Hacker News Reader

Comment by bunderbunder | Hacker News Reader

Example of the "force of habit" factor:

Every time my mom comes to visit us in the city, at some point she says she could never live here because she couldn't imagine having to drive in city traffic every day. And every time she does that, I remind her that her car hasn't moved even once since she first arrived a week ago. Mostly we walk everywhere. And every time she responds, "Oh, you're right. You know, that's been really nice."

She's lived in suburban and rural areas her entire life. The idea that she simply has to get in a car to go anywhere is so ingrained into her psyche that even a solid week of not driving is insufficient to dislodge it.

View on HN

>She's lived in suburban and rural areas her entire life. The idea that she simply has to get in a car to go anywhere is so ingrained into her psyche that even a solid week of not driving is insufficient to dislodge it.

I'm in a suburban area. When I was a child, I got driven everywhere - until I was old enough to take public transit by myself.

I'm about to walk ~3km (2mi) each way to a grocery store, something I do regularly. I save thousands of dollars annually like this. I could feed myself several times over with that money.

It will never stop being strange to me that people actually get that car-dependent mindset ingrained into them.

1. Possibly reasons like this: https://archive.is/tjdZ2 ... to save you the click, the title/subtitle reads:

> When Getting Out of Jail Means a Deadly Walk Home > Nearly every day in Santa Fe, N.M., people released from jail trudge along a dangerous highway to get back to town. Jails often fail to offer safe transport options for prisoners.

2. You must have a preference for walking, since a bicycle would be at least 3x and as much as 10x faster than walking.

3. The thousands of dollar number seems misleading. If you bought a car solely for this purpose, yes, I believe you're right. But that seems unlikely. The actual marginal cost of using a car you already owned for this purpose is on the order of $3-500.

I commend and support what you do (though I prefer to use my bike when I can). But I don't think the financial benefits should be overstated. There are, of course, other benefits.

The average annual cost of owning a car in Canada is >$16000 CAD. In the US it's even higher at >$12000 USD.

Obviously owning a bike, taking public transit and taxis, and occasionally renting a car isn't free, but if you live in a walkable neighbourhood and can take public transit to work it's easy to keep your monthly transportation expenses under $200. The great part about not needing to own a car is that there's no sunk cost that incentivises you to choose one option over another.

"If you live in a walkable neighborhood" is doing a ton of work there. The increase in housing cost almost certainly eats at whatever savings you might see. And the opportunity costs of having fewer work options is not nothing.

My original point was that I'm a little perplexed at how high other people's standards seem to be for a neighbourhood to qualify as "walkable".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com