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Comment by zip1234 | Hacker News Reader

It's the tragedy of the commons. Driving is very convenient, however it is also VERY space inefficient and congested streets with drivers slows down busses and makes public transit worse. Furthermore, the price of driving is not born fully by drivers. The noise and particulate pollution, increased danger to the public, and space taken by cars is not paid for by drivers in any meaningful way.

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Driving is honestly pretty inconvenient. You have to find a huge space to put your car every night (difficult when trying to rent in an urban area) possibly with electrical service, you have to pay for the car which is likely tens of thousands of dollars, you have to maintain the car with regular oil changes, new tires, etc that's at least 4-8 hours a year.

I think we feel the pain of waiting for a subway, and think boy it would be so much easier to drive, but few people think while they're working an extra <period of time> a week to pay for their car+parking+insurance+maintenance+... boy would it be nice to not have to own a car.

It does not help that on time performance, outages, and safety on subways have all gotten worse versus 5/10/15 years ago.

Got a lot better from 90s thru about 2010 or so and has been reverting since. Remember the "Summer of Hell" in 2017 which just sort of slowly faded into the COVID transit issues and now we are here with budget shortfalls. Hard to see it getting materially better before it gets worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017–2021_New_York_City_transi...

Isnt this just reiterating the idea the all the car owners are too stupid to properly assess that tradeoff?

That is what the top level post was objecting too. If the theory relies on everyone being consistently wrong, then perhaps it isnt properly accounting to the benefits of cars and inconvenience of public transportation as it exists today.

I dont think anyone is challenging the idea that cars are expensive, or people would prefer something else, provided it is actually better.

My assertion isn't one of stupidity, it's a question of when people evaluate their decisions.

A smart person may get frustrated when the subway is 5-10 minutes late every day and take a car instead. They have 5-10 minutes that they're dwelling almost exclusively on the lateness of the subway.

That same person may get frustrated when they work n+1 hours per week because they own a car, but will not associate that frustration + time loss with their mode of transportation because they're focusing on work for that hour instead of sitting at a subway station waiting for the train.

It's not that they're too stupid to address the trade off, they just aren't addressing the trade off because they're spending the time that they had been wasting waiting for the subway at work / driving, and don't have the time to reflect on the inconvenience compared to when waiting for the subway you're forced to dwell on the idea that you're waiting.

>It's not that they're too stupid to address the trade off, they just aren't addressing the trade off because they're spending the time that they had been wasting waiting for the subway at work / driving, and don't have the time to reflect on the inconvenience compared to when waiting for the subway you're forced to dwell on the idea that you're waiting.

Seems pretty thin to me. I dont think people are so cognitively busy that they never have time to ponder things like the tradeoff.

My experience is people think about the tradeoff very often. When they are in traffic, when they paying for their car, changing those tires, ect.

I think you are forgetting the commute isn't the only trip you take. outside commute hours transit schedules and coverage leave a lot to be desired. People would rather pay extra to have a car and be able to range all over the place on their own schedule, than wait 30 minutes for a Sunday frequency bus to show up at a grocery store assuming you can even land a grocery store on a single convenient bus line to your home without having to transfer and potentially wait another long headway. You are doing all of this exposed to the elements and limited to what you can physically schlep about. Clearly people are paid enough to afford this convenience as costly as it is. If they weren't paid enough to afford a car transit (and bike) use in nyc would probably be as high as somewhere in southeast asia where cars are out of reach for most people's wages.

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