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Comment by _peeley | Hacker News Reader

The article mentions electric vehicles several times as a panacea for suburbanism, but I think a lot of people fail to realize just how _miserable_ owning and commuting in a car is. I spend half an hour every morning and evening alternating between white-knuckling the steering wheel on the freeway while fearing for my life and being stuck in traffic on some God-forsaken stroad[0]. My daily routine would be unimaginably more enjoyable if I could step out of my front door and simply walk to the places I need to go, or take (reliable) public transportation. Because the only affordable housing in my area is in single-family housing developments accessible only via the nearest freeway exit, walking would be suicide and there's not enough density for actual public transportation to be efficient/financially feasible.

[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-...

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When I first came to the U.S. it was shocking how spread out everything is. Each store is an island surround by a concrete lake of parking. It’s absurd. Americans mostly don’t understand what they are missing. We have criminalized aspects of walking. Congregating in groups outside is frowned upon and likely to garner harassment by police. We are a nation of people using cars to go from one building to another while spending as little time as possible outside.

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

> Congregating in groups outside is frowned upon and likely to garner harassment by police

Making it that much worse -- there are no public indoor spaces but libraries.

When the internet became fast enough for streaming services to be a practical alternative to cable, the surge of people dropping cable and landlines to keep only internet service were called "cord-cutters." It turned out, despite its seeming dominance, tons of people hated cable and rushed to abandon it the moment they had any other option.

My question isn't whether the same thing will happen for car ownership, or even when, but what we're all going to call the people who do it.

I’ve not thought to make a comparison to cord cutters but this seems like an apt comparison. Car ownership is very expensive and with the current shortage of new cars and increase cost of used cars maybe their will be a higher demand for public transportation. Car cutting needs to become a thing. My wife and I recently went down to one car and I wish I could go down to 0 cars.

It just so happens that people have different preferences. I grew up with excellent transit and walkability, learned to drive at 30yo and never looked back.

Small example in lieu of a long post.. climbing gym halfway across Seattle is a convenient 13-18min drive, so when I was visiting family in Moscow I was grumbling about how it took 45-50mins to get to one by transit, including 10mins of walking, sometimes in the rain. I remember Moscow being very convenient, I thought, why do gyms locations in particular suck so much? Then I realized my definition of convenient has changed with driving... taking 45-60mins and the weather is how I used to go pretty much anywhere, but driving in Moscow is even worse, so I thought it was great. Now that I've discovered properly organized environment, I could never go back to transit without a strong incentive (ie some other major advantage an area has), and if someplace is too dense for cars I just wouldn't live there.

“only affordable housing in my area is in single-family housing developments”

Where do you live where a single-family (assumedly detached?) house is the most affordable? I know of rural areas where they are the only housing available, but in the US apartments are (almost always?) more affordable, if nothing else than they are smaller. Rent/buy considerations, true, but house plus land > just house/condo/apartment. Sounds like an investment opportunity…

And how is owning a car making you *miserable*? Not the commute, but just the ownership? The expense? The option of convenience of carrying the whole family and/or cargo? The option of climate control? The option of direct À-to-B routing? The option of immediate availability? The option of relative privacy and safety? The option of a boring monoculture of people just going from A-to-B without the piquancy of urine, drug addicts, random attacks, infections, etc.? Find a good mechanic…

> how is owning a car making you miserable?

Not the original poster, but when I first got a car of my own it was such a huge worry. The cost of an unexpected repair, the worry about it being broken into or stolen, the figuring out of maintenance and buying insurance and all that hassle. It was a huge asset, that I could barely afford, but needed in order to get to a job to feed myself. And now I have to worry about it all the time. It was terrible.

> Find a good mechanic...

This is a perfect example of the worries that a car induced. How do you know if a mechanic is good? How do you know if they are ripping you off? It's such a needless hassle to have to find a personalized service person. How much time have I wasted with mechanics in my life? Way too much, and I would love to have all that time and money put to more productive uses.

You could learn to fix it yourself too --- there's no shortage of educational content on the Internet.

I could, and maybe save some money, but it wouldn't save me any worry or time.

After a couple of times turning a $400 brake job into a $100 brake job by DIYing you're gonna have a hard time swallowing the price differential on further repairs. Experience builds from there. Once you've got enough experience to have an understanding of the underlying systems there's not much worrying because you know the state of the vehicle you're driving and you know that you're unlikely to be surprised. Most people either go through this when they get their first shitbox car early in life or never.

You do that brake job once every 2 years or so. That's not a lot of time to really get into the habit. Especially since it comes with the worry that you're going to do it wrong and cause a lot of damage.

In the past couple of decades, cars have become a lot more reliable. They just don't need that kind of repair very often. It's a lot easier to let a professional do it, and save yourself the hassle of storing ramps, oil wrenches, etc. for 99% of days that you don't use them.

That changes as the car gets older, and you need to decide between another $1,200 mechanic repair, a $300 self job, or a new vehicle. If you're into doing the repairs yourself, you can save a ton of money. But that only occurs once a decade or so these days, and it's just not worth it to many people.

If you start with a $1300 beater that needs brakes to drive reasonably and a whole laundry list of "this is starting to go and might go next week or next year" items you can pick up the experience as fast as your budget allows.

When you only have hundreds in the bank paying someone to do a timing belt when the kit of parts is $120 just isn't an option. You either do it yourself or you cross your fingers.

It's weird to see viewpoints like this when, during the times I still had to commute, there have been many days when the drive to and from the office was the most enjoyable part of the day. That said, driving is going to be far more enjoyable when you have a comfortable car to drive.

Especially with the ongoing pandemic, I don't see the appeal of being crowded into public transit with tons of strangers.

> That said, driving is going to be far more enjoyable when you have a comfortable car to drive.

And a comfortable route. Spending an hour in a traffic jam doesn't sound enjoyable regardless of the comfort of the car you're in.

Is the main point here that America will always grow in the same direction? That it will never change? Homeostasis is a boring prediction. I have 2 points: Mining unlimited lithium will not be carbon neutral, and suburban development has a geometry problem. Traffic and long term maintenance issues will lead to its demise.

a town that runs it's own automated ride share would be my suburban near-sci-fi go to.

personally i love cities & biking, but a safe, coordinated, available, municipal, semi-personal/pooled or personal ride hail system operated as a not-for-profit utility would be such a neat virtue, such a way to make the distance not count for as much.

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