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2) spending $8-10k per year is a crazy amount on a car though...
Where are you pulling these numbers from? Or maybe you are assuming the first year cost if you had to buy a car to live here? While you certainly COULD spend that much on a car, you can easily spend much MUCH less than that. My wife and I each have a car. We carpool to work each day (16 mile round-trip) and limit the driving as much as we can, but we enjoy driving around to hunt for vintage furniture, visiting out of town friends, and playing rec sports and a few other things that having a car is useful for. Our total for all of 2012 for BOTH cars was right around $2200 with taxes, insurance, gasoline, oil changes, etc.
So, while Greenville is not a great city to go completely without a car, you certainly don't have to spend a ton each year to own a car.
Okay.
I admit that I do not recall EXACTLY where that figure came from, but I believe that the figure was USD 8,000-9,000 per annum was the "average fully-loaded cost" of running a car for the average American, as reported on a recent Strong Towns.org podcast.
Many people do not fully-load the costs of car-owning. And even worse, some of the costs of car owning are passed on to others, through the way we finance our highways - They are subsidized by the Federal government, so non-driver are now paying for some of the costs of car owning. I wonder how much longer that cross-subsidy will continue?
Let me try to confirm my figure, by pulling some figures off the web...
This is a little out-of-date, by the 2006 figure from the US government was a little bit over $8,000 per annum:
"Government Estimates
According to Consumer Expenditures in 2006, released in February of 2008 by the U.S. Department of Labor's U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average vehicle costs $8,003 per year to own and operate. The breakdown of the figure comes to $3,421 for purchasing the vehicle, $2,227 in gasoline and motor oil expenses, and $2,355 in other vehicle-related costs."
Obviously, the higher income people have, the more they are willing to spend on their cars. I reckon that gasoline prices today are near where they were (on average) during 2006, and maybe a bit lower than they were in 2007-8, when oil prices peaked. People are driving less, but other costs like new car purchase prices, and insurance costs may be higher today.
Maybe someone who is better at doing web research that I can get a more up-to-date figure.
As for the Cross-subsidies, that non-drivers (like me) make to the Car-dependent, Chuck Marohn talks about this in his latest Strong Towns podcast:
Basically, highways are VERY expensive to maintain, and most states are not getting anything like enough money to cover the costs from gasoline taxes. (For instance, North Carolina will need an extra $22 Billion over the next 30 years to fund its highway-related costs*, says Marohn.) So the shortfalls from gasoline tax are now getting funded through new bond issues, and through the state sales tax. If ALL of the costs of maintaining the highways were put into gasoline taxes, then the price of gasoline would go up by $2-3 per gallon.
This is tolerated politically because so many people drive, and the car-dependent are able to use the political process down the throats of the Carfree - although this is patently unfair. The problem now is that highway maintenance costs are rising much faster than revenues from the gasoline tax, and so it is getting harder and harder to fund these costs through cross subsidies.
Marohn quotes those who are talking openly about abandoning some old highways, raising gasoline taxes, and charging drivers for driving on a per mile. However you look at the real data, it should be crystal clear that the costs of driving are likely to rise and rise. I want to avoid that cash drain, if I can, by living carfree. It makes logical sense in my view of the world - I hate to be a sitting duck for future tax increases.
Pretty sure the 8-10k involves a car payment of some sort, unless you work for BMW where you get a nice lease option... and how nice a ride you want to have. (remember, don't spend more than 25% of your monthly income on Rims!) Most families with 2 paid-for vehicles probably spend ~5k/year. ($60 gas/week, $300 tax/year, $100 insurance/mo + maintenance - oil, tires, etc).
I am pretty keen to spend 0% of my income on wheels, and keep the rest to pay down a mortgage, and build up capital.
I hate the thought of my wealth draining away to foreign oil producers, and making the USA weaker, and its currency cheaper.
What do old folks do who can no longer drive and don't have younger relatives to chauffeur them around? I ask because I'm looking at semi-retirement in a few years when I'm around 70, I'm divorced and have no family in the Upstate (well, except for my ex-wife ). I'm hoping to drive into my 90s, but none of us knows what the future holds for us.
A great point.
I am younger than you, but I think about this too. And with many boomer approaching retirement age, "solving the transportation problem" for those who do not want to drive will become a bigger and bigger issue.
When I invest, I like the "wind at my back, not in my face", so I like to be on the right side of a long term trend. That is one reason, I left the US and stayed away, until the housing bubble was burst.
Yes, it was completely obvious that the US was in the midst of a Housing Bubble as early as 2004. It amazes me that any senior banking person could have missed it. But may were gaining so much in income and bonuses from the bubble, that they chose to ignore it. And no one has gone to jail yet for looking the other way. (Sadly, because too many banksters were greedy and incompetent, and justice has been denied.)
i never understood the appeal of using mass transit for some people.
Have you ever lived in a City with a good mass transit system?
I have lived in: Boston, NYC, Chicago, London, and Hong Kong, and it mystifies me why anyone would want to live somewhere that they MUST own a car. I lived in a city where everyone was car-dependent (a suburb of Detroit), and would never go back to the isolation and lack of freedom that comes with the car-dependent living arrrangement.
I was born in Detroit - a city where you need a car, and would never go back to that kind of living.
Since then, I have lived in: Boston, New York, Chicago, London, Hong Kong
Do you think a car-addicted city like Detroit (or even Charlotte?) can be compared to any of those great cities?
My advice is stay in one of those "great cities" and enjoy the rest of your life there, because you'll probably never be happy living elsewhere.
For what it's worth, I do know people living comfortably in Greenville without a vehicle. I enjoy visiting the nearby mountains and lakes regularly via an automobile.
My wife and I managed sharing a car for quite awhile here, and I imagine you could get away without having a car downtown. However, I can't imagine living here without the option of jumping in a car and getting out of Dodge. There's just not a ton of things going on here, so road trips are a must-do thing for us.
Part of the appeal of Greenville isn't Greenville, it's Greenville's proximity to other places (like the mountains, the beach, Atlanta, Asheville). And I think I'd go insane if I felt the downtown area was the only place I could easily go to. It's nice, don't get me wrong, but the appeal wears off after living here awhile.
The ideal situation would be having a car for whenever needed while utilizing a convenient, efficient and cost-effective public transportation system wherever possible. For example, my children ride the school bus, but after-school activities, sports, evening PTA meetings, whatever often require getting to/from school in a car. (I won't digress into all the many deficiencies of the school bus system other than mentioning my only-sorta-joking conspiracy theory that they make it bad to discourage its use.
I have a friend who cannot drive (due to a health condition) -- she lives proximate to a busline and based on her experiences I know greenville's public bus system is woefully lacking in convenience and efficiency. She manages to get to/from work via the bus but is frequently late due to delays. She also has a network of friends to count on for evening/weekend transportation.
And that brings up a quibble I have with the OP's assertion that the 'carfree' ought to be emancipated from contributing to the costs of road maintenance-- not owning a car is NOT synonymous with never being in a vehicle on a publicly-funded highway. You might not be 'car dependent' but you ARE dependent on the network .... unless you tell me you grow all of your own food (for just one example) then you are being nourished with products that got to you via those very roads you claim not to use.
Location: South Carolina - staying with brother in Columbia
596 posts, read 937,571 times
Reputation: 188
Quote:
Originally Posted by Geologic
Have you ever lived in a City with a good mass transit system?
I have lived in: Boston, NYC, Chicago, London, and Hong Kong, and it mystifies me why anyone would want to live somewhere that they MUST own a car. I lived in a city where everyone was car-dependent (a suburb of Detroit), and would never go back to the isolation and lack of freedom that comes with the car-dependent living arrrangement.
Hence the SEARCH underlying this thread.
most places aren't as dense as those cities and mass transit makes no sense.
i see having a car as having freedom and being forced to rely on mass transit as a lack of freedom, but i grew up in south carolina.
if i have a good job at a nuclear power plant, i don't think they would put in mass transit to the plant, and thus i would need a car to get to it.
Okay.
I admit that I do not recall EXACTLY where that figure came from, but I believe that the figure was USD 8,000-9,000 per annum was the "average fully-loaded cost" of running a car for the average American, as reported on a recent Strong Towns.org podcast.
Many people do not fully-load the costs of car-owning. And even worse, some of the costs of car owning are passed on to others, through the way we finance our highways - They are subsidized by the Federal government, so non-driver are now paying for some of the costs of car owning. I wonder how much longer that cross-subsidy will continue?
Let me try to confirm my figure, by pulling some figures off the web...
This is a little out-of-date, by the 2006 figure from the US government was a little bit over $8,000 per annum:
"Government Estimates
According to Consumer Expenditures in 2006, released in February of 2008 by the U.S. Department of Labor's U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average vehicle costs $8,003 per year to own and operate. The breakdown of the figure comes to $3,421 for purchasing the vehicle, $2,227 in gasoline and motor oil expenses, and $2,355 in other vehicle-related costs."
Obviously, the higher income people have, the more they are willing to spend on their cars. I reckon that gasoline prices today are near where they were (on average) during 2006, and maybe a bit lower than they were in 2007-8, when oil prices peaked. People are driving less, but other costs like new car purchase prices, and insurance costs may be higher today.
Maybe someone who is better at doing web research that I can get a more up-to-date figure.
As for the Cross-subsidies, that non-drivers (like me) make to the Car-dependent, Chuck Marohn talks about this in his latest Strong Towns podcast:
Basically, highways are VERY expensive to maintain, and most states are not getting anything like enough money to cover the costs from gasoline taxes. (For instance, North Carolina will need an extra $22 Billion over the next 30 years to fund its highway-related costs*, says Marohn.) So the shortfalls from gasoline tax are now getting funded through new bond issues, and through the state sales tax. If ALL of the costs of maintaining the highways were put into gasoline taxes, then the price of gasoline would go up by $2-3 per gallon.
This is tolerated politically because so many people drive, and the car-dependent are able to use the political process down the throats of the Carfree - although this is patently unfair. The problem now is that highway maintenance costs are rising much faster than revenues from the gasoline tax, and so it is getting harder and harder to fund these costs through cross subsidies.
Marohn quotes those who are talking openly about abandoning some old highways, raising gasoline taxes, and charging drivers for driving on a per mile. However you look at the real data, it should be crystal clear that the costs of driving are likely to rise and rise. I want to avoid that cash drain, if I can, by living carfree. It makes logical sense in my view of the world - I hate to be a sitting duck for future tax increases.
While you may be able to pull some average figures for lots of things on the internet, I'm very organized when it comes to our finances and I am always tracking our trends and budgets. That's how I was able to provide you that factor for our car expenses last year. So while $8000 per year per car might be some sort of national average, ~$2200 was what my wife and I spent for two cars here last year. I included all insurance, car property taxes, gasoline, and regular maintenance (filters, oil, tire rotation etc.) in those numbers. I do not include any portion someone might attribute that is passed on to *everyone*. IE, anything already built into general taxes I do not count since everyone is paying it regardless.
So $2200 was accurate for us for all of last year. Now, our cars are paid for. We bought both cash for <$10,000 each about 10 years ago (they were not beaters either, we just went with reasonable, used cars). For example, let's split that $2200 evenly between both cars just to make it simple. So my car cost me $1100 for all expenses occurring in 2012. Even if I annualized the $9500 initial cost of the car 10 years ago, and a total of $700 in tires and brakes over these 10 years (changed each once) my 100% total cost of ownership for my car last year (2012) was $2120. And of course your average cost of ownership annually gets smaller every year you get away from the year you bought the car.
The $8-10k number might be a true average for Americans, but most Americans by cars more expensive than they need (desire, luxury, or just not researching the financial impact), drive more than they need to, and buy cars more frequently than they need to.
Someone like you shouldn't be afraid of the $8-10k number because you would probably be more similar to my wife and me and your real average cost of ownership would be MUCH lower.
If you live near the heart of downtown Greenville, you really can get by fairly well without relying on a car. But, depending on what you like to do, it might be worth it to buy a high-mileage used car with a good maintenance record to have around just in case
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). I'm hoping to drive into my 90s, but none of us knows what the future holds for us.
