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Comment by Ericson2314 | Hacker News Reader

When "and did not own a car and took public transit" is part of that story not against it, this country will be a lot better.

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Too many people just don’t understand what car ownership costs. If we had decent public transportation a lot people currently at the margins would have their lives greatly improved. Far too many people are slaves to the debt servicing their cars and the costs of gas, insurance, and maintenance.

Too many people don't understand how little car ownership can cost outside of HCOL metro areas and if you're willing to drive junk.

I specifically talk about people at the margins. It costs an average of $5,000 per year to own a car. There aren’t enough junk cars for everyone to own one. Roughly $0.50 per mile driven.

https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a31267529/cost-of-car-...

I didn't say there were enough for everybody to do it. If we want to talk about margins why are you quoting an average at me?

Without an absolutely insane distribution $400/mo average has some pretty strong things about the bottom quintile.

Bringing up owning a junk car is not relevant if there aren’t enough to make that feasible. I suspect there aren’t enough to make that a feasible options except for a small percent of the people at the margins given that junk cars are likely already prevalent for such people. I quote an average cost of ownership because I have no other stats. Junk cars do cost more to maintain and a person at the margins likely ends up paying credit card debt to service repairs.

Car ownership is expensive. It would be much better for a lot of people if we have good public transportation. It would also be healthier for the nation.

>Bringing up owning a junk car is not relevant if there aren’t enough to make that feasible.

All cars go through that phase eventually. It's a simple problem of economic friction. If more people who could afford much nicer drove those kinds of cars more of those cars would be on the market because there would be demand and people would sell stuff private party rather than taking stupidly low trade in values.

> Junk cars do cost more to maintain

More than a car under warranty, sure. If you don't maintain them to "subdivision of McMansions in a good school district" standards they are quite cheap. <Insert pearl clutching and low effort comment about road safety here.>

If you wanna drive junk you have to go all in and really play the part. Driving junk and trying to maintain it like it's not junk is a fools errand. I don't really want to go into specific examples because people will just hand wave it all away as anecdotes but basically if you buy any old running and driving shitbox for $1k, keep all the fluids topped up and changed on some semblance of a schedule and only fix the things that will imminently (like next week) keep the vehicle from operating you'll probably be out no more than the purchase price in a given year. That leaves a hell of a lot of money to buy gas before you even get close to your $5k average number.

To put real numbers to things, a 90s/00s economy car that runs some sort of 14" tire will cost you under $300 to put new tires on. A transmission replacement (which you probably wouldn't do, you'd just get another shitbox) using a medium-low mile junkyard transmission (say $250 used) will likely be under a grand after shop labor (unless you live in a HCOL urban area). A lot of crap has to break to get you to your $1k/yr cost.

Plus, if you can do the work yourself it often becomes more than worth it. A mechanic's time is expensive—yours probably is not. If you have alternative transport to get to work or fetch parts and can work on it in the evenings, stuff can be done very cheaply.

For example, paying a mechanic to repair an air conditioner (replace compressor, condenser, drier, and associated parts, with a flush out and refrigerant recharge) is prohibitively expensive. I was quoted $2000 plus labour to do this work last month by a reputable mechanic. I did it myself for about $600 with parts from rockauto.com and very basic tools (socket set).

99 Chevy S10 pickup. Speed sensor went on transmission $300.

Break line rusted: $100

Rear brake pads, rotors, and rebuilt calipers (due to age and neglect): $500

I’m probably good for another 20k miles with gas and oil only

Hyundai i10s are reasonably inexpensive and you get them new for a fair price. There are good enough options at the margin. The bigger issue is that cars not only cost the driver money but also the city. Roads are expensive and sprawl can't finance them.

It really doesn't have to be "junk" though. My last 2 cars have been 5 or 10 years old, and they both drove great, and didn't have any maintenance issues I wouldn't have expected in a new car. Both were in the 5 - 10k range, with pretty limited depreciation. The costs were gas, and a few oil changes.

I'm not denying the pricing, I'm saying the pricing is wrong. It's a huge failure of perverse subsidization.

You also assume that someone that's poor pays the same amount of money for a junk car than you do. Poor people pay 2-3x more than the value of a car over its lifetime, due to credit issues and predatory lending.

Cars can cost a lot but a lot of it is avoidable - especially if you are just replacing public transport. I estimate that a cheap used car has a total cost of ownership of ~$3200/year or ~$266/month.

Looking at places with public transport, a good average might be ~$130/month between the regular cost and a few special costs like going to the airport, etc.

Saving $136/month is pretty good. On the other hand, public transport costs about 50% of owning a vehicle and has a lot of limitations including only covering a single city & one person.

If not having a car means you have to buy groceries at more expensive/closer stores then the savings are not as much. If you spend more time each day on public transportation then the savings might not be worth it. If you do recreational activities that require a car then rentals/ride-shares will quickly cost more than you save.

Even in places where public transportation is used extensively it seems to be driven by factors unrelated to cost: 1. Parking is limited or very expensive 2. Traffic congestion is very high

The high cost of vehical ownership seems to be driven by consumer preferences. It's a trope that many low-income areas of the US are filled with expensive trucks. People have the option to buy luxury & new vehicles but public transport doesn't have that option.

Essentially, comparing public transport to the typical vehicle in the US isn't fair since the vehicle is more functional - wether the average American needs that extra utility is a different question.

I lived in Germany for a while and used a car twice. Both times it was a rental. Was able to take public transportation to almost every place including national parks. The U.S. needs to make investments in public transportation. It would greatly benefit the environment, our health, and our pocketbooks. In 1995 there were 0 miles of high speed rail in China and today there are tens of thousands of miles of high speed rail. We could have made similar investments into our people and the environment but haven’t.

Cars do have a utility and car sharing programs coupled with good public transportation can obviate the need for everyone to own one. Most cars spend most of their time not being used. We collectively are a nation of people who by and large spend our lives driving a car from to go from one building to another. We have people who drive somewhere for the purpose of going on a walk.

We’d be much better off without such a car centric focus.

The US has four times as many people as Germany but 27 times as much land. Public transit to every national park would be expensive.

If the U.S. could shift from a car centric culture then population density would go up. Of course having bus routes to every national park is not feasible in the U.S. but we can have a robust public transportation system beyond urban centers.

There is a cost to not having a good public transportation system. Overall, I think we and the world would be better off if the U.S. transitioned from a car centric culture.

> If the U.S. could shift from a car centric culture then population density would go up.

That seems like a reversal of cause and effect, though.

As I see it people in the U.S. can live in spread out cities because of cars. If cars were somehow to be made undesirable then we’d want to live in more compact spaces.

Urbanization in the US has consistently increased throughout the entire time the car has been in existence.

> If cars were somehow to be made undesirable then we’d want to live in more compact spaces.

Poor people, mostly. Wealthy people could continue to live where they want. Forcibly making car ownership more undesirable seems like an extremely regressive choice.

I would rather see the trend towards mega-cities reverse. Not to rural, but to small & medium sized cities that are more livable, which are then connected by good transportation.

A livable city means a city that is not car centric. Such is my opinion. Far too much land and resources are used for parking spaces and those spaces are largely unused. Our cities are hostile to pedestrians as well as our law enforcement. Our car centric culture is regressive due to the large cost of car ownership, mandatory land usage for parking spaces and subsidies to pay for roads.

https://www.illinoislawreview.org/print/vol-2017-no-3/the-cr...

https://www.fastcompany.com/40441392/see-just-how-much-of-a-...

I tend to agree. A few years ago someone totaled my car, and I decided to try living without it. At the time I calculated the cost of ownership, and for a 5 or 10 year old car, it really isn't all that expensive. Part of the problem is that external costs (road, parking, etc) are amortized over everyone whether or not they own a car.

I think your costs for public transit might be a bit off. It cost me over $150/month just to commute via BART, from not too far into the East Bay, when I was doing that.

And if you’re retired, how many Lyft rides does that buy you?

It looked like the Bay area's public transport is a bit more complicated & expensive. A NYC metro card is $127/month and from what I could fine most places in Europe were a bit below or a bit above. Currently I consider the Bay area cost to be an anomally but it could unfortuently be a indicator of much new public transport would cost in the US.

NYC is so different from the rest of the US when it comes to transit, it seems like a bad baseline.

As a senior with three cars, I’ve looked at this in depth. The inconvenience isn’t worth it until I’m a hazard to myself. So I’m certain it’s unfeasible to prime young workers without a mass transit situation.

Public transportation in Prague, Czech republic, costs $15/month subsidized or $60/month if you include the taxpayer money. Also, the quality is quite good - underground, tram, bus, waiting times between 2 - 10 minutes and a dense network.

Similar for Berlin - 60 EUR/month, not sure about subsidies on top of that.

The cars in Europe cost the same or more than in US, so financially the public transport within a city is a no-brainer here. Cars are used mostly for convenience or status.

That seems high, although I don't know how you are amortizing purchasing cost.

It's worth noting that there is the middle class used car market and car repair market, and a lower class used car market and car repair market, and the lower class one is much cheaper and more grey market.

Cars are terrible, but car culture is massively subsidies, and the few places with public transit fucked in housing prices.

It's so tragic.

Why are cars terrible? Don't you think people have an innate desire to move and go places? Our ancestors moved a lot before they settled down because of farming.

Cars create suburbia which is depressing, isolating, land engourging, and plain ugly. Cars mean traffic. Traffic means going nowhere. Cars crowd out alternatives like a gene drive. Cars also contribute to obesity.

I never said transportation is bad. Take rail at all scales, and ride bikes and schooters.

Cars/bikes offer unprecedented freedom of movement. A lot of people would still own cars even if they didn't need them for driving to work. You could say the same thing about Netflix subscription, dishwasher, holidays, sports, coffee, cigarettes,..., they are all expensive and unnecessary and yet they make life nicer.

Not owning a car in a car in the US / Canada, your taxes are probably disproportionately going toward maintaining car-oriented infrastructure as opposed to public transit (depending to some extent on where exactly you live, I guess). So you're kinda screwing yourself in a sense.

Yup! Very sad.

Where he lives - i.e my hometown - public transport is absolutely non-existent. Twice a day you can take a bus if you need to visit neighboring towns, but that's it.

Cars are expensive. Some people enjoy buying new cars every 3-4 years, but that's also money that could be spent on retirement funds.

Right. I'm saying it's a profound failure that the subject of your Horatio Alger tale needs to live far away from an efficient big city.

> - He chose to live in his small rural town

Having grown up in small rural towns, your comment makes me suspect you may not be familiar with what rural America looks like.

Also having known quite a few electricians, I have a hard time imagining one lugging all their equipment on a bus or subway.

Didn't say that he didn't have a car - just that he didn't splurge on buying a new car every 2-4 years, like many of our peers do. I understand their rationale because they want the warranty, but still, trading in your car for something newer ever x years will cost money.

If you can "survive" driving a 10-15 year old car, and have some mechanical aptitude to do regular maintenance, then that's A LOT of money saved.

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