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Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

The fact that this article does not break down the various transportation costs sets off massive red flags.

The $3k/yr number mentioned for the cost of transportation via car in Houston is on the same order as an MBTA rail pass in the Boston area. Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston.

Yes of course transit is not free but that's true whether regardless of your mode of transit. The premise is solid. The analysis is lacking.

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> Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston.

Having lived in both places, and currently living in metro Boston without a car, I'm of the opposite opinion. To each their own.

> To each their own.

... as long as they help pay for the externalities all that driving is responsible for.

I don't think anybody in the world is doing this, right? The environmental impact of all these cars?

A great bit of activity San Francisco saw recently was someone renting out parking spaces as "office spaces" for like 2.50$ an hour. It pointed out that a similar space in a building would probably go for more like 10$/hour or more, highlighting how little we're valuing our street-side real estate.

In Denmark cars are taxed 100% and they still prob aren't paying their fair share. They do have lots of people walking, biking, and taking tansit.

Yes, gas is way more expensive in Europe, in general.

One thing my European friends tend to not understand is just how big the US is. For a huge portion of none-coastline America, driving is the only mode of transport.

"Denmark is approximately 43,094 sq km, while United States is approximately 9,833,517 sq km. Meanwhile, the population of Denmark is ~5.6 million people (321.0 million more people live in United States)" From a quick search.

Typical Americans don't commute across state lines. The size of the US is just a stupid argument. The typical US commute is not that much longer than the typical European commute. 80% of the trips are below 10 miles.

I disagree. It's not just about the commute, it's about the fact that there is almost zero public transpo infrastructure in the US. For example, I had a near 40 mile drive just to get to my highschool, and a 75 mile drive to the closest Walmart.

Also, given the numbers I just posted, even if your 80 percent number is right, that's still a portion of the population doing long commutes, and that number of people is more than the entire population of Denmark!

Look, I've traveled in places with great public infrastructure and I really want the US to work very hard towards it, but I get tired of all the Europeans who always in any thread of this subject start ridiculing us without even fully comprehending how large the US is. Do we need to put major money and work into it? Yes. Does that mean it's actually feasible for people to get rid of their vehicles? Not yet for anyone except those in the best public transpo cities.

"Your argument is stupid" ... great one...

The lack of public transport is not due to the distance between New York and San Francisco. It's decades of car-centric city planning that is responsible. Russia is a big country too and public transport in Moscow was pretty good when I visited.

There are people with very long commutes in Europe too. I personally know people who commute 100km+ one way.

If you had to drive 75 miles to get to the next Walmart you probably didn't live in an urban area so any arguments against cars in urban areas don't apply to your lifestyle. You won't find public transport in the countryside in Europe either.

Forget externalities, car owners aren't even actually paying for the roads they use. Gas tax pays for significantly less than half of the road budget in the US, although the exact percentage varies on a state by state basis. The rest comes out of general tax receipts.

Hah, quite correct. I have a link to that in my 'urbanism' bookmarks:

https://taxfoundation.org/state-road-funding-2017/

I did DC in a black truck with no A/C for awhile. Still better than the MBTA.

> Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston.

I'd really like to see how you come to this conclusion.

More control of when you leave/arrive, storage space to transport things, not dealing with other people, ability to go wherever you want, air conditioning.

There are downsides like traffic, car maintenance, and parking, but in general, cars are probably more comfortable than public transit in the US. I'm also ignoring externalities like pollution and unsustainable suburban sprawl growth. I'd rather take the subway Mon to Fri in NYC, but if the roads are empty, the streets are faster and more comfortable.

Unfortunately, public transit is awesome if everyone has to take it, but if enough people opt out, and we give them an option like a personal car and pave roads over where we could have had public space, then cars become optimal for the individual.

I personally like a hybrid approach. I absolutely hate driving in a city, and trying to find (and pay for) parking. So I drive to a park-n-ride that is outside the city, park for a couple bucks, then take light-weight rail into the city. This does require the physical ability to walk quite a bit once you are in the city, however, which a number of people can't do much of due to physical issues (starting to include myself in that category).

Park-n-ride has great quality of life but costs a ton because you inevitably wind up paying the cost of driving, parking and public transit.

Like everything else, it depends.

It would cost me approximately $23/day to drive to work accounting for gas + parking, even more if I wanted to pay to use the HOV lane. Instead I drive to a park and ride and take an express bus. The total estimated cost is around $6 including my gas costs.

> Park-n-ride has great quality of life but costs a ton because you inevitably wind up paying the cost of driving, parking and public transit.

Somebody pays for the cost of your parking. If you're parking at work, it's your boss. If you're parking on the street, it's taxpayers at large. If you're parking in a park and ride, it's you.

Park and rides are generally built in areas where the cost of parking is much lower then it is downtown, so the overall cost of a P&R + bus ticket will often be lower then driving and parking the whole way yourself.

Maybe, but my feudal lord offers a discounted bulk public transit pass plus park-n-ride combo.

I dislike the hybrid approach because that's what makes it impossible to optimize a community for either public transit or private cars. You can't do both at the same time, the resources that would make public transit amazing are being used up by infrastructure for private cars.

This hybrid approach still requires purchase and regular operation of an entire personal vehicle, which will not be entirely attenuated by simply driving half as many miles. So if [driving] and [public transit] both cost x, the hybrid solution will definitely cost more than x, up to 2x, which means most people will only do one or the other.

I don't think 'not dealing with other people' really applies to driving. You're still dealing with people, but now they're in large machines that can quickly kill you if the other person is on their phone, drunk, angry or just plain bad at driving.

Public transit is generally safer and less costly when you start taking into account accidents and injuries resulting from them. There's also the immense value of being freed from having to focus on the road, which gives you the ability to multitask and read, write code etc.

I used to do just that back when I rode the bus to and from college.

"dealing with other people" = ticket inspectors, beggers, crying babies, random conversations 50 cm away from your ear, drunk people...

you don't have this in your car.

Beggars exist and will walk up to your car at popular intersections. Drunk people also drive, or else drunk driving wouldn't be an issue and the result of so many other deaths.

Don't get me started on people suffering from road rage.

I think you're drastically underestimating the health impact of of driving. Public transit incorporates walking and you can relax on the train, read a book or stream something. Driving usually means stressful traffic, road rage, and overall lost exercise.

Driving excessive amounts or in high traffic situations is worse than public transit.

Sorry, I was unclear. Yes, I totally agree: I believe driving is substantially worse for your physical and mental health than transit.

In personal terms, I sought a new job where I could take the T or bike to avoid driving as the extreme antisocial behavior of other Boston drivers was taking a serious toll on me.

I don’t know about you, but my WMATA rage (raging at the fact that the ride is super jerky because they used all their maintenance funds for hookers and cocaine and thus had to turn off automatic train control; raging at sitting stopped because some switch broke down again, etc.) raises my blood as much as toad rage ever did.

>hookers and cocaine

You misspelled "creating previously non-existent middle manager positions for powerful people to place people in as political favors"

No, the corruption at WMATA is among the rank and file, who get paid too much and don’t do their jobs. The vast majority of WMATA’s employees are in operations.

40 minutes standing or even sitting on a hard plastic seat is not my idea of relaxing. I admit that you'll get more exercise, but no thanks; I'll walk somewhere a bit more pleasurable then downtown.

I find being in close quarters with that many people way more stressful then driving.

"Relax on the train" - My experience is that it's very difficult to relax on public transit due mostly to the homeless. Whether it's the smell, begging, or just general unstable behavior, it's not exactly a relaxing environment.

This is a side product if there being lots of homeless and not enough commuters using public transport.

In European cities the most common unpleasantness is drunk people late at night coming back from clubbing, at all other times it is as pleasant as it can be. It was certainly a shock to discover the reason for empty Muni carriages during rush hour so after moving to SF. To give people from outside the bay area an idea, elevators on the stations now have a person in them at all times to avoid them turning into public bathrooms. The area of the city all the underground lines go through have historically been the congregation area for the homeless, and there are a lot of homeless here.

No, you can definitely not relax with one arm extended over your head, the other on your backpack, several strangers’ bodies touching yours, and dramatic change in acceleration every few seconds.

> More control of when you leave/arrive, storage space to transport things, not dealing with other people, ability to go wherever you want, air conditioning.

But everything you listed there, except people and AC, doesn't apply to commuting, which is the main transportation people in suburbs rely on.

Sure it does. Want to pick up some beer on the way home from work? Kid had a rough night and you want to sleep in 30 minutes later than usual (taking you out of the AM peak train frequency)? Don’t want to have to walk 10 minutes through the rain (or a 150% humidity DC day) to get to your office? Driving is much better for that.

Yeah, I guess it depends on the person. I live on a pretty strict schedule, so if my kid has a bad night, we all still have to be up and out at exactly the same time. The closest parking garage is a lot farther than the closest train stop. I've taken small groceries home in my backpack pretty often; there's lots of shopping by my office. The thought of parking at a shopping center after work sounds really unappealing. :D

One thing to notice is that the groceries themselves are different in the us and Europe. Packages have a tendency to be bigger and the shops tend to be further away because the customers will be driving to the shop. It's a self reinforcing cycle.

Interesting, the reasons you listed make a stronger argument for public transit than for cars, for me.

30 minutes sleeping in mean I've just added one hour to my car commute time (we joked that the difference between leaving at 6:30 and 7am is getting to work at 7am and 9am), whereas I just catch the next train and get there exactly at the same time as I would have before... plus 30 minutes. If I want to pick up beer, I just grab some from the liquor store on the way to the train or whatever, and carry it, no big deal. Re: rain, traffic accidents go way up in the rain and everything slows way down on the freeways, but the train doesn't feel it at all and still gets there exactly at the same time. It's got AC on it so I'm not uncomfortable on hot days.

Public Transit generally sucks in America so yea, driving is better because the above reasons don't apply when the train comes once every 3 hours, is unreliable, and the AC is broken. But the option does exist to have good public transit, it just needs the funding. Other cities and countries have figured it out, it's possible.

So given that good public transit is an option, is better for the environment, is cheaper in real costs, why not seek that out?

> But the option does exist to have good public transit, it just needs the funding. Other cities and countries have figured it out, it's possible.

Our public transit is actually very well funded. London’s Tube spends half as much money per passenger mile as New York’s subway. (And the New York Subway or DC Metro get half their operational funding from the government, while the London Tube pays for its own operational funding with fares.)

Just because non-Americans have figured out how to do something doesn’t mean Americans can’t. (For example, we spend among the most on public education per student, but get worse results.) Good, well managed, public services is something that appears incompatible with our culture.

>incompatible with our culture.

Culture, or system of governance? Culture is too wishy-washy a term. It seems to easy to give up - ah sorry, Americans are just too stupid/lazy to figure it out. Nah. I want to figure out what specifically about the structure of our infrastructure development is, and fix it.

Our system of governance is an expression of our culture. In France, when the government wants to build a railroad, they do the studies, then they pass a law that preempts every other law, and the railroad gets built. In the US, the government does the studies, decides to build the railroad, and spends years tangled up in litigation. We created those legal structures to reflect what we think is important.

Right now, folks in our county are trying to shut down three light rail stops that have already been built and are operating. (Transit is a “conduit for crime.”) If we do that, we have to pay the federal government back a bunch of money we got to build those stops in the first place. Americans hate infrastructure. And they don’t particularly like each other, so they have built a distributed society that doesn’t require as much centralized coordination.

It’s not stupidity or laziness. Americans are too individualistic to build infrastructure. Nobody can put the needs of society over their own needs. That’s why every infrastructure project is a disaster of inefficient self-serving union workers[1] and endless litigation. (I have an acquaintance who is ethnically Japanese, and moved back to Japan after growing up in the US. She remarked to me: “Americans don’t really go around thinking about how what they’re doing affects other people.”)

Once you really internalize all that, it’s pretty fine. I kinda like the suburbs. I like being able to roll right up to a chain restaurant and park, instead of having to shlep a stroller up and down stairs. In my old age, I’ve realized that if you’re living in New York or SF, you’re doing the whole America thing wrong. That just forces you to constantly confront all the things Americans do poorly (transit, zoning, social services). Kansas City! You can drive everywhere, traffic isn’t too bad, cost of living is super low, etc.

[1] In the NYT piece on why the Second Avenue subway costs so much, there were French transit managers pointing out how ridiculously over staffed the project was. The French were pointing out how inefficient we were.

I think you've illustrated this perfectly - a lot of frustration I've experienced with my peers is what you've said - we want something, and we turn up to the city council meeting asking for it, and we're beset by a lot of older people shouting that a navigation center at the wharf is bad because homeless are criminal and dirty.

Maybe you're right that America as a whole can't. I think the younger liberals though, at least from my experience with them, willing to put forward the needs of society. I think many of them have no choice, because the individualist option just isn't available anymore like it was in the past.

Thank you for your words on this.

In California the state has been slowly passing laws here and there to preempt zoning and lawsuits to stop transit and densification.

One of the things I've noted is often the opposition is basically insane.

From voters in the Santa Cruz mountain blocking construction of a sewer up HWY 9. Needed because everyone's septic systems are polluting the ground water and streams. Blocked after all the planning had been done. The Feds, State, and Country would have paid for most of it. But blocking construct meant all the planning costs had to be paid for by the home owners. Total $1000 each.

To suing to block the construction of the California high speed rail. Because they might run a tunnel 3000 feet under someones toy horse ranch in the San Gabriels.

The worst consequence of a car-heavy culture, to me, isn't the pollution (or any other externalities we don't normally account for because cars!).

It's that a car-heavy culture takes the choice away for everybody for any other transportation.

I'm sure driving around Houston is great, but say I don't want to, for whatever reason (I want to drink a lot to celebrate something)...or say I can't, because of a health condition...

because of the car culture, I now have no choice.

There should be a way to structure cities to return choice to people, instead of giving up 35% of our usable land to streets that force people to move about in personal vehicles; freedom should mean the freedom to choose one's transportation, not just the freedom to own and maintain a vehicle.

"More control of when you leave/arrive, "

I disbelieve. If you don't want to be caught up in nasty traffic, you have to check the reports, and have knowledge of when rush hour gets bad. So you're still on somone else's schedule.

How long is your commute? I highly doubt anyone who has to endure public transport for more than 30 minutes at a time would say that. Not to mention the limits on where you can go and what you can take with you. Of course you don't need a car if your workplace is 20 minutes away and your only hobby is going to the gym across the street. But I'd like to see you practice any more niche hobby that requires transporting equipment.

My subway commute is about 30 minutes and I practice some pretty damn niche hobbies.

The $3k/yr number mentioned is not the cost of transportation via car in Houston, but the premium you pay for Houston's sprawl. In other words, commuting in a low-sprawl city is $3k/yr cheaper than it would be in Houston.

Car ownership is significantly more expensive than $3k/year.

This. There are many other costs associated with car ownership. As a transit user I don't need to pay towards a vehicle registration/inspection, repairs, insurance...

Not to mention things like the mental stress and sedentary lifestyle.

My Nissan leaf disagrees with you.

6.5k purchase price. Cost to Charge less than 50$/mo th. Maintenance nill. Insurance cheap ($35/month)

It doesn't depreciate?!

Who cares. 6.5k/4 years is 1.6k/year. the car needs to only last 3-4 years

Buying a used electric is clearly an exception, not the norm.

Also https://www.edmunds.com/nissan/leaf/2018/cost-to-own/

Also, even if it was... it's not the same price!

MBTA is like $100 a month, which is $1.2k, which is less than half of $3k.

Definitely agree.

One way to show that car transport is much more "valuable" than public transport in terms of convenience and comfort is to observe that very rich people almost universally travel by private car.

> very rich people almost universally travel by private car.

Do they? I thought this would be hard to know, has there been a survey? And is this true even in cities with decent public transportation?

There are no American cities with “decent public transportation.” NYC, DC, and Chicago are the only candidates. The first two used to be good, but have fallen off a cliff due to deferred maintenance. The latter is pretty good but inaccessible from vast swaths of the city.

You forgot to qualify that with "for all residents". If you live in the inner suburbs of Minneapolis and work downtown public transit is pretty good for getting you to work. You will still need/want a car for grocery trips but one car will cover the entire family so you won't need a second. Thus in Minneapolis public transit is subsided transport for the rich - from the perspective of those who do not have a job downtown. (of course the poor also ride public transit, but they don't live in the suburbs)

>You will still need/want a car for grocery trips

Yea, exactly, there is no good public transit, anywhere, in America.

There are cities throughout Europe and Asia where the thought of needing a car to get groceries is comical - the grocery store is right there, or a short hop on a bus/metro away, and it comes every 3 minutes so no big deal.

The USA desperately needs infrastructure help.

Having been to Europe I can report that a fair number of people do not need or have a car. I can also report that a large number of people have a car and consider it essential to get around - they don't live in the big cities.

There are certainly places you can live (even relatively affordable ones!) that you can have this in the US.

I live in Chicago within a 3 minute walk I have my choice of Jewel/Osco or Trader Joe's (which are both right by an L stop, so they're accessible to other people near the L as well). An extra few minutes and I can go to Target. An extra 10 minutes and I can walk to Whole Foods or Mariano's.

My rent isn't super low (~1650/month + electricity for a ~700 sq ft 1 br; parking would be $200+ extra if I had a car) but a CTA pass is only $100 / month and it's pretax. Of course not every part of Chicago is like this.

Or you just get your grocery shopping delivered at home.

I live downtown Minneapolis. I own a condo and there are literally at least 4+ different bus stops right outside on the corners of my building going just about anywhere in and outside the cities (Costco, Aldi, Grocery Stores, Movie Theaters, Home Depot, etc...). Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's are within a couple blocks walk.

The light rail is 1 block away and goes directly to University of Minnesota or Mall of America with stops between.

During the winters, rain, or bad weather, the entrance to the Skyway is across the street.

I don't see how it can get any better.

I sold my car and lease out my parking spot for $150/month. I have a Metro Transit GoToCard [0] I fill up with $20 or weekly/monthly day passes.

[0] https://www.metrotransit.org/go-to-card

This is anecdotal but I can speak for the high net worth individuals I work with in NYC.

Most of them will occasionally take the subway, depending on time of day and where they are traveling. However, all of them travel by car when more convenient (which is often). They also tend to schedule calls during private vehicle commutes (impossible on the subway) and they'll sometimes put up with longer travel times in order to do so.

An MBTA local bus and subway pass is $84.50 per month

$84.50 * 12 months = $1014 per year

As someone living in metro Boston, that is a large difference in cost from my perspective - approximately equivalent to 2 months of rent.

If you live outside of the subway system and need to get places (particularly in/out of the city) within a reasonable time-frame you're likely going to need a commuter rail pass. That jacks up the price substantially.

I did the whole "live in Boston and just use public transit thing" for awhile. Then I moved to one of those cities that MA likes to pretend doesn't exist and my transportation costs stayed about flat. If I had made heavy use of Uber/Lyft they probably would have decreased. My friend commutes in from Worcester and rides the train because of the tolls and the fact that his work subsidizes the rail pass. In a sprawling city with free/cheap parking there would be no economic reason to do anything but drive.

When people say "public transit", they don't mean the periphery of a commuter rail system. They mean the core bus network and usually the subway. You're comparing the worst case of meaningful public transit to a city only built for cars. My hypothesis, if you lived in Somerville, Dorchester, or at most, Quincy, the numbers would look different.

Sure, if you specifically craft your living situation to not involve commuter rail (and don't replace it with Uber/Lyft) you can save money. But you'll spend the money on rent.

> But you'll spend the money on rent.

Bingo! That's exactly what the linked article is about. How much extra are you paying in rent? How much are you saving on transportation? What are total costs of [rent + transportation] in both cases? How much time is wasted on transportation when you're paying lower rent? These are questions that need to be asked.

Why would you not want to "craft" your living situation to give you the optimal setup? No, you can't have everything, but a "crafted" lifestyle that avoids need for transportation may be preferred by many, and may in addition in some cases be cheaper _and_ provide higher quality of life. Maybe not, maybe not for everyone; but those are questions that need to be asked, not simply have, "What are housing rental/purchase costs?" be taken as deciding question of what places have higher cost of "housing".

Yes, that is somewhat the point of this discussion. The money one saves on housing by living further from a dense urban core is often offset to a significant degree by transportation costs, whether those additional costs come from regional rail or driving.

I live in the outermost zone of the commuter rail, and a monthly pass is about $400, or $4,800 per year.

Add to that the fact that you are going to be packed in like cattle, won't have a seat to sit on unless you board at the very first station, and can count on a 30-60 minute delay at least once a week ... the MTBA is probably the single biggest stressor in the Boston area.

If you lived in the urban core, you could save $3786 per year by just getting a local pass. You would avoid a lot of that stress and lost time from your commute. You would not need a car. Of course, your housing costs would be higher, or your housing would be worse, or both. Worth it?

> your housing costs would be higher

My housing costs would be roughly twice as high (from $2,500 to more like $5,000 per month). Living closer just isn't an option.

And most employers will have some sort of transit benefit. $84.50 falls well within a lot of the wage works style benefits people get!

Why would you say using public transportation results in a poor quality of life? Not driving would increase my quality of life a great deal!

As someone who has years' of experience each doing non-trivial commutes by driving and by subway, I'd have to say, the subway wins hands-down. It's not even a close contest. I was doing the most reading of my life when I was taking the subway to work every day, and it was great. I also occasionally played handheld video games or read magazines. My commute time wasn't wasted; I spent it doing things I wanted to do. Contrast with driving, where my commute time was wasted.

And driving is much more stressful and unsafe, as well. You can't be off when you're driving, but you can definitely be off when you're taking the subway. On days when I was especially tired, I would just zone out with my eyes closed.

Now I just have a 10 minute bike commute, and it's my favorite commute I've ever had, but I do miss reading as regularly as I did back then on the subway.

I just lived the last 10 months without a car. There needs to be a big asterisk of not driving would increase your quality of life if there is alternative transit in place. It's pretty miserable when the nearest activities are a 45 minute light rail ride away. Biking is great mid day, but doing anything at night when you're adding 30 minutes to an hour on each side makes most plans fall through.

I would love to not have to own a car in my city, but we'd need to increase density and transit significantly.

When I've driven I have never had to stand for 40 minutes in rush hour in a jammed Milan subway car with my nose in a strangers armpit while another stranger breaths down my neck. I've never been ask for spare change while in my car. I've never been challenged to a fight for asking someone to take their feet off the opposite seat so my wife could sit down. I've never been pickpocketed. I've never had a bad dixieland band set up, play a few measures of bad out-of-tune jazz and then aggressively solicit donations. I've never had a creepy passenger stare at me for the entire ride as if they are trying to memorize my face. My car seat is never covered with vomit when I get in. I've never had a car commute cancelled because of a a labor action, or a signal malfunction, of work being done on the lines or bureaucratic incompetence. I've never had my car stop running because it was too late in the day or a holiday. All these things and much more have happened to me on public transport.

Yes, it is irritating to be stuck in traffic in a car -- you have to move your right foot back and forth between the accelerator and brake while you sit in your adjustable leather seat, traveling on your own schedule to your custom destination in climate controlled comfort while rocking out to music, an audible book or a podcast.

Some newer cars will even drive for you in these traffic conditions via radar sensors.

> Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston.

It's a trade off. One of these tanks the planet and the other doesn't, however.

Public transit doesn't come for free. Bus systems are sometimes worse than people in cars. I would suggest fixing the individual vehicle transportation system (congestion tolls + high gas tax would be a start) than forcing everyone to stand on trains for their commute and stay at home on the weekends.

> Bus systems are sometimes worse than people in cars.

Source?

In the US, bus routes often run with zero passengers on the bus.

Here is a Quora question and answer that states buses consumed 20% more energy than cars per passenger mile in 2009[1]. It references a US Department of transportation document that can now be found here(pdf)[2]. Tables in chapter two. Not sure about more recent figures.

I made this comment as I remembered an AC Transit (Alameda County Transit which includes Oakland) study that said their average mpg per passenger was around 8 mpg some time ago and I found that surprisingly low.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Do-buses-really-result-in-increased-en...

[2] https://tedb.ornl.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Edition30_F...

> Driving everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than riding public transit everywhere in Boston.

I'd bet that few people exclusively take public transit in Boston. People still take taxis and car-shares, hitch rides with friends.

The key is that for many important high traffic routes, the highest quality of life option in Boston is transit, far better than sitting in traffic.

Even in parts of the world that have amazing public transit systems, there are use cases where a car (whether owned, rented, or hired), fills in the quality of life gap very nicely.

We live and work in Cambridge, and live close enough to work that walking and cycling are our normal commutes, so our commute costs effectively nothing. I could get a subsidized T pass through work, but I don't need it. When we were looking for a house, we could have gotten something bigger further out, for less money even, but then everything else would cost more and take longer. We'd have to drive more. Hell, taxes would be higher. Our city tax bill is a lot less than most of the people we know in nearby towns pay.

From zillow, the median home price there is 900k. The median rent is 3,000 a month. It is literally unaffordable to most people to do what you do; the yearly amount you pay in rent alone is the yearly salary of many other people. You'd need to make a wage of $24 an hour just to pay that rent. If you looked at the median wage in the USA, its 56k, and this rent would end up being 64% of that income.

What you do is a luxury of the rich. Most people simply can't afford the luxury of carlessness in an urban center.

Gosh, I was unaware of what it cost to live here, or what the flood of tech/biotech money has done to the neighborhood. We got lucky and were in a position to buy during the crash. We couldn't afford it now.

Lived in Houston most of my life, and in places with public transit (good and bad) other parts.

My perspective: sprawl fucking sucks. That's what this is about - not just driving, but what a city built on driving leads to: sprawl. 45 minute commutes to college from Clear Lake while I'm doing nothing but kinda listening to an audiobook or something. So demotivating. Not really being able to hang with my classmates after school cause I can leave at 4 and get home in 45 minutes or 6/7 and get home in 1.5-2 hours.... or just wait until 9, 10, which fucks me cause the next morning I need to be on the road at 6:30 sharp if I want a "reasonable" 45 minute commute. Oh, and when I turn up to school, better leave 20 minutes to an hour to find parking. That's not hyperbole, parking was that bad at University of Houston.

Compared to the train I used to take to Mountain View - my "worst" commute from my time in the bay area. Still a "long" trip, but I'm sitting on a train reading, playing a video game, or sleeping. Traffic is not a consideration. I can go in rush hour or whenever, I'll still get there at the same time. I get off the train and bicycle to the office, leave my bike downstairs and that's it. No idling in the parking lot shitting out CO, waiting for someone to walk into the parking lot so I can offer them an AC ride to their spot in return for the ability to park in it when they leave.

Growing up in that sprawl was painful. Our suburbs were spread out not too bad, but enough to suck hard. One of my best friends was a good 3 miles away in a different suburb (so I had to go the long way round to actually get to an entrance. Sometime's I'd toss my bike over the 10 foot sound barrier thing and try to scale it but stopped after spraining an ankle). Bicycling there would take 20 minutes if there were bike lanes, but there weren't, there were "sidewalks" with giant roots pushing the concrete up that were too big to hop on the bike, or there'd be massive puddles in the dips or dirt and sand ready to slip me up, so I was on/off/on/off the bike, waiting 5 minutes at an intersection for a walk signal and still keeping my head on a swivel because nobody expects someone to actually walk in the burbs. So, it'd take me like 50 minutes to get to my friend's house. If it wasn't so hard, I think I would have hung outside more with my friends, and played less videogames. I distinctly remember chatting in WoW about how we'd consider hanging out, and then say "nah don't wanna bike an hour" and just play more WoW.

Then when you finally do get a car, it's not that much better. First spend 45 minutes driving a pentagram across the suburbs picking everyone up, then drive another 45 to get to the city or wherever. It just sucked!

So, I don't know about cost, I don't have the math for it, but it was terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE and I hated it growing up. The convenience of living in a mildly walkable city like SF with even the mediocre (from int'l standards) public transit they have here is to me leagues better than the bullshit I put up with in Houston. And then you go to a city like Taipei and see what this world is capable of creating... it's a dream.

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