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Comment by brockwhittaker | Hacker News Reader

I would normally agree but the difference could be around $5 each way for 250 work days a year. A few thousand dollars a year is quite a lot.

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Cars cost more than that. If I had a choice between a second commuter car or $200/month of ubering, the ubering would be cheaper. Car ownership in the bay is something like this:

* $100-500/month car payment or depreciation

* +$100/month in gas

* $60-120/month in insurance

* $100/month in amortized maintenance costs

= $360/month minimum base cost

And if you work/live in SF or need to go over the bridge:

* $100-200/month in parking space rent

* $100/month in toll bridge costs

Plus adhoc parking costs as you use your car.

Wow. My costs: 300€/month payment which includes insurance. 60-80€ a month for gas. And mind you it’s expensive there ~1.2€/liter ~30€/month mainatence. 2/3 of it comes down to change and storage of winter/summer tires (winter tires are mandatory).

I said amortized maintenance, so when you have to replace that $300 part and pay $100-$300 in labor to do it, that is part of the bill spread over a year. To me repairs are an inevitable part of car ownership, so I put in the maintenance category. Not just replace your oil and swap your tires type maintenance. Maybe a year or two you'll have no repairs, then get a $1500 repair bill because a water pump broke, and some asshole who breaks your car window to steal nothing, leading to $2000 of 'surprise' repair costs that year.

Also if you buy a used car for $15k, then sell it 5 years later for $9k, that is equivalent to a $100/month car payment, which I call car depreciation.

My numbers do include repairs, which was 0 euros. I also have an insurance which would cover asshole scenario.

If you are regularly commuting via Uber you are doing a lot of things wrong.

Why? If it’s an alternative to owning and parking a car in a city, it seems like something that could be a rational decision especially in the absence of good transit options.

In any city where the economics of car vs uber work out in favor of uber, then necessarily the economics of train + bus vs uber work out in favor of train + bus.

That’s clearly false unless you value your time at $0

Bus + train is much faster than Uber, for example in NY. You’d take an Uber in order to have the luxury of riding alone or with a small group instead of a crowd, or because you have a large suitcase, but absolutely not because it’s faster. This is no different than the same tradeoff for taxis.

And the context of this subthread is about Uber as a full solution for commuting. So my original claim still holds. If things like always riding alone or always transporting luggage are impacting your daily commute decision and making you believe that paying the premium for Uber is cost effective, then necessarily it’s even more cost effective for you to buy and maintain your own car, and satisfy those unusual commute preferences in a way that amortizes the costs of operating your own car even in a dense urban area.

? Been doing it for years

Disabled people who are unable to operate a vehicle need to work too. Sometimes jobs are too far for public transportation to be an option. What should they do instead?

It's perfectly okay to tell someone to buy a cheaper car or one that's better on gas. Car owners spend thousands more than they need to commute to work.

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