person (myself). Second, I use reusable bags which are durable enough for the job. Third, I can take a train for part of the route if need be (or in a hurry). Fourth, I am accustomed to it (I've been living like this for more than 5 years, and I know what I need to wear depending on the weather). Finally, if the weather is truly unbearable or unusually extreme, I can wait it out for a couple days if need be.
But of course, I realize that for those with a family, who aren't accustomed to it, who live several miles from any transit or shopping, or live in difficult climate or geography, etc. might not find that lifestyle practical.
The biggest car use for many is not grocery shopping but their commute. And the easy solution to that, which may or may not be practical for a given person's circumstances, is to live closer to work.
If you have two spouses with jobs 20 miles apart, obviously at least one of them will need to commute (unless telecommuting is offered by one or both employers) but there is no reason both have to - you can live near one of the jobs. The real tough spot is with school-age kids that need continuity in their education or a home that would be difficult to sell. Of course one may argue that the latter is just a reason not to own a home in the first place, but this brings up a whole 'nother set of messy issues.
I get so sick of people offering this advice, to move closer to work. Sure it is a great idea initially, but people usually are never at the same job forever. If you buy a house you plan to stay there, you build your roots there. Say one person lives close to work and the other has a 20 minute commute- then the one who works close by gets laid off, or transferred to another office, or simply finds a new better job that is also 20 minutes away in the opposite direction? Then they both have a commute! That is just how it is, the days are gone for the most part of finding a job, knowing you'll be there forever so you can find a house near your work and plant roots there. And besides, living near a certain work place may not always work well for other reasons, too- for example where I work, the homes nearby are in the $600K- $700K and up price range. WAYYYY too expensive for me, so I have to live further out in the suburbs for something I can actually afford.
How much money do roads cost? Don't forget to include all the infrastructure to support them. Granted, building rail to the burbs in a low density town like Nashville doesn't make a lot of sense either. Americans have a very hard time thinking macro. We always want to turn everything into micro. Sometimes the two perspectives are conflicting.
I take the bus from NE PA into NYC five days a week. I would not have accepted my job offer if I had to drive in. I am amazed every day as my bus sails along in the special bus lane to see the thousands of cars, single drivers all, sitting in miles of traffic. I have absolutely no idea why they do it. No clue. They can't all have free parking. So they're paying gas, plus $13 to enter the tunnel, plus God knows what to park in a garage .... for what??????
I used to have to drive 90 minutes each way to a job, as there was no public transportation (suburban/rural area). It's not that I was too snooty to take it -- there was no. option.
I was hit by a drunk driver, hit several deer, spun out in ice, spent the night on the side of the road because of bad weather, and spent countless hours steaming in traffic jams. The stress was immense. Unless the commute is less than a half-hour, I cannot possibly think it is preferable.
And I do not live in some elite enclave - far from it - it's a middle class area where people have moved because they can't afford the city.
I would love to have more public transit options - there is no easy way to get to Philly, for instance, or to interim points before NYC.
That's because despite what many want us to believe, many people still prefer to drive even in cases where public transit is more convenient (which is rare). NYC is probably one of a handful of places where public transit is actually more convenient yet people still still clog up the streets...because driving is the preferred method of travel for those who can afford it.
I recognize that my public transit experience might be different than yours, but when I'm sailing by the traffic jams on I-25, sitting in a comfortable light rail car and looking out at the beautiful mountain views, I'd argue that the "herd" is to be found in the cars idling on the highway, going nowhere fast. Moo!
What about those idling at the bus stops or transit stops?
No, it's a problem for you. Most people don't have a problem with it. Objectively, it isn't a problem. The marginal cost of driving a short distance (like two miles to the grocery store for a typical suburbanite) is very, very low.
But what is the true cost: pollution, health, etc. Just because the act of driving two miles is cheap, doesn't mean it has no impact.
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Cheaper than the cost of the fare which is 80% subsidized. Cars are more energy efficient and cheaper to operate than buses per passenger mile. There is a societal benefit to people taking cars instead of buses in that more people riding buses encourage more buses. Buses are more expensive and more energy intensive than cars. It doesn't have to be this way, but that's how transit in America operates. It's massively over-funded for the level of demand there is. The demand is very low because it frankly sucks since the focus is minimum levels of service rather than transportation. If you focused it, as other countries do, on routes where there was demand ridership would be higher and it would cost less.
There is also a societal cost as well, of engineering all activity out of our days. And even for people who drive all the time, their car is only in use like 30% of the day. The rest of the time it stays parked hogging up land that could be used otherwise. I am not saying there is not use case for cars, but we don't look at all the impacts of using them for all trips. It is a lot higher cost than CO2 emissions and oil prices.
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Agreed, but look at the explosion of Lyft/Uber-type services in cities. Now realize that most of those costs are labor costs. It won't be the savior of the universe, but it will revolutionize transportation, especially in cities. You've just cut the cost of a taxi substantially. Mass transit will still have a role in urban areas. You can't replace BART or the 38 bus with driverless cars during commute hours as congestion is a problem. Especially for short trips during the day, however, it will make transit largely irrelevant. Assuming the 80% subsidy of transit is applied to a driverless car that is currently wasted providing transit in San Francisco, the clear winner is obvious. Even if you about double the IRS rate and assume it's $1 per mile, 80% subsidized like MUNI, that's only 20 cents a mile. It's hard to go 10 miles in San Francisco.
One of the biggest benefits of uber/lyft/car-sharing is that if cuts down on the number of cars per person, and the percentage of a cars available hours it is being used. Suddenly, a person who might have bought a car realizes they only need it 20% of the time. So one car is for 5 people, instead of 1-2 cars per person. And that car that spends 80% of the day parked is suddenly getting used 50% of the day. A lot more efficient from a resource usage perspective.
That's because despite what many want us to believe, many people still prefer to drive even in cases where public transit is more convenient (which is rare). NYC is probably one of a handful of places where public transit is actually more convenient yet people still still clog up the streets...because driving is the preferred method of travel for those who can afford it.
50% of New Yorkers use transit for their trips. It can't suck that bad. For some trips, not driving is a lot faster, even if you are as rich as Bloomberg.
Prosopis, apologies in advance if you genuinely have never considered the plight of people who cannot drive. But this is an opportunity to educate yourself. If you have eyesight below 20/40 (+/- depending on the state), or epilepsy, or a couple of other physical problems, you can never operate an automobile. It's not a "free choice".
How produce is shipped to markets has nothing to do with private automobile ownership. The near-impossiblity of buying food that has not touched a vehicle at some point only speaks to the total dominance of the automobile in today's society.
If you were legally banned from having children because of something you were born with, I suspect that you would feel differently about these taxes.
Non-drivers have every right, indeed a duty to oppose the very existence of an efficient road system along with their tax dollars paying for it. Every advance in the road system means more places where they cannot live and more employers who won't hire them.
Forgetting, or ignoring, that some people in the world are denied the privileges that you take for granted -- and have constructed an entire society around -- would be the very definition of "self centered".
But it does have something to do with the money being spent on roads/highways. Even if a person can't drive, they still benefit from roads/highways.
It strikes me after reading this paragraph from your previous post that cars help drive economic expansion by allowing such conveniences. My husband and I share a car, and as such we must carefully plan our schedule, meaning that I shop on a particular day at a particular place. If I forget something important, I can't necessarily just run out and pick it up, so I've learned to be resourceful; I can make all sorts of things from household odds and ends. This has a dampening effect on our household expenditures. Whether or not I personally run over to a Office Depot to pick up a $.99 bottle of Elmer's or make a jar of white glue from the pantry doesn't seem like such a big thing, but when everybody starts eliminating those convenience purchases, it can really add up.
I guess I wasn't referring to non-essential stops, such as what you mentioned for convenience purchases that could be eliminated. I am referring to stops for baby diapers, medicine for the baby, baby food/formula, light bulbs, paint, replacement twine spools for the weed-eater, etc. Just the little necessary things that require stops at these stores. Why should we have to restrict our movement and our options for going to get the things we need? Do we want to live in a society where we allow ourselves to be limited in our movement?
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