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

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.