I live in a rural area without any mass transit. I love my cars.
My brother lived in Mannheim, Germany for a while. He could walk half a block, hop on a train, take it to a station and transfer to a different train, eventually going anywhere. He toured Europe without a car.
I live in London, and haven’t owned a car for 40 years or driven one for 20. There’s no need for anyone with the use of their legs routinely to use a car in London. If I want the additional flexibility of going when and where I like, rather than checking public transport routes, then I have my bicycle. And I suppose my choice of destinations is to some extent dependent on the ease of connection by public transport.
But it all depends on how cities are planned and developed, and how people plan their own housing and priorities. All I can say is that a new or extended train line pushes up property values in the relevant catchment area by a staggering amount. I can see that for cities that have grown up around easy car use, into extended sprawling suburbia, it would be massively expensive to lay on the kind of public transport provision that would really encourage people to use it as a matter of choice. The car always has the USP of being personal and individual - you can choose who you sit next to as well as your personal entertainment (mind you, there is often entertainment to be found in overhearing other people’s conversations on a bus or train).
Sure, the population density has to be at a certain level for public transit to work- but it doesn’t have to be small crappy apartments either. I live in NYC - but it’s not Manhattan or any fashionable neighborhood. People from outside the city don’t realize that there are large parts of the city full of 1-4 family houses with the occasional small apartment building. My neighborhood is predominantly one or two family houses. They aren’t huge houses, and every bedroom does not have it’s own bath but they aren’t tiny and most people who live in apartments live in a 3-4 unit owner-occupied building. The lots, on the other hand are small compared to most suburbs- 25 x 100. And that’s what provides the density that makes public transit work.
How do things work when I don’t have a car? One thing is I don’t do huge grocery shopping trips. Taking any of the buses or trains I can walk to (which is around 10 buses and two train lines) will leave me off on a main shopping strip, so I can pick up a few things each day walking home from the bus or train. If I want to buy more than that, I make a separate trip and bring my shopping cart and do all my errands at once
as the supermarket is down the block from the hardware store which is next to the bakery which is next to the butcher which is across the street from the drugstore … One of the reasons I like my neighborhood is that it’s very possible to live without a car and many of my neighbors do. People don’t have choose between moving and becoming housebound when they can no longer drive.
To expand on what doreen said, places with good public transit aren’t necessarily rife with small crappy apartments. Atlanta, where I grew up, has a pretty solid in-town transit system and the residential areas it serves run the gamut. I live in Richmond, VA now, and the bus service is most dependable in the “good” neighborhoods with all the stately Victorians. Service is most spotty where the “crappy” apartments are.
As I said, public transit only works when it’s not seen as a “poor people” thing. When people dressed in business suits are lining up for a bus, then people who would normally drive feel like it’s viable option and decide to try it out. But when it’s only a bunch of fast food uniformed folks riding, then it’s associated with “small, crappy apartments”. Or crime. Or “Ew, buses are smelly and dirty!” I’ve heard it all.
Right now, there’s a major controversy with the bus system here. The city wants to create another route down the same business corridor that eleventy-billion other routes travel down, except the new route would be served by an express bus specifically created to ferry hipsters living on one side of town to the town center mall on another side of town. The current routes serving their area apparently aren’t befitting of this esteemed class of individuals. But the bus system sucks for all the current riders who just happen to live on another side of town. Guess who these riders are? They are the folks who don’t have the option of taking a car. Who ride the bus to get to work, not to go grab sushi with their buds. They are in need of additional routes for their neighborhoods too, but no. The transit system wants to whiten its ridership so as to attract even more whites, so that there will be more political will to expand out to the (white) suburbs. The transit system has even admitted as much. Meanwhile, the po’ black folks have to take two buses to get home every evening because no one cares to create a special route for them.
So unfortunately, bus systems AREN’T all about “crappy apartments”.
I’ll add that there are plenty of DC-area folks who use a combined approach. They drive to an outer station and metro in.
I live in an expensive “crappy apartment” near a metro stop, but most of the buildings near my stop are single-family houses. Like other cities, there are plenty of parts with back yards. They’re just not necessarily the parts the tourists visit.
I can see the point of so called hipster buses, when I am working I do not want to sit next to a plasterer or bricklayer when I am wearing a $600 suit. I think that the bus companies have spotted a market they are not getting and are providing a service to get added revinue
I live in Chicago and have basically always worked in the Loop. It would be madness to commute to the Loop by car, unless you enjoy sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic and paying more than $20 a day for parking. I did drive to work for a while after major leg surgery, when my ortho forbid me from taking public transportation because of the risk of falling and reinjuring myself. And it’s hard to walk far on crutches. I don’t know what people with serious mobility issues do now that it’s no longer possible to leave a car at a meter all day with a handicapped tag in the Loop. Honestly, though, I prefer to just hop on the El and zone out for 45 minutes. We purposely bought a condo that is a 5 - 10 minute walk from an El line, although I really would have preferred a single-family house; any houses within walking distance of a major rail line that took both of us directly to work either needed a lot of work, or were out of our price range. And walking distance to the El was a must-have for both of us.
We do have a car, which gets used mainly for weekend errands and social activities, schlepping to my mom’s house, etc. Sometimes one of us will stop off on the way home from work to pick up a missing ingredient for dinner, and anything routinely necessary can be found in our neighborhood, which we chose for its walkability. Honestly, if we were strapped for cash, we could get by with a car share and monthly transit passes, but I prefer the convenience of having a car for grocery shopping, weekends, etc. or when my ankle is feeling gimpy, which is sometimes an issue. But if we’re going out on the weekends to somewhere along the El line near our house, and it doesn’t involve schlepping stuff or coming home super-late at night, we’re just as likely to take the train. Cold? Eh, if you can’t deal with crappy weather you probably shouldn’t live here anyway. Just wear proper clothing and you’ll be OK.
But think of the moral benefit conferred on your inferiors by appearing resplendent amongst them.
There aren’t really “bus companies” around here. There’s a government agency that heavily subsidizes mass transit with tax dollars. They couldn’t care less about adding revenue.
Care full I have many friends in the building trade and the only benefit to them is they get to take the @#?* out of me when I am booted and suited.
I think mass transit is heading the way of the dodo. Where I live, Uber and Lyft aren’t that far off mass transit prices. Once we get to the point of driverless cars and smart ride sharing algorithms they will be able to undercut mass transit pricing. Once they’re price competitive, the only areas where mass transit can compete are long haul journeys and the handful of places where a subway is faster than a car.
I live in Austin. My workplace is on a major bus route that runs every ten minutes between 7-9 and 4-6 . I chose my apartment from one of several complexes along that line. I have been driving to work for the last two years, but I’m planning to get back into the bus routine again. I love letting someone rise deal with the traffic. There’s a grocery store on the route with a stop in front of it for small trips. I tend to plan my meals and do a Sunday lunch and breakfast prep for the week. That trip requires the car.
For any trip to a destination that involves a frosty beverage, it’s the bus our my own two feet. (Mexican martinis are two blocks away if you come for a visit.) All trips downtown are on the bus because there’s no parking.
. It takes a little planning to get it all together, but the saving in traffic headaches and the chance to relax before getting to work is worth it. The bus has free Wi-Fi and my employer pays for my bus pass.
I also love my small apartment that costs me an average of $45 a month to hear and cool, And I don’t believe in being warm inside when it’s 109 outside. Certainly it’s not for everyone, but it’s great for me.
Yes you may like your tiny inner city homes or apartment but it’ll never be as nice, dollar for dollar, as you could get by living in a low population density area.
If you plucked up my home and stuck it in the boonies, it wouldn’t be as nice. To me. Obviously not to you.
I live in San Francisco. I don’t drive (although I do have a license) and have never owned a car. I never have to worry about car payments, insurance, parking, repairs, or tickets. The price of gas is meaningless to me.
There are three different transit systems within a 10-minute walk from my house, and they will take me anywhere I want to go. There are at least 50 movie screens that I can access within 45 minutes, including two massive AMC theater complexes, a Century theater complex, three Landmark theater complexes showing independent and art films, and a bunch of other theaters showing a range of old and new films.
I can walk 20 minutes to Safeway, which I do every weekend, or walk about 15 minutes to another Safeway from work, or stop on my way home on public transit
at yet another Safeway (I have visited all three in the past two days). Whole Foods is about a 10-minute walk up the hill. I do have to shop more frequently, because I have to be able to carry my groceries, but I can always stop at a corner store or one of the 18 Walgreens I pass every day if I need to pick something up.
If I need to buy furniture or something really heavy, I can either take it home in a taxi or have it delivered. The last thing I took home in a taxi was my microwave, around 2007.
I love this way of life, and can’t imagine doing anything differently. I’m uncomfortable in cars (I get carsick after about 15 minutes), and very aware of how dangerous they are. The last person who used to offer to drive me home from work texted while she drove, so now I just politely refuse her offers.
Of course this limits the places where I can live, and my job opportunities, etc. But there is something about getting around on your own two feet, and interacting with the bricklayers and the plasterers, that appeals to me. I was just reading Rebecca Solnit’s book Wanderlust, about the history of walking, in which she talks about how isolating private cars can be, not only in keeping us separate from nature and the landscape, but also from each other.
I don’t advocate that everyone give up their cars and use public transportation, and I recognize that different locations call for different approaches. But I hope that there will always be places for people like me who prefer the communal approach and the pavement beneath my feet to the privacy of my own vehicle.
I live in the DFW area as well, and DART seems to be kind of hit or miss. On one hand, I live about a mile from a Red line light rail stop, and about as far from a Blue line stop. When I worked downtown, that was freaking awesome; I paid like $50 per month, and didn’t have to pay to park downtown, didn’t have to buy gas, didn’t have to deal with traffic, driving in weather, etc… The only downsides were that I had about a 4-5 block walk from the downtown station to my building, so I had to deal with whatever sort of inclement weather to get there, and while waiting on the train. Trains run every 5-10 minutes during rush hour, so it wasn’t like I had to wait long.
On trips to Europe (5 so far, to 7 countries), we pretty much hoof it, or take the subway/tram system, as most major European cities are built up enough to support a tram/subway system that gets you reasonably close to anywhere you want to go.
The big problem in a lot of American cities is that they’re so big that any sort of reasonably cost effective transit network still has HUGE gaps between stations- like several miles.
Not always. Take Boulder Colorado and the surrounding county. They have typical housing developments with large single family homes but all of them have bus stops. Also bike paths everywhere. Granted Boulder county is special where they take environmental issues very seriously.
In my suburb of Kansas City I drive a car everywhere. They recently added bus service out here and many people use it especially the people who work downtown but for me it wouldnt fit my work schedule.
I’d like to ask, how much do you pay to keep it in a garage?
Why not a tram system as they have in Europe, they share the road with existing traffic but have priority.
Good to hear that you are interacting with the bricklayers and the plasterers but do not forget the plumbers, electricians and carpenters they are also great people