12-17-2020, 08:38 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-17-2020, 08:41 PM by danbrotherston.)
(12-17-2020, 03:42 PM)jeffster Wrote:(12-17-2020, 10:01 AM)Acitta Wrote: I have lived here 19 years and have never felt the need to own a car. Bicycling and public transit have always been sufficient. There are a lot of people with families who don't own cars. I see them on the buses and on bicycles.
I think it really depends on a persons or families situation. For some, walking/biking/transit will work fine. For others, it just won't.
If I were to look at my situation:
Regarding my work: I work shifts, 7 times I have to start by 6am another 7 times I finish at 12:00am -- no bus service. Walking not an option, biking not a real option either (I have bad asthma, which activates during very warm weather and anything below 12ºC). That leaves me using a cab (about $40 per trip) for at least 16x out of 4 weeks (13 periods).
...snip for brevity...
As for other drawbacks of not having a car and just using transit/cabs/bikes/walking for day to day things like work, appointments, grocery shopping, etc, is the amount of time all that it takes is pretty significant.
But having a car for this family works out to 1/3 the cost of the alternative.
Certainly replacing a daily commute with a taxi because there is no other possible alternative makes no sense whatsoever--not financially, and not in terms of transport policy (taxi's generate MORE VMT than owned vehicles...even if they generate less parking). When I lived in New Hamburg, I drove my car every day, it was my only reasonable option.
But most people are not in that situation. I no longer am. I live downtown, and have very good access to transit. I am also setup for and comfortable riding for many of my errands. And I have car share and car rentals for occasional trips outside the city.
But in some cases I still feel limited by my lack of a car. There are many parts of the city which are difficult or dangerous for me to get too. And don't even get me started about winter. I can totally see why a car may seem like a necessity even in a TOD. I choose not to have a car, but ultimately, that's a choice I make that has real costs.
I do think that if more people made the cost analysis of owning a car, especially, if they are not using it for a daily commute, they might rethink whether it is worth the money, but I totally understand that in our city, the way it is right now, giving up a vehicle is not without cost. But detaching parking from the cost of renting can go a long way to making the cost of owning a vehicle more visible, I wish they would do so here, but given the suburban nature, I doubt it.