enigmaT120

I like public transit. It makes my bike commute possible. I definitely prefer it when I have to go to Portland.

ubringliten

I can't say about other US cities, but you need to come to SF Bay Area. The cycling community grew 71% over the last five years and SF knows this and are installing bike lanes as fast as they can. I don't know about mass transit ridership, but it's a great complement to biking. My ex-coworker just dumped his car for a folding bike to get to work so he can get his bike onto BART because a full-length bike is not allowed on those type of transit in rush hour.

China is a totally different story. They are forced to ride bikes because they are poor. The government will forced them back to riding bikes again once they can't managed the air pollution in the cities. The Chinese just installed 500,000 bike shares, the biggest in the world.

Suburban

ubringliten, I have to agree that the number of people cycling and taking transit is growing around my area too. It's all in the news. I guess it depends on where you live, but the number of people moving away from the auto started in 2005 when there was still easy credit.

Llamero

Here in rural Maine, young adults are also forgoing car ownership as well, but there is no mass transit to fill in the gap. Instead, they're car pooling in with those who do own cars, or having to find lower paying part-time work nearby that they can access by bike or on foot. Those who do own cars are often in a vicious cycle of buying a barely mobile car with some 200,000 miles, and then spending all their discretionary funds trying to keep it mobile. Then, of course, this state is in pretty rough shape with paying some of the highest prices for food (outside of Alaska and Hawaii), and having the smallest annual income growth of all 50 states. As a result, the state is full of working poor who can't afford to leave, and retired people who don't need to worry about employment. It seems everyone else who can leaves to find better opportunities and quality of life elsewhere. Unfortunately, this just makes things worse for Maine, as the welfare program becomes increasingly burdened with working poor, with no middle class to support them.

Roody

I think they need to realize that one big reason young people are leaving these town is precisely because the infrastructure is so bad for them to be carfree. In my city, the civic leaders have a strong vision that they must make the city attractive for these young people, or there literally is no futute for the city. That includes bike lanes and transit, as well as good jobs, cool housing, and education opportunities.

Urban activists should ask themselves this question: Why are so many young college grads moving to Portland when, compared to their home towns, the weather is worse, the rents are higher, and the unemployment rate is higher in Portland? The main answer seems to be tyhat Portland has a great social scene that's accessible without an automobile!

mr geeker

i see no reason to buy a car, maybe a moped for emergencies, but not a car.

gerv 

No...To quote from Portlandia, "Many young people move to Portland to retire."

Seriously.. they could find many more carfree people and social scenes in New York or Chicago than Portland.

Roody

True, and a lot of young people are moving to Chicago and New York as well as Portland.

So how do you keep them in Lansing or Des Moines?

zephyr

Why don't young Americans buy cars? (in other words, as often as the two previous generations or young Americans used to buy cars?)

The answer has several components. One component is cost. Previous generations like me (who became a driving age teenager in the late 1960s) got free driver's training classes in high school. Nearly all kids got a learner's permit at age 15 1/2 and a driver's license at age 16. Our parents added us to the basic liability insurance policy for a small additional fee. Our parents drove used cars that cost way less than $1000. Gasoline was 30 cents a gallon. The cost of keeping a car running was a fraction of what it is today, even accounting for significant increases in wages.

The other component is that today, there are more things that are taking the buying power of young Americans away from the automobile industry. There is a reason that the stock value of Apple is over $600 per share, and most auto manufacturers stock values have dwindled. Young people in this country are spending a lot of their money on smartphones (initial cost + monthly fees), I-Pads and I-Tunes instead of making monthly car payments. I pedal by the local high school every day on my commute to and from work. Nearly every kid walking down the street outside the school has the smartphone in hand and is scrolling the screen. The smartphone has taken over and is priority one, and cars are lower on the list. These days there is a lower percentage of kids under age 18 that have a driver's license and own their own car compared to 40+ years ago when I was a high school student. It's Steve Job's legacy!

SweetNightmare

I would say less are buying because it's just too expensive. Even the cheapest gas you can find now is nearly four dollars a gallon, cars are ridiculously expensive, especially if you don't have any credit and can't come up with enough money to pay up front, college prices are through the roof(more than I can pay, depressing to the little girl in me that always thought she'd be going to college), and to even get a learner's permit costs a good few hundred dollars, not to mention the ridiculous rates for teen drivers for insurance. All those reasons are why I'm still not driving a car, and if I ever do get a driver's license, which I'll need to for emergencies, I'm just going to share with the SO, and use a bike/public transportation all other times. There's even a train over in Dallas I can take to Fort Worth to visit my mom if I want. I don't see a reason to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars for a car. And when driving through college areas, I've never seen so many people just biking around, so many bikes locked up at the bike racks.

DX-MAN

Well, Trollmeister, I'm living on Earth, and while your rant sounds like my town, I know my town isn't representative of the nation.

You know, the one you live NORTH of.

There are towns and cities where riders are increasing; apparently you just haven't seen or read about them. Suggest you do so before you unleash the tongue without engaging the brain.

Roody

Wrong bucko.

https://personalmoneynetwork.com/mone...rtation-usage/

gerv 

Most Mid West cities suffer one fatal flaw in trying to attract young people -- particularly young people in this economy. The urban population density is insufficient to support a strong "street life". The kind of side scene -- cafes, clubs, restaurants, corner grocery stores, ethnic shops, bookstores, etc . When you have cities built up around the automobile (and I believe Portland suffers also in that category...) the incentive to give up the automobile and walk/bike everywhere just isn't there. In Des Moines, walking to your destination is long and relatively featureless. You won't see a lot to amuse you on the way.

Setting up a more crowded city where walking and cycling really worked... that would attract this new generation.

Roody

Good point. Just putting in sidewalks and bike trails won't do the job, as I suggested earlier. Encouraging infill--especially lofts and other paartments above Main St. businesses, and new mid-rise and high-rise housing near downtown areas and other urban cores. Giving these cores a "sense of place" is thought to be important also.

My city encouraged a lot of bars and restaurants in the downtown area also. Once desserted at 6:00 PM, the downtown now has thousands of young people swarming at night. They've also connected by faux-trollies the East Lansing campus bar scene and the new downtown Lansing bars. Now they want to build a casino downtown, but strangely young people have been mostly opposed to the idea.

gerv 

Some of this is happening in Des Moines. Problem is that there aren't enough grocery stores and basic supplies in the near-downtown.

I know a couple of people who live there and w/o cars. It's a 7 mile roundtrip to the nearest grocery store. So no matter how many cafes and bars and restaurants there are, the city also needs to make sure the people who live in the area can get supplies reasonably close.

I believe this will naturally happen when the downtown turns some of those unsightly parking garages into apartment buildings. Suddenly there's a large population actually living there instead of visiting... and entrepreneurs see the opportunity.

Although the funny thing is that in Des Moines... even though there is a good population close to the downtown, the grocery chains seem to prefer setting up in the suburbs. It's only the constant complaining of residents and the city that have kept them from moving away.

Roody

One positive sign comes from Walmart of all people. They are experimenting wit several small footprint building designs in inner urban areas. Our city tried to geet Trader Joe or Whole Foods to come into an abandoned downtown department store, Evidenly they weren't interested. We have a City Marke right downtown that has small vendors selling mostly local food--both raw and prepared food. You could get most of the food you need there, although the price (and the quality) woul be 10 or 20 percent higher than the supemarkets. You could probably buy most non-grocery items at dollar stores withn a mile of.downtown, but the price (and quality) would be less than at the supermarkets. And there is a Kroger within two miles, and off-brand supemarkets even closer.

SweetNightmare

As far as not having an increase in bikers, I beg to differ. When I was a kid, everyone had a car and drove everywhere. Now back in my hometown of fort worth, I see more people biking, especially in the nicer residential areas with lots of small shops and grocery stores. Even here in my new town, I see tons more people biking. Kids and elderly alike. But I don't agree that everything should become more cramped. Yes, sprawling cities are not the best idea for cycling. But turning a rural town with lots of greenery and parks into basically New York will not be the answer. Why? Because then it's not fun to ride anymore. I don't know about you, but I would hate riding in a concrete jungle. I love a relaxing ride or drive through an area thick with trees and bushes and streams. I'm lucky enough to ride through a residential area on my way to work. It's a two mile stretch between two shopping centers and major intersections. It keeps the balance between nature and concrete jungle just where I like it. I think if more cities did that, more people would stop to smell the roses so to speak.

Then again, looking at some riders, I wonder if they pay any more attention to the scenery than the people in cars. There is a group of cyclists I see every saturday though that ride the streets and trails, not slow but not whipping by either. That's the kind of cycling I enjoy.

cooker

I like public transit.

Sirrus Rider

I"ll answer.. Becasue their parents buy their cars for them! I swear it's like a punchline.

cooker

I like it when all the pro-car people post in the forum. It makes for livelier debate. Not being as car free as I'd like to be myself, it also makes me feel a bit better that at least I'm accomplishing something, against what they see as major hurdles.

gerv 

This may seem strange, but bicycles are definitely the savior of US low population density cities. You can make this trip by bike with a trailer or panniers. Walking this distance with groceries would be a major pain.

hotwheels

No doubt. I am a relaxed rider for the most part.

Mobile 155

It is my opinion that more people are looking for alternative modes of transportation than we have seen since the 1970s. Even I am part of that movement.
However I believe the economy, social changes and the changing face of our cities has as much to do with why youn people may or may not be buying cars.


1. When I was in my teens and early twenties I can remember spending almost every night, or at least three times a week at one of the Coffee Shops close to the U of W talking to other students about issues we thought would change the world. I would see people I considered my friends almost every day. Today the youth have to a great extent replaced the coffee shop where you sat face to face with someone with social media. With Twitter, facebook, even forums like these some teens don't see their "best" friends for weeks and they may never see people they talk to every day except with pictures. In other words they don't need to get to the coffee shop or even leave their room. They don't need a car, bike or bus for what they now call social interaction.

2. Past generations had an easier time of finding a part time job to help pay for insurance, a used car or a motorcycle. Resturants and groccery stores were always willig to hire a student part time when they werent in school. Today many of those jobs are taken by adults than need the income to take care of themselves or families. Business owners get more experienced workers and and they pay the same amount of money for them. For the business owner it is a win-win but not for the student looking for a summer or part time job. I worked in an auto parts store.

3. At least in my area many of the suburbs so many complain about have turned into cities of their own and all of the jobs and services once religated to the "city" are now withing striking distance of the former suburban raised youth. As someone pointed out the supermarkets moved with the people and in most cases there are several within walking distance on any neighborhood. Just look at a google map of the giant suburb call Orange County Califorinia. There are three stores withing 4 miles of me and three stores of different chains within the same distance.

4. all that being said the car world is far from dead. Looking at traffic the other day I saw far more new cars with paper plates than I expected. What I believe has happened is the economic climate has changed putting the youth at a disadvantage, if any consider a car an advatage, for financing and insurance. And still the car market is growing faster than the economy. Somewhere there is a disconnect and to tell the truth I am not sure where it is.

US sales.

March 2011 March 2012 %chng 2011 CYTD 2012 CYTD %Chng
Cars: 658,178 763,306 16% 1,542,879 1,843,789 19.5%
Trucks: 588,445 641,468 9% 1,516.926 1,623,707 7%
Total: 1,246,643 1,404,744 12.7% 3,059,805 3,467,496 13.3%


The youth may be buying fewer cars but someone is picking of at least some of the slack.

ubringliten

https://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/04/05...r-bikes-buses/

An article that pertains to this thread.

cycleobsidian

Boy, your article is timely. And encouraging.