I live on the western edge of Oak Park and our office is on top of the Jackson blue line stop; that stretch of the blue line is one of the better, faster public transit runs in the US.
Meanwhile, my driving connection to my office is I-290, the Ike, one of the most congested highways in the US.
I'm pretty optimally situated to take advantage of public transit.
And yet a commute on the blue line, in addition to being much less pleasant than the freeway (the trains at peak time are packed) takes roughly an hour. Even in rush hour, driving to the office is so much faster it makes a meaningful difference in my morning logistics. After hours, the train still carves an hour out of my life, and the drive is practically like teleportation.
I've done the blue line for months at a time (car trouble, &c) and I don't mind it and I'm happy I have the option, but there's a litany of car unpleasantness on this thread, and I want to contribute an honest counterpoint.
>> I'm pretty optimally situated to take advantage of public transit.
I don't doubt that public transit is the worse choice for you, but I wanted to comment on an attitude this line reminds me of. People expect that public transportation will, when it "works," be better than having their own vehicle. If driving to a destination is faster and more pleasant, then the system has failed.
In general, there are two problems with this. First, the system was not designed for your trip - your car is. You car will (almost) always be better than any general purpose transport system. The measure of a transport system is how many places you can get to in an acceptable time frame with acceptable reliability. Obviously, as reliability increases and the time frame shrinks, the system improves. Think about the cost of your vehicle (both up front and continuing) and multiply that by the population of your city. We pay quite a lot for the quality afforded by a private vehicle.
Second, I think that many people judge trips from a point of view that's heavily conditioned by experiences in private vehicles. I like taking the subway to work because it lets me read for 25-30 minutes. I like it because I don't have to pay attention and can safely think about other things while I'm traveling. Many people aren't used to the different texture of traveling with a crowd of strangers, and I think that effects their assessments of the overall system.
You also have to deal with the segment of the homeless population that seeks shelter on the trains, and the ones that aggressively panhandle. I have rarely ridden a CTA train without being accosted with demands for money from people who "just got out of prison and am trying to get on the right path" etc.
I'm a fan of the idea of public transit, but, like tptacek, I don't end up using it much. Mainly the trouble is this:
- In many situations, even with good public transit available, you're going to want to own a car.
- If you do own a car, it's a sunk cost.
- The cost is substantial.
- Due to a substantial sunk cost, you might as well get your money's worth, and drive. (i.e., Loss aversion)
So basically, I am stuck driving because I can't "not have a car" and if I'm going to pay into having a car, I might as well realize the benefits of owning one.
Taking it a step further, unless I can live in an area with good enough transit sufficient to not own a car at all, I'm better off economically in the suburbs, where rent is cheaper.
There's plenty of cases where transit beats driving, especially during rushhour, though admittedly there are many more where it doesn't. For example, getting from Midtown Atlanta to the airport during rushhour takes about 40-45 minutes driving, or 30 minutes by metro. The 20-minute light-rail trip from downtown LA to Pasadena can also easily take 2x as long by car. And the 30-minute Pacific Surfliner trip from downtown LA to Orange County beats even the off-peak driving times on I-5, easily crushing the rushhour trip times.
The variance is also typically less; I've gotten stuck in 2-hour commutes home due to a freeway accident much more often than I've been waylaid for over an hour by a train delays, though that probably varies based on the freeway and transit system.
Speaking as someone who has chosen a life of public transit and walking over driving (I did have a drivers licence at one point), there are considerations more important to me and society as a whole than "pleasantness", like the air we all breathe, rediculous car insurance costs, my sanity and my time.
P.S. Everyone who voted the parent comment up is a lazy bastard. Get off your fat arses and walk once in a while.
The overall cost of car ownership and driving (gas, insurance, maintenance/repairs, YOUR TIME to wash/re-fuel/maintain your car, parking fees, stress, environmental factors that not many seem to care about) vs. some of those same factors in public transit do it for me.
A bike is also a small fraction of the cost of a car, and great for pretty much everything if you live in a city. I'm moving to SF in a few months and I'll only take a job within a few miles of where I'll be living (SOMA area) because I'd like to commute via bike year-round (and ideally telecommute at least some of the time.)
Really, with how much "work from outside the office" tech we have, it's crazy to me that millions of Americans are risking their lives every day /just to get to work/. Can we stop this unnecessary, costly, dangerous, polluting madness please?
I associate cars with constant paranoia. Will I run out of gas, will my tire explode because I forgot to put enough air in it (or put too much), will I lose focus for a second and kill a family of four? If I leave my car somewhere, will it still be there when I come back? If it isn't, was it stolen? Was it towed? How will I find out, and what will I do if I'm able to find out? Will it disappear when I am sleeping, or will parts of it disappear along with a broken window?
Or... I could put a card in my wallet. I could tap my wallet on a turnstile[1], a gate slides open, a train arrives every 5 minutes or so, and I ride anywhere in the city for a flat rate. This seems a lot "cooler" than dealing with maintaining my own personal transport pod.
[1] in Boston, in New York you still have to take it out and swipe.
To provide a counterpoint, I've lived my entire life in smaller cities with little to no public transit, so all the things you've mentioned are just second nature to me. Never run out of gas because there's always a gas station nearby (and I don't let it get that low anyways). I check my tires about 4 times a year, and I pay attention while driving.
On the other hand, when I visit a city with public transit it usually makes me very uncomfortable. Is the station open when I need to go? Do I need tokens or a card? Will the vending machine take credit cards? Will I just miss barely the train and be late to my meeting? Will the train be late because some dude got stuck in the door (this happened to me in London)? Is that shady looking fellow at the other end of the car going to mug or knife me? What if the engineer is texting, misses a crucial signal and plows into the back of a stopped train?
Each mode of transit has its plusses and minuses. Public transit is great if it's convenient, quick and safe. Cars also have a cost as well as the article illustrates.
For me, I like the flexibility and feeling of control I have from having a car. And, frankly, I like driving. :)
"The decline in driving by younger Americans is fed by many factors: the high cost of gas and insurance at a time of economic insecurity; tighter restrictions on teen drivers in many states; and roads that are more congested than ever, making driving less fun than ever."
But I'd add that cars used to be cool, and right now there aren't any cars I seriously want to drive. My dad and his brothers could afford muscle cars and they loved driving them, it was cool as hell. I can't relate to that at all.
If you buy used and can handle doing maintenance yourself, you can buy an older e.g. BMW convertible for less than $10k. That's somewhat cool, if you're into the whole drop top thing.
As much as I appreciate the look of muscle cars, I can't imagine myself driving an impractical gas guzzling behemoth. So I settle for an occasional econobox groceries run on the weekend, which still feels somewhat unnecessary, and a subway pass for the work week.
Nowdays we are all too aware of environmental impact of cars, so the whole concept beyond basic utilitarian use is a whole lot less appealing.
We Americans often think we have a well developed public infrastructure until we visit almost any other developed nation in the world, from Korea to France, to even China, they all have 'expected' rail systems.
Why is America so far behind in a developed transit and public infrastructure?
First, I think it's easy to ignore the fact that the US Interstate System is a monumental public infrastructure achievement. You can learn this the way I did: cross over from rural Montana to Alberta. Even the bleakest, most desolate part of the US has roads better than the TCH, and you don't get to the TCH for several hours from the southern border of Alberta.
Second, for its core purpose --- not moving people from home to vacation, but for moving products between manufacturing centers, ports, and consumers --- the US has a powerful and reasonably effective rail infrastructure. Read Buffett's shareholder note after buying Burlington Northern.
Third, if (say) 80-90% of public transit is commuter transit, keep in mind that most US major metros have tolerably effective public transit, and many (NYC, Chicago, DC, &c) have extremely good public transit.
While you think about that remember also that the real estate bubble and artificially low commuter costs (cheap gas, &c) distorted public transit in our metro areas by encouraging the development of exurb suburbs that can't cost-effectively be addressed by rail. It's possible that within the next 20 years, they won't be cost-effective for cars either, and that problem will self-correct as housing values in exurbs plummet and families move back into the public transit rings around the cities.
Put differently, because maybe that point seems banal ("suburbs bad!"), consider that in complaining about transit, we may effectively be complaining that it is hard to link a city with what should be a corn field in the middle of nowhere. Well, yeah?
Then read everything everyone else writes about long distance high speed rail.
I'd love to have it. People made fun of STL->CHI high speed rail, hoping instead for coast-to-coast or Chicago->Detroit->Cleveland->NYC, but STL->CHI would link two major metros and allow companies to expand between the cities; for instance, it would allow us to hire out of STL and serve STL companies as house accounts.
But the flip side of high-speed rail is that it's simply not cost-competitive over the distances we're dealing with, especially once you factor the cost of deploying it, which is spectacular. Just look at the problems California had with secure rights of way.
It's easy for Europe to have effective rail, because Europe is comparatively tiny; the distance from Berlin to Rome is just a little more than twice the distance the Acela runs; Acela's got nowhere to go north of Boston, and extending it to Atlanta would make Acela longer than Berlin-Rome.
Because we haven't made it a priority. We've spent our resources fighting abroad and cutting taxes at home, leaving little money left over to repair our current infrastructure, let alone fund any ambitious public works projects.
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that the nation faces a $2.2 trillion infrastructure backlog. One of every eight bridges is "structurally deficient," and 85 percent of public transit systems are struggling to carry the growing number of riders. As ASCE President Blaine D. Leonard puts it, "We are still driving on Eisenhower's roads and sending our kids to Roosevelt's schools."
We also have one half of our two-party democracy steadfastly against public transit. Despite the fact that trains and rail were a central theme in their cultural touchstone, Atlas Shrugged.
Why did President George W. Bush try to zero out Amtrak funding in 2005? Why is the conservative Republican Study Committee suggesting that we do so now? Why does George Will think "the real reason for progressives' passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans' individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism"?
"You need to distinguish between Republicans and conservatives and libertarians when you look at this," says William Lind, the director of the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation. "It's the libertarians who push this crap."
The growth of the suburbs in the middle of the last century and the subsequent flight from the inner city. These two factors contributed to the death of railway transit systems in all but a few of the large and medium-sized cities. From that point one, most of the transportation investment is in expanding highways from the suburbs to the city and maybe bus services as well.
It is only in the last 10-15 years that serious efforts are being made to rebuild the inner system rail ways system. In the face of public apathy (and sometimes outright opposition) as well as interests depended heavily in highway transportation, it is been slow going.
II think it's actually pretty easy to understand just by comparing the US to a country with a useful passenger rail system. I'll use Germany because I've spent some time there and taken a few trips by train.
Two things are required for a regional or national train service to be useful enough that it can be self-sustaining: population density and local public transportation. Local public transportation also requires population density to be effective; someone considering taking a train to Tallahassee FL might decide to drive instead after looking up the bus schedules online. Busses run about once an hour during the hours people normally commute to day jobs and do not go to many useful locations, like the airport.
Germany has a population of about 80 million people. Germany is smaller than Montana. The US as a whole has 26 times the land area but less than 4 times the population.
There are useful train services in population-dense areas of the US such as the SF bay area and the NYC/northern New Jersey region. The population density of these areas is such that it's often easier to travel by train, subway and bus than by car.
The same is not true of Billings, MT, the largest city in a state bigger than Germany. The population of Billings is about 100,000, and the closest city in the state with a population over 10,000 is Bozeman, about 150 miles away. The population of the whole state is about the same as the city I live in, Jacksonville FL, and that city can barely sustain a barely useful bus system.
If the US is to have a decent nationwide public transportation system, it needs about a billion more people. I'm not sure we actually want that.
Some of it has to do with the sheer size and low population density of most of the United States. Oregon (a medium-sized western state) is larger than the UK. Texas is larger than France. Alaska is larger than all of Western Europe. You mention South Korea. It's slightly larger than Indiana, but has close to 49 million people, while Indiana has only about 6.5 million. Overall, the population density of the United States is 1/7 that of Germany and 1/15 that of South Korea.
Canada is in a similar situation, only more so. Lots of land, not many people living on it. Just as in the U.S., you find public transit in large, dense cities like Toronto, not so much in the smaller and more rural areas. Same with Russia -- good subways in Moscow, etc. by all reports, but you aren't going to find subways or buses in the middle of Siberia.
America doesn't have a well developed public transportation infrastructure because of the auto lobby. You can't build a train without annoying GM and ford.
Driving sure has lost its cool for me. The traffic and wasted time. The fuel and insurance costs. Making time for car services, oil changes, smog checks. Dealing with the DMV.
Yuck. I hope our relationship with the car changes.
Self driving cars. Cars-as-a-service. Improved public transit. Bike-friendly cities. Remote work. Etc. I'll be watching with interest.
I recommend stick shifts to everyone. It should take all four limbs to drive a car.
When "driving a car" means turning a key and then pointing it in the right direction, it's no surprise the experience has lost its luster. If your life is about constantly being online, then I see the article's point—public transit is your best option. If you enjoy driving, then get a car that's fun to drive.
Unfortunately the appeal of manuals is lost on most Americans.
For me, the luster is lost because driving is typically high stress. Having to drive a manual would only increase the number of things I need to concern myself with and make it more stressful. I realize I'm probably in the minority. Particularly because about the only place I don't mind driving is on the highway, probably because I usually just cruise in one lane without having to make many decisions except when I need to exit or the occasional lane change.
Stick sucks in stop-and-go traffic. I wouldn't say it's impractical for commute drives (I drove a stick in a daily commute from SF to Santa Clara for a year and a half), but it's not particularly pleasant.
I'm 17, and drive a manual. My parents thought I was crazy when I said I wanted to only drive manual, and I've noticed that at my school my vehicle is one of probably 5 cars (out of >100) in our lot that's a stick. When I ask friends why they don't drive stick, they say they simply don't want to deal with the hassle of it. Enthusiasts are few and far between…
I think the decline of younger Americans driving is because of the overall economic climate in the US, not because it's uncool. Talk to any 18-25 year old and ask if they would like to have a car if they could financially swing it, and the majority of the time they would say yes.
As a young adult myself I'd love to own a car, but it's almost impossible to have enough capital to pay for insurance, maintenance, petrol, the auto, and my student loans. I'd be digging myself into a financial ditch I wouldn't be able to get out for over 20 years.
Driving has definitely "lost its cool" for me. My permanent residence is in a small suburb of a small city that is right on the border of Randolph County (i.e. Redneck Central), and before I went to university, I drove everywhere.
But I didn't take my car with me to university. Instead, I use the thrice-daily Piedmont train to get back and forth from Raleigh and home every couple of weeks, and while I'm in Raleigh I either walk or ride the bus to get around. And now that I'm at home on Christmas break, I have realized how much of a bother driving really is. Sure, you can just get up and go whenever and wherever you want, but you have to deal with traffic, buy gas, pay for maintenance on your car... It's a pain even in High Point (a small city of only about 100,000), and I have no doubt that it would be even more of a pain in Raleigh, to say nothing of Charlotte, Atlanta, or New York.
I'm 32. I've never been interested in driving; I didn't get a driving license until I was about 28. I used to cycle everywhere in my small town, and take buses after that. For a year, I used to commute by train to college; a distance of about 54 miles took about 1 hour total.
Now that I can drive, I still have no interest in a car. Mind you, I live in London, where driving a car is very expensive; just congestion charges and parking alone would make it more expensive than public transport, never mind fuel costs, insurance and depreciation.
But scooters in the city: that's another game altogether, almost literally. In the UK, filtering / lane splitting is legal, and nowhere is it as gleefully taken advantage of as in London. Getting from A to B is such a joy I frequently go out into the evening rush hour (I work from home) merely to entertain myself, cutting through the traffic.
Two wheels: no congestion charge, much better fuel consumption, significantly cheaper insurance, parking is cheap or usually free outside of Westminster, and the weather is almost always mild. It's very hard to beat. And overall, the cost is less than public transportation if you're not living in central London (where you'll take the hit in rent prices or living circumstances instead).
Cars are expensive, maintenance is expensive, insurance is expensive, traffic is a pain and giant waste of time, tolls on bridges add to the costs.
There are maybe a couple of activities that I still cannot do without a car, such as getting tons of groceries (say, going to Costco), transporting anything heavy, and doing road trips. Something like ZipCar already addresses most of those.
Also, I always feel bad for driving, it feels lazy from both a physical exertion standpoint (I live in a highly urbanized area, it's not like I have miles of cornfields to cross), and burning gas does nobody a favor.
Can't wait for some sort of personal automated pods to be developed.
Depends. I'm European and I'm not that young anymore so I'm not exactly the subject demography here but I think driving is tremendously enjoyable and cars can have an unexplainable personal connection to some people, including myself.
However, what isn't and what certainly isn't cool is if I had to spend a half an hour on the road, driving to/from work each day. Going to the office, I just take the tram if weather doesn't suit cycling. I'd never move to a place where I'd need a car to go to work or do my chores. A few times a year I end up driving in rush hour traffic and each time just enforces that opinion of mine.
I think that as soon as the car becomes a commodity, it loses much of its appeal.
For me, it's still somewhat of a luxury: I could do without it. I keep a car because I love to go on long trips driving myself, instead of taking the train or bus. And I love to occasionally drive to some place where I have chores to do but I can't easily reach by public transit, such as shops and spare parts stores in industrial zones, or picking somebody up in downtown or airport. Or just drive to go swim in a neighbouring city where I know they have an especially nice pool. I clock maybe 15,000km per year doing that. And there are weeks I don't start my car once.
But then again, I don't text much either. I don't even always take my mobile phone with me when I go out. So, go figure.
Born and raised in the Bay Area, mostly living in the suburbs until I went to college in Santa Cruz. Biking and the bus, there are pretty optimal. The rest of the suburban Bay Area, not so much -- unless you are near BART and want to get to the city or Berkeley.
I have driven since I was 16. Over 20 years later, I still enjoy it. What I don't like? Commuting. Unfortunately, if one wants to rely on public transit in Silicon Valley, you will either make compromises in time or cost of living (or location to live). Bay Area roads and freeways are pretty bad. Thankfully, for me, I commute off hours twice a week and am at home other times.
Back to the joy of driving though -- the road trip is quintiscential Americana. The open road, radio blasting, and just letting the miles go by. If one can get out of the major metro areas (or vacation time traffic routes), you can just go...Highway 395 from the Canadian border, down through the high desert and into the Sierras; or getting out during the low season and driving down the Pacific Coast Highway; or taking it a bit slower and experiencing the gold country with Highway 49 and Highway 20...I could go on...
Unfortunately, this enjoyment means getting away from people, density, and traffic...
This really makes me miss California. What a privilege to have the scenic views AND the world centre for tech innovation in the same place (bay area). I seriously cannot wait to move there.
> When we worry about driving and texting, we assume that the most important thing the person is doing is piloting the car. But what if the most important thing they're doing is texting?
I can't even imagine the thought process that would even consider this question.
I don't see it myself, but I just looked at my cell phone bill a few weeks ago, and my sibling (junior to me) had sent some 5,000 text messages that month. Seeing that makes me understand just a little bit better.
I am 26, and when I was living in Europe (Poland) I didn't even bother to get a driver's license - getting around by public transportation was cheaper and faster (especially if you take in account the time you need to find a parking spot and walk from it to your destination). However, moving to the Bay Area made me reconsider. Not being able to drive is a serious handicap. Not only there's no public transportation, but also everything seems to be optimized for cars (no sidewalks in some places, traffic lights giving a low priority to pedestrians, highways all over the place). I tried biking, but the cars seem unfriendly in a way that scares me.
I think its for two reasons - cars are way more expensive and less exciting. Growing up I knew two kids with paper routes that bought Corvettes by their 18th birthday. Try spend six years working at the mall and doing that today.
My first car in college a '69 Mustang fastback is by far the most exciting ride I've ever had.
I too lament that fact, but there are a few non-boring cars under $30k. The Subaru WRX, Mazda Miata and (soon) the Toyota GT-86/Subaru BRZ strike me as not boring, but it seems to me that the market for these cars has shrunk. People actually seem to want boring cars now.
I can say that driving was vastly cooler 40 years ago, where I lived then, than it is here and now. There were limited access highways and even side roads where one could drive recklessly (usually) without fatal consequences. Some of the things I saw done during the commute to and from high school would lead to a wreck in a block or two under the conditions of traffic now.
But really it is pointless to compare the US to Denmark. Does New Jersey have a population density comparable to Denmark's? New Jersey north of the Raritan, even?
Well, on the bright side there is no "car piracy" that can be blamed for the decline. (Since you can't download a car)
Seriously, though, I think there are just a lot of things competing for people's attention, young or otherwise. There are many activities you can do at home / online nowadays, and these naturally displace some activities that would have involved driving somewhere.
I have felt this way myself, currently I live in a city with terrible public transportation where you have to drive everywhere, I drive pretty far to and from work and it just wears on me. I'd like to move somewhere where I don't have to drive as much, however I also don't much like living in really high density areas so its a bit of a dilemma.
Good heavens. I had no idea. So many replies here on HN so far seem to concur as well!
I am young, and I love motoring. I guess I am out of touch. But, I suppose it wouldn't be the first time.
Though there is one major problem encroaching on my enjoyment- the decline of the sports car. The number of true-blue sports cars coming out of car makers is steadily declining. I can only pray it does not grow worse in the future.
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, my driving connection to my office is I-290, the Ike, one of the most congested highways in the US.
I'm pretty optimally situated to take advantage of public transit.
And yet a commute on the blue line, in addition to being much less pleasant than the freeway (the trains at peak time are packed) takes roughly an hour. Even in rush hour, driving to the office is so much faster it makes a meaningful difference in my morning logistics. After hours, the train still carves an hour out of my life, and the drive is practically like teleportation.
I've done the blue line for months at a time (car trouble, &c) and I don't mind it and I'm happy I have the option, but there's a litany of car unpleasantness on this thread, and I want to contribute an honest counterpoint.
[+] [-] aeturnum|14 years ago|reply
I don't doubt that public transit is the worse choice for you, but I wanted to comment on an attitude this line reminds me of. People expect that public transportation will, when it "works," be better than having their own vehicle. If driving to a destination is faster and more pleasant, then the system has failed.
In general, there are two problems with this. First, the system was not designed for your trip - your car is. You car will (almost) always be better than any general purpose transport system. The measure of a transport system is how many places you can get to in an acceptable time frame with acceptable reliability. Obviously, as reliability increases and the time frame shrinks, the system improves. Think about the cost of your vehicle (both up front and continuing) and multiply that by the population of your city. We pay quite a lot for the quality afforded by a private vehicle.
Second, I think that many people judge trips from a point of view that's heavily conditioned by experiences in private vehicles. I like taking the subway to work because it lets me read for 25-30 minutes. I like it because I don't have to pay attention and can safely think about other things while I'm traveling. Many people aren't used to the different texture of traveling with a crowd of strangers, and I think that effects their assessments of the overall system.
[+] [-] ams6110|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wes-exp|14 years ago|reply
- In many situations, even with good public transit available, you're going to want to own a car.
- If you do own a car, it's a sunk cost.
- The cost is substantial.
- Due to a substantial sunk cost, you might as well get your money's worth, and drive. (i.e., Loss aversion)
So basically, I am stuck driving because I can't "not have a car" and if I'm going to pay into having a car, I might as well realize the benefits of owning one.
Taking it a step further, unless I can live in an area with good enough transit sufficient to not own a car at all, I'm better off economically in the suburbs, where rent is cheaper.
[+] [-] _delirium|14 years ago|reply
The variance is also typically less; I've gotten stuck in 2-hour commutes home due to a freeway accident much more often than I've been waylaid for over an hour by a train delays, though that probably varies based on the freeway and transit system.
[+] [-] allertonm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xinjiang|14 years ago|reply
P.S. Everyone who voted the parent comment up is a lazy bastard. Get off your fat arses and walk once in a while.
[+] [-] seanp2k2|14 years ago|reply
A bike is also a small fraction of the cost of a car, and great for pretty much everything if you live in a city. I'm moving to SF in a few months and I'll only take a job within a few miles of where I'll be living (SOMA area) because I'd like to commute via bike year-round (and ideally telecommute at least some of the time.)
Really, with how much "work from outside the office" tech we have, it's crazy to me that millions of Americans are risking their lives every day /just to get to work/. Can we stop this unnecessary, costly, dangerous, polluting madness please?
[+] [-] natesm|14 years ago|reply
Or... I could put a card in my wallet. I could tap my wallet on a turnstile[1], a gate slides open, a train arrives every 5 minutes or so, and I ride anywhere in the city for a flat rate. This seems a lot "cooler" than dealing with maintaining my own personal transport pod.
[1] in Boston, in New York you still have to take it out and swipe.
[+] [-] ams6110|14 years ago|reply
Now you know how many people feel about their computers...
[+] [-] peckrob|14 years ago|reply
On the other hand, when I visit a city with public transit it usually makes me very uncomfortable. Is the station open when I need to go? Do I need tokens or a card? Will the vending machine take credit cards? Will I just miss barely the train and be late to my meeting? Will the train be late because some dude got stuck in the door (this happened to me in London)? Is that shady looking fellow at the other end of the car going to mug or knife me? What if the engineer is texting, misses a crucial signal and plows into the back of a stopped train?
Each mode of transit has its plusses and minuses. Public transit is great if it's convenient, quick and safe. Cars also have a cost as well as the article illustrates.
For me, I like the flexibility and feeling of control I have from having a car. And, frankly, I like driving. :)
[+] [-] jgn|14 years ago|reply
"The decline in driving by younger Americans is fed by many factors: the high cost of gas and insurance at a time of economic insecurity; tighter restrictions on teen drivers in many states; and roads that are more congested than ever, making driving less fun than ever."
But I'd add that cars used to be cool, and right now there aren't any cars I seriously want to drive. My dad and his brothers could afford muscle cars and they loved driving them, it was cool as hell. I can't relate to that at all.
[+] [-] nitrogen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prolepunk|14 years ago|reply
Nowdays we are all too aware of environmental impact of cars, so the whole concept beyond basic utilitarian use is a whole lot less appealing.
[+] [-] phil|14 years ago|reply
http://www.teslamotors.com/roadster http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/
[+] [-] TechNewb|14 years ago|reply
Why is America so far behind in a developed transit and public infrastructure?
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
Second, for its core purpose --- not moving people from home to vacation, but for moving products between manufacturing centers, ports, and consumers --- the US has a powerful and reasonably effective rail infrastructure. Read Buffett's shareholder note after buying Burlington Northern.
Third, if (say) 80-90% of public transit is commuter transit, keep in mind that most US major metros have tolerably effective public transit, and many (NYC, Chicago, DC, &c) have extremely good public transit.
While you think about that remember also that the real estate bubble and artificially low commuter costs (cheap gas, &c) distorted public transit in our metro areas by encouraging the development of exurb suburbs that can't cost-effectively be addressed by rail. It's possible that within the next 20 years, they won't be cost-effective for cars either, and that problem will self-correct as housing values in exurbs plummet and families move back into the public transit rings around the cities.
Put differently, because maybe that point seems banal ("suburbs bad!"), consider that in complaining about transit, we may effectively be complaining that it is hard to link a city with what should be a corn field in the middle of nowhere. Well, yeah?
Then read everything everyone else writes about long distance high speed rail.
I'd love to have it. People made fun of STL->CHI high speed rail, hoping instead for coast-to-coast or Chicago->Detroit->Cleveland->NYC, but STL->CHI would link two major metros and allow companies to expand between the cities; for instance, it would allow us to hire out of STL and serve STL companies as house accounts.
But the flip side of high-speed rail is that it's simply not cost-competitive over the distances we're dealing with, especially once you factor the cost of deploying it, which is spectacular. Just look at the problems California had with secure rights of way.
It's easy for Europe to have effective rail, because Europe is comparatively tiny; the distance from Berlin to Rome is just a little more than twice the distance the Acela runs; Acela's got nowhere to go north of Boston, and extending it to Atlanta would make Acela longer than Berlin-Rome.
[+] [-] sc68cal|14 years ago|reply
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that the nation faces a $2.2 trillion infrastructure backlog. One of every eight bridges is "structurally deficient," and 85 percent of public transit systems are struggling to carry the growing number of riders. As ASCE President Blaine D. Leonard puts it, "We are still driving on Eisenhower's roads and sending our kids to Roosevelt's schools."
http://www.governing.com/columns/potomac-chronicle/The-Loomi...
We also have one half of our two-party democracy steadfastly against public transit. Despite the fact that trains and rail were a central theme in their cultural touchstone, Atlas Shrugged.
Why did President George W. Bush try to zero out Amtrak funding in 2005? Why is the conservative Republican Study Committee suggesting that we do so now? Why does George Will think "the real reason for progressives' passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans' individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism"?
"You need to distinguish between Republicans and conservatives and libertarians when you look at this," says William Lind, the director of the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation. "It's the libertarians who push this crap."
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...
[+] [-] rilindo|14 years ago|reply
It is only in the last 10-15 years that serious efforts are being made to rebuild the inner system rail ways system. In the face of public apathy (and sometimes outright opposition) as well as interests depended heavily in highway transportation, it is been slow going.
[+] [-] Zak|14 years ago|reply
Two things are required for a regional or national train service to be useful enough that it can be self-sustaining: population density and local public transportation. Local public transportation also requires population density to be effective; someone considering taking a train to Tallahassee FL might decide to drive instead after looking up the bus schedules online. Busses run about once an hour during the hours people normally commute to day jobs and do not go to many useful locations, like the airport.
Germany has a population of about 80 million people. Germany is smaller than Montana. The US as a whole has 26 times the land area but less than 4 times the population.
There are useful train services in population-dense areas of the US such as the SF bay area and the NYC/northern New Jersey region. The population density of these areas is such that it's often easier to travel by train, subway and bus than by car.
The same is not true of Billings, MT, the largest city in a state bigger than Germany. The population of Billings is about 100,000, and the closest city in the state with a population over 10,000 is Bozeman, about 150 miles away. The population of the whole state is about the same as the city I live in, Jacksonville FL, and that city can barely sustain a barely useful bus system.
If the US is to have a decent nationwide public transportation system, it needs about a billion more people. I'm not sure we actually want that.
[+] [-] Turing_Machine|14 years ago|reply
Canada is in a similar situation, only more so. Lots of land, not many people living on it. Just as in the U.S., you find public transit in large, dense cities like Toronto, not so much in the smaller and more rural areas. Same with Russia -- good subways in Moscow, etc. by all reports, but you aren't going to find subways or buses in the middle of Siberia.
[+] [-] notatoad|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] drivebyacct2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andyl|14 years ago|reply
Yuck. I hope our relationship with the car changes.
Self driving cars. Cars-as-a-service. Improved public transit. Bike-friendly cities. Remote work. Etc. I'll be watching with interest.
[+] [-] joshuaxls|14 years ago|reply
When "driving a car" means turning a key and then pointing it in the right direction, it's no surprise the experience has lost its luster. If your life is about constantly being online, then I see the article's point—public transit is your best option. If you enjoy driving, then get a car that's fun to drive.
Unfortunately the appeal of manuals is lost on most Americans.
[+] [-] RobAtticus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mynameisraj|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cantbecool|14 years ago|reply
As a young adult myself I'd love to own a car, but it's almost impossible to have enough capital to pay for insurance, maintenance, petrol, the auto, and my student loans. I'd be digging myself into a financial ditch I wouldn't be able to get out for over 20 years.
[+] [-] LeafStorm|14 years ago|reply
But I didn't take my car with me to university. Instead, I use the thrice-daily Piedmont train to get back and forth from Raleigh and home every couple of weeks, and while I'm in Raleigh I either walk or ride the bus to get around. And now that I'm at home on Christmas break, I have realized how much of a bother driving really is. Sure, you can just get up and go whenever and wherever you want, but you have to deal with traffic, buy gas, pay for maintenance on your car... It's a pain even in High Point (a small city of only about 100,000), and I have no doubt that it would be even more of a pain in Raleigh, to say nothing of Charlotte, Atlanta, or New York.
[+] [-] barrkel|14 years ago|reply
Now that I can drive, I still have no interest in a car. Mind you, I live in London, where driving a car is very expensive; just congestion charges and parking alone would make it more expensive than public transport, never mind fuel costs, insurance and depreciation.
But scooters in the city: that's another game altogether, almost literally. In the UK, filtering / lane splitting is legal, and nowhere is it as gleefully taken advantage of as in London. Getting from A to B is such a joy I frequently go out into the evening rush hour (I work from home) merely to entertain myself, cutting through the traffic.
Two wheels: no congestion charge, much better fuel consumption, significantly cheaper insurance, parking is cheap or usually free outside of Westminster, and the weather is almost always mild. It's very hard to beat. And overall, the cost is less than public transportation if you're not living in central London (where you'll take the hit in rent prices or living circumstances instead).
[+] [-] BadassFractal|14 years ago|reply
There are maybe a couple of activities that I still cannot do without a car, such as getting tons of groceries (say, going to Costco), transporting anything heavy, and doing road trips. Something like ZipCar already addresses most of those.
Also, I always feel bad for driving, it feels lazy from both a physical exertion standpoint (I live in a highly urbanized area, it's not like I have miles of cornfields to cross), and burning gas does nobody a favor.
Can't wait for some sort of personal automated pods to be developed.
[+] [-] yason|14 years ago|reply
However, what isn't and what certainly isn't cool is if I had to spend a half an hour on the road, driving to/from work each day. Going to the office, I just take the tram if weather doesn't suit cycling. I'd never move to a place where I'd need a car to go to work or do my chores. A few times a year I end up driving in rush hour traffic and each time just enforces that opinion of mine.
I think that as soon as the car becomes a commodity, it loses much of its appeal.
For me, it's still somewhat of a luxury: I could do without it. I keep a car because I love to go on long trips driving myself, instead of taking the train or bus. And I love to occasionally drive to some place where I have chores to do but I can't easily reach by public transit, such as shops and spare parts stores in industrial zones, or picking somebody up in downtown or airport. Or just drive to go swim in a neighbouring city where I know they have an especially nice pool. I clock maybe 15,000km per year doing that. And there are weeks I don't start my car once.
But then again, I don't text much either. I don't even always take my mobile phone with me when I go out. So, go figure.
[+] [-] jmspring|14 years ago|reply
I have driven since I was 16. Over 20 years later, I still enjoy it. What I don't like? Commuting. Unfortunately, if one wants to rely on public transit in Silicon Valley, you will either make compromises in time or cost of living (or location to live). Bay Area roads and freeways are pretty bad. Thankfully, for me, I commute off hours twice a week and am at home other times.
Back to the joy of driving though -- the road trip is quintiscential Americana. The open road, radio blasting, and just letting the miles go by. If one can get out of the major metro areas (or vacation time traffic routes), you can just go...Highway 395 from the Canadian border, down through the high desert and into the Sierras; or getting out during the low season and driving down the Pacific Coast Highway; or taking it a bit slower and experiencing the gold country with Highway 49 and Highway 20...I could go on...
Unfortunately, this enjoyment means getting away from people, density, and traffic...
[+] [-] seanp2k2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelcampbell|14 years ago|reply
I can't even imagine the thought process that would even consider this question.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] szopa|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmason|14 years ago|reply
My first car in college a '69 Mustang fastback is by far the most exciting ride I've ever had.
http://carphotos.cardomain.com/ride_images/4/282/941/3820297...
Cars under $50K today are mostly boring. Most of my younger friends see cars as transportation and nothing more.
[+] [-] Zak|14 years ago|reply
I too lament that fact, but there are a few non-boring cars under $30k. The Subaru WRX, Mazda Miata and (soon) the Toyota GT-86/Subaru BRZ strike me as not boring, but it seems to me that the market for these cars has shrunk. People actually seem to want boring cars now.
[+] [-] cafard|14 years ago|reply
But really it is pointless to compare the US to Denmark. Does New Jersey have a population density comparable to Denmark's? New Jersey north of the Raritan, even?
[+] [-] wes-exp|14 years ago|reply
Seriously, though, I think there are just a lot of things competing for people's attention, young or otherwise. There are many activities you can do at home / online nowadays, and these naturally displace some activities that would have involved driving somewhere.
[+] [-] devs1010|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sliverstorm|14 years ago|reply
I am young, and I love motoring. I guess I am out of touch. But, I suppose it wouldn't be the first time.
Though there is one major problem encroaching on my enjoyment- the decline of the sports car. The number of true-blue sports cars coming out of car makers is steadily declining. I can only pray it does not grow worse in the future.
[+] [-] YoungEnt|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]