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Nothing new about owning one car. Lots of families do that. It is just limiting when wife and husband both need to be somewhere like work at the same time.(then in your case you are limited to hours public transit can run or distance bike can go and forget biking in snow.) Get back to me when you try having kids and no car.
I bike 6.5 miles each way to get to work, it takes roughly the same time it would take to drive and is faster than transit. As for snow, in Portland, that rarely happens and when it does, the city basically shuts down so forget driving in the snow.
And in case you missed it, we already have one car, so we will be fine when we have kid.
The calculators that assume that assume you're buying a new vehicle every five years and financing the entire purchase price at some outrageous rate of interest. There are many ways to make a car cost less than that.
I saw gas here in CO today for $2.91/gal. So much for these predictions for the last 7 years I've been on CD that it will be going up to $5+/gal some time soon.
I was just using a simple general calculation. Regardless of how one wishes to figure out the cost of a car, it is still going to cost you money to own and use a car, and those costs will add up.
I bike 6.5 miles each way to get to work, it takes roughly the same time it would take to drive and is faster than transit. As for snow, in Portland, that rarely happens and when it does, the city basically shuts down so forget driving in the snow.
And in case you missed it, we already have one car, so we will be fine when we have kid.
Due my parents had one car when I was an kid, no big whop in my opinion.
Due my parents had one car when I was an kid, no big whop in my opinion.
Yes, I agree. Having one car reduces the cost a family has to spend on cars but it requires living in an area that provides options for commuting such as walking, biking, and transit.
Yes, I agree. Having one car reduces the cost a family has to spend on cars but it requires living in an area that provides options for commuting such as walking, biking, and transit.
Not really. In olden days the wife used to drop the husband off at work or just get stranded at home.
Why? Well why not? That is my opinion. That is the way I grew up in a suburb of St. Louis. That is simply normal, never to pay for parking. Library, school, church, work, shopping, Boy Scout meetings, whatever. There was always free parking. It seems sick and twisted to pay for parking. If the world weren't so overcrowded, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
But it's not a natural condition. Why is parking so special it should always be free? It makes no sense. It has some cost, sometimes low, sometimes not so low. I'm rather surprised, you're usually fairly reasonable and often loudly criticize unreasonable posters, but this reads as one of the least reasonable ideas I've read on the forum in a long while.
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This is probably, at least in part, generational - I am 70. I was used to certain wonderful conditions which no longer prevail in many locations. If people have never had something, they don't know what they are missing. More and more people are forced to live in overcrowded conditions because that's the way the world has become, but it doesn't make it good, and it doesn't make it right.
I don't think it's a generational thing, we grew up in different places and visited different places.
Maybe not everyone finds what you find wonderful? I've lived in places where parking is free everywhere, and have been places where it hasn't been? Why is it wonderful? I appreciate more places where there actually people on the larger streets rather just the whoosh of automobiles much more than free parking. Or it never existed in some places, I doubt free parking was more common in Boston 70 years ago than today. It never was or is the norm in England, which is yes, more crowded, but why should they find it natural?
But it's not a natural condition. Why is parking so special it should always be free? It makes no sense. It has some cost, sometimes low, sometimes not so low. I'm rather surprised, you're usually fairly reasonable and often loudly criticize unreasonable posters, but this reads as one of the least reasonable ideas I've read on the forum in a long while.
I don't think it's a generational thing, we grew up in different places and visited different places.
Maybe not everyone finds what you find wonderful? I've lived in places where parking is free everywhere, and have been places where it hasn't been? Why is it wonderful? I appreciate more places where there actually people on the larger streets rather just the whoosh of automobiles much more than free parking. Or it never existed in some places, I doubt free parking was more common in Boston 70 years ago than today. It never was or is the norm in England, which is yes, more crowded, but why should they find it natural?
I'll try one more time. I was lamenting the conditions which make it impossible for parking to be free, namely the very high value of land caused by density. When I wrote that parking OUGHT to be free, I was advocating for the way things were when I was growing up; I was not saying I thought it possible just to pass a law and make parking free in places like Manhattan. I am not unrealistic. A crude analogy might be my opinion that there OUGHT to be no murders. Well we all know that such a statement will not prevent murders just as I know very well that when demand exceeds supply there will be costs for parking, hence my emphasis on overpopulation.
The real difference of opinion here, it seems to me, is between those who celebrate high parking costs as a means to discourage car usage by making it both more expensive and more inconvenient and those who remember the Garden of Eden days of the 1950's and 1960's when car use was axiomatic.
The very phrase "car-dependent" I find jarring and nonsensical. Well of course we are car dependent. How could it be otherwise? It's like saying we are clothes-dependent because we are not allowed to go naked in public. I have no objection to someone who chooses to live near a bus or transit line and not own a car, but I have no understanding of someone who finds that "liberating" unless the person has a very low income. Owning a car is one of the major keys to the good life. There is no contradiction at all that my father used transit in the 1950's. One can own a car and use transit. One can own a car and also own a bicycle.
I submit that I know as much or more about cycling as anyone on this forum. My ex-wife and I bicycled from Seattle to Los Angeles in 1978 - spending three weeks and averaging 75 miles a day. It was gorgeous and fantastic. But we still owned two cars. There is no contradiction. I wouldn't be without a car, but neither do I advocate spending every waking moment in one.
Cars are more than transportation - cars are a joy in themselves.
I do realize I am a fish out of water here, and so I think I am done here. I know that will be much to the delight of most posters here, and that is O.K. too. Some gulfs are too wide to bridge.
A resident that doesn't cook, still has to pay for the kitchen.
I've also never heard of a situation where a resident who doesn't drive actually pays more.
Plus it's really not that uncommon for parking to be decoupled. My last apartments in the US mostly were. In chronological order it was Seattle (old construction, pre-automobile), Seattle (parking maximum, new construction, decoupled waitlist for expensive parking), Sacramento (parking minimum vastly exceeded, decoupled pay to park), Sacramento (roughly built to the parking, decoupled, pay to park with a waitlist for parking), Davis (parking minimum vastly exceeded, unassigned free parking), Davis (built to parking minimum, coupled one spot per unit, insufficient parking in the area frequently requiring lengthy walks of 10-15 minutes back from the nearest parking).
Not really. In olden days the wife used to drop the husband off at work or just get stranded at home.
What "olden days" are you referring to? One could do it that way seeing all a car does is sit parked while one is at work. I work with a couple guys that do that now with their wives. It works for them. My wife and I have one car, I bike and she uses the car because her job requires her to have a car.
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