How much money you really saving traveling 10 extra miles to save $5 on groceries in your $30,000 car that costs $2000 a year to insure and $60 a week to fill up?
Its not more of a time savings to drive in a car dependent city. It's certainly not a time savings to check out the competition that's spread out 5 miles apart.
I live in a walkable area. Have 3 grocery stores in a 10 minute walk, several bookstores, clothing stores etc. Plenty of competition and I don't have to spend most of the transit time traversing giant parking lots.
Do you rent?
Anyway, doesn’t change that it’s dramatically different than my experience.
In a 10-minute walk you have 3 grocery stores. In a 10-minute drive, I have 30 to choose from with specialty stores I haven't even gotten around to exploring yet. There's no comparison whatsoever.
You generally don't own a home in a "car-free" city.
Car-free doesn't just mean just skyscrapers. It just means not-shit design centered around metal boxes instead of people.
Not sure where you are getting at with the specialty store thing - the nicest stores are always in cities, either a walk/bus/metro ride away. People in cities do more than ... walk to places. :)
What it really comes down to is this: a preference to live/work/etc in and around big-box parking lots and highways (where 70% of the land is parking), or to do the same in walkable neighborhoods with minimal parking (space replaced with more cool stuff).
Most people buy used cars, and spending more on luxuries isn’t related to the necessary cost of transportation. You’re doing the equivalent of using the price of first-class train tickets to argue that rail is expensive. Your insurance numbers are also very high, and a safe driver driving an average car would be paying half as much.
The median commute is ~20 minutes, which is way less than 20 miles due to speed limits and traffic. An F-150 is also not a common commuter vehicle, and pickups are a minority even in truck heavy areas like Texas.
Your original comment about price savings being minimal is also wrong; the savings on a single item at Costco is often more than $5 compared to a downtown store.
Your numbers are complete garbage, try again.
[0] https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a40690607/averag...
Avg price doesn't matter. You can find plenty of cars in the $3-5k range that are mechanically sound but have aesthetic issues.
Imo, buying a brand new car is the biggest waste of money ever.