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by perl4ever
2357 days ago
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"gas & wear" account for a portion of the TCO but ignore things like registration, insurance, and cost of purchase" Sure, but I said "if you're going to have a car anyway". And I, and I think most people who can afford it, am going to have a car even if I use mass transportation daily. If you ride the bus, you're not paying any less in registration, insurance, or car payment until you actually sell your car. That's why it ends up being a class distinction in at least most of the places I've lived - people who consistently ride the bus are mostly people who do not have the option of owning a car for whatever reason. I've never tried to drive in NYC, but if I lived there, and I was making the kind of money that would incentivize me to move there, then I would still keep a car for going out of the city on weekends or holidays. It's hard to find a place to park...but I lived for a while in the middle of a smaller city (about 1M population) and found a solution to parking - I lived within walking distance of work, and left my car in the free parking garage space provided by work all week. But that was a really serendipitous thing. |
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Sure and if you're riding the bus, train, cable car, etc. instead of driving the $500/mo you're paying becomes less worthwhile.
But let's say you're driving from Mountain View to SF daily, that's about 40 miles. Let's say you consistently get 30 mpg (unlikely if there's traffic or if you're driving something large) and let's say that gas stays at $3.50/gal. That's almost $190 in fuel alone. Parking, if you want a reserved spot, is about $300/mo in San Francisco. Daily rates are closer to $400/mo (or at least that's what I've had to pay for parking along the Embarcadero). So you're looking at $500-$600 in addition to whatever it costs to own the car. That's nearly double what you'd pay for Caltrain (which is typically not a bus).
Obviously things get more expensive if you buy something more status symbol like that requires high octane fuel or gets worse mileage. Things get less expensive with an electric vehicle but parking is still extremely expensive in San Francisco.