I did this (avoided buying a car in lieu of Uber/Lyft) my first year in Palo Alto/Menlo Park.
I lived in Hew York before coming out West so I was strongly inclined not to own a car, I didn't even bother replacing my drivers license after being pickpocketed 5 years ago. Using Uber frequently was actually pretty enjoyable. My ride was only about 15 min/$12. each way (sometimes I'd bike), and the drivers were usually interesting to talk to. Last year I did end up buying a car. With payments, insurance, parking, and gas thrown in (and the fact that I take Caltrain to get into SF or other cities), the economics really didn't make sense for me to buy a car, but it did improve quality of life in terms of just having more impulse to go out and drive to places, whereas with relying on Uber/Lyft, the thought of the money transaction for every ride discourages me from using it except for pragmatic reasons (yes, even though owning a car is more expensive in the long run).
I can relate. I'm seriously considering getting a "BahnCard 100", the flatrate offer of the German railway service (all trains and public transit in 100 cities included). It would set me back about 4000 euros a year, which is much more than I would usually pay for mobility. But once the money is spent, it will likely push me into more frequent weekend trips to cool places.
There are people living inside the train with a Bahncard 100 similar to the van people in the US. For example her: http://www.tyatravel.com/en/about/
A Bahncard 100 is a really nice perk you often get when working for a bigger German company. The company saves taxes and gets a discount, the employee gets unlimited free transportation.
For private use, it is hard to justify. You have to travel quite a lot to beat the price of a Bahncard 25/50 using special offers combined with local public transit flatrate ticket. Depends on where you live of course, but I think I would have to visit about 2 cities every week using special offer tickets, to reach the Bahncad 100 costs. It gets much more expensive, though, when you decide to travel very spontaneously and don't like to take trains at unusual times, which I prefer. Different story of course if you live in the South/North and want to visit the North/South regularly.
I understand the psychological aspect, but I mean if you live near a major airport, 4000 Euro buys a whole lot of weekend trips via budget airlines all over Europe, not just within Germany.
But the friction is even higher with air travel. The beauty of BC100 is the spontaneity of just getting on a train and not having to think about tickets (or queue for security).
There used to be a "Deutschlandpass", pretty much a one-month version of BC100 during summer, that cost some 300€ for young people. I did that with friends a few years back and it was great. We'd do tons of spontaneous things. You know that thing where most exchange students have been to more places in your own country than you've been? That ticket was the best (and cheapest) way to fix that :)
They didn't offer it this year. Instead there was a "Sommer-Ticket", 4 rides for 96€ for ≤ 26 yr olds, which doesn't even come close. Compared to the 269€ (349€ for >26yrs) that the Deutschlandpass cost, and considering how much I used mine in 2013 (26 out of the 30 days, about half of which more than one ride), that's not even funny.
Yes, this sheer human irrationality is an impediment to sensible progress.
I know, and you know, that a car just does not make sense mathematically. You can Uber/Lyft whenever it’s too difficult to walk. But emotionally, and I feel it too, turning the ride into a transaction makes it something you have to consider carefully. With a car, the payments, the insurance, the gas, are all disconnected from the idea of taking a specific trip. As a result, since I don’t have a car, I very rarely go anywhere that I can’t bike.
Now, combine this with so many people who can’t look at this mathematically, and say that life without a car is impossible, and we get very poor housing and transportation policies being supported all over the Bay Area.
I just did the math for my car, which is a 2006 Honda CR-V, under the assumption that the car will have no resale value. My cost per mile over the 10 years I've had it has been about $0.75. The costs were the purchase price, yearly registration and license fees, insurance, gasoline, regular oil changes and other minor schedule maintenance, a couple scheduled major services, new tires, and a few unscheduled fixes (new battery, light bulbs).
That's less than what Google is telling me Uber changes per mile, so at first glance it looks like for me that a car does make sense mathematically.
It depends on where you use the car. If you have free parking everywhere, that is effectively a government subsidy of urban sprawl and traffic. More crowded places charge for parking. In San Francisco, parking downtown is like $20 per day. And that’s if you leave it in an attended lot. Feeding the meter is so annoying.
Also, there is time spent in traffic. And fossil fuels are just stupid bad to use, so your $4 per gallon assumption is another hidden subsidy. But these don’t affect your personal finances, so they’re fine to leave out.
I didn't track it. I just took total mileage, divided by miles per gallon (I've got a ScanGauge II [1], which tells me each time I fill up what my miles per gallon on my previous fill up was), multiplied by $4/gallon. I picked $4/gallon because I'm pretty sure it never got higher than that here over the last 10 years (or if it did, it was only briefly), and I was trying to make sure I'd err on the side of higher prices.
I should probably do the same thing, and plug in some "average" of Prius MPG too just for kicks and complication [I trend toward complication before I simplify].
> You can Uber/Lyft whenever it’s too difficult to walk.
Not with kids you can't, because then you need car seats. Things like the Ride Safer Vests help a bit, but now you're having to lug those around. And if your kids are small enough, they must be in a rear-facing seat no matter what.
In practice, this means that for a family with more than one child there's a multi-year period when Uber/Lyft/taxis are basically non-viable. With one child, you may be able to limit this period to a year or two (e.g. in California the rear-facing seat requirement goes up through age 2).
While true, it's also not uncommon for one parent to take the kids somewhere and the other to pick them up. It may be possible to do that with one car or it may not depending on geography and where the adults need to be before/after having the kids in the car.
Simple concrete example that is quite common: one parent takes the toddler to daycare and then heads to work and works later than the other parent. The other parent starts work earlier and picks up the toddler on the way home from work. This can work with one car if their jobs are located close enough that they can switch which one has the car. But if not, this is really hard to do without two cars.
I assume you are referring to parking requirements.
Even if you can go without a car 99% of the time (like by using ZipCar), the one day you want to bring home a large appliance or piece of furniture, monthly Costo haul, etc. what are you going to do if there is no place to safely/legally stop within several blocks?
One thing I noticed about the references to costco throughout this thread, is that people only go there to buy a full overs-zed shopping cart full of supplies.
Maybe I'm just weird, but I walk there weekly and it's the only grocery store I use. Going early in the morning on weekends or an hour before closing weeknights means I can get from my apt and back with groceries in an hour.
When setting up a new apartment, in addition to the big stuff, I always find myself bringing home ~5 carloads of stuff from Target and Home Depot. Does that just explode into several dozen bicycle trips, or do you also use taxis for that? Where do they unload?
Within the city centre, but not on a large road, they will double-park if there isn't a space for loading nearby. Outside the centre, there will almost always be a parking space available.
26% of people use private cars to get to work in Copenhagen, and few of these people are driving to the city centre -- parking is too difficult. That means a badly parked delivery van isn't as much of a problem as it might be in other cities. At least, so long as it's not blocking a cycle lane.
Danish apartments tend not to have much furniture. It's the Scandinavian, minimalist style. I don't think many people would make dozens of bicycle trips; they'd either have, rent or borrow a car, or use taxis. Students might be an exception, but they don't have much space. You couldn't have fitted 5 carloads of stuff in my student apartment, especially in addition to the big stuff.
I can answer based on the Boston area. It's not that Boston is consistently perfect for walking and biking, but it's awful for driving, so the car-free life is pretty appealing.
I guess you could describe what delivery trucks do as "double parking". It's far from the worst traffic sin and you quickly learn not to follow a delivery truck on a one-lane street. Delivery drivers tend to be a lot better at solving this constraint problem than me in a Zipcar, anyway.
If you're moving, the best thing to do is to reserve street space for a box truck or moving truck in advance. Or you can wing it and just be in the way (a popular choice in September, when many new people move in).
I wonder if an Uber subscription might get around that transaction barrier. For example, a $100/month plan gives you up to a 100 Uber travel miles per month. Similar to how phone plans give you a certain amount of talk time minutes.
It would probably end up being far more about a min/dollars rate, since the time operating the vehicle and human (presently) driving it are both costs in time and not inherently in distance.
Approximating some numbers...
60 miles / hour (2 gallons and lets call that 10 USD for ease of accounting)
5 USD mis overhead (and profit)
15 USD driver wage (while working)
30 dollars an hour is about 0.50 USD / Min.
That's probably the absolute floor: I've not left much room in there for profit, insurance, vehicle costs... idle time of work units, travel to/from endpoints.
I suspect that 1 dollar / min is a reasonable fee, if quite aggravating for cities like Seattle / Bellevue.
