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Comment by ckris | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't say most cities unfortunately. European cities are quite walkable and not as sprawling as American ones. But it is still pretty easy to end up were only cars can go not that far from the city center, or where there is only the occasional bus. Asia is really the leader in public transport now. I think the article is slightly misleading. Currently in Europe things like bike infrastructure and public transport is sort of like the development of drones. Everyone is saying they are doing it to claim they are keeping up, but not a lot is happening. It isn't like Shenzhen were every year there is a new pedestrian street, bikes, subway line, train line or something became electrified.

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I live in Europe (in Prague right now) and I never needed to own a car here. I would say it depends on the city in Europe. However, if you occasionally happen to be outside of the city center where only cars go you would call Uber. I am fine with that when 90% of my daily transport is covered by public transport.

I live in Germany, and use the bike, e-scooter/bikes/... and public transport for everything.

I have owned a car before, and I did not use those other transportation methods any less. We don't own a car anymore because it does not make economic sense for us.

When we need to travel by car inside the city, we just use Uber (~30 EUR/month is what we currently pay). When we need a car for a couple of hours to pick up stuff, we use one of the car sharing vendors. We can get "the right car" for whatever we need for ~4 hours with gas for less than ~20 EUR (~once every two months). When we want to travel around with a car, we just rent a high end one for the weekend for ~300 EUR. We do that once every two months, although in the summer a bit more often. This means we end up paying ~3000-3500 EUR/year in rentals/uber.

If we were to own a high end car, we would at least have to pay 30.000 EUR/year for a used one with 100k kms. On top, we need to pay insurance (~500-600EUR/year), parking (~150EUR/month where we live), maintenance (~200/year), handle some other burdens (wheel changes, etc.), and if for whatever reason we need a different car (to pick up something big), we still need to rent that. That puts the costs of owning a car at 2300-2400EUR/year + unforeseen maintenance + gas + rentals + (30.000 EUR - reselling value) / (years until re-selling).

Where we live, unless one uses the car at least every weekend, it makes no sense owning one. At one weekend usage per month, you can just rent, and are more flexible.

Your estimated costs are pretty average, but I found the €30k figure curious. Used cars are dirt cheap in Germany, and they are often in really good shape and well maintained compared to used cars in other countries.

I occasionally drive a 20 year old Opel that was purchased 7 years ago for €2500. It works great. I ride my bike most of the time, but it's really handy to have a car to haul kids or heavy/bulky stuff.

€30k is only a little under the annual salary in Germany, so I'm suspicious that this figure is somewhat overblown as well.

€30k is enough for pretty much any new entry level or basic trim car outside of Audi/BMW/Porsche.

Cars are important status symbols in Germany, and people who can afford it often do exactly as described--buy a new or slightly used Audi/BMW/Mercedes, use it for a while, keep it in absolutely immaculate condition, and sell it on a couple of years later for close to what they paid for it. Those higher end cars often go through many owners until they no longer pass inspection and finally get exported. 'Ordinary' people are more likely to drive lower end cars, which seem to have a different life cycle, ending as student cars and getting crushed instead of exported. That's my impression anyway, could be wrong. My experience (see Opel reference above) is that those lower end cars can be had for pretty cheap and often in great shape. With a little care, you can keep them running for ages on the cheap.

And then those sold cars end up in Poland. Reuse, then recycle. ;)

If you have kids, especially more than one, a no-car city center is a nightmare. Even in Europe.

That very much depends on the city. I had no problem getting around Paris/Amsterdam/London/Rome when I was traveling with my friend's family (3 kids). A car would have been a bigger nightmare with traffic and parking and we weren't even staying in the central areas.

But it also depends on how and where you live and work specifically. If I lived in a many of the areas outside of the Périphérique in Paris, not owning a car would probably impact your overall quality of life, but I'd still not want to take it into the city.

Rome should not be on that list IMO. Its public transport is terrible, at least in the centre. Still preferable to having to drive there though, that's for sure. I'm sure it's not true of every part of the city, but I was unpleasantly surprised by inadequate rush hour bus service. Haven't seen buses that packed since my childhood in 1990s Ukraine.

vienna is definitely not a nightmare with kids and no car. even disregarding the subway and public transport, i see plenty of people riding around with bike trailers (fits two) if the weather permits.

How about you raise your kids without the big trust-no-one bubble mover?

I have 2 kids and live in Berlin car-less without trouble.

We use public transit and bicycles (lots of parents have cargo bikes for transporting little kids e.g. https://www.babboe.de/lastenraeder/big).

I also have a hard time seeing how a "high end car" is a fair comparison to not having a car at all.

Anyway, could you also elaborate on your parking situation? Is this mostly destination parking? I'm just a bit surprised, since a resident parking permit is like €20 for two years here in berlin [0].

[0] https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/121721/ (german)

It's the same reason why you can have vending machines everywhere in Japan but not in the US. Uniformly high cultural level (relatively speaking), as well as a high level of trust (justified) probably has a lot to do with it.

I don't see how a lack of uniform culture and trust prevents vending machines elsewhere, or what it has to do with vending machine proliferation?

In japan you even have vending machines to pay for your restaurant food inside the restaurant, where your usually paying upfront. And some parking lots have per stall locks that don't let you drive away until you pay. You could argue that is symbolic of lower "trust".

I think the parent comment is referring to vandalism. See any public machine in any big US cities.

The "vending machines" inside restaurants are only there to increase efficiency and reduce labor needs, because there's a labor shortage of sorts in Japan.

For stuff outside, they just don't have problems with vandalism and theft the way America does, so it makes it much more feasible to have lots of vending machines outside: no one is going to deface them or break into them.

This is also really useful for bicycling. Bikes in Japan all seem to have little locks on the back which go through the rear wheel's spokes, so someone can't just hop on and pedal away. But there's nothing stopping someone from picking the bike up and carrying it away, putting it on a truck, etc. But theft is almost nonexistent in Japan, so people just leave their bike parked on the sidewalk and don't worry about it, and this makes biking very easy and feasible, whereas in the US you have to worry about someone stealing it if it isn't U-locked to something completely immovable, and even then someone might steal parts off of it.

How is this about culture and not about economics? People presumably don't steal bikes for fun but to fence them, because that's the best way for them to keep themselves from starving.

Having a country with starving people is absolutely about culture. The culture of that country doesn't allow any social welfare programs, so people become like that.

I don't buy your labor shortage thesis because the vending machines are also commonplace inside restaurants in Korea, and there is certainly no labor shortage here. I think it's more of a cultural thing - Koreans (and Japanese) value efficiency more than Americans when it comes to eating out. Korean dining is the most standardized and efficient I've seen in the world.

Depends on the city, really. I live in Dublin, which has a not-great public transport system (a couple of train lines, a couple of tram lines, a vast, sprawling, slow bus system). I don't have a use for a car (on the rare occasion I need to go to the suburbs, I can use the bus system), but some people certainly do. When I visit German cities, though, I'm always kind of amazed anyone bothers having a car.

That gap is being bridged by scooters (electric rental ones, but also private ones, non electric ones) and bikes (same here, rental but also private ones)

In general people are less reticent to bring a foldable bike in the subway for instance.

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