Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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I wonder where the results of this research come from.
Even with a size of 10,000+ people, I would definitely like to see the information on where they live, because that is a massive factor.
I live in a place with ok (not great but not horrible) public transportation. Problem is, it's way cheaper for me to drive to work than to take public transportation.
It costs me 4$ a week in fuel to drive to work. A monthly transit pass is more than 100$. Even with an honored citizen pass which is just under 30$, it's still cheaper for me to drive to work.
This doesn't include other costs from driving obviously in which it would be overall cheaper to take public transit, however it's overly time consuming just to get to a local store and back home due to a lack of better transit. It would take me almost an hour one way just to go 3 miles to the local grocery store.
I'm not saying cars are better by any means, but the necessity is very much dependent on where people live, so the data could be skewed simply by that factor alone.
I lived in mainland Japan for a while, the public transit system is amazing. What also helps is that there are smaller local places where you can simply walk to in order to get groceries or other necessities.
I wish the US wasn't stuck in this capitalistic nightmare and just started heavily investing in public transit. Then, in places where transit is fully functional (and reasonable), start pushing an occasional non driving day, with free or reduced fare transit. Anything to slowly integrate public transit systems into people's daily lives so it isn't seen as some lower tier form of transport or a hunge inconvenience.
You are committing a mortal sin of personal finance - equating vehicle cost with gas cost. It is this precise mistake that results in countless American families literally driving themselves into poverty. The cost of gas is only a small fraction of the per-mile cost to operate a vehicle. This is one of the single biggest mistakes people mistake when assessing their personal finances, deciding on how far to live from work, deciding whether to drive or fly for a trip, etc.
All of the costs of vehicle ownership scale with mileage. Cars depreciate faster the more you drive them. The more you drive, the greater the chance of an accident and a resultingly higher insurance premium. Every mile you drive means more maintenance and burns through ever-more of your car's finite lifespan. Gas is the only one of these you feel so directly, but ALL of the costs of operating a vehicle scale with mileage.
It is difficult to calculate the true total cost of vehicle ownership, but a good approximation is the IRS mileage rate, which is 67 cents per mile. This is the IRS's best figuring of the average cost to operate a vehicle, averaged across the US vehicle fleet. Obviously it will be higher or lower depending on the precise vehicle you drive, how reckless a driver you are, etc.
But let's be generous and assume an average mpg efficiency of 35 mpg. If gas costs $3.50/gallon, then gas costs you about 10 cents per mile. Averaged across the US vehicle fleet, gas costs less 20% of the actual cost of operating a vehicle. A car is a big expensive asset that you burn through just like you burn through gas. Every mile you drive a vehicle gets it one mile closer to the junkyard.
This is what creates the illusion of driving being cheaper than it actually is. I mean, just think about it from first principles. A bigger vehicle like a train or bus is obviously going to be a hell of a lot cheaper to move a person the same distance. It's simple economies of scale. When you buy a transit pass, you are paying for your share of the full cost of operating a bus or train, not just the fuel cost.
If you want to calculate the true cost of operating a vehicle, a rough method is to take what you spend on gas and multiply by 5. That's a lot closer to your true cost per mile of owning and operating a vehicle.
Iirc, a company vehicle was worth around 8 grand in salary back before covid. I'm not sure what it would be today, though.