Outdoor activities or any hobby that requires you haul around a lot of gear can also make having your own transportation a lot more appealing.

Similarly, living in SF with two kids, I don't technically _need_ a car since MUNI coverage is decent, but we have a fast-paced lifestyle: it's a heck more convenient to have a car when you are regularly going to costco, ikea, trying out a new local bakery or restaurant, etc, etc... in a single day.

Much like a house becomes a home, the car becomes a "base": it's a place for snacks and naps for the kids, for radio music and breaks, it's where we leave the bags of things to be returned to the mall after brunch, or the three layers of sweaters that are too hot to wear at noon but we'll definitely need on the way home at dusk, it's where we take pictures of the latest ice cream mess and where we have yelling contests when we get lost even though we have 2 GPS-enabled devices running.

We could still do many of those things when we didn't have a car, but it's far more boring, far more exhausting, and far less fun.

> the car becomes a "base"

This is the biggest divide I see when talking with people about future ownership of self-driving cars: will they consume it as an on-demand service, or will they own it outright?

Some are vehemently in the "I'd never own a car again" camp, and others say "I'll buy one right away". People with kids seem much more likely to say the latter. It's not just transportation, it's a mobile room of the house.

My wife and I each gave up cars we loved because they didn’t make sense for our new kid oriented life. The econobox we have instead we both hate and will likely replace with “nothing” when it becomes cost stupid to own.

I might buy a car after that but it will be pure toy.

For people who are considering having kids in the future and care about consuming less, consider that the largest positive ecological impact you can probably make is to have fewer kids. It's important to consider this before deciding on kids, because once they're around, the house is stacked against you in terms of switching to (or retaining) low-consumption habits.

The idea of going to physical stores to browse articles has become mind numbing to me. 'Regularly going to costco, ikea' when I can just order on amazon, get ikea to deliver to my home, get non-perishable/fresh food online from supermarkets that do home deliveries, have 5 bakeries that I can get to in 5 minutes of bicycling and more restaurants than I could care for (European cities are nice like that).

> We could still do many of those things when we didn't have a car, but it's far more boring

Maybe for you.

> far more exhausting

Getting things delivered to your home is far less exhausting than going through the mad labyrinth of Ikea that was built to keep you in the store for the longest time possible. Just the thought of having to find the exit again makes me feel hypertension.

Fair. But on the other hand, having ice cream and meatballs at Ikea is a thing. You also need to account for cost of delivery and for returning things. And that's just ikea-related things we do.

> 5 bakeries that I can get to in 5 minutes of bicycling and more restaurants than I could care for

That describes downtown of any half decent metropolitan city anywhere, not just europe. I already mentioned the issue with that though: you can't do "5 minutes of bycicling" when you have 2 toddlers. Nor are your family going to have easy access to the multitude of other things I didn't mention: fishing, strawberry picking, corn mazes, safari, skiing, lift lock tour, trips of various lengths are just _some_ of the many many things we did last year. Driving three towns over to ride in a carousel one afternoon "because my wife heard it was a nice one" is the sort of thing we've done just for the heck of it.

Could I do the instagramming-yet-another-fusion-sushi-roll metrosexual lifestyle? Sure. But I think having a car opens a wider breadth of experiences.

With two, that would be complicated. It's really not that uncommon to see parents ride with one though, with that sort of equipment : https://www.twowheelingtots.com/childbabybikeseatbuyingguide...

> Nor are your family going to have easy access to the multitude of other things I didn't mention: fishing, strawberry picking, corn mazes, safari, skiing, trips of various lengths, lift lock tour are just _some_ of the many many things we did last year.

That really depends on location. Living in a southern French town that has public transportation (bus and tramway) that leads to nice beach towns in 20 to 30 min, fishing is not an activity we lack. Leaving the city to get to the bordering countryside for activities like picking fruits, nuts and wild vegetables also takes about 30 min. When I was a kid I didn't need for my father to be home and drive me around if I wanted to go out and have fun eating wild nuts and berries.

France has a powerful train network and no matter where you live here, you're always close to a ski station, kinda.

> Drive three towns over one afternoon to ride in a carousel "because my wife heard it was a nice one" is the sort of thing we've done for the heck of it.

And the sort of attitude your grand-children will rightly judge you for considering the horrible impact your vacuous consumerism you're calling 'breadth' of experiences is having on this world. I would have abstained from this remark were it not for this latter quip :

> Could I do the instagramming-yet-another-crepe metrosexual lifestyle?

So, if we're not proudly rolling coal we are instagramming metrosexuals, probably wearing fedoras and tipping it at m'lady? have you gone and looked at a mirror yet?

This thread in general was one of the most revealing thing I've ever read about Americans and their view of the world. Particularly the guy who wouldn't even walk one kilometer :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16162504

And the other one to comment on wutaboutwinter.

Maybe it's time we hit the reset button on civilization.

True. Where I grew up, the closest beach was an hour and a half drive away. Closest ski station was in a different country. Wasn't exactly safe to step out of the house to begin with though, being close to slums and all. I consider myself lucky to be able to share different kinds of experiences with my kids now even though the public transport system in north america doesn't help me.

> the sort of attitude your grand-children will rightly judge you for considering the horrible impact your vacuous consumerism you're calling 'breadth' of experiences is having on this world

You're right, I should just throw my car in the sea. If I also throw out my computer, my grandchildren will be proud that I tried to help bankrupt the ecology-destroying companies that mine rare metals for these gadgets you and I use to waste time online. OR I could just be honest with myself and acknowledge that I'm selfish despite knowing that merely existing is a huge burden on the planet.

> So, if we're not proudly rolling coal we are instagramming metrosexuals

I dunno what you do or didn't do with your life, or why you're acting defensive, and frankly I don't care. I literally said I could do that lifestyle, stereotypical as it may be, but that it would eventually feel somewhat monotonous to me now that I've had different experiences.

I say this as someone who was extremely anti-car-ownership and changed minds once I had kids. Maybe you had it easy with safe ubiquitous public transportation and you're just trying to pull the tired europe-is-superior thing on me, but I've no allegiances in that game and I'm just talking about my experience with what I can pragmatically do for my kids with a car vs without. You do you.

You can have a sense of proportion about the fun:ecological impact ratio of the activities you do, and make choices in the light of that. My instinct is that "driving three towns over to ride in a carousel ... just for the heck of it" is in the same category as "tossed all our rubbish in a nearby field": the cost to other people is all out of whack with the benefit to you. I don't know whether that's actually true or not, but going on a long drive for something frivolous triggers the same skin-crawling reaction in me that tossing litter out of a window would.

(My preferred solution would be carbon cap-and-trade (and land value taxes that would translate into road use fees and parking charges) so that car users bore the full costs of the externalities they were imposing, and then if you want to spend your discretionary income on frivolous car journeys that's up to you. But in the current regime I'd say there's a moral duty to minimize car travel or offset it somehow, because by taking a car journey you're imposing a cost on others, much more than just using a rare metal for a time)

Driving three towns over isn't actually that long of a drive, compared to, say, driving downtown from uptown. The sense of proportion comes from the length of the drive. Sure the carousel was nice, but going to the library or the swimming pool is muuuch more appealing on any given weekend.

In any case, how far does one take the fun-vs-impact dilemma? Is using a couple of dollars worth of gas worse than killing a 7 yr old top-of-food-chain wild predator so we can have a fresh tuna sushi roll? Does it make sense to keep thousands of buses running at 10% capacity 7 days a week when we could all just stay home watching youtube and eating delivered food? One can draw an arbitrary line anywhere but unless they're either an ecological saint or admittedly selfish, there's going to be some amount of hypocrisy in that line.

Wrt taxes, taxing suburb living costs seems totally arbitrary. Even the current income/sales tax system makes more sense imho: spend less == less ecological impact

There are degrees of selfishness; "everyone's somewhat selfish therefore being arbitrarily selfish is fine" is a fallacy. How much ecological impact you consider acceptable is a matter of personal conscience just like how much money you consider it acceptable to spend on personal amusement rather than worthwhile causes, and in the same way there's no clear bright line; rather there's a spectrum from saintdom to niceness to decency to nastiness to evil.

> Wrt taxes, taxing suburb living costs seems totally arbitrary. Even the current income/sales tax system makes more sense imho: spend less == less ecological impact

Pigovian taxes on pollution are mainstream economics orthodoxy. That Georgist land value taxes are optimal and would therefore be better for the economy than income/sales taxes is only slightly less so. It's not about suburbs specifically and it's far from arbitrary.

I don't think anyone's disputing that. I just find it weird that someone would call out another person's lifestyle as "vacuous consumerism" or whatever when they have their own nowhere-near-ideal-but-somehow-arbitrarily-kosher footprint. You might, for example, recycle but I'm not going to be giving anyone crap if they aren't as meticulous about it as the japanese are.

I keep hearing "well here in europe you don't need a car as much" as if that's some sort of sound argument. I mean, that's great for them, but I don't speak french, dutch and certainly not norwegian, so what, I'm supposed to spend $10k+ to move my whole family there so I can lug around a stroller or a bag full of books on the train for the sake of the planet? Sorry, not gonna happen.

It's easy to be single and tell other people "look, I spend so little, I'm such a model earth dweller". I've been there. Now try doing that while enriching your kids lives, while having a public transit system that doesn't span much further than downtown core, and while having considerations about proximity to family, etc. It's a totally different ball game. And that's my whole point: different people have different lifestyles for various reasons. One's single european lifestyle is not necessarily going to work for someone else living somewhere else with a family. If anything, the "you have car, you bad" attitude is self-absorbed and short-sighted.

A lot of Americans talk as though needing a car is a law of nature, which just isn't the case. From a European perspective a lot of this is Americans shooting themselves in the foot and then saying they can't help bleeding everywhere. The American situation is one that's been created by American political decisions - zoning, parking minimums, minimum lot sizes, car-first city designs - and can be reversed by politics as well, but for Americans to make those changes they have to believe that the results are possible. Of course you can choose to keep operating on everyone-owns-a-car politics, but recognise that you do have a choice in the matter; recognise that approaches like the currently-under-discussion California SB 827 could create an America that's less car-dependent.

> And that's my whole point: different people have different lifestyles for various reasons. One's single european lifestyle is not necessarily going to work for someone else living somewhere else with a family.

But non-car does work for a lot of people across many different lifestyles, including Americans, including people with families. You're painting it as if the only people who could possibly disagree with you are this tiny box of single European instagramming metrosexuals, and actually it's you that's the small box. Most of the world's households do not own a car.

> If anything, the "you have car, you bad" attitude is self-absorbed and short-sighted.

Global warming is already going to kill millions of people in the best case, if we do everything we can - but what we do can make the difference between how many millions die. The current American level of car use is simply not sustainable; maybe avoiding it is going to mean worse lives for your kids or less chance to see your family, but ultimately if it comes down to a choice between those things and killing 80% of humanity there can only be one answer.

But really I don't believe it's that hard. For decades incandescent light bulb manufacturers claimed they couldn't possibly make a light bulb that was more efficient - but then when we actually legally mandated certain levels of efficiency, somehow they found a way. A good life without a car is possible, and when cars become a non-option people will surprise themselves with how easy it is to adapt to their absence, and wonder what it was they ever thought they needed them for.

I can't speak for other people (especially those who do live in really-car-first parts of the US), but for me it's definitely not a law of nature. I've been single with no car, married with no car, had a kid with no car, had a kid uptown with no car. Can it work? Sure, with some concessions it can totally work. But things like taking the newborn to the doctor using public transportation _suck_, even though I consider the public transit system _good_.

> Most of the world's households do not own a car.

Right, and the sort of logistics that sucked for me with just strolling one kid in downtown Toronto suck for them too, often tenfold. Where I grew up (Brazil), it's common for single moms of 4 to need to take 3-4 buses to get to their first job of the day. There's plate rotation, vehicle ownership tax, tolls, alternative forms of public transit, uber, but also high crime, floods, corruption, inequality, you name it. The cars-vs-public-transit discussion doesn't even begin to scratch the transportation problems in Sao Paulo, let alone the environmental impact. For my specific situation and my level of disposable income, a car happens to make life much easier, but I'm fully aware that cars aren't a one-glove-fit-all solution, just as I'm aware that making sweeping political commentary wrt city design isn't going to cut it as a solution to the many different types of challenges involved in optimizing transportation in a non-idealized world.

> You're painting it as if the only people who could possibly disagree with you are this tiny box of single European instagramming metrosexuals

Not at all! Not having a car does work for a lot of people, and in places like the Netherlands, one can even happily bike everywhere with their kids without getting almost killed by taxis. But cars can be undeniably useful for saving time and for carrying things around. People giving labor use cars to go to the hospital for a reason. People uber for a reason. People drive in much of the rural world for a reason. I'm not sure what's there to disagree with.

> recognise that you do have a choice in the matter; recognise that approaches like the currently-under-discussion California SB 827

Generally speaking, the problem with social activism is that most people don't have the time, energy or interest to pour into the political game, and it's not even clear that a half decent solution would emerge even if they did (see, e.g., housing in SF). For my particular case, as I mentioned before, I'm not american and I'm about as unmotivated to be politically invested in San Francisco as I am in Sao Paulo.

> A good life without a car is possible

Yes, it is, but currently, as I mentioned, it unfortunately involves making a lot of concessions. If a better option came along, I'd totally be open to it. As I said, I've held the anti-car position for a long time, and I'm certainly not shy to change camps again.

Back-of-the-envelope numbers from a quick search suggest that a day's eating beef is equivalent to driving maybe 15 miles in terms of climatic impact, a day's chicken equivalent to ~1 mile. So "only drive when you're getting at least 1 steak/15 miles worth of fun out of it", and conversely "only eat steak when you're getting at least a 15 mile drive's worth of fun out of it", seem like good principles to live by.

Looks like your car hasn't given you any breadth in experiences.

I just want to say: come visit the Netherlands sometime. It will surprise you.

(granted, the cycling infra is far superior than most other places in the world)

Yeah, it is possible to do this without much effort, if the car-seat has a seatbelt strap in the base and the stroller can carry the car-seat around instead of being held in the hand.

I had no car for the first eight months, with my child in SF.

The Lyft plus generally has enough space to stow the stroller and the kid wasn't heavy enough to hurt myself by picking up the carseat with the baby in it.

However, once day-care starts, it gets pretty inconvenient to use a taxi every day.

In my experience, drivers are generally a _lot_ more careful when there are kids in the car, compared to, say, a pool driver at rush hour.

* actual carseat requirements vary by state, the laws seem to be at: http://drivinglaws.aaa.com/tag/child-passenger-safety/

But that’s not how life works. We all risk our lives and those of our kids every day, for convenience, life experience, laziness, etc. You should be aware of the risks and then pick the place on the risk / reward curve that you can live with.

Not affiliated with this company but own one and am happy with it. Only for kids 3+.

From local laws. From physical laws they are not. As a kid long time ago, I was sitting in a Fiat 124 when a bus driver wasn't paying attention to the road ahead and hit the stationary car on intersection in full city speed, thankfully it was direct hit from behind and there was nothing in front of the car, so there were no serious and only some very light injuries, but it was ugly.

But I cannot image having a kid sitting freely in a lap nowadays just because the car in question is exempt from regulations. There doesn't even have to be a collision, emergency braking (either human or autonomous) is enough to throw the kid off against the car interior and sustain injuries (yep, had that too in the old no-rear-seat-belt-times when an ambulance without siren appeared oncoming wrong way, almost bit my tongue off).

Don't use restraint systems just when they are required by regulations. And especially in nowadays tenfold traffic.

Absolutely, but I think the context was clearly indicating that we were talking about human laws, not physical laws.

Indeed, this is something that gets totally missed by advocates of on-demand self-driving yadda yadda, because they live in densely populated cities and socialise and get entertainment almost exclusively online. That demographic is overrepresented on HN. Most people who own cars who might use them to commute during the week use them for fun stuff at the weekends too, for which glorified taxis are just not suitable.

This was several years ago and in Canada, so conclusions may differ.

Renting a car (via Getaround, Zipar) on weekends can be cost effective

    1. No need to travel to rental (out-of-town) centres, it's round the corner
    2. Don't have to pick-up or drop-off during office hours
    3. Don't have to wait half-hour for all the paper-work and stuff
    4. Don't have to answer a bunch of obnoxious questions
    5. Don't have to dig out a load of documentation
    6. Can decide to take one on a whim, with no notice
    7. Can hire it for 2 or 3 hours instead of days

I don't use it much as generally taxis are cheaper, but if I want to go on a country walk or do a large shop, it's very handy.

I think it works out slightly more expensive if you hire it for whole days, but again all those conveniences apply.

1. Traditional car rentals in the cities where this article is relevant are easy to find.

2. Not an issue, at least for dropoffs afaik.

3. Not an issue. With Hertz and National I just walk into the car pickup spots (skip the office because I have membership + reservation)

4. Like?

5. No need to, just cc and driver license.

6. Agreed, but zipcars are unavailable all the time too.

7. Agreed.

I have a membership in a car share, but I rarely bother with it for the above reason.

For an hour or two or something, it's good.

Most recently used it for trips to emergency. I mean, the co-op car is out there on the street, walking distance, whereas you need a reservation for the rental car, can only get it during the opening hours, from an outfit that is several miles away.

Yet, there is no guarantee that the share cars will be there for emergencies; it's just luck. If it's 3 a.m. the odds are excellent. 3 p.m. on a Saturday; not so good.

once they are both in school, (and the school that is being remodeled so one of them is going across town, we should be able to take transit daily and the kids can walk too from school. There's more to it than if they can walk on and off the bus.

Parking: For me the bus is around 10 minutes slower each way. I just take that most days.

Home parking: Free on-street parking

Gas: $40/month * 12 = $480

Registration: $200 (May be a bit higher now with ST3)

Insurance: $700

Maintenance: $1000 sounds about right

For around $2380 / year. Well worth it for the freedom it gives me imo.

I have a car, but I'm not the one paying insurance on it anymore (passed on to other family member). The car was 5000 EUR used (Volkswagen Polo) which was bought 7-8 years ago and it was a 5 year old car back then. Right now it's really getting old, but only needed a fix last year or so and new tires this year (not my concern anymore though). But it's safe to say those cost about 800 EUR in total. The car insurance is what I'd guess 400 EUR.

I'm glad that I live in a city where biking is the #1 priority, I wouldn't feel safe biking in the US. It's also a lot cheaper!

You don't just live in a city where biking is a priority, you live in a country where you can actually get to places by train - which the US, for all intents and purposes, is not.

This is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Never insure for a risk you can cover yourself. If you have a car that is worth < $10k, you probably should pay for damage to it out of pocket.

But yeah it being a beater makes sense, I just got quotes for a 1981 Honda Civic in Seattle and some are even less than $700/year.

As an aside, in the UK it is illegal for an insurance company to consider gender when calculating the premium.

I looked at getting comprehensive insurance on my old car, but in the end the excess was greater than the value of the car. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same for GP.

If you stay in the city almost all the time it's probably great. The minute you want to do something outside of the city it's impossible without a car.

Depends on where you live and what you do outside. Over the years, I have ridden my bike to half a dozen different countries, starting from my doorstep. That might be rare, but it's definitely not "impossible without a car".

I also happen to have access to a very active market for skiing/snowboarding weekend trips where a bus takes you to an hotel in the mountains on Friday night, you spend two days on the slopes and get back on Sunday evening. There are all kinds of people on those buses and most of them arrive at the meeting point by car, so it's definitely not a choice made out of necessity.

effectively there are moderately common road/condition combinations that you cannot drive in a rental car.

Where is this? I live in northern part of Scandinavia, and we manage just fine with normal winter tires. Snow chains are pretty much only for semi trucks. Most people even use studless winter tires these days.

And of course rental cars have winter tires in the winter season, anything else would be illegal.

The US does not mandate snow tires at a national level, and in many places (even northern states where snow and ice are common) tire chains are illegal because they can damage the roads.

If you're going up steep hills covered in ice, winter tires or even studded tires are not going to work. You need chains. Then again, the best rally drivers are Scandinavian, so maybe you guys are just better drivers than we are :)

Lots of them in the West. Little Cottonwood Canyon (at a minimum) in Utah. Tahoe from the Bay area (Donner Pass) under certain conditions http://www.dot.ca.gov/trafficops/trucks/chains.html. In a number of cases you can get exceptions for approved winter tires but it varies.

Zipcars with ski racks might be a little hard to find in Seattle during the winter, but they do exist.

Lyft prices in the SF/BayArea are $1.21/mile, so just on mileage, I would've paid $36K. Add in the $2/trip base fair, $5 minimum, and any surge pricing or time waiting, and it could add up to $50K very easily, double what I've spent on my car.

People look at $16K for a car or $3k/year and think "those are big numbers", but it turns out that spending $10/day on individual transportation rides adds up very quickly, such that you end up paying way over what the large capital expense would've cost. When I was working in downtown Boston, I did a hybrid car/train commute, and it easily added up to that ($5 parking at Alewife + $2.50 for the train each way) - it was still cheaper than driving, but only because parking in downtown Boston is ridiculous.

You also need to factor in the freedom a car gives you. Time is the limiting factor.

Now that I'm in Seattle (well, Bellevue), the beauty of the PNW has me going on several hours of driving and exploration every weekend. Good luck doing that without a personal vehicle. Also, my commute is agonizing, but even in a personal car it's still orders of magnitude more time efficient than the public transportation options, and I can get all my random errands for the family done during.

I'm probably preaching to the choir by replying to you, but my car is now an indispensable part of my life. I could only imagine not having it being in the densest and most "isolated" American cities at this point (Chicago, Manhattan possibly).

assuming you don’t drive to work and park on the street at home your numbers are down to $4100/yr. but your insurance number looks 2x too big, and maintenance i would drop by half, i think more realistic is a about $3,000/yr

I own a car bet it much more feasible to ride the train and walk briefly. Parking is free and only a mile to the closest train stop.

My employers building has a free parking deck. Does Seattle not have free parking decks is some larger buildings?

A couple of people asked me what I was doing!

If that's changed, that's a great improvement for Atlanta.

Although I would walk or cycle the mile to the station.

5miles is very close to downtown. Street parking sort of works, if you get enough mercy from your neighbors not parking on-street.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/standard-mileage-rates-for-2018...

But you also have to go to grocery store, go out with friends, do errands which most of the time are scattered across the city, it can take multiple rides per day as well. Also if you have kids you should add dropping them to school and other stuff. So you end up spending lots of time waiting for uber and paying for this little trips.

(I'm not OP) Why not? I ride even during storms, much less shying away from what, some cold winds in winter? By the time you reach your destination if you're wearing the right clothing you not only won't feel cold, you might even feel too hot. If I ride for longer than 10 minutes I need to open my jacket or put it in my backpack to let some air in to prevent my body from sweating.

Of all the seasons I'd name summer as being worse to ride than winter because there is no getting away from the fact that you'll be drenched in sweat during summer. Thankfully I don't need to go to work on a bicycle because we have great public transportation here in France, so I mostly use it for other things and just for the sake of it (I like cycling). Cycling to work would not be convenient during warm seasons, to say the least. Winter is the best, just get a jacket that protects you from the wind, some gloves and decent shoes.

I also have an Amex platinum which gets you $200 of Uber credit a year.

The one thing you’re missing from your calculation is parking tickets! In LA it can easily creep up on you :)

Also, no time spent parking and you can do work emails while someone else drives.

Supermarkets, many restaurants, and malls are all along the state high way. It is ridiculous for a walker, because sometimes you cannot walk across the street to get to the McDonald's right in your eye sight. No crosswalk for a few miles.

Walmart is 15 minutes drive away from the city. But to take busses, you will need about 45 minutes to an hour to get there,depending on your timing.

There are closer grocery stores, but the busses still take much much longer than a car.

I will be willing to ditch my car anytime, if either there is a grocery store in city, or a faster public transportation method is available.

[1] To be fair, the US wreaked havoc across its cities in the 60s and 70s, so it's a lot more common here than it should be.