America Still Loves Cars, But Some Cities Are Starting to Ditch Them

[Don't Be That Guy]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Cities don't ditch cars. People do. San Francisco is a good example. For years now the city has been trying to push people out of private cars by making it ever more annoying to own one. What they haven't done is make public transit really attractive to use. So the result has been traffic that gets ever worse as vehicular lanes are converted to use by bikes and made the exclusive zone for the ever more passenger-unfriendly busses. Also, there are already more vehicles in the city than legal parking spaces so people park every which way, blocking more lanes and providing the city a steady source of revenue in parking fines on which they now have come to depend.

It's no accident Uber and Lyft come to you from San Francisco. The city long ago caved to its taxi operators and too-stringently limited the number of medallions making taxis a not very practical alternative to car owning. But the need is there and private enterprise has filled it. But now the grandees are complaining about how many Uber and Lyft vehicles roam the street and blame THEM for the traffic that is now crammed into one lane where it used to have 2.

And the city is about to do a little more entrepreneuring: An app like the ones that tell you where the traffic is bad except this one tells you where there's an open parking space (if you can beat everyone else with the same app to it). At the same time, the city is now immitating Amazon or the airlines by varying parking meter rates by time of day and how busy the location is.

When it comes to public transit, you feel like a fool actually paying to ride because so many people don't. And the drivers sit stoney-faced rooted to their seats at the wheel, pretending not to notice anything from fare evasion to murder happening behind them. To notice would be dangerous and their union tells them they are paid to drive; nothing more. As a passenger, you can enjoy your ride, if you survive it, sitting next to an unwashed street person staying out of the cold and wet on the bus all day long. And you'll get to breathe the germs emmitted by your fellow passengers crammed in tighter than sardines.

The bottom line for all this: Some people find they can live with a combination of transit, Uber/Lyft and car sharing (ZipCar etc) and have given up owning their own. Some haven't yet gotten to that point. My best friend in the city doesn't own a vehicle but still won't ride busses (he will ride rail transit) because of the horrors. I have a scooter for trips away from downtown, on the edge of which I live, but no car (my condo has a parking garage). And when I need to carry a passenger or more cargo than the scooter will carry, I belong to ZipCar which keeps several vehicles in my building garage.

That is an excellent post, and exactly mirrors my experiences in San Francisco. Uber/Lyft would naturally come from a place where parking is difficult, but the transit options and/or urban environment do not reasonably allow for car free options. Unfortunately, San Francisco's approach of making parking and car ownership more onerous without making transit more attractive and accessible seems to be urban orthodoxy for many progressive minded cities. It's easy to say that cities are for people and not for cars, but that's a hollow statement if you're not making the city easy to live in because the ability to get to work/grocery store/childcare/church has been replaced by bike lanes and not actual transit.

[mthd]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

I didn't say it was evidence and I'm sorry I forgot I was on SSP. I made the assumption that the discussion would understand that the picture was provided to show that Americans are buying cars at record rates despite the OP that states that some cities are starting to 'ditch' them. Despite the trend to ditch cars, Americans continue to buy cars -- at an all time record.

record rates? not in any meaningful sense, we're buying cars at lower rates than the last economic peak, adjusted for population, and the historic trend is downward. TOTAL number of cars is not as important as cars per capita, wouldn't you say?



source: bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...al-limit-again

removing all the ups and downs, the trend is a gradual decline.

[Sun Belt]

^I meant record numbers not rates. (The Steelers game is distracting me, haha). Your graphic indicates we're at about 1985 levels. Regardless, there are more cars than ever before and we are seeing record sales.

It's great that urbanites have convinced themselves not to buy cars. Ultimately, it frees up lane space for commuters from the suburbs. If urbanites all owned cars then the commute would be even more hellish for far flung suburbanites to drive into the central city.

[mhays]

It's ok to admit you were just guessing, and have been shown to be wrong.

Even if sales were at a record per capita (a long way off), that still wouldn't support your argument that people "love" their cars.

Yes, this is SSP as you note. We call out BS.

[badrunner]

There are a lot more car enthusiasts than there are skyscraper enthusiasts. There are literally hundreds of car forums with more traffic than this one. Yes, Americans absolutely love their cars. Outside the bubble of urban fetishists this isn't even a debate.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Nobody would buy a coat unless they lived in a place that required them to wear a coat. For people who do live in cold places, some may spend a couple of thousand to buy one, and some may spend $50. But nobody would buy a coat at any price point if they didn't need to have one.

Clothing in general is a necessity for everyone. Like cars and coats, some people go basic based on their budget and/ or their personalities while others go upscale. Unless, it’s a hobby or something we do out of pure indulgence...pretty much everything we spend our money on is motivated on necessity.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by mhays

It's ok to admit you were just guessing, and have been shown to be wrong.

Even if sales were at a record per capita (a long way off), that still wouldn't support your argument that people "love" their cars.

Yes, this is SSP as you note. We call out BS.

Are you replying to me? What am I guessing at?

Even at a rate, we're at 1994 and 1985 levels. Yep that's a big decline.

E) Good 4th quarter Steelers game. 6 minutes left, you should tune it. (NBC).

[Steely Dan]

I like our car, but I certainly don't love it. It's alright I guess (mazda CX-5) and it comes in handy from time to time for lugging our two rugrats around, but it's squarely in the appliance realm for us.

Between my bike commuting, and the facts that my wife works from home and our kiddo's daycare is at the end of our street and we do the vast majority of our errand running on foot in our neighborhood, we definitely don't use it on a daily basis and could probably ditch it altogether except for the fact that cabs and car sharing don't do the whole child car seat thing very well.

But when the kids are older and out of car seats, and automated robo-cabs patrol the city streels 24/7, maybe we'll go entirely car-free.

I will of course always continue to own a small fleet of bicycles because I absolutely do LOVE bikes!



TL/DR: cars are stupid, but bicycles completely rule the universe!

[mhays]

I'm watching part of the game. But I don't watch whole games because of the ads...they set off my BS detector.

Your second sentence is funny Sun Belt....wanna look up our population growth since then, and then rethink your point?

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by mhays

I'm watching part of the game. But I don't watch whole games because of the ads...they set off my BS detector.

Your second sentence is funny Sun Belt....wanna look up our population growth since then, and then rethink your point?

I'm looking at the graphic from mthd. Follow the 70 line from right to left. 2016 is at the same exact level as 2008ish, 1994, 1985ish, 1981. If the graph showed car ownership from 1981 it would remain a constant, instead of choosing 1976.

As for numbers of sales, record numbers for the past 2 consecutive years.

E) from the Bloomberg article explaining the dip in car sales per capita (even though it's basically flat since 1981):

On a per-capita basis, light-vehicle sales have been on a long, if unsteady, decline in the U.S. since the 1970s. 1 That's mainly just because there are lots of used cars out there. The average age of cars and light trucks on the road in the U.S. is now 11.6 years, up from a little over five years in 1969.

New cars are bought less frequently because they last much longer than they used to.

[mhays]

Do I honestly have to explain the "per capita" concept?

[JManc]

Baby Boomers are retiring, fixed incomes. Less disposable income for new cars. Millennials dragging their feet getting into the driving thing either not being able to afford and or desiring alternative mode of transportation. I’m sure that plays into flat auto sales. People also hold onto cars longer too. And the used market is tighter.

[mousquet]

@JManc I think I need to put you at ease here...

My grandparents - both my mom's and dad's parents - and my uncles are millionaires. They drive (big) Mercedes, BMW and shit. They probably got enough money to stick their middle fingers up your stupid ass, like it'd feel painful to you.

My own dad (he may rest in peace) was a spoiled kid who liked drugs and driving too fast.
He is dead now. My mom raised me on her own.

Ever since I was a little kid, I felt lonely and looked for something higher and bigger. You may say it was the lack of a dad, I don't think it's that obvious. I knew him as a kid. He was pitiful, selfish and died as he deserved to.
BUT, I found something in people in general around me, whatever their skin color or social origins, and I do realize my own happiness straight depends on theirs. I can feel it, every day as I breathe my Paris air.
So, I love the Paris Metro, RER and Transilien, and you don't have the right to speak like you do to me, cause you're clueless.

I don't even fight against capitalism, cause it's waste of time anyway. It's retarded, and people will get over it in real environment and development in the end.
I'm certainly not a fucking commie, but I support mass transit with all my guts.

Now, good luck to you. You'll need some (luck) if you can't change your mindset.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by mhays

Do I honestly have to explain the "per capita" concept?

Why would you feel the need to explain that?

[JManc]

Originally Posted by mousquet

@JManc I think I need to put you at ease here...

My grandparents - both my mom's and dad's parents - and my uncles are millionaires. They drive (big) Mercedes, BMW and shit. They probably got enough money to stick their middle fingers up your stupid ass, like it'd feel painful to you.

My own dad (he may rest in peace) was a spoiled kid who liked drugs and driving too fast.
He is dead now. My mom raised me on her own.

Ever since I was a little kid, I felt lonely and looked for something higher and bigger. You may say it was the lack of a dad, I don't think it's that obvious. I knew him as a kid. He was pitiful, selfish and died as he deserved to.
BUT, I found something in people in general around me, whatever their skin color or social origins, and I do realize my own happiness straight depends on theirs. I can feel it, every day as I breathe my Paris air.
So, I love the Paris Metro, RER and Transilien, and you don't have the right to speak like you do to me, cause you're clueless.

I don't even fight against capitalism, cause it's waste of time anyway. It's retarded, and people will get over it in real environment and development in the end.
I'm certainly not a fucking commie, but I support mass transit with all my guts.

Now, good luck to you. You'll need some (luck) if you can't change your mindset.

I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to convey here with this rant but if you resort to any more namecalling, you won’t be posting at all.

[hauntedheadnc]

I'm afraid of my car, and I find driving to be very stressful. This is a bad thing because I have a thirty mile commute to work every day. My fear of cars stems from the fact that my dad was a mechanic, but the only thing he ever taught me about cars is that they are the most fragile mechanisms on the face of the earth, and they explode at the slightest touch. At least, to hear him talk about the various things he had to work on every day, that was definitely the impression I got.

However, except for the people living in public housing in town who ride the city bus system (because Asheville is so expensive that anyone who can't afford a car also can't afford to live in town), you cannot function in this area without a car. And so every day I drive that thirty miles in and that thirty miles back and it really frays my nerves the entire time. My lifelong dream is the same now as it was when I was a kid: live somewhere that the train can take you anywhere you need to go, and you can walk wherever it won't take you. If I could possibly arrange it, I'd never set foot in a car ever again.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

For that there's Chariot:

[img]Chariot is a commuter shuttle service owned by the privately held firm Chariot Transit Inc. that is currently in the process of being acquired by the Ford Motor Company. The company's mobile-phone application allows passengers to ride a shuttle between home and work during commuting hours. Chariot currently operates in several neighborhoods of San Francisco, and plans to expand rapidly to other cities in the United States. New routes are determined based on demographic information and crowdsourced data.[1][2][/img]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot_(company)



Chariot routes


Imagine: A guaranteed seat! No invasion of your space! Drivers who make sure everybody who rides pays so no street people or misbehaving teens!

That's extremely interesting but... legally, what's the deal? As we saw with Uber, moving people is a protected business segment. At least here.

Can anyone start a bus/shuttle service in SF? Or, say, a bank? On a small scale...?

[lio45]

Originally Posted by JManc

I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to convey here with this rant but if you resort to any more namecalling, you won’t be posting at all.

Anything mousquet posts between 3 am - 7 am in his time zone, you shouldn't take personally.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by JManc

How am I projecting when I say most people take pride in their cars? How is this even a debate? If we truly treated them as a dishwasher, why drop $80k on an Audi S7? Either buy a no frills Corolla or take the bus.

Actually, many people will drop more money than needed on their appliances, too... getting special features and a nicer look.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by cannedairspray

But even then, as a 25 year old with a very "cool" car, I was still 10000% more interested in getting drunk and trying to get laid than I was sitting around talking about carburetors or whatever.

lol, had you tried to talk to the WRX guys about "the carburetor that's under your Subaru's hood" you would likely have been permanently laughed out of the Barnes and Noble parking lot!