Says more about the power of investment over 35 years than it does about bicycles, really.
I haven’t taken more than a glance over the grandparent’s calculator, but this shouldn’t be too hard to estimate. The Edmonds TCO calculator gives the five-year cost of ownership for a two-year-old base-spec Toyota Camry (as generic a car as I can think of) at $37,196, inclusive of gas, maintenance, etc. Assuming you buy an equivalent car every five years, that comes out to a monthly cost of $619. If you instead invested that money at a five-percent rate of return, then after 35 years of contributions, the resulting fund ends up being worth a hair over $700,000 -- not enough to fit the “millionaire” tag, but close.
There are plenty of less obvious costs associated with riding a bike instead of driving a car, of course—and some less obvious benefits. But the moral of the story is obviously “invest your money”.
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.
One can turn any expense into a high number by applying some not-quite-realistic rate of return[1] over a long period of time. I remember reading a web comic which applied this procedure to an iPhone, with enough creativity you could probably make coffee at Starbucks into a million-dollar expense as well.
In some sense it is true, if you invest regularly and wait a long time you’ll likely accumulate considerable savings. But singling out one particular expense for that kind of treatment, without the context which you provided above, is exactly what Lumifer called it: blatant propaganda.
[1] E.g., William Bernstein “Five Pillars of Investing” cites 3.5% long-term real (ie after inflation) rate of return from stocks.
The corresponding number at 3.5% is $500,000. I wasn’t trying to argue for any particular value, merely that the cited value isn’t wildly off base, and that long-term investment is how you get into its neighborhood.
Yes, I understand that and I didn’t mean to criticize your argument, which is good, I meant to attack the original source which was trying to impress the audience with a large number without explaining where it really comes from (which you did explain). Sorry that I didn’t express this more clearly.
The cited value isn’t wildly off base, in the same sense it wouldn’t be wildly off base to say that if you work at McDonald’s and invest every penny you made, after 40 years you’ll be a millionaire. So car ownership is really expensive in the same sense in which McDonald’s pays really well.
Not to accuse you of doing this, but I’m a little bemused at how my post seems to have been taken as a broad apologetic for the ancestor’s cost calculator when I was trying to make the point that, when you’re playing with values in the high hundreds of dollars per month, conclusions like “investing this will make you a millionaire after 35 years” prove a lot less than they sound like they do. Hell, the first sentence even says that bicycles aren’t the important thing to be thinking about there.
So in other words, I think we agree. I could probably have been clearer with my examples, though.
You seem to be reading in specificity that I didn’t put there. There aren’t any securities that can provide a guaranteed 5% rate of return after inflation, but those kinds of returns are fairly reasonable for a well-diversified portfolio (though they will of course go down from time to time). Maybe a little high, and mea culpa if so, but certainly not high enough to rate a “my ass”.
You seem to be reading in specificity that I didn’t put there.
Not really. I think that picking an arbitrary number and compounding it far into the future is a very flawed method of estimating future value—and that’s not just because this number is arbitrary.
certainly not high enough to rate a “my ass”.
My ass was specifically upset about the million dollar figure that the linked-to web page prominently waved about, not about anything in your post.
Some of the default numbers in the calculator do seem high to me, but that’s not the point. Not owning a car does save a lot of money. Do you own calculation with your own numbers if you are skeptical. I linked to this one because I think it is comprehensive.
I’ll unpack what I mean by “how much you’d save”. The savings is between two hypothetical situations. So yes, given the choice between buying a Lamborghini and not, you’d “save” money by not buying one. The same applies for a yacht. This language is commonly used colloquially.
Even if you didn’t include inflation, you’d end up with a large number for the default settings: about $275,000. This isn’t like the iPhone case Aleksander mentioned. Cars are quite expensive, and people do actually pay hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetimes. If your issue is with the inflation, consider the cost without inflation. If the duration is the issue, look at the costs for a single year. If you have a particular problem with any of the costs cited in the calculator, I’d be interested in learning which costs you think are unrealistic and why. Otherwise, I don’t understand your argument.
Doesn’t that make you suspect that this particular way of comparing things is nonsensical?
It makes perfect sense to me even if it’s not strictly correct. Your pedantry is what makes the least sense to me here.
Let’s say someone is buying a house. There are two houses which are more or less identical, but house A costs 10 times as much as house B. Do you not think it is makes sense to choose house B because it “saves” money? The car ownership comparison is between two vehicles, not between doing nothing and buying something if that is your issue.
My general problem with the linked-to web page is that it is precisely the thing that LW tries to teach to ignore.
It is not helpful advice or good evidence—it is a blatant attempt to force the reader to a predetermined conclusion. It is deliberately dishonest.
I don’t like manipulative propaganda which tries to pretend it’s just supplying facts.
I am seeing a trend. You make many assertions without evidence. Explain why you think this is “manipulative propaganda” or how you know the author is “deliberately dishonest”.
The most you’ve indicated so far is that you don’t like the investment analogy, though you ignored the part of my post that showed the investment analogy is not necessary to show that not owning cars is cheaper, or that you think the specific numbers in the calculator are “dubious”, but you have neglected to specify which you think are dubious.
If the calculator is trying to force the reader to a predetermined conclusion, I don’t think the author of it is doing such a great job given that you can change every number in it.
We agree that the million dollar number is high, and I do think the rate of interest is too high in the calculator. But, I’m afraid you’re being vague and hyperbolic otherwise.
There are two houses which are more or less identical … The car ownership comparison is between two vehicles
I’m sorry, are you asserting that a car is “more or less identical” to a bicycle?
This is turning into a pissing match which I don’t have much interest in at the moment. I stand by my opinions which you are, of course, free to disregard.
I’m sorry, are you asserting that a car is “more or less identical” to a bicycle?
No, the point of my analogy was to highlight the cost difference part of the reasoning, not to say that cars and bikes are largely equivalent. Both have very different advantages and disadvantages as means of transportation.
This is turning into a pissing match which I don’t have much interest in at the moment. I stand by my opinions which you are, of course, free to disregard.
Given that you already seem to have disregarded much of what I’ve written, I’ll oblige.
Here’s an excellent calculator to estimate how much you’d save by not owning a car. It’s aimed at those in the US, but you still may find it to be useful.
Can we please not post on LW blatant propaganda pieces with dubious numbers? Million dollars, my ass.
Says more about the power of investment over 35 years than it does about bicycles, really.
I haven’t taken more than a glance over the grandparent’s calculator, but this shouldn’t be too hard to estimate. The Edmonds TCO calculator gives the five-year cost of ownership for a two-year-old base-spec Toyota Camry (as generic a car as I can think of) at $37,196, inclusive of gas, maintenance, etc. Assuming you buy an equivalent car every five years, that comes out to a monthly cost of $619. If you instead invested that money at a five-percent rate of return, then after 35 years of contributions, the resulting fund ends up being worth a hair over $700,000 -- not enough to fit the “millionaire” tag, but close.
There are plenty of less obvious costs associated with riding a bike instead of driving a car, of course—and some less obvious benefits. But the moral of the story is obviously “invest your money”.
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.
One can turn any expense into a high number by applying some not-quite-realistic rate of return[1] over a long period of time. I remember reading a web comic which applied this procedure to an iPhone, with enough creativity you could probably make coffee at Starbucks into a million-dollar expense as well.
In some sense it is true, if you invest regularly and wait a long time you’ll likely accumulate considerable savings. But singling out one particular expense for that kind of treatment, without the context which you provided above, is exactly what Lumifer called it: blatant propaganda.
[1] E.g., William Bernstein “Five Pillars of Investing” cites 3.5% long-term real (ie after inflation) rate of return from stocks.
The corresponding number at 3.5% is $500,000. I wasn’t trying to argue for any particular value, merely that the cited value isn’t wildly off base, and that long-term investment is how you get into its neighborhood.
Yes, I understand that and I didn’t mean to criticize your argument, which is good, I meant to attack the original source which was trying to impress the audience with a large number without explaining where it really comes from (which you did explain). Sorry that I didn’t express this more clearly.
The cited value isn’t wildly off base, in the same sense it wouldn’t be wildly off base to say that if you work at McDonald’s and invest every penny you made, after 40 years you’ll be a millionaire. So car ownership is really expensive in the same sense in which McDonald’s pays really well.
Sure; I don’t dispute any of that.
Not to accuse you of doing this, but I’m a little bemused at how my post seems to have been taken as a broad apologetic for the ancestor’s cost calculator when I was trying to make the point that, when you’re playing with values in the high hundreds of dollars per month, conclusions like “investing this will make you a millionaire after 35 years” prove a lot less than they sound like they do. Hell, the first sentence even says that bicycles aren’t the important thing to be thinking about there.
So in other words, I think we agree. I could probably have been clearer with my examples, though.
Any particular asset you have in mind, one that would provide a certain 5% return after inflation and over 35 years, no less..?
Ain’t no such thing.
You seem to be reading in specificity that I didn’t put there. There aren’t any securities that can provide a guaranteed 5% rate of return after inflation, but those kinds of returns are fairly reasonable for a well-diversified portfolio (though they will of course go down from time to time). Maybe a little high, and mea culpa if so, but certainly not high enough to rate a “my ass”.
Not really. I think that picking an arbitrary number and compounding it far into the future is a very flawed method of estimating future value—and that’s not just because this number is arbitrary.
My ass was specifically upset about the million dollar figure that the linked-to web page prominently waved about, not about anything in your post.
Some of the default numbers in the calculator do seem high to me, but that’s not the point. Not owning a car does save a lot of money. Do you own calculation with your own numbers if you are skeptical. I linked to this one because I think it is comprehensive.
Can I save more money by not owning a Lamborghini? How about if I don’t own a yacht, can I save a few millions that way?
This forum declares it is in favor of raising the sanity waterline. The linked-to calculator lowers it.
I’ll unpack what I mean by “how much you’d save”. The savings is between two hypothetical situations. So yes, given the choice between buying a Lamborghini and not, you’d “save” money by not buying one. The same applies for a yacht. This language is commonly used colloquially.
Even if you didn’t include inflation, you’d end up with a large number for the default settings: about $275,000. This isn’t like the iPhone case Aleksander mentioned. Cars are quite expensive, and people do actually pay hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetimes. If your issue is with the inflation, consider the cost without inflation. If the duration is the issue, look at the costs for a single year. If you have a particular problem with any of the costs cited in the calculator, I’d be interested in learning which costs you think are unrealistic and why. Otherwise, I don’t understand your argument.
Doesn’t that make you suspect that this particular way of comparing things is nonsensical?
Yes, it is commonly used to mislead.
My general problem with the linked-to web page is that it is precisely the thing that LW tries to teach to ignore.
It is not helpful advice or good evidence—it is a blatant attempt to force the reader to a predetermined conclusion. It is deliberately dishonest.
I don’t like manipulative propaganda which tries to pretend it’s just supplying facts.
It makes perfect sense to me even if it’s not strictly correct. Your pedantry is what makes the least sense to me here.
Let’s say someone is buying a house. There are two houses which are more or less identical, but house A costs 10 times as much as house B. Do you not think it is makes sense to choose house B because it “saves” money? The car ownership comparison is between two vehicles, not between doing nothing and buying something if that is your issue.
I am seeing a trend. You make many assertions without evidence. Explain why you think this is “manipulative propaganda” or how you know the author is “deliberately dishonest”.
The most you’ve indicated so far is that you don’t like the investment analogy, though you ignored the part of my post that showed the investment analogy is not necessary to show that not owning cars is cheaper, or that you think the specific numbers in the calculator are “dubious”, but you have neglected to specify which you think are dubious.
If the calculator is trying to force the reader to a predetermined conclusion, I don’t think the author of it is doing such a great job given that you can change every number in it.
We agree that the million dollar number is high, and I do think the rate of interest is too high in the calculator. But, I’m afraid you’re being vague and hyperbolic otherwise.
I’m sorry, are you asserting that a car is “more or less identical” to a bicycle?
This is turning into a pissing match which I don’t have much interest in at the moment. I stand by my opinions which you are, of course, free to disregard.
No, the point of my analogy was to highlight the cost difference part of the reasoning, not to say that cars and bikes are largely equivalent. Both have very different advantages and disadvantages as means of transportation.
Given that you already seem to have disregarded much of what I’ve written, I’ll oblige.