Cars are a terrible use of money

[CPA]

How else am I supposed to pull my snowmobiles into the mountains to run down granola eating cross country skiers?

Why, pull it with the ZipCar, of course! Or your bicycle.

 

[BUTCH1]

I make good money and enjoy my car. That and public transit is a joke around here.

Stay home if you don't like it, bitch.

LOL, not to mention not having a car and living in an area where there is not extensive public transportation means it's damm near impossible to get/keep a job. Seen ton's of job ad's that start with "must have reliable transportation". Also I hope you like stinky people because a lot of people that ride the bus smell like ass, have fun OP.

 

[Imp]

I hate cars for commuting, but if I weren't poor, I'd get one.

Public transportation is horseshit -- buses and subways. Effing overcrowded piece of shit in my city.

 

[jlee]

I am getting sick of seeing so many cars. There is so much congestion and they are a big waste of money. They make little to no sense for most people living within 20 miles of a major urban center.

Whenever I see a parking lot of cars, I think of the giant amount of capital that is being wasted. Cars typically have utilization rates of less than 10%, which means they are money pits the rest of the time.

Public transit + Zipcar + a good bicycle is much better financially.

Let's consider the financials behind car ownership. Here I assume that someone lives near a decently sized (> 1 million) metropolitan area, and drives 2 hours each day of the week.

Total hours driving per month: 60 hours
Insurance: $100/month
Parking: $100/month (including land value of parking at home)
Gas: $240/month (assuming 30mpg, $4 per gallon of gas, and 30 mph average speed)
Cost per hour of driving: $7.33

This does not include the actual price of the car, which for many Americans is > $10,000. It also does not include maintenance.

If you have access to car-sharing services like Zipcar, which costs around $9/hour, then why would you own a car? With internet shopping, home delivery, taxis/Uber, and cheap car rentals it makes no sense to me.

Show me a Zipcar that comes with 400+rwhp and a manual transmission.


No?


How about one that can drive over rocks the size of your dining room table?


No?


/done.

 

[TwiceOver]

For the few people that meet your criteria, probably a waste of money. For the vast majority of Americans, worth it.

 

[-slash-]

How do I tow my boat with no truck? What bus takes me up in the mountains at 4am to shoot a deer? What bus will take me and all my camping shit to a trailhead for a week long camping trip?

Asinine statement. It's harder to choke out granola faggots like the OP with diesel smoke in a zip car as well.

Please eliminate that word from your posting vocabulary.
admin allisolm

 

[nageov3t]

Show me a Zipcar that comes with 400+rwhp and a manual transmission.


No?


How about one that can drive over rocks the size of your dining room table?


No?


/done.

they're also not open 24/7... so if I needed to drive down to visit a friend out in the sticks on a Friday night for dinner and didn't get back to my home city until after midnight, you're stuck paying for the car overnight.

 

[K1052]

It's pretty hard to go car free outside a major urban area in the US. NYC, Chicago, SF, Boston, Portland, etc are places where it comes to mind as possible to varying degrees.

Since I can't magically transport one car between SF and Chicago on a weekly basis I now have no car. Public trans, walking, Uber, and Zipcar pretty much handles anything I need to do.

 

[BudAshes]

How do I tow my boat with no truck? What bus takes me up in the mountains at 4am to shoot a deer? What bus will take me and all my camping shit to a trailhead for a week long camping trip?

Asinine statement. It's harder to choke out granola faggots like the OP with diesel smoke in a zip car as well.

You started strong then turned into a typical pathetic bigot. Ironic that washington is full of some of the coolest people I know, along with some of the worst prejudiced hillbillies you will find anywhere.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I agree that commuting sucks. I drive 20 miles each way to/from work, and with traffic, it takes 45-60 min each way.

There's no bus, train, or cheetah route. It would be deadly to attempt by bike. It would take much too long to walk. So, I drive.

Move closer to work you may say, well, in the NW burbs of chicago. Moving closer means that to find a comparable home (small ranch with basement on .15 acre lot), we are talking about 100K more than what I paid for my house. And, of the cities that are smaller and sort of feel like a "small town", there are very few here, and the cost would likely add another 300-400K.

So, to have a comparable home in a comparable town and neighborhood, would be many hundreds of thousands more than just living in my home 20 miles away in a sub 200K home.


I find having a car, and sacrificing 1.5ish hours 4 days per week to be a lesser sacrifice than living in a shithole or paying an extra half a million to live in a comparable house within walking distance of the office.

 

[vi edit]

I'm moving to a city of about 400k people. I'll be commuting to the center of the city where a major university is and has about 10,000 people dumping into on a daily basis from about 5 or so arterial highways. Parking blows. It's bumper to bumper crawl from about 3 miles out as everyone forms one giant clot trying to get through lights the closer you get to the university.

What I'd want ideally is a couple huge park and bike lots about 2-3 miles out and then some sort of skywalk that dropped you into the center of the campus. Idea would be to reduce the number of cars coming into that area and give people a good option to easily get into campus in a much more nimble, economical, and earth friendly way.

Hell, if you put a simple tin roof on the top of the skywalk then you don't even have to worry about weather much. If it was relatively flat and wide enough you could easily cover that distance in 5-10 minutes. If you sat in a car bumper to bumper it'd take 2x that much just to get to your parking spot. Add that time in again walking from your car to your building.

Bike commuting is increasing as fuel goes up and cost of cars and parking does along with it. There has to be better options available but cities are so reluctant to spend a dime on any sort of progressive alternative commuting plans.

 

[BUTCH1]

they're also not open 24/7... so if I needed to drive down to visit a friend out in the sticks on a Friday night for dinner and didn't get back to my home city until after midnight, you're stuck paying for the car overnight.

Just for LOL's I checked, there's a zip-car outpost right near me, but @$8-10/hr to keep it I would need to spend most of my paycheck just staying at work, what a ripoff.

 

[BUTCH1]

Show me a Zipcar that comes with 400+rwhp and a manual transmission.


No?


How about one that can drive over rocks the size of your dining room table?


No?


/done.

I don't think zip-car's business model would work well if they included that type of vehicle, very few need those kind of capabilities. Still, I'd rather drive a $500 beater than use zip-car, I'd still come way out on top $$ wise.

 

[Phoenix86]

I am getting sick of seeing so many cars. There is so much congestion and they are a big waste of money. They make little to no sense for most people living within 20 miles of a major urban center.

Whenever I see a parking lot of cars, I think of the giant amount of capital that is being wasted. Cars typically have utilization rates of less than 10%, which means they are money pits the rest of the time.

Public transit + Zipcar + a good bicycle is much better financially.

Let's consider the financials behind car ownership. Here I assume that someone lives near a decently sized (> 1 million) metropolitan area, and drives 2 hours each day of the week.

Total hours driving per month: 60 hours
Insurance: $100/month
Parking: $100/month (including land value of parking at home)
Gas: $240/month (assuming 30mpg, $4 per gallon of gas, and 30 mph average speed)
Cost per hour of driving: $7.33

This does not include the actual price of the car, which for many Americans is > $10,000. It also does not include maintenance.

If you have access to car-sharing services like Zipcar, which costs around $9/hour, then why would you own a car? With internet shopping, home delivery, taxis/Uber, and cheap car rentals it makes no sense to me.

That's great it works for you. I live within 20 miles of a major urban area. There's absolutely 0 chance I can do what you suggest without major, major changes (job/home).

Also, LOL@$100 mo/parking for land value at home. I could park 20 cars in the back yard alone. Why does parking 1 car cost more? It doesn't. I'd have the land with or without the car.

 

[OutHouse]

They make little to no sense for most people living within 20 miles of a major urban center.

i would love you to qualify that statement.

20 miles for Denver is either

East- in the plains
West - in the mountains
south- almost to colorado springs
north - past longmont.

sorry but your absolute statement is fucking stupid and so is the rest of your post.

 

[waggy]

no car and zip car may work in a heavily populated area but for most of the US it's not going to work.

i would be happy to give up my if i could. I just don't enjoy driving anymore.

 

[K1052]

That's great it works for you. I live within 20 miles of a major urban area. There's absolutely 0 chance I can do what you suggest without major, major changes (job/home).

Also, LOL@$100 mo/parking for land value at home. I could park 20 cars in the back yard alone. Why does parking 1 car cost more? It doesn't. I'd have the land with or without the car.

I think both you and the OP may have a problem envisioning that different places are....different.

 

[nageov3t]

That's great it works for you. I live within 20 miles of a major urban area. There's absolutely 0 chance I can do what you suggest without major, major changes (job/home).

Also, LOL@$100 mo/parking for land value at home. I could park 20 cars in the back yard alone. Why does parking 1 car cost more? It doesn't. I'd have the land with or without the car.

every neighborhood is different and this wouldn't apply if you were living in the center of Manhattan for example, but even in my urban neighborhood across the river I can park for free.

maybe I'll get 1 ticket/year if I'm not paying attention to alternate side rules or oversleep, but otherwise I can nearly always get free street parking within a block of my house (at least 8-9 months/year... it becomes a bit of a clusterfuck during the winter any time it snows)

 

[Newell Steamer]

If you live in an urban city, with great public transportation, you will rarely need a car.

NYC has been great to me and I love every awful, smelly, grimy, shitty square inch of it.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

I'm one of the few people that the OP's vision applies to. I live in SF and have great access to public transportation. I can take the Muni to work very easily (~30 minutes) and so can my wife (also ~20). I have to walk about 5 blocks and she has to walk 2 to to catch the Muni.

I however rarely take the Muni. The motorcycle is basically my car. Thankfully the weather in SF lets you ride nearly 365 days/year. Plus it solves a lot of the problems the OP mentions, parking, wasted space, cost, traffic, etc. Plus motorcycles are unbelievably fun. For my own curiosity, I'm going to do the math.

Cost: 3000
mileage: 50mpg
maintenance: $1000/yr (so far)
Gas: in SF I'd estimate... 4.10 over the last year.
Miles: 10000/yr
Insurance: 300/yr

cost/mile: $0.512

So my commute to work is 3.7 miles. It costs me $1.89 to ride to work one way and it takes me roughly 15 minutes. If I take the Muni it costs $2 and takes me at least 30 minutes, maybe longer if something goes wrong.

Additionally, when my wife and I want to go somewhere in the city (round trip) the muni cost is $8 round trip and the motorcycle gets us there and back quicker and significantly cheaper.

 

[videogames101]

i guess if you don't drive places you'd be right, but some of us drive a lot to places far away

 

[Svnla]

Down here, public transportation is a joke. I bought my vehicle brand new a few years ago and will drive it until the wheels fall off = FTW. I only live less than 5 miles from work (20 minutes of commuting or so) so if I only drive from work and back and a few errands, my gas tank will last about 3 weeks. Not bad.

 

[ponyo]

What about our private jets and helicopter? And our yachts?

 

[Rakehellion]

Total hours driving per month: 60 hours
Insurance: $100/month
Parking: $100/month (including land value of parking at home)
Gas: $240/month (assuming 30mpg, $4 per gallon of gas, and 30 mph average speed)
Cost per hour of driving: $7.33

If you have access to car-sharing services like Zipcar, which costs around $9/hour, then why would you own a car? With internet shopping, home delivery, taxis/Uber, and cheap car rentals it makes no sense to me.

:hmm:

 

[Slew Foot]

Lol, Europeans