Impossible. It takes my husband 45-60 minutes to get to work (mass transit would take him much longer), and our son goes to school in a different town. My car doubles as an office / living room. I spend significant time in my car running errands, getting him to/from school, and to activities. In no world is renting, borrowing, or Ubering more feasible when you're a suburban stay at home mom.
Those are literally all choices you made, though, and if we disincentivize some of them as a society, people can more easily make more transit-friendly choices.
Look at Singapore. It costs at least $50k to get a permit to then actually be able to buy a car. Disincentivizes people, to say the least. Then, of course, they take the carrot approach, which is dense building and plenty of transit options.
Honest question, though. Are we suggesting that everyone basically go through that pain simultaneously, despite the fact that our planning hasn’t accounted for it. There isn’t enough housing in cities to rapidly switch our entire paradigm to that, nor could people whose home is currently a huge asset lose it because now suddenly everyone’s home is virtually worthless.
I agree that this is unlikely in the short term, but I do think it would allow us to become a one-car family, and if a large chunk of two-car families could become one-car families, that would be a great start.
I am in a suburb not that far from Chicago, and I'm not sure I've ever seen a charging station anywhere. I would love to get an electric car, but until those are more ubiquitous, I can't see that happening.
I am also curious how the transition will happen. Let's just say you COULD get rid of both cars and do sharing...what happens to all the people with car loans who want to sell and do this but can't because of so many surplus cars and so little demand? They just keep paying it off, drive it until it dies since they can't sell it and then don't buy another one? That will make for a very long transition, so I don't see this happening for quite some time, unfortunately.
This is impossible for us, it just won’t happen. 1) where we live has no public transportation
2) moving isn’t an option due to Husband’s job and the fact our support system is here. With a SN daughter we have very few options for help/support as not just anyone can babysit her. Plus her program/school is excellent and moving her from that isn’t an option due to its impact on her therapies.
2) our daughter has Autism and while she doesn’t melt down often when she does it is REALLY bad and we have to quickly get her somewhere safe. We can’t wait for a shared car (wouldn’t subject strangers to her in that state anyway) or a bus/train
I agree this is not feasible for many families with Special Needs or other challenges.
Impossible. It takes my husband 45-60 minutes to get to work (mass transit would take him much longer), and our son goes to school in a different town. My car doubles as an office / living room. I spend significant time in my car running errands, getting him to/from school, and to activities. In no world is renting, borrowing, or Ubering more feasible when you're a suburban stay at home mom.
Those are literally all choices you made, though, and if we disincentivize some of them as a society, people can more easily make more transit-friendly choices.
Look at Singapore. It costs at least $50k to get a permit to then actually be able to buy a car. Disincentivizes people, to say the least. Then, of course, they take the carrot approach, which is dense building and plenty of transit options.
Right. They built their society around that concept.
Our society isn't built that way. Roll out a "disincentivziation" like that, when cities command a HCOL, and all you're going to do is fuck over people who are already struggling.
I understand your argument, but for me, it comes dangerously close to "well, you made those choices, so now you have to live with the consequences." When really, their "choice" in location was simply them being born into that situation. Many people will never have the means to relocate, and living is MUCH cheaper in rural areas. Every time someone talks about moving/relocation here, people immediately start talking about how INSANELY expensive it is to live in a big city or metro area. It just isn't financially realistic for someone with a HS diploma, living in rural West Virginia, working at a convenience store, to magically obtain a better paying job that pays well enough to uproot their family to go live in Charleston. Even if you bump minimum wage to $15/hr, they will still struggle to support a family of 4 in a city simply because COL is so much higher.
There are many people in this country who have never left their county/small town area, not because they don't want to, but because they can't.
Those are literally all choices you made, though, and if we disincentivize some of them as a society, people can more easily make more transit-friendly choices.
Look at Singapore. It costs at least $50k to get a permit to then actually be able to buy a car. Disincentivizes people, to say the least. Then, of course, they take the carrot approach, which is dense building and plenty of transit options.
Honest question, though. Are we suggesting that everyone basically go through that pain simultaneously, despite the fact that our planning hasn’t accounted for it. There isn’t enough housing in cities to rapidly switch our entire paradigm to that, nor could people whose home is currently a huge asset lose it because now suddenly everyone’s home is virtually worthless.
Not necessarily, but climate change will also make large areas/housing stock virtually worthless and uninhabitable. So people can make the choice or they can be forced to make the choice.
Climate change will affect urban areas as well as rural areas, though, so that could also be a consideration when people are choosing where to live long-term.
Obviously, people also have financial and family concerns which can keep them from moving from a rural area that is 2-3 hours outside the closest major city to a dense urban area.
Those are literally all choices you made, though, and if we disincentivize some of them as a society, people can more easily make more transit-friendly choices.
Look at Singapore. It costs at least $50k to get a permit to then actually be able to buy a car. Disincentivizes people, to say the least. Then, of course, they take the carrot approach, which is dense building and plenty of transit options.
Right. They built their society around that concept.
Our society isn't built that way. Roll out a "disincentivziation" like that, when cities command a HCOL, and all you're going to do is fuck over people who are already struggling.
I understand your argument, but for me, it comes dangerously close to "well, you made those choices, so now you have to live with the consequences." When really, their "choice" in location was simply them being born into that situation. Many people will never have the means to relocate, and living is MUCH cheaper in rural areas. Every time someone talks about moving/relocation here, people immediately start talking about how INSANELY expensive it is to live in a big city or metro area. It just isn't financially realistic for someone with a HS diploma, living in rural West Virginia, working at a convenience store, to magically obtain a better paying job that pays well enough to uproot their family to go live in Charleston. Even if you bump minimum wage to $15/hr, they will still struggle to support a family of 4 in a city simply because COL is so much higher.
There are many people in this country who have never left their county/small town area, not because they don't want to, but because they can't.
I 100% agree, but the majority of people posting ON THIS BOARD did make those choices, whether they were conscious decisions or not. The few hundred regulars on this board won't make a huge impact even if we all choose to forego private cars, but there are plenty of other people like me in my community/metro area who could, but won't because there's not enough incentive. Hell, it's tough to incentivize people who live in the actual city I'm in a suburb of (Philly) to get rid of their cars, or at least go down to 1 car per household, let alone people who live out in Bucks Co, where there are tons of horse farms, winding roads, and suburban shopping centers centered around car culture.
Threads like this show exactly why we're going to hit that tipping point where we all die in 10 years. Instead of figuring out how to reduce our consumption, people immediately have to post about how they can't and won't change.
ETA: And I see we're already in the nasty phase where people get their feelings hurt because they've just been told that hey, you do actually have a choice on how you proceed.
Those are literally all choices you made, though, and if we disincentivize some of them as a society, people can more easily make more transit-friendly choices.
Look at Singapore. It costs at least $50k to get a permit to then actually be able to buy a car. Disincentivizes people, to say the least. Then, of course, they take the carrot approach, which is dense building and plenty of transit options.
Honest question, though. Are we suggesting that everyone basically go through that pain simultaneously, despite the fact that our planning hasn’t accounted for it. There isn’t enough housing in cities to rapidly switch our entire paradigm to that, nor could people whose home is currently a huge asset lose it because now suddenly everyone’s home is virtually worthless.
Actually, the article posted suggests that self-driving electric vehicles could offer rides on an Uber-like platform for a tenth of current Uber price, at which point for many families it will be cheaper to ride a self-driving Uber either all the time, or as your connection to public transportation if you need to go a long distance, than to own your own car. It doesn't suggest that people should or will do this out of a sense of civic duty or government requirement, simply that most people will make the switch to save money.
For us, this is already true of our second car at current Uber prices. We can go almost anywhere we might want to go for $25 or less in an Uber now. DH is shopping for cars because our older car is 19 years old. A $30K car would have an opportunity cost of at least $350 just in insurance and missed investment income, before you factor in fuel and maintenance. That's about 14 trips per month, which for us is plenty. If the price drops to 1/10 what it is now, that would be 4-5 trips per day for anyone in a close-in suburban neighborhood like mine, so it would become the economically preferable choice for a lot of people. (Or it could be fewer trips and some days each year with a rental car for road trips... I'm really looking forward to the day when I can order a rental car online and have it just drive itself to my door.)
If this were to happen, the strip malls could sell off most of their parking lots, which could then be developed into more housing close into the city and to services. Hopefully this would be zoned in an inclusive way with at least some of the units set aside as affordable housing, but with or without that, I think this would be wonderfully revitalizing in my community and probably in many suburbs to develop most of the parking lots instead of having all that dead space.
Threads like this show exactly why we're going to hit that tipping point where we all die in 10 years. Instead of figuring out how to reduce our consumption, people immediately have to post about how they can't and won't change.
ETA: And I see we're already in the nasty phase where people get their feelings hurt because they've just been told that hey, you do actually have a choice on how you proceed.
Yeah, I get this. We lived with one car (that is 20 years old now) until last year. So we managed we two kids just fine. We only eventually bought a 2nd because the 20 year old car was unreliable and we were tired of renting cars multiple times a year when family visited. We could probably still deal with one car (assuming it was the bigger one!) but I am not going to lie that having 2 cars make our life 100 times easier. And mainly means that DH can actually show up on time to things so it isn't all me doing everything. But I get it. We could technically live without cars if we really wanted to. IT isn't impossible, it just takes a lot more planning and time. It always comes down to priorities.
Threads like this show exactly why we're going to hit that tipping point where we all die in 10 years. Instead of figuring out how to reduce our consumption, people immediately have to post about how they can't and won't change.
ETA: And I see we're already in the nasty phase where people get their feelings hurt because they've just been told that hey, you do actually have a choice on how you proceed.
Like, 10 years? Really, TEN YEARS FROM NOW, you can't iamgine shifting how you live your life a bit to get away from having exclusive use of a vehicle? REALLY?
Even knowing that we're seriously destroying our climmate? Being able to carry spare shoes and your kid's soccer cleats in your trunk at all times is that valuable? k.
Also why in the WORLD are you all under the impression you won't be able to use your robot taxi to pick up a load of whatthefuckever? IT WAITS WHILE YOU LOAD IT AND UNLOAD IT. CRAZY IDEA. Also your robot taxi doen't care if your kid is having a meltdown. it doesn't care if you have to lay down a tarp before you throw in your cargo because it's muddy. It will come take you to your kid's game after you leave the office. Why can't you take your robot taxi to visit your IL's? Half the objections in here don't even make any damn sense.
You don't need to own a second vehicle for full time ownership if it sits in your damn driveway 80% of the time if it's financially feasible to just ORDER UP A CAR THAT SHOWS UP IN YOUR DRIVEWAY WHEN YOU NEED IT. It's like saying "oh, I can't have a driver, I run a lot of errands."
And no, this won't work for really rural areas, which in the US are nothign liek the rural areas in the UK. Shit is just not that close together across a lot of our areas. But also what's the stat on the percentage of our population actually LIVES in those areas. MOST OF OUR POPULATION COULD DO THIS IF THE TECH WAS THERE AND THE MONEY WORKED.
(now...the effect on transit is a huge one. The regulatory aspect of this is delicate as fuck in order to avoid killing off all sorts of transit. and we can't all ride in our own robot taxis in city centers, we won't all FIT on the roads. And I have ZERO faith that our government is going to succeed in that regulatory dance, so we're all gonna be fucked regardless. but still, y'all are annoying the shit out of me in here with this 'NOPE CAN'T WON'T AND DON'T WANNA' bullshit)
Well, we sailed past the carbon tipping point 2 years ago, and people are still proudly posting about driving mini-vans, so...
Our world is NEVER going to get colder. Our CHILDREN, and even ourselves, are going to deal with the consequences. Fuck, some of you have ALREADY dealt with catastrophic life changes due to climate change, but sure... keep on keeping on.
As for me - I'm into this - there are a small number of missing links in our local non-single occupancy vehicle transit options that when completed (and they're in the pipeline) woudl allow us to drop down to a single vehicle household.
what we'd actually do at this point is park the truck in the driveway except for those times when we actually use the truck to do truck stuff - until it died and then we'd not replace it. And then my car would become MH's daily driver and I'd switch to takign the commuter bus down the new BRT route straight to my office front door. I could cheaply robotaxi myself to any meetings I have during the day, and if shit comes up and I have to get home when the bus isn't running yet, again, I robotaxi my way there. doen. I coudl do it now, but without the completed BRT the ride times on the bus are really unpreditable, and daycare pickup is still a thing I need to be there for. Wont' be a problem in 10 years though.
Car seats are the biggest issue I will refrain from scoffing at. I think there are probably solutions to that, but right now there's no real market to develop them. We need either carseats that are truly easy to install and somehow not a giant hassle to transport on the other end (though for infants, this is what a snap n go is for) or vehicle seats that can actually accommodate children safely. Like the built in boosters you can find now. Just need somebody to come up with something good for the toddler crowd.
(also I am a giant hypocrite with the whole H drives a truck thing. We use it for truck stuff on a regular basis but...yeah. we need to figure out how not to need it.)
wawa, I definitely CAN picture it. I just think we lack the political will do anything about it. But that's coming from someone who lives in a city with very mediocre public transit. The people here just do not seem to care.
Honest question, though. Are we suggesting that everyone basically go through that pain simultaneously, despite the fact that our planning hasn’t accounted for it. There isn’t enough housing in cities to rapidly switch our entire paradigm to that, nor could people whose home is currently a huge asset lose it because now suddenly everyone’s home is virtually worthless.
Actually, the article posted suggests that self-driving electric vehicles could offer rides on an Uber-like platform for a tenth of current Uber price, at which point for many families it will be cheaper to ride a self-driving Uber either all the time, or as your connection to public transportation if you need to go a long distance, than to own your own car. It doesn't suggest that people should or will do this out of a sense of civic duty or government requirement, simply that most people will make the switch to save money.
For us, this is already true of our second car at current Uber prices. We can go almost anywhere we might want to go for $25 or less in an Uber now. DH is shopping for cars because our older car is 19 years old. A $30K car would have an opportunity cost of at least $350 just in insurance and missed investment income, before you factor in fuel and maintenance. That's about 14 trips per month, which for us is plenty. If the price drops to 1/10 what it is now, that would be 4-5 trips per day for anyone in a close-in suburban neighborhood like mine, so it would become the economically preferable choice for a lot of people. (Or it could be fewer trips and some days each year with a rental car for road trips... I'm really looking forward to the day when I can order a rental car online and have it just drive itself to my door.)
If this were to happen, the strip malls could sell off most of their parking lots, which could then be developed into more housing close into the city and to services. Hopefully this would be zoned in an inclusive way with at least some of the units set aside as affordable housing, but with or without that, I think this would be wonderfully revitalizing in my community and probably in many suburbs to develop most of the parking lots instead of having all that dead space.
This is a good point. H and I are a one car household. We have been for a few years. It always surprises people, but I honestly don't feel like we need 2 cars. We got rid of his car a year or so after we started living together because it mostly sat in the driveway. I have wished for a 2nd car probably less than 10 times. I get that it's harder when you have kids going in several directions, but for the most part a small amount of compromise and teamwork makes sharing a car pretty easy for a couple. And for the times when we can't do that, there is Lyft/Uber. Or public transit, even if it's a bit less convenient sometimes. It's worth the savings. I can imagine if and when these driverless cars become cheap, they would alleviate any issues with sharing a car. Right now I have to consider if whatever I'm doing that evening is worth the extra $25 in Lyft rides or if it's safe to take public transit to certain places at certain hours.
Lyft recently started a program where you can take 30 rides a month for $300. I think the rides can be valued up to $15, and if the ride would have cost more you just pay the difference (so a $20 ride would cost you $5 if you had this program). 30 rides is not quite enough to commute daily, so I'm not sure if this is exactly the right program for most of us, but I find it intriguing. If I were to take a job where I couldn't take the train (like I do now) or we were to move to a different area where public transit wouldn't be reasonable (like most areas in Baltimore, really), I can see something like this Lyft program working for me. If I were to buy a car right now, I'd probably be looking at a minimum of $500-600 a month between a payment, insurance, parking at my building AND at work, and gas. Typing it out like that, even now that Lyft program would save me money if I just paid out of pocket for a few other trips a month. But - I had to type that out to realize that! I think most of us Americans are just so used to having a car and driving everywhere that we don't think creatively about other options.
(also I am a giant hypocrite with the whole H drives a truck thing. We use it for truck stuff on a regular basis but...yeah. we need to figure out how not to need it.)
I feel like this about bus usage. I used to take the bus a lot because it didn't add a whole bunch of time. But where I live now? I rarely take the bus. I have regular church meetings that start at 6:30 on weekdays. To get there on time by bus, I have to leave at 5:45. To get there on time in my own car, I can leave at 6:10. Those 25 minutes feel precious on a weeknight with dinner and bath to do. I should just leave H on his own and use the time to read a book, but then I feel guilty leaving him to do dinner and bath by himself. And I KNOW I shouldn't feel guilty about that, but guilt is like my #2 talent, right behind making social situations awkward.
I think we just have to reach the mindset of "we have to change our lifestyle and behavior" and most of us aren't quite there yet. But if you have to, you will. My brother lost his vision quite suddenly a few years ago and they are now a one-car household. He uses uber a great deal, and I can imagine he would love a robotaxi, lol. Sometimes their schedule requires coordination and sometimes my mom has to stay a day or two to get the kids from daycare if SIL goes out of town or has a work conference or something, but they make it work. They don't have a choice. And had you asked them a few years ago if they could make it work, their responses would have mirrored the ones in this thread. They were "lucky" in that his vision loss came at a time when they were looking to buy a house - so they could buy a house close to his work and close to things like gyms, daycare, etc., so while they are in the suburbs, he is not isolated. So I can understand if you have already made the choice about where you live, having to change your lifestyle is easier said than done. But it wouldn't be impossible for many of us, not all of us maybe, but many of us.
No one is saying that if we stopped buying cars we would stop going places, or have access to vehicles. It just may require a bit more planning or coordination or some more robotaxis.
I wish I didn’t have to drive anywhere but the transit in my city is abysmal. I took it for many years and it literally took me over 2 hrs to go less than 10 miles to work and 2 or more hrs back and plus a 1/4 to 1/2 mile walk on either side depending on the time of day. It was a miserable time. The bus was frequently late or not come at all and the bus only ran every 1-2 hrs depending on the time of day.
I have a paid off car that I really only use to go to the library/grocery store since I work from home now. I get gas every 2-3 months lol. It’s 14 yrs old with only 80,000 miles on it. When I don’t have that anymore I hope these robotaxis or whatever are available then or I might switch to driving my husband to work when I need the car which would be a pain because while he works in our city it is across town and not near anything I would go to.
Actually, the article posted suggests that self-driving electric vehicles could offer rides on an Uber-like platform for a tenth of current Uber price, at which point for many families it will be cheaper to ride a self-driving Uber either all the time, or as your connection to public transportation if you need to go a long distance, than to own your own car. It doesn't suggest that people should or will do this out of a sense of civic duty or government requirement, simply that most people will make the switch to save money.
For us, this is already true of our second car at current Uber prices. We can go almost anywhere we might want to go for $25 or less in an Uber now. DH is shopping for cars because our older car is 19 years old. A $30K car would have an opportunity cost of at least $350 just in insurance and missed investment income, before you factor in fuel and maintenance. That's about 14 trips per month, which for us is plenty. If the price drops to 1/10 what it is now, that would be 4-5 trips per day for anyone in a close-in suburban neighborhood like mine, so it would become the economically preferable choice for a lot of people. (Or it could be fewer trips and some days each year with a rental car for road trips... I'm really looking forward to the day when I can order a rental car online and have it just drive itself to my door.)
If this were to happen, the strip malls could sell off most of their parking lots, which could then be developed into more housing close into the city and to services. Hopefully this would be zoned in an inclusive way with at least some of the units set aside as affordable housing, but with or without that, I think this would be wonderfully revitalizing in my community and probably in many suburbs to develop most of the parking lots instead of having all that dead space.
This is a good point. H and I are a one car household. We have been for a few years. It always surprises people, but I honestly don't feel like we need 2 cars. We got rid of his car a year or so after we started living together because it mostly sat in the driveway. I have wished for a 2nd car probably less than 10 times. I get that it's harder when you have kids going in several directions, but for the most part a small amount of compromise and teamwork makes sharing a car pretty easy for a couple. And for the times when we can't do that, there is Lyft/Uber. Or public transit, even if it's a bit less convenient sometimes. It's worth the savings. I can imagine if and when these driverless cars become cheap, they would alleviate any issues with sharing a car. Right now I have to consider if whatever I'm doing that evening is worth the extra $25 in Lyft rides or if it's safe to take public transit to certain places at certain hours.
Lyft recently started a program where you can take 30 rides a month for $300. I think the rides can be valued up to $15, and if the ride would have cost more you just pay the difference (so a $20 ride would cost you $5 if you had this program). 30 rides is not quite enough to commute daily, so I'm not sure if this is exactly the right program for most of us, but I find it intriguing. If I were to take a job where I couldn't take the train (like I do now) or we were to move to a different area where public transit wouldn't be reasonable (like most areas in Baltimore, really), I can see something like this Lyft program working for me. If I were to buy a car right now, I'd probably be looking at a minimum of $500-600 a month between a payment, insurance, parking at my building AND at work, and gas. Typing it out like that, even now that Lyft program would save me money if I just paid out of pocket for a few other trips a month. But - I had to type that out to realize that! I think most of us Americans are just so used to having a car and driving everywhere that we don't think creatively about other options.
You are lucky where you live in the city! See my post about my abysmal years using public transit lol
I wish I didn’t have to drive anywhere but the transit in my city is abysmal. I took it for many years and it literally took me over 2 hrs to go less than 10 miles to work and 2 or more hrs back and plus a 1/4 to 1/2 mile walk on either side depending on the time of day. It was a miserable time. The bus was frequently late or not come at all and the bus only ran every 1-2 hrs depending on the time of day.
I have a paid off car that I really only use to go to the library/grocery store since I work from home now. I get gas every 2-3 months lol. It’s 14 yrs old with only 80,000 miles on it. When I don’t have that anymore I hope these robotaxis or whatever are available then or I might switch to driving my husband to work when I need the car which would be a pain because while he works in our city it is across town and not near anything I would go to.
The transit in our city is REALLY bad. I work at a metro station, so on my office days I could take H to work with me and he could ride the metro from there to his office (his office is also at a metro station.) It's really silly how convenient it would be. But he often needs to leave work and drive all over town to meet with clients. Better mass transit or better options for getting around (i.e. robotaxis....I'm all in on the idea of these now, ha) would help a great deal. If he could even go one day a week without driving in that would help with his stress level I think, even if it took roughly the same amount of time (it would probably be faster, but only by maybe 10 or 15 minutes.) He could also take the metro from Owings Mills on the days I don't go into the office. But again, Baltimore isn't really a practical city for that if you have to go anywhere during the day(and also the metro can be unreliable.) But if we HAD to go to one car, we could find a way to make it work especially with the magical robotaxis of the future.
As for me - I'm into this - there are a small number of missing links in our local non-single occupancy vehicle transit options that when completed (and they're in the pipeline) woudl allow us to drop down to a single vehicle household.
what we'd actually do at this point is park the truck in the driveway except for those times when we actually use the truck to do truck stuff - until it died and then we'd not replace it. And then my car would become MH's daily driver and I'd switch to takign the commuter bus down the new BRT route straight to my office front door. I could cheaply robotaxi myself to any meetings I have during the day, and if shit comes up and I have to get home when the bus isn't running yet, again, I robotaxi my way there. doen. I coudl do it now, but without the completed BRT the ride times on the bus are really unpreditable, and daycare pickup is still a thing I need to be there for. Wont' be a problem in 10 years though.
Car seats are the biggest issue I will refrain from scoffing at. I think there are probably solutions to that, but right now there's no real market to develop them. We need either carseats that are truly easy to install and somehow not a giant hassle to transport on the other end (though for infants, this is what a snap n go is for) or vehicle seats that can actually accommodate children safely. Like the built in boosters you can find now. Just need somebody to come up with something good for the toddler crowd.
And wheelchairs. Because in my experience getting a lyft/uber/etc is difficult once you add in a wheelchair/mobility aid, etc.
This is a good point. H and I are a one car household. We have been for a few years. It always surprises people, but I honestly don't feel like we need 2 cars. We got rid of his car a year or so after we started living together because it mostly sat in the driveway. I have wished for a 2nd car probably less than 10 times. I get that it's harder when you have kids going in several directions, but for the most part a small amount of compromise and teamwork makes sharing a car pretty easy for a couple. And for the times when we can't do that, there is Lyft/Uber. Or public transit, even if it's a bit less convenient sometimes. It's worth the savings. I can imagine if and when these driverless cars become cheap, they would alleviate any issues with sharing a car. Right now I have to consider if whatever I'm doing that evening is worth the extra $25 in Lyft rides or if it's safe to take public transit to certain places at certain hours.
Lyft recently started a program where you can take 30 rides a month for $300. I think the rides can be valued up to $15, and if the ride would have cost more you just pay the difference (so a $20 ride would cost you $5 if you had this program). 30 rides is not quite enough to commute daily, so I'm not sure if this is exactly the right program for most of us, but I find it intriguing. If I were to take a job where I couldn't take the train (like I do now) or we were to move to a different area where public transit wouldn't be reasonable (like most areas in Baltimore, really), I can see something like this Lyft program working for me. If I were to buy a car right now, I'd probably be looking at a minimum of $500-600 a month between a payment, insurance, parking at my building AND at work, and gas. Typing it out like that, even now that Lyft program would save me money if I just paid out of pocket for a few other trips a month. But - I had to type that out to realize that! I think most of us Americans are just so used to having a car and driving everywhere that we don't think creatively about other options.
You are lucky where you live in the city! See my post about my abysmal years using public transit lol
We definitely are! It's a real barrier when thinking of moving elsewhere OR looking for another job. I honestly did get lucky that I ended up getting a job on the metro line. In our current situation, I genuinely don't think we could afford a 2nd car so one of us would be stuck on a long bus ride if things had worked out differently. Which, we could have made work. But the current situation is much easier. It's like, one thing I actually really appreciate about my less than ideal job situation
ETA: I guess that's the one downside of going down to a 1 car family a few years ago. At that point it was a choice, we had 2 paid off cars and a driveway to park them in. Now it would be very hard to add a 2nd car. Not only would we have start up costs of buying one, but we don't have free parking at home or at work so our costs would escalate quickly. I do hope we can make choices in the future that allow us to stick with 1 car, but it does limit options.
I wish I didn’t have to drive anywhere but the transit in my city is abysmal. I took it for many years and it literally took me over 2 hrs to go less than 10 miles to work and 2 or more hrs back and plus a 1/4 to 1/2 mile walk on either side depending on the time of day. It was a miserable time. The bus was frequently late or not come at all and the bus only ran every 1-2 hrs depending on the time of day.
I have a paid off car that I really only use to go to the library/grocery store since I work from home now. I get gas every 2-3 months lol. It’s 14 yrs old with only 80,000 miles on it. When I don’t have that anymore I hope these robotaxis or whatever are available then or I might switch to driving my husband to work when I need the car which would be a pain because while he works in our city it is across town and not near anything I would go to.
The transit in our city is REALLY bad. I work at a metro station, so on my office days I could take H to work with me and he could ride the metro from there to his office (his office is also at a metro station.) It's really silly how convenient it would be. But he often needs to leave work and drive all over town to meet with clients. Better mass transit or better options for getting around (i.e. robotaxis....I'm all in on the idea of these now, ha) would help a great deal. If he could even go one day a week without driving in that would help with his stress level I think, even if it took roughly the same amount of time (it would probably be faster, but only by maybe 10 or 15 minutes.) He could also take the metro from Owings Mills on the days I don't go into the office. But again, Baltimore isn't really a practical city for that if you have to go anywhere during the day(and also the metro can be unreliable.) But if we HAD to go to one car, we could find a way to make it work especially with the magical robotaxis of the future.
I am SO FRUSTRATED about transit in my city. It's not bad if all you need to do is go in a straight line. And actually, babyharpy's daycare basically is in a straight line from our house. It's just that it literally takes twice as long to take the bus there. If we had trains, I imagine it would be much more comparable in time to driving. I would LOVE to just take her on a train - honestly, getting her in the car seat is such a PITA that I'd rather plop her in a stroller on a train than drive. But to do it all via bus would just take for-fucking-ever.
Just for kicks, I looked up public transit from my house to my job. I live maybe 6 miles from work. It would take 1.5 hours, 2 miles of walking, and 2 busses to take public transit. Add in picking my daughter up from daycare or dropping her off, and it gets even more crazy.
Just for kicks, I looked up public transit from my house to my job. I live maybe 6 miles from work. It would take 1.5 hours, 2 miles of walking, and 2 busses to take public transit. Add in picking my daughter up from daycare or dropping her off, and it gets even more crazy.
Well a 6 mile bike ride would take about 30 minutes.
I get that public transit is shit in a lot of cities, and even worse outside of them.
If a lot fewer people had cars, it would likely be better because there would be more demand, more people paying in, more people voting to support it, etc.
Now I'm curious who actually read the article. It doesn't say we should all martyr ourselves. It says that for many people, autonomous cars will make owning a car less attractive.
Even if - as I said upthread - I still would envision H and I owning one vehicle because some things we do would be impractical, that doesn't mean someone is out there trying to make your commute 3-10x longer!
We could drop down to one car if we had to, but that's because I work from home and only need to go into the office about once a month. Also, there's a grocery store about a mile from our house that I could walk to if we needed groceries during the week, otherwise I could get grocery shopping done on the weekend.
I recognize, though, that I'm in a privileged position with my job. If I had to go into the office every day, I still think we could make it work with one car...but my husband wouldn't like it.
Public transit in Atlanta (at least in the suburbs) isn't worth shit. There would have to be some major improvements. Every time I have the chance to vote for it I do because we have to change something.
Just for kicks, I looked up public transit from my house to my job. I live maybe 6 miles from work. It would take 1.5 hours, 2 miles of walking, and 2 busses to take public transit. Add in picking my daughter up from daycare or dropping her off, and it gets even more crazy.
Well a 6 mile bike ride would take about 30 minutes.
And with the injuries I have to my knees and my hips, 3 months of PT.
All this being said. If we could get more employers to embrace wfh (for those that it easily applies) it would be extremely helpful cutting down on mutli car homes, embracing ride-shares, etc (ANECDOTES speaking to my coworkers and friends about this article).