To have a car, or not? (San Francisco, Daly City: car rental, market, insurance)

[jupiler]

Please help me with this decision. I'm single and plan to live near public transit. My initial thought is No Car due to the availability of public transit. But then, here are some scenarios that I currently use my car for. I'd like to know how does a car-less San Franciscan typically handle these?

-Grocery shopping. I currently shop once a week or every 2 weeks, and bring quite a bit home. Do car-less SF'ers go more often and have less to carry?

-Do grocery stores in areas like Inner Sunset and West Portal have parking?

-Buying large items like TV and furniture. Do stores typically deliver?

Also, I'm sure I'll be road tripping quite a bit to all that California has to offer. I could rent a car in these cases, but it's another use case for having a car.

Is it a good idea to have a car for these cases? I have an old car that probably isn't very attractive to thieves. I imagine I'll use it once a week or so. Is street parking near the home typically safe and free?

[Boompa]

When we lived in San Francisco we never went "Grocery Shopping" as suburbanites call it. Daily trips to a produce or butcher shop for about $10-20 and most of the time a take out that would last a couple of days. We often laughed about not needing a car or a refidgerator. Once a month or so we would schlep over to Trader Joes for about $50 worth of stuff and take it home on the bus. Even Trader Joes was impossible to park at, there was a line of cars waiting to get into the parking lot so the bus was easier.

As for furniture or appliances, since almost every circumstances meant carrying them up numerous floors of stairs, delivery was a neccessity. I often scratched my head about why I kept an expensive Land Rover sitting in the garage, the answer was that it was a lease and would have cost me a bundle to get out of.

[California Vagabond]

Serious grocery shopping is much more easily done by rail than by bus, at least in my experience.

You might want to invest in one of these:
Amazon.com: American Trading House, Inc. H1001XL-Heavy Duty Shopping Cart in Black: Home & Kitchen

I purchased similar models from supermarkets, but they always wound up breaking. The one linked to hasn't ... at least not yet!

Appliances and furniture can always be delivered, but please bear in mind that someone will need to be home to sign for the order. That can get old, if it's hard to be home and you're ordering a lot of stuff.

Some parts of San Francisco are transit friendlier than others. If you'll be car-free here, I suggest a careful study of the SF Muni maps:

Official Muni Maps

before deciding where to live.

[bentobox34]

Originally Posted by jupiler

Please help me with this decision. I'm single and plan to live near public transit. My initial thought is No Car due to the availability of public transit. But then, here are some scenarios that I currently use my car for. I'd like to know how does a car-less San Franciscan typically handle these?

-Grocery shopping. I currently shop once a week or every 2 weeks, and bring quite a bit home. Do car-less SF'ers go more often and have less to carry?

I have been almost always grocery shopping by bicycle for 11 years. My bike has a rack on back with a milk crate attached by zip ties or bungee cords, and a basket in front. Add in a backpack and reusable canvas bags that can sling over the shoulder. With that set up, I (almost) always have enough cargo space to carry home all the groceries I want. There was one time in 11 years that I went overboard and had to call someone to come help me. Granted, I tend to shop two times a week on average, which is more out of a preference for fresh food than anything else.

Keep in mind that grocery stores will be a lot closer to where you live than they are on average in suburbia.

-Do grocery stores in areas like Inner Sunset and West Portal have parking?

I can't speak to those areas in particular, but parking is hell almost anywhere in SF, especially at grocery stores.

-Buying large items like TV and furniture. Do stores typically deliver?

These types of trips happen so rarely that it is almost always more economical to rent a car, take a taxi, get help from a friend, or pay for delivery.

Also, I'm sure I'll be road tripping quite a bit to all that California has to offer. I could rent a car in these cases, but it's another use case for having a car.

Again, car rental will probably be more economical. You could rent a car at least two weekends per month for less than the cost of owning, insuring, maintaining & parking a car in SF. There's also zipcar.

Is street parking near the home typically safe and free?

No and no.

[uptown_urbanist]

Originally Posted by jupiler

Please help me with this decision. I'm single and plan to live near public transit. My initial thought is No Car due to the availability of public transit. But then, here are some scenarios that I currently use my car for. I'd like to know how does a car-less San Franciscan typically handle these?

-Grocery shopping. I currently shop once a week or every 2 weeks, and bring quite a bit home. Do car-less SF'ers go more often and have less to carry?

-Do grocery stores in areas like Inner Sunset and West Portal have parking?

-Buying large items like TV and furniture. Do stores typically deliver?

Also, I'm sure I'll be road tripping quite a bit to all that California has to offer. I could rent a car in these cases, but it's another use case for having a car.

Is it a good idea to have a car for these cases? I have an old car that probably isn't very attractive to thieves. I imagine I'll use it once a week or so. Is street parking near the home typically safe and free?

Is your choice of city based purely on public transportation? If so, I would NOT move to the Bay Area right now. Sure, public transportation is good in many areas, but you'd have just as easy a time in places that cost a less and have a much better rental market. You could live without a car even in many smaller California cities.

If you have other reasons for moving to SF, or have a good job opportunity here, I'd wait to see where you end up living before you make a final decision on the car (but WOULD draw up two budgets, one for with a car, one for without). We've never had a car while living in the area. Where we lived in the Richmond it was possible to find street parking, but it took some circling and you'd probably have to park a few blocks from home. Or you could rent a place with parking, but that seemed to be worth about $100-$150 in the rent price (either folded in and the base rent was higher to reflect parking, or advertised as an option; some places, like ours, had no parking option, so you could either try for a street spot or rent a garage spot from someone else.). I did most of our shopping at local markets, and on the weekends when we rented a car for some other purpose we'd make a Target run to the Colma Target to get boxed stuff like cereal, which tended to be extremely expensive in our local stores.

For bigger items, just get it delivered. Unless you have a cargo van you'd probably have to do that anyway.

If you envision wanting to use a car at least once a week, join a car rental place like City CarShare or Zip Car. They are all over San Francisco and in some other areas of the Bay Area, and are cheaper and easier than owning and maintaining your own car if you're not using it for commuting or more regular driving.

But... the rental market is truly crazy at the moment in SF. Don't rush out and ditch the car (I am assuming you own one at the moment) BEFORE you find somewhere to live. When we moved back we ended up in Alameda, and while we don't have a car, our rent here is cheap enough that if we had a car it might still be worth it to keep it to make it easier to run some errands and to get out and explore the region, and parking seems to be pretty easy. We don't yet want a car enough to go out and buy one (it still makes more economic sense to just rent when needed), but if we already had one I'd probably keep it.

There are also some neighborhoods in the city where it would be handy to have a car. Not all areas of San Francisco are convenient for living without a car, so don't make the mistake of thinking that all neighborhoods are equally well-served or convenient if you're planning on making most of your trips on foot/public transportation/bike.

[alliance]

As I'm writing this there's an insurance assessor outside looking at my car to give an estimate for 2 episodes of vandalism and a hit and run claim. This city hates cars. Or more like it, the people of this city hates cars. I have never lived anywhere with such disrespect of other people's property.

Oh, and I've spent well over a thousand dollars in the last year on street-sweeping tickets and a towing fee.

If I didn't love my car so much I'd ditch it...

[capoeira]

Originally Posted by jupiler

-Grocery shopping. I currently shop once a week or every 2 weeks, and bring quite a bit home. Do car-less SF'ers go more often and have less to carry?

-Do grocery stores in areas like Inner Sunset and West Portal have parking?

In Inner Sunset the only big grocery store is Andronicos and it has a parking lot. In the 20's Aves in Sunset there are a lot of good produce markets,mostly Asian oriented except for the big one at 22nd & Irving. Irving and the side streets have meter parking. If one can't park in the heart of things at 20th and Irving they can easily park around 27th & Irving and walk.

West Portal does not have grocery stores,only a few very small dumpy markets. The closest grocery stores to West Portal are the Safeway on Taraval,the Lucky on Sloat and the Trader Joes in Stonestown Mall.

There a lot of Safeways in the city and they all have parking lots. Some are very small rooftop lots like the one on Taraval. Some are big surface lots like the one on Fulton near the ocean. Target has groceries at much better prices than Safeway. If you stock up it is worth the drive to Daly City or Colma to go to Target.

You will waste a tremendous amount of time taking public transit to grocery stores unless you limit yourself to a small area. For example if I want to go to the Japanese grocery in Japantown,it is an under 15 minute drive for me. In contrast, taking public transit would take an hour+ with transfers and waiting. I can drive to Rainbow Grocery(the best natural food store in the city) in ten minutes. By the time I take the Muni train and transfer to the 22 bus and then walk 3 blocks etc. it will take a long time. If you take only public transit to grocery stores in SF,you greatly limit your options.

[capoeira]

Originally Posted by Boompa

Even Trader Joes was impossible to park at, there was a line of cars waiting to get into the parking lot so the bus was easier.

If someone wanted to go to that Trader Joes on Masonic they could easily park on Anza and walk one and a half blocks. I don't understand why people will wait in a long line to park in a crowded lot to avoid walking a couple of blocks.

[California Vagabond]

It's too late to edit my last post, so I'll write another to add this: the cart I linked above would only come in handy if you shop once a week or less frequently, and often buy heavy stuff when you do. If not, it might be easier to tote a few reusable bags.

[Boompa]

NOt to mention that Super Markets are, in general, too expensive. When I lived in Outer Richmond three went under because they couldn't compete with Clement Street or Geary Blvd. Shopping at the Safeway on La Playa was outragous. Trader Joe's on Masonic using their store brands was much better. I could walk over and ride the #38 home.