I have a probably insulting question...

[conuly]

The other day, I was at the museum, and I commented (for no reason, actually, I don't know why I did that) that I can't abide strollers. Up the stairs, down the stairs, on the bus, off the bus....

The person I was talking to mentioned that she hadn't ever taken her Ana-sized kid on the bus yet. (Well, this *is* Staten Island....)

What she didn't know is that we'd actually detoured from our normal route, been incredibly late, and taken car service from the boat that day.

Seven dollars, pre-tip. Seven dollars for, what, a five minute car ride? Used to be four, only about a year ago.

If gas has gone up that much, I wonder that *anybody* can afford to drive! All you people living in places without public transportation ought to get on that.

So... how can people afford to drive? Are prices really that high? I'm out of the loop here, this being something I don't really care about in my day to day life.

(And, for your disinterested information, public transportation is much better for kids than cars. They can't snuggle with you in cars when they're upset, they can't stand up and hold the pole like a grownup in cars, they can't ring the bell in cars, they can't improve their social skills in cars (Ana's being taught right now not to stare. Better to teach her at three than to wait and teach her at seven. She's already learned how to say "excuse me" and "thank you bye thank you bye" and similar necessities) and all the money you save can go straight into college (if you live in a place without a decent educational system....) or other necessities. But I'm biased.)

Comments

[pne.livejournal.com]

A lot of regions would need massive infrastructure changes to allow for public transit.

And a fair number of people would probably need an attitude change, as well -- being used to cars, they take certain things for granted, which would have to change before they're willing to accept public transport.

public transit doesn't work as well when it's spread out.

That's one of the things - cars can stop pretty much everywhere (subject to parking constraints, but since things are geared towards drivers, that's probably not as much of a problem as it is in old inner cities here in Germany), whereas public transport has defined stops, so you'd have to walk from the nearest stop to wherever it is you want to go.

Bus stops can be closer together, but rail stops tend to be a bit further apart, so people might have to walk, say, ten or fifteeen minutes, and if they're not prepared to do so, they probably won't use public transport.

For example, bradhicks claims that Americans are not willing to walk farther than 660 feet at a time and that for this reason, they will not use more passenger rail even if fuel prices continue to rise (http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/168738.html).

(Another article in a series of three (http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/169873.html) talks about cars and why people rely on them, such as to transport heavy or bulky things; specifically about SUVs, but a similar argument probably applies to car-vs-no-car in general.)

I have no idea how accurate his ideas are -- for New York City, they seem to be pretty off. But for large parts of the remainder of the United States, I have no idea.

(Anecdotal story: when I took the bus in Phoenix, Arizona, all the advertisements and most of the signage inside the bus were in Spanish. My host - someone of European heritage - said, almost apologetically, that this was because only Hispanics take public transport, since all the whites have cars.)

[leora.livejournal.com]

Oh, I meant to mention... the Bay Area has started something nifty. It's a small company called, I think, Car Share. The way it works is you get a membership that allows you to have use of cars on an hourly basis. It's cheaper than renting a car and allows you the flexibility to not have a car, but still have use of one when you really need one. But because it's pay per use, it encourages people to use other forms of transportation when they are more practical. This gets rid of the strong need to have a car, which generally exists. If things like this catch on, it could help discourage car use. But it'll still only really work in cities.

car sharing

[pne.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, they started that sort of thing up in Germany, as well; more and more cities are starting to have some provider or other of car sharing services.

I signed up for one of those because back then, they made membership free for people with a public transport season ticket (otherwise you had to pay a deposit of around a thousand dollars or so, plus monthly fees). Well, you had to pay monthly fees, but they were credited against your usage, so if you used the car each month, you wouldn't have a base fee.

Now they were bought by another company and initially didn't offer that model any more, but that's changed -- which reminds me, I ought to change my membership to the no-monthly-charges one. (Slightly higher charges per kilometre, but that's OK.)

That came in particularly handy when moving house, since they also let you rent small vans -- and as you say, renting is cheaper than from a "real" car rental place. I also rented a car to go to my wedding reception, for example.

I think that sort of thing is helpful for the times when you need a car, so not everybody needs one of their own. However, the places where cars are parked need to be easily accessible - either within walking distance or close to public transport (and preferably not too far from home). So as you said, will only really work in areas with high-ish population density, otherwise they'd either need a car pool with too many cars (and too many locations) to be cheap enough to be attractive, or the locations would be too far apart to be attractive to a large number of people.