This is a misleading calculation, since it assumes that the car has zero economic value over and above the bicycle. Whereas in fact there’s a very large value for many people, in terms of being able to move heavy things, go on vacations, get to and from work etc etc.
I disagree. Little of the value you mention is contingent upon owning a car. Renting cars as needed is very useful for those who don’t own cars (this is included in the calculator that sparked this discussion, in fact). It also offers a few other advantages: the flexibility of choosing a vehicle most appropriate for a task (e.g., Need more space? Get a truck.), the convenience of not doing maintenance, and the satisfaction of using a new car nearly every time.
Unless your job or other things in your life require you to move heavy objects frequently, not owning a car and renting is likely cheaper. Compare the costs of merely owning a car (thousands of dollars) to those of renting a truck from a local home improvement store (around $25/hour). I recently moved 1500 miles in a rented van. It was cheaper than using a car available to me for free with a trailer (the gas mileage made the difference), and offered a similar amount of space.
Vacations are easily done in rented cars in my experience.
You could make a good case that cars are useful for getting to and from work, but given the biases in thinking about commuting, this case is perhaps less strong than you imagine. Having tried driving, transit (bus and subway), carpooling, and cycling for my commute at different times in my life, I strongly prefer cycling for the cost, health benefits, low stress, and convenience. What you find works depends on too many things to list. (I have also read of people using rented cars for commuting, but I’m skeptical this works well.)
I think the best case for owning cars may be the convenience of picking up and dropping off of children. This seems to be the sticking point for many car-free individuals. Thankfully I’m a mild antinatalist, so this does not concern me.
In 4 years of not owning a car I have never found myself wishing I owned one. I can get all of the benefits of ownership that I care about at far lower costs.
This is a good point, and it’s worth noting that even making a reservation in advance might not guarantee what you want. When I was moving, Hertz accidentally rented the van my father and I reserved in advance to someone else. Ultimately they gave us a similar van and there were no major issues, but this still left me feeling uneasy.
I imagine that renting via a different service like Zipcar wouldn’t have this issue, though I haven’t used Zipcar yet.
ZIpcar has a different set of problems; there is probably a car of the specific type you want available, but getting to it (and from it) may not be convenient, because it has a specific place in the city that it lives. ANd if that’s 30 minutes away by your fastest non-car transportation, that’s pretty frustrating.
I suppose for moving etc., you could call a cab to get you from old home to the Zipcar, and then again from the Zipcar parking to new home. That feels strange and probably-inefficient, but I don’t have evidence to back up that feeling.
I can see how that would be frustrating. I guess my experience is not representative. The nearest Zipcar spot is a 2 minute bike ride from where I live. There’s also the option of car2go, which seems to have a much larger coverage where I live, but also no variety in car choices. I’m not sure how much the variety matters, as I would use a car only if I need to transport something large (and I might just use a truck there; Home Depot is 15 minutes away) or if I was going a long distance beyond where public transit takes me (> 10 miles).
I actually use both Zipcar and car2go, and find they complement each other pretty well. Car2go is good for things where you don’t need to transport anything but yourself (and possibly one other person) and expect to spend most of the time at your destination rather than traveling, and enables spontaneous decisions; Zipcar is good for transporting large things, making substantial grocery runs (i.e. a monthly trip to Costco for purchasing in bulk rather than weekly things like fresh fruit/vegetables), or whenever you expect to spend most of your trip traveling, or when you need to make reservations well in advance.
Ah yes, I had made the mistake of not looking through the link and so wasn’t clear on what was or wasn’t included. Thanks for flagging that.
I don’t mean to dispute your preferences; I take for granted that different options make sense for different people or for people in different stages of life. However, I’ve now had this conversation with bicycle advocates a few times, and they always seem to assume that their needs are a close proxy for my needs, and they’re not.
Looking through the details of the cost benefit analysis, there’s a bunch of factors that aren’t obvious that do need to be included.
I’ve had jobs where there wasn’t good transit, and where it wasn’t feasible to relocate myself. Much of the United States doesn’t have usable transit, and does have bike-unfriendly geography.
If you have to move furniture, yes, you can rent a truck. But if you have two weeks of groceries, or a passenger and a few suitcases, a car is fine, and a bike (even with a trailer) is not fine. Car share isn’t a perfect substitute, since often the car-share is a significant distance from where you live, and since it isn’t reliably there when you want it. There’s real economic value to having the car exactly where you want it, when you want it.
Renting cars for vacation or medium-distance overnight travel can be an option. It isn’t included the linked-to calculation and it can get expensive depending on whether you need to keep the car rented for the period in which you aren’t actively using it.
Right now, some people own cars and some don’t. I’m sure there’s some status quo bias and some bias in favor of social convention for owning the car. Beyond that, why do you think people are making this decision irrationally? There’s enough car-free folks that I think it’s not that hard to see what the benefits and costs of the lifestyle are.
I appreciate your response and interest. This post turned out to be rather long.
I’ve now had this conversation with bicycle advocates a few times, and they always seem to assume that their needs are a close proxy for my needs, and they’re not.
I don’t claim bikes are right for everyone, but I do claim that they are right for a much larger fraction of the population than most believe.
Also, I think if you tried switching to bikes you’d find a lot of your “needs” aren’t actually such, or can be fulfilled adequately or better in ways that do not require a car.
But if you have two weeks of groceries, or a passenger and a few suitcases, a car is fine, and a bike (even with a trailer) is not fine.
People who have never tried to buy groceries with a bike tend to think it’s difficult or impossible. It’s perfectly fine if you have a bike with baskets. I buy groceries once per week. If I had a trailer, I could easily go a month or longer.
Any reason you need two weeks’ worth of groceries at once? It’s probably just because that’s what you’re used to getting in your car. Going once a week is not bad, in fact, I prefer it because I can get fresh food. There’s another advantage: I buy only what is necessary. There’s no room for junk food.
As for taking a passenger and luggage, it is perfectly possible. The main issue is that most bikes are designed for recreation, not utility. People don’t complain that sports cars can’t move mattresses easily, so don’t do the equivalent for sports bikes. There are two-seated bikes, sidecars, and cargo bikes. Such things are uncommon, but they do exist. A second bike is also a possibility for a “passenger”.
Car share isn’t a perfect substitute, since often the car-share is a significant distance from where you live, and since it isn’t reliably there when you want it.
You are overly pessimistic about car-share. I suspect that you overestimate how often someone would use car-share, and underestimate the reliability of such services. I haven’t used car-share once in the 6 months or so since I signed up, but I have checked it a few times. Every time I checked, cars were available. Car-share services have an incentive to be reliable.
As for the distance, that could be an issue, but most people who choose to not own cars move to places that fit their needs. If that includes car-share, they’d have it. Plus, car-share services are growing very quickly, so if it’s not there now, wait.
There also exist less formal car sharing services, and there’s always the possibility of bumming a ride off a friend.
There’s real economic value to having the car exactly where you want it, when you want it.
The value is largely subjective, and in my experience it tends to evaporate when you don’t own a car, though that might be selection bias. Also, don’t discount the disadvantages in your value calculation.
I’m sure there’s some status quo bias and some bias in favor of social convention for owning the car. Beyond that, why do you think people are making this decision irrationally?
Great question. I’m not entirely sure. I’ll list what I can think of.
First, I think very few people rationally think about their transit choices. To most people, driving is synonymous with transportation. Status-quo bias and familiarity are big factors. Consider it a learned cached thought.
Second, I don’t think most drivers understand the disadvantages of driving. Having discussed this with a number of people, they seem to be incredulous that driving could be unhealthy or expensive.
In the bicyclist literature, many people write about how they were genuinely surprised by how much money they have saved since they stopped driving. I suspect part of it is that few see the costs added up in total. Rather, you see them in smaller chunks: your car payment, your gas trip, your repair bill, etc. In his book How to Live Well Without Owning a Car, the author (Chris Balish) describes how he sold his car unintentionally early and started taking public transit. He thought this was temporary because he was waiting to buy a new car. At the end of the month he was checking his bank account and was absolutely shocked to see that he had $800 more than he usually does at the end of the month. He wasn’t sure if there was a mistake, so he calculated how much his car was previously costing him, and sure enough, it came out to $800 per month.
Third, there really does seem to be something outright irrational about people’s driving behavior. Yvain briefly mentioned this in his post titled Rational Home Buying. The best summary I have seen of this topic is in a book titled Commuting Stress. Researchers have repeatedly shown people are willing to commute by car for long distances in ways that do not compensate for anything they get out of it. It doesn’t matter that their job pays well, or that their house is large and cheap. They’re just stressed out and miserable from the commute. The book also details how people tend to prefer driving even when public transit is cheaper and faster. As I recall, the book suggested that the main factor behind these findings is the perception of control that cars provide. I’m not entirely sure I buy this theory or that I’m remembering it right.
Fourth, many people’s self-worth and status are related to their cars. Their car is part of their identity. They don’t make the choice to drive for rational reasons. There’s a similar group of bicyclists, though they are far fewer in number. A bike is a fashion accessory to these folks.
Fifth, there’s also the fact that (in the US) our transportation system is designed primarily for cars. All others modes of transportation are afterthoughts, which tends to make them inconvenient, dangerous, and/or inadequate. I hear from many people that they would ride bikes if it were not so dangerous. This is not necessarily irrational, but I think some folks overstate the danger of biking or understate the danger of driving.
There’s enough car-free folks that I think it’s not that hard to see what the benefits and costs of the lifestyle are.
I disagree. In my immediate social circle, I know zero people who don’t own cars or who don’t have access to a family car or something similar. I imagine this is true of most people in the US. To meet other folks like that I have to go to bicyclist meetups.
Yes. There are people who would be better off with a bike than a car. I take that point and I believe it’s easier than some people think.
The problem is that carfree isn’t the right choice for everybody and it’s not always obvious from the outside who it is or isn’t appropriate for. If you aren’t careful, advocacy here can come off as thinking you know your interlocutor’s life and needs better than they do. (Which is a bit irritating.)
I’m going to describe a bit about my experiences, just so that you and the readers have a sense why somebody might reasonably benefit from owning a car.
I live in a small town in the northeast. We don’t have particularly good public transit in, out, or around town. By transit, it’s about two hours from my door to the nearest major city. It’s less than half that by car. It’s cold and slushy here a lot and therefore not a particularly pleasant place to bike.
The grocery stores I typically go to are five miles away, via a major expressway that isn’t bike-safe. (The ones that are bikeable are small and expensive.)
When last I checked, there were only four car-share vehicles within ten miles. They’re heavily used.
I’m in a medium-distance relationship, and that involves a lot of medium-distance travel with overnight stays. Having a car makes this much cheaper for a given amount of visiting, and I think it’s worth some money to see my special friend.
I have some experience with the car-free life. I used to live in a dense urban area. Most of my friends didn’t own cars and didn’t want to. I myself was happily car-free for five years. I did the math before buying the car, and I’m pretty sure I come out well ahead.
I would be interested to calculate the health benefits and costs. I suspect this is hard to do, because the risk of bike accidents is hugely variable depending where you live and where you travel.
The problem is that carfree isn’t the right choice for everybody and it’s not always obvious from the outside who it is or isn’t appropriate for. If you aren’t careful, advocacy here can come off as thinking you know your interlocutor’s life and needs better than they do. (Which is a bit irritating.)
I understand how other-optimizing can go wrong. Different circumstances make different solutions optimal. A lot of what you described fits with my earlier knowledge. Still, previously I hadn’t considered that relationships could be an issue, but I’ve now learned better.
I have found that many drivers is are prone to other-optimizing cyclists. People frequently request (actually, insist) to give me rides because they think what I’m doing is dangerous or a bad idea for other reasons (convenience, largely). They see it as doing me a favor, but it’s actually rather annoying. I will oblige sometimes, but mainly when the weather is bad, or if it’ll help the requester feel better. I have never seen bicycle advocates be so assertive. Imagine if bike advocates regularly insisted that no, you aren’t going home in your car, you are taking a bike. Car “advocates” (if you will) have done the same for me many times.
I would be interested to calculate the health benefits and costs. I suspect this is hard to do, because the risk of bike accidents is hugely variable depending where you live and where you travel.
This is definitely hard, and it hasn’t been done yet for anywhere in the US. I previously wrote a post about the net effects of cycling on health, and in short, the only good study I could find on the subject used data from Europe. Europe is generally considered to be much safer for cyclists than the US. Many cycling advocates in the US cite this report as affirmation that cycling has net health benefits without realizing why it does not apply. I am not sure whether the average net health effects in your typical US city are positive, and I lean towards negative for the moment.
Another factor (that few recognize) is that the health benefits are reduced for people who are in good shape. I run fairly regularly, and thus the health benefits of cycling are limited for me. Though, the cycling has worked out well to keep me in reasonable shape when I’ve been too busy to run.
This is a misleading calculation, since it assumes that the car has zero economic value over and above the bicycle. Whereas in fact there’s a very large value for many people, in terms of being able to move heavy things, go on vacations, get to and from work etc etc.
I disagree. Little of the value you mention is contingent upon owning a car. Renting cars as needed is very useful for those who don’t own cars (this is included in the calculator that sparked this discussion, in fact). It also offers a few other advantages: the flexibility of choosing a vehicle most appropriate for a task (e.g., Need more space? Get a truck.), the convenience of not doing maintenance, and the satisfaction of using a new car nearly every time.
Unless your job or other things in your life require you to move heavy objects frequently, not owning a car and renting is likely cheaper. Compare the costs of merely owning a car (thousands of dollars) to those of renting a truck from a local home improvement store (around $25/hour). I recently moved 1500 miles in a rented van. It was cheaper than using a car available to me for free with a trailer (the gas mileage made the difference), and offered a similar amount of space.
Vacations are easily done in rented cars in my experience.
You could make a good case that cars are useful for getting to and from work, but given the biases in thinking about commuting, this case is perhaps less strong than you imagine. Having tried driving, transit (bus and subway), carpooling, and cycling for my commute at different times in my life, I strongly prefer cycling for the cost, health benefits, low stress, and convenience. What you find works depends on too many things to list. (I have also read of people using rented cars for commuting, but I’m skeptical this works well.)
I think the best case for owning cars may be the convenience of picking up and dropping off of children. This seems to be the sticking point for many car-free individuals. Thankfully I’m a mild antinatalist, so this does not concern me.
In 4 years of not owning a car I have never found myself wishing I owned one. I can get all of the benefits of ownership that I care about at far lower costs.
There’s one non-obvious drawback to renting—if you want a non-average car (say, an SUV), there may not be one available.
This is a good point, and it’s worth noting that even making a reservation in advance might not guarantee what you want. When I was moving, Hertz accidentally rented the van my father and I reserved in advance to someone else. Ultimately they gave us a similar van and there were no major issues, but this still left me feeling uneasy.
I imagine that renting via a different service like Zipcar wouldn’t have this issue, though I haven’t used Zipcar yet.
ZIpcar has a different set of problems; there is probably a car of the specific type you want available, but getting to it (and from it) may not be convenient, because it has a specific place in the city that it lives. ANd if that’s 30 minutes away by your fastest non-car transportation, that’s pretty frustrating.
I suppose for moving etc., you could call a cab to get you from old home to the Zipcar, and then again from the Zipcar parking to new home. That feels strange and probably-inefficient, but I don’t have evidence to back up that feeling.
I can see how that would be frustrating. I guess my experience is not representative. The nearest Zipcar spot is a 2 minute bike ride from where I live. There’s also the option of car2go, which seems to have a much larger coverage where I live, but also no variety in car choices. I’m not sure how much the variety matters, as I would use a car only if I need to transport something large (and I might just use a truck there; Home Depot is 15 minutes away) or if I was going a long distance beyond where public transit takes me (> 10 miles).
I actually use both Zipcar and car2go, and find they complement each other pretty well. Car2go is good for things where you don’t need to transport anything but yourself (and possibly one other person) and expect to spend most of the time at your destination rather than traveling, and enables spontaneous decisions; Zipcar is good for transporting large things, making substantial grocery runs (i.e. a monthly trip to Costco for purchasing in bulk rather than weekly things like fresh fruit/vegetables), or whenever you expect to spend most of your trip traveling, or when you need to make reservations well in advance.
Ah yes, I had made the mistake of not looking through the link and so wasn’t clear on what was or wasn’t included. Thanks for flagging that.
I don’t mean to dispute your preferences; I take for granted that different options make sense for different people or for people in different stages of life. However, I’ve now had this conversation with bicycle advocates a few times, and they always seem to assume that their needs are a close proxy for my needs, and they’re not.
Looking through the details of the cost benefit analysis, there’s a bunch of factors that aren’t obvious that do need to be included.
I’ve had jobs where there wasn’t good transit, and where it wasn’t feasible to relocate myself. Much of the United States doesn’t have usable transit, and does have bike-unfriendly geography.
If you have to move furniture, yes, you can rent a truck. But if you have two weeks of groceries, or a passenger and a few suitcases, a car is fine, and a bike (even with a trailer) is not fine. Car share isn’t a perfect substitute, since often the car-share is a significant distance from where you live, and since it isn’t reliably there when you want it. There’s real economic value to having the car exactly where you want it, when you want it.
Renting cars for vacation or medium-distance overnight travel can be an option. It isn’t included the linked-to calculation and it can get expensive depending on whether you need to keep the car rented for the period in which you aren’t actively using it.
Right now, some people own cars and some don’t. I’m sure there’s some status quo bias and some bias in favor of social convention for owning the car. Beyond that, why do you think people are making this decision irrationally? There’s enough car-free folks that I think it’s not that hard to see what the benefits and costs of the lifestyle are.
I appreciate your response and interest. This post turned out to be rather long.
I don’t claim bikes are right for everyone, but I do claim that they are right for a much larger fraction of the population than most believe.
Also, I think if you tried switching to bikes you’d find a lot of your “needs” aren’t actually such, or can be fulfilled adequately or better in ways that do not require a car.
People who have never tried to buy groceries with a bike tend to think it’s difficult or impossible. It’s perfectly fine if you have a bike with baskets. I buy groceries once per week. If I had a trailer, I could easily go a month or longer.
Any reason you need two weeks’ worth of groceries at once? It’s probably just because that’s what you’re used to getting in your car. Going once a week is not bad, in fact, I prefer it because I can get fresh food. There’s another advantage: I buy only what is necessary. There’s no room for junk food.
As for taking a passenger and luggage, it is perfectly possible. The main issue is that most bikes are designed for recreation, not utility. People don’t complain that sports cars can’t move mattresses easily, so don’t do the equivalent for sports bikes. There are two-seated bikes, sidecars, and cargo bikes. Such things are uncommon, but they do exist. A second bike is also a possibility for a “passenger”.
You are overly pessimistic about car-share. I suspect that you overestimate how often someone would use car-share, and underestimate the reliability of such services. I haven’t used car-share once in the 6 months or so since I signed up, but I have checked it a few times. Every time I checked, cars were available. Car-share services have an incentive to be reliable.
As for the distance, that could be an issue, but most people who choose to not own cars move to places that fit their needs. If that includes car-share, they’d have it. Plus, car-share services are growing very quickly, so if it’s not there now, wait.
There also exist less formal car sharing services, and there’s always the possibility of bumming a ride off a friend.
The value is largely subjective, and in my experience it tends to evaporate when you don’t own a car, though that might be selection bias. Also, don’t discount the disadvantages in your value calculation.
Great question. I’m not entirely sure. I’ll list what I can think of.
First, I think very few people rationally think about their transit choices. To most people, driving is synonymous with transportation. Status-quo bias and familiarity are big factors. Consider it a learned cached thought.
Second, I don’t think most drivers understand the disadvantages of driving. Having discussed this with a number of people, they seem to be incredulous that driving could be unhealthy or expensive.
In the bicyclist literature, many people write about how they were genuinely surprised by how much money they have saved since they stopped driving. I suspect part of it is that few see the costs added up in total. Rather, you see them in smaller chunks: your car payment, your gas trip, your repair bill, etc. In his book How to Live Well Without Owning a Car, the author (Chris Balish) describes how he sold his car unintentionally early and started taking public transit. He thought this was temporary because he was waiting to buy a new car. At the end of the month he was checking his bank account and was absolutely shocked to see that he had $800 more than he usually does at the end of the month. He wasn’t sure if there was a mistake, so he calculated how much his car was previously costing him, and sure enough, it came out to $800 per month.
Third, there really does seem to be something outright irrational about people’s driving behavior. Yvain briefly mentioned this in his post titled Rational Home Buying. The best summary I have seen of this topic is in a book titled Commuting Stress. Researchers have repeatedly shown people are willing to commute by car for long distances in ways that do not compensate for anything they get out of it. It doesn’t matter that their job pays well, or that their house is large and cheap. They’re just stressed out and miserable from the commute. The book also details how people tend to prefer driving even when public transit is cheaper and faster. As I recall, the book suggested that the main factor behind these findings is the perception of control that cars provide. I’m not entirely sure I buy this theory or that I’m remembering it right.
Fourth, many people’s self-worth and status are related to their cars. Their car is part of their identity. They don’t make the choice to drive for rational reasons. There’s a similar group of bicyclists, though they are far fewer in number. A bike is a fashion accessory to these folks.
Fifth, there’s also the fact that (in the US) our transportation system is designed primarily for cars. All others modes of transportation are afterthoughts, which tends to make them inconvenient, dangerous, and/or inadequate. I hear from many people that they would ride bikes if it were not so dangerous. This is not necessarily irrational, but I think some folks overstate the danger of biking or understate the danger of driving.
I disagree. In my immediate social circle, I know zero people who don’t own cars or who don’t have access to a family car or something similar. I imagine this is true of most people in the US. To meet other folks like that I have to go to bicyclist meetups.
Yes. There are people who would be better off with a bike than a car. I take that point and I believe it’s easier than some people think.
The problem is that carfree isn’t the right choice for everybody and it’s not always obvious from the outside who it is or isn’t appropriate for. If you aren’t careful, advocacy here can come off as thinking you know your interlocutor’s life and needs better than they do. (Which is a bit irritating.)
I’m going to describe a bit about my experiences, just so that you and the readers have a sense why somebody might reasonably benefit from owning a car.
I live in a small town in the northeast. We don’t have particularly good public transit in, out, or around town. By transit, it’s about two hours from my door to the nearest major city. It’s less than half that by car. It’s cold and slushy here a lot and therefore not a particularly pleasant place to bike.
The grocery stores I typically go to are five miles away, via a major expressway that isn’t bike-safe. (The ones that are bikeable are small and expensive.)
When last I checked, there were only four car-share vehicles within ten miles. They’re heavily used.
I’m in a medium-distance relationship, and that involves a lot of medium-distance travel with overnight stays. Having a car makes this much cheaper for a given amount of visiting, and I think it’s worth some money to see my special friend.
I have some experience with the car-free life. I used to live in a dense urban area. Most of my friends didn’t own cars and didn’t want to. I myself was happily car-free for five years. I did the math before buying the car, and I’m pretty sure I come out well ahead.
I would be interested to calculate the health benefits and costs. I suspect this is hard to do, because the risk of bike accidents is hugely variable depending where you live and where you travel.
Driving sounds best in your case.
I understand how other-optimizing can go wrong. Different circumstances make different solutions optimal. A lot of what you described fits with my earlier knowledge. Still, previously I hadn’t considered that relationships could be an issue, but I’ve now learned better.
I have found that many drivers is are prone to other-optimizing cyclists. People frequently request (actually, insist) to give me rides because they think what I’m doing is dangerous or a bad idea for other reasons (convenience, largely). They see it as doing me a favor, but it’s actually rather annoying. I will oblige sometimes, but mainly when the weather is bad, or if it’ll help the requester feel better. I have never seen bicycle advocates be so assertive. Imagine if bike advocates regularly insisted that no, you aren’t going home in your car, you are taking a bike. Car “advocates” (if you will) have done the same for me many times.
This is definitely hard, and it hasn’t been done yet for anywhere in the US. I previously wrote a post about the net effects of cycling on health, and in short, the only good study I could find on the subject used data from Europe. Europe is generally considered to be much safer for cyclists than the US. Many cycling advocates in the US cite this report as affirmation that cycling has net health benefits without realizing why it does not apply. I am not sure whether the average net health effects in your typical US city are positive, and I lean towards negative for the moment.
Another factor (that few recognize) is that the health benefits are reduced for people who are in good shape. I run fairly regularly, and thus the health benefits of cycling are limited for me. Though, the cycling has worked out well to keep me in reasonable shape when I’ve been too busy to run.