christ0ph

If that happens, fast, it will not be a good thing, because that would be what would happen if the price of gas doubles or triples, and it will be accompanied by rents in cities doubling or tripling, and people deserting the unlivable, unaffordable suburbs.. some of which (esp. in the Southwest, where distances are high and gas will loom larger than other areas) could then end up as miles of abandoned homes filled by penniless carless unemployed ex city dwellers... or more probably bulldozed.. to prevent the prices of other homes falling.

If the math doesn't allow some kind of gradual transition we'd see an exodus of the Americans who still had some assets to places, in the developing world where they thought could still afford to live, God knows where.. in all probability eventually nobody would want most of them..

christ0ph

This is an amzing story that we all should read - about the transportation history of the US..

https://www.thedetroiter.com/jan05/carnation1.html

https://www.thedetroiter.com/jan05/carnation2.html

Basically the goverment helped the car industry destroy public transit in order to addict America to cars (and employ returning WWII vets, in a slow economy) That ushered in the era of the car, as well as a lot of events in the Middle East.. it was and remains a coercive situation in many places and in many ways..

Also Google "National City Lines" - its still a controversy.. lots of people trying to spin that story.

Roody

Then why don't you tell the story, instead of assigning it as our homework.

JeanSeb

Great article indeed. Thanks for posting.

Mithrandir

You'll never get a certain political party in this country to agree with that stance. I've argued with members of that party who insist that if a profit cannot be made doing something, then it is actually "immoral" to do it. Utterly warped, but that's what we have to deal with in this country.

Ridefreemc

They don't efficiciently travel all places so are not easy to use. I want to travel to Gainesville, FL to pick up a bike - 100 miles. The trip was about 9.5 hours via Greyhound - one way.

dwellman

No one told me there would be math.

But yeah: miles driven per capita decrease can be if population increases faster than miles driven. To make matters worse, it is also acceptable (though disingenuous) to say car usage projected to be 3.9% more at some future date and later found to 2.1% more at some future date and call that a 1.7% decrease.

And I'm going to drop this:
For the population at large: mobility = choice = freedom. Greater mobility equals more choice equals more freedom. If one is happy where he is then mobility isn't a concern for him. Is traffic messy and inconvenient? Yeah. Sure. But the alternative, for me, is worse.

Caretaker

If you're suggesting people should be allowed build houses and live wherever they want, I don't agree.

Here in Ireland there was a move to turn the whole country into one big suburb which suited local government because they collected developement charges and politicians because they collected campaign funds. Land zoned as agricultural was rezoned as residential. Everybody had the choice to buy these houses and some did and are regretting it. They had freedom and mobility and made the wrong choice now they haven't got any freedom, mobility or choice. They're stuck in zombie housing estates with huge debt around their necks.

This is just the Irish experience maybe things are different where you are or maybe you can learn something from us.

Roody

This is pretty much the American experience also. People in all countries often want things that aren't good for them. Fine, let them screw up and hopefully learn from their screw-ups. But when you're talking about land use, the screw-ups can harm everybody, not just the individuals involved.

dwellman

No, I said mobilityI doubt it. In fact if I understand your anecdote correctly you actually do agree. Or you would agree if you applied your anecdote to include 47 other places with different rules you could easily move; because, you could use your mobility to MOVE AWAY.

Ireland is roughly the size of Ohio and comparable in economic output to Alabama, and slightly less people live in Ireland than Tennessee, Great State Of.

Caretaker

************************************************************??

It makes sense to you.

That's all that matters.

dwellman

Ireland is not the United States.

Caretaker

Kind of stating the obvious, isn't it?

Dahon.Steve

Greyhound receives tens of millions in subsidies and can be found using Google. In my town, we had a Greyhound stop but they wanted thousands for this service. Even though the government does not support Greyhound, towns and cities across the nation are giving them funds.

Intercity bus transport received a boost from MegaBus and BoltBus services. No question, there is a need for transport across several states and these new companies are providing a low cost alternative. However, the fares are so low they are not factoring replacement costs! Once those buses start to age, the fares will have to go up and replacement of the bus will almost always double the fare in 10 years after the purchase.

dwellman

One would think. But I distinctly remember reading an anecdote about houses and zoning an people buying hoses they ended up not being able to afford. . . and how this somehow had something to do with car travel. . . .

Caretaker

Would that it were.

tony_merlino

I drive a Honda Civic, which gets about 25 mpg locally. At $3.20/gal for gas, it costs me about $.13/mile in fuel to drive my car. Being generous with wear and tear, say my total use cost for the car is $.20/mile. For any distances that I could replace by bicycling, the amount of money I save is down in the noise. Even if I could replace a 100 miles per week of driving with cycling, it would come to about $1000/year - not enough to write home about. And talking about replacing much more than that starts to be unrealistic. Not that nobody does more utility cycling mileage than that - but they're probably outliers. I'd be willing to bet that the average is something under 100 miles/week, and that would include daily commuting.

The real savings would come if you could go totally car-free - though most people couldn't really manage that. The average 12 month insurance premium paid for a car in the United States is about $1200. Let's say that, over the life of a car, the yearly depreciation, averaged over the life of a car comes to between $1000 and $3000. That puts the total yearly cost of ownership at something between $3000 and $5000. Not a number to sneeze at, but still not earth-shattering. And if you factor in the cost of using other forms of transportation for distances that aren't practical for regular cycling or walking, the savings for not having a car amount to a lot less, unless you happen to live in an area where most things are pretty close to where you live and work.

The bottom line is that being car-light doesn't save much money at all, since most of the cost of a car is in the depreciation and insurance, which you pay whether you drive the thing or not. And being car-free, while it saves more, still isn't likely to make sense based on a financial argument alone.

This article talks about the Marchetti Wall, and how that motivated one driver to switch to a bicycle. But, for most people, it's switching to a bicycle or public transportation that would put them over the Marchetti Wall, making commuting in that way unsustainable. If my commute is hovering around the Marchetti Constant (a concept related to the Marchetti Wall), and switching to a bicycle would appreciably lengthen it, Marchetti would say that the likelihood is that I won't switch regularly or permanently.

What this basically says is that a change away from the car culture isn't likely to come from individuals acting spontaneously. It will have to be driven down by government, acting based on a larger view. Not a concept that will make the libertarian types here happy, but probably true.

tony_merlino

Only remotely - transportation costs weren't even a close fourth place. The first three were property taxes on those McMansions, the cost of heating and cooling - which ran into thousands of dollars PER MONTH, and reductions in income due to the economic tightening.

dwellman

Oh. Right. Yes. So there's a general consensus economic recession is the primary contributing factor to the miles per capita statistic, if we accept the premise the per capita statistic is meaningful. Interesting, sure. Statistically significant to portend a trend? Eh.

tony_merlino

Well, the unemployment rate has certainly gone up by a number of percentage points. People who are out of work don't need to commute, so they use their cars less (as well as lose them, along with their homes...). When they go back to work, they get back in their cars. If it is a "trend", it's not one to celebrate.

Ekdog

It certainly makes no sense to me.

Mark Stone

This is in the ballpark - I've been tracking my savings since I have been using my bicycle for primary transportation, and after 16 weeks it is at $400. It includes purchases for the bicycle, also - tires, tubes, a new light, and a can of Tri Flow. As Tony states, if I didn't own a car at all it would be substantially higher. At this rate I would be saving about $1200 per year, but my vehicle is not a Civic lol. However, there's more savings than that around the corner for people with an active lifestyle - and that is medical. Although there are exceptions, when we choose to commute on our bicycles most of us see a huge increase in health benefits which probably translates into lower health costs as we age. I've bicycled for 35 or 40 years, and as I'm approaching 60 I have no chronic disease problems and am not on any medications, although cancer, heart disease, and diabetes are all in my immediate family. I attribute that to bicycling, and the savings are not just monetary! They are also in peace of mind. I'm almost 60 and am not chained to a prescription drug company and am not shooting up insulin and don't have to keep nitro or aspirin by my side. I am not enslaved by much of the fear associated with aging. Who can put a price on that?

If we're going to change North America, and car usage is going to decrease in favor of Public Transportation and walking/bicycling, it's going to be against the odds I think. Gasoline is a true addiction, and cold turkey is not enjoyable. But we can change it a little at a time by being examples and talking to family and friends. All of my Facebook friends are aware that I commute on my bike - a couple of them have told me they may try it themselves. Will that matter when thinking about the overall picture? Nope. Will it matter to them? Heck yes.

dwellman

I'd sincerely like to read a defense of that thesis.

tony_merlino

The health benefits have always been there, and people have ignored them - continue to ignore them. I don't expect a groundswell of health-conscious bike commuters, especially if it increases their commute time to over an hour. As someone else said on this thread or one of the related ones, people like to choose how to use their time, even when it comes to exercise - they don't want to face the imperative of getting back on the bike at the end of the workday, simply because they rode in that morning. We see any small increase in the number of bikes on the road as an enormous change - and it is, relative to what things were before. But even doubling a very small number is still a very small number.

If there is a culture change, I believe it will be driven down to us by the government, out of concerns for the environment, energy independence, balance of trade... unless there is a much more severe economic collapse than the one we're living right now. (Watch the film, "The Bicycle Thief" to get an idea what that sort of world would look like. Not something most of us would like to shoot for.)

The form that government intervention would have to take would be a combination of making it more convenient to be carless, plus a combination of regulations and taxes that would GREATLY increase the pain of car ownership and use. That's not likely to happen anytime soon. Consider the steps taken to protect the US auto industry. It employs a significant fraction of the population and was seen as worth spending billions of dollars to preserve. I don't see the government moving to do things that would negatively impact it.

I sure do wish there were fewer cars on the road, particularly between here and the grocery store But I don't think it will happen anytime soon.

Roody

No there is no general consensus that the bad economy is the cause of the per capita drop. You made this up. This is what the OP article says: