Cars are a luxury item (and you might be in a bubble)

In My Humble Opinion
41

Right, the problem with cars isn’t that they replaced horses, it’s that after WWII we built an entire country around the concept of cars without anticipating how much that might one day kinda suck.

If the people pushing cars as central infrastructure had told everyone that “cars are as cheap as they’ll ever be, your grandchildren will be paying the equivalent of 4 to 8 times as much”…

If the people pushing cars as central infrastructure had told everyone “fossil fuels that you’re burning right now are going to cause catastrophic impacts to your great grandchildren”…

If the people pushing cars as central infrastructure had told everyone “your children will not view this as a nice to have, but will be effectively chained to the concept of car ownership just to exist in society”…

Well, different decisions may have been made.

42

Many people, especially those outside major cities, expect to find parking (even free parking) at every commercial building they visit. And for the most part, that’s true; most stores have acres of free parking. Sure that’s convenient but the cost is enormous. Perhaps twenty percent of the land in many cities is devoted to parking. What else could we do with this land if it wasn’t all paved over?

43

Lol, you can tell I’m somewhat urban, as i ask if there’s parking when i make an appointment. I often take the train downtown.

44

If they can afford to do that, it means the gas prices, congestion charges, carbon surcharges, etc. aren’t nearly enough. Regulatory issue, both on the local municipal level and as a matter of national policy.

45

I see your point, but again, this phenomenon ISTM isn’t so much an issue of gratuitous luxurious extravagance as of a poorly designed compromise.

I don’t think anybody really enjoys or luxuriates in the specific feeling of wastefully hauling a whole huge mostly-empty car down the road just to get their own comparatively itty-bitty body from point A to point B. They just don’t know any other way to do it. In many places, there isn’t really any feasible other way to do it.

46

I think some people totally enjoy that.

I don’t enjoy that. We don’t have bus service to the city where I work. It’s about a 25 minute drive (down from 45-60 where I lived previously.) The traffic is fast and I would consider biking on most of these streets unnecessarily dangerous. I would 1000% not drive a car everywhere if I could safely get places without one.

But the voters who enjoy waste and excess are also voting down initiatives for local public transportation. In my old county they refused to fund basic bus service for the disabled and elderly.

47

I mean, I think many people enjoy feeling that they’re in a comfortable vehicle that’s easily maneuvered and can go fast. I’m not sure anybody really enjoys the specific feeling that they’re dragging around masses of unneeded empty space along with them? Do people enjoy traveling with huge half-empty backpacks or suitcases too? Do they hop into golf carts to traverse the halls and elevators at their workplace so they can enjoy the feeling of taking up more space and weight than they need?

Maybe some would if they had the opportunity, I guess. After all, plenty of people seem to enjoy having multi-thousand-square-foot mansions where they hardly ever set foot in most of the rooms.

48

Well, coal rollers probably do. Just goes to show some people just want to watch the world burn

49

I doubt that driving an underpowered, plastic auto down polluted, congested roads to get to work because bus service does not extend to the suburb in which one can afford to live is as enjoyable as steering your Ferrari GTB along panoramic passes on a nice day with no particular place you have to be.

50

Disagreement - it’s not that the voters enjoy wate and excess (though, I agree with @Great_Antibob, that some including coal rollers do), but there are two groups with substantial overlap who are too involved in personal vehicles and against public transport.

The first group is those whose car is a HUGE part of their identity. Not just huuuuuuuge trucks, but also classic cars, sports car, antiques, and people proud of their abilities to keep junkers on the road (or even souped up). Even those whose vehicles are nothing more than giant, mobile sound systems!

It runs from fun, hobby, pride, competition, collections, and all the way to some sort of unhealthy (IMHO, YMMV) personal totem, and everything in between. Whether healthy, harmless, or not, they LOVE their cars. And there’s plenty of them (though seemingly less among the younger crowd).

The second, much more malign group, is those that will happily pay more and suffer more, as long as they feel that the “them” aren’t getting something “for free.” You know, don’t want Healthcare for all because they pay for theirs, or paid, or “earned” that Social Security/Disability. Or in this case, paid for their car(s) over the years, and worked hard for it, and why should OTHER people benefit from their tax dollars and hard work.

They’re omnipresent in the USA, each happily supporting measures that often hurt themselves because in their minds it’s a zero-sum game.

So two groups, some considerable overlap, and that’s leaving out any of the corporations that profit enormously from the private car market (manufacture, sales, service, insurance, certain injury lawyers, gas stations, and everything else that’s part of the chain).

And now, cars are a recurring source of income! If I had retained every service that came included with my car (Nav, remote access, music streaming, internet connectivity) I’d be paying over $50 a month just to drive my car.

Yeah, there’s plenty of selfish, petty, and evil forces working against good public transport in some areas, but there’s plenty of ye olde corporate money pushing the issue as well.

51

mmmmm… I’ve got an eye on a restored Alfa Romesco.

:grin:

52

I can’t find examples on the Internet, but I’ve seen bumper stickers in the wild bragging about their vehicles’ negative impact on everyone else.

That’s where my opinion is coming from.

Yeah, identity has a lot to do with it. People have always seemed (to me) weirdly attached to their vehicles. I like my car but I don’t think about it that much. I just want something reliable.

53

I wonder if kids these days are attached to their phones instead of to their cars.

54

My life would be a LOT harder if I didn’t have a car. I’m older now, I can’t walk miles like I used to. I live in a metro area notorious for its sprawl, and a car means an errand takes 45 minutes instead of 2½ hours waiting for buses and transfers, if I can get there by bus at all. I could just survive without a car but it would sharply diminish my quality of life.

I do scrape by with a used car in poor repair. The COVID stimulus money in 2020-2021 paid for my current car and if there’s another handout that’ll pay for the next one.

55

Have you tried rideshare? (Uber, etc.) My area used to be extremely poorly served by taxis, like, you could call a company and they’d come eventually, in, maybe an hour long window. But now we have excellent service from both Lyft and Uber. When my husband and i dropped to sharing a car for a while, we used it, and we decided we liked to luxury of just getting into a car and driving, and then having the car there at the other end. But it would have been good enough, especially replacing our second car, as we only both use a car in different places a few times a week.

56

As a lifelong non-car-owner (albeit licensed and infrequent driver), Lyft has been a real godsend for me. I mean, it’s not getting me anywhere that I wasn’t able to get to already with sufficient advance planning, but it’s made it possible for me to have a whole lot more spontaneity in my local travel, as well as being able to cope with last-minute plan changes. Plus all the drivers (okay, maybe with one or two exceptions out of probably hundreds by now) have been highly competent, courteous and reliable, and the cars comfortable and clean. I still walk and bike and bus a lot, but it’s nice to also have rideshare.

Of course, rideshare costs a whole lot more than walking or biking or busing, and significantly more than the comparable per-trip expenses of using a car you already own. But compared to the expense of actually acquiring and maintaining a car, for the amount I use it, it’s cheap AF.

57

Agreed.

Especially for a retiree who drives little & rarely far, uberlyft is far cheaper than owning and driving a comparable year & model car.

Once in awhile you wait an extra 10 minutes for a ride. OTOH, you never spend even a second parking and walking: it’s door to door service. IMO that time nets to zero. And I can txt while they drive.

When driving gets difficult for me I’ll sell my final car and uberlyft everywhere I’m not able to walk.

Public transportation? What’s that? In a few US cities it’s dense enough to not to be an act of pointless self-flaggelation to use. I live urban, but it’s a public transportation desert.

58

This is true, and it irks me greatly when I see a light slim woman get out of what is obviously her husband’s humongous pickup truck or SUV in the grocery store parking lot, hauling around tons and tons of metal just to bring home a few bags of groceries that she might have as easily done on a scooter!

But the reality of all vehicles, and, really, just about all products, is that they have to be built for the worst use cases one might reasonably encounter, which may include driving long distances and carrying heavy cargo or large families, even if this happens just a small percentage of the time.

That’s no excuse for the wasteful vehicles we have long had and continue to have, especially in America. But “you don’t need this monstrosity just for grocery shopping” is not always a valid criticism, though it personally irks me whenever I see it.

59

I’d say it was more reasonable (and cheaper) to rent a truck or large van for the few times one needs to haul cargo but others clearly disagree. And those folks may say owning a large vehicle is reasonable to indicate or maintain social status, and I would disagree.

I think a vehicle that covers 95% of my total use cases is more than sufficient. Most Americans think it needs to exceed 99% (though they probably haven’t thought about it in those specific terms). But that’s more a problem with how we each define ‘reasonably’ than about specific use cases.

60

You would disagree, whereas I’d have no hesitation in calling them irresponsible idiots and a scourge on the environment.

I have no problem with someone who can afford it owning a fuel-efficient luxury vehicle and enjoying its features and comforts. But someone who buys a vehicle strictly for status – especially when “status” is defined in terms of how gigantic it is – is not someone I can ever identify with.