[TomK32]

From Wikipedia 3.7 million people were employed in New York City; Manhattan is the main employment center with 56% of all jobs.[19] Of those working in Manhattan, 30% commute from within Manhattan.

And: The primary mode of transportation in New York City is rail. Only 6% of shopping trips in Manhattan involve the use of a car.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_New_York_Cit...

[ghaff]

NYC, and specifically Manhattan, is pretty much the only US city where you can get by pretty easily without owning a car but there's no cultural expectation with respect to friends and recreational options that you have one.

[arcticbull]

You don't need a car in San Francisco. It's a tiny city that's easily traversable by bike, metro and bus - or just walking. I haven't had a car in the city in over 10 years and it's really never impacted me - except for saving me boatloads of money, I guess, probably well over $100K.

[bsimpson]

SF is an awful place to own a car if you don't have a parking garage; however, you lose out on regional mobility. Marin, Sonoma, Tahoe - so many monumental vistas are an easy drive from SF, but nearly impossible without a motor. (Bicycling gets you some of the way there, but it's still life at a different scale.)

The ultimate SF cheat code is to get a Vespa - the regional mobility of a car, but the ease of travel and parking of a bicycle. Traffic doesn't exist on a Vespa.

[riku_iki]

> Marin, Sonoma, Tahoe - so many monumental vistas are an easy drive from SF, but nearly impossible without a motor.

you can rent a car over weekend..

[busterarm]

But the point is that you DON'T have to do that in NYC.

[ghaff]

My point was slightly different. If you want to go skiing for the weekend, you either have to carpool or rent a car of course. But in NYC (or at least Manhattan/parts of Brooklyn), there's just a general assumption among your local friends, organizations putting together activities, etc. that neither you nor a lot of other people have cars.

By contrast, with a group of paddling friends, some of which live in Cambridge, everyone has a car and while we'll carpool where appropriate the (correct) assumption is everyone has a car for gatherings and activities.

[xhkkffbf]

I wouldn't be so sure. A number of my friends tried living without a car and they quickly bought one when they could afford it. There are so many places that the car unlocks.

For instance, taking a bus to Golden Gate park from downtown isn't that fast. If you like to go to the park, it helps to have a car.

[arcticbull]

> For instance, taking a bus to Golden Gate park from downtown isn't that fast. If you like to go to the park, it helps to have a car.

From personal experience, yes, it's strictly "faster" to take a car to the park from downtown unless you include going to the parking lot, picking up your car, finding a parking spot and then walking to where you're actually trying to go. From Powell it's 16 minutes by the N train every 10 minutes, followed by a 3 minute walk. I guess driving is technically 16, but you know, parking on either side. Or 23 minutes by bike.

Honestly, the fastest way between any two points in the city is a bike (or an e-bike, or scooter) at least 2/3 of the day.

Then you have the spiky "oops all traffic" and your drive gets exponentially longer while your bike commute (or metro, or bus ride with protected lanes) remains exactly the same length.

The kind of places a car actually unlocks (going out of town on weekends) are like $100 for a car rental vs depreciation, financing, tolls, registration, insurance, parking, fines, gas/charging, etc. That gives you a huge car rental and Uber budget. And rental cars are usually available at the same parking lots you'd normally be putting your car.

[Nullabillity]

> From personal experience, yes, it's strictly "faster" to take a car to the park from downtown unless you include going to the parking lot, picking up your car, finding a parking spot and then walking to where you're actually trying to go. From Powell it's 16 minutes by the N train every 10 minutes, followed by a 3 minute walk. I guess driving is technically 16, but you know, parking on either side. Or 23 minutes by bike.

Don't forget about the time to actually get to the station either.

> Then you have the spiky "oops all traffic" and your drive gets exponentially longer while your bike commute (or bus ride with protected lanes) remains exactly the same length.

A cramped bus or train ride gets pretty miserable too. There's nothing fundamentally preventing bike congestion either, aside from bikes being miserable enough that they have a fraction of the usage.

> The kind of places a car actually unlocks (going out of town on weekends) are like $100 for a car rental vs depreciation, financing, tolls, registration, insurance, parking, fines, gas/charging, etc. That gives you a huge car rental and Uber budget. And rental cars are usually available at the same parking lots you'd normally be putting your car.

This must be somewhere between regional and bullshit. Looking it up, it seems like you'd expect to pay around $65/day + gas here for a rental. But then you need to consider availability (hope you didn't plan on going during holiday/vacation season!) and the practicalities of the rental process itself (picking up and delivering the car becomes its own full trip on its own, not to mention all the paperwork involved).

[ryukafalz]

> A cramped bus or train ride gets pretty miserable too.

It's unpleasant but the bus/train will get there at about the same time it would with fewer riders, which is not the case for car congestion.

> There's nothing fundamentally preventing bike congestion either, aside from bikes being miserable enough that they have a fraction of the usage.

Because bikes are smaller and more nimble, it takes substantially more of them to have congestion in the same amount of space as it does with cars. A single stopped car in an 11-foot-wide lane will back up that lane; given the same amount of space cyclists will just go around.

I've been traveling in the Netherlands/Belgium the last few weeks and it's made the space taken up by cars extremely clear. On the streets where cars are restricted, there's a ton of space for pedestrians and cyclists - until a single car shows up, at which point it dominates the available space.

[arcticbull]

> ... the practicalities of the rental process itself (picking up and delivering the car becomes its own full trip on its own, not to mention all the paperwork involved).

Check out Getaround or Turo. In major cities there's zero paperwork, the keys are in the car, and the car is parked in a parking lot a short walk from where you already are. They're very cheap and you can rent by the hour. There's a getaround parked in the white zone in front of my apartment building that's $53 per day.

[ghaff]

I don’t live in a city but a lot of my time a Saturday is waking up, having a coffee, and mulling what I’m in the mood for doing today.

[renewiltord]

No way, dude. We have a car parked in a garage, and we take the Lyft ebikes to go to GGP. It's faster from SOMA to take the bikes than the cars. Primarily because you can park at the other end really easily. Same with the Mission. If you add parking time, almost every SF location is better by Lyft ebike.

Have lived here over a decade, with car, motorcycle, bike, and ridden Muni+Bart. I'd never use the buses (way too slow) but ebikes are pure gold in the city.

[ghaff]

I know a couple who live in Dogpatch without a car but my observation is they do a lot of Zipcar, regular rentals and Uber.

[internetter]

> they quickly bought one when they could afford it

Anybody can afford a car, and yet we’d be much better off if we didn’t spend 10 grand a year on something we don’t really need. With compounding interest, that 1k a month becomes 500k in 20 years

[chgs]

At 6.6%. After tax.

And $1k a month sounds insane to own a car to me - at least 5 times the cost

[internetter]

You think gas + the cost of purchase of a car + maintenance + insurance doesn’t add up to 1k?

[hehhehaha]

Depends where you are in sf, the transit is an order of magnitude worse then manhattan

[treyd]

You can get by without a car in Boston as I do as well, if you work and live in the city.

[ghaff]

That applies to a number of cities but that's the caveat. Especially if you're a bit older, it's common for friends to live outside the city, many jobs aren't in the city, there are activities you might like to do outside the city etc. Yes, there are rental cars but that's the type of thing I was getting at with my comment about cultural expectations.

Everyone in my circle who lives in Boston/Cambridge owns a car.

[hparadiz]

When I lived in Philly I still drove to do my shopping but I had coworkers that didn't even have cars.

[fatnoah]

> You can get by without a car in Boston as I do as well, if you work and live in the city.

FWIW, I lived in the city and worked in a suburb, and also was able to live car-free without issue. This was in the days before ride-hailing apps, so I imagine it'd be even easier now. (Not technically car-free, I know)

[ghaff]

I’ve always worked out by 495 not adjacent to commuter rail. So living in town without a car would have been impossible. Indeed would have been too long a commute for me with a car.

[fatnoah]

I was working off 128 in Waltham and the time I worked overlapped perfectly with a city-sponsored local bus route that took people from the train station to the business areas. There were about 15-20 regulars doing the train-to-bus the morning Since the bus basically existed for commuters, the driver would always wait when the train was late.

The most amazing part of that commute was that most of the commuters actually did a cross-platform transfer at North Station from the Newburyport/Rockport line to the Fitchburg line. Again, one reason it worked is that the conductors on the outbound train would hold a few minutes of the Newburyport train was late.

[programjames]

I live in the area. You can get by, as long as you're willing to risk your life every few minutes. Some parts of Boston are walkable/bikeable, but most of it is not.

[ghaff]

I don't really bike and certainly wouldn't in Boston. But most of the urban core (essentially Bay Bay plus the original pre-landfill Boston) plus Cambridge in general are absolutely walkable.

[selimthegrim]

New Orleans used to be until they nuked the bus system recently.

[busterarm]

This broke my heart because it was one of the reasons that New Orleans was one of my favorite travel destinations.

This move was so short-sighted.

[selimthegrim]

The board of the transit system is currently falling apart and probably facing an impending FBI investigation so all the statements that were made about it being right as rain again within a year when they made the latest service cuts are now laughable.

[CharlesW]

Chicago is like this as well.

[ghaff]

Chicago probably comes closest. Yes, it's not really binary.

[cryptonector]

Maybe Manhattanites should have to pay $15/day to park their cars on the street. That would quickly curb traffic issues in the city.

[apstls]

I would love if (_consistently available_) $15/day street parking was a thing in Manhattan, it'd be a good deal cheaper than garages and obviously a lot more convenient than keeping your car elsewhere. There isn't much benefit to having a car in Manhattan for day-to-day life, but it would be nice to have for things like day trips. Right now I park my car about 45 minutes away in another borough (at my family's house) so when I do need to drive I have a +90min fixed cost added to my commute time.

[jcranmer]

FWIW, Manhattan commercial real estate goes for about $80/ft²/yr. A parking space therefore costs about $40/day in real estate rent, so $15/day is well below costs.

[supertrope]

Is that $80/ft^2/yr raw land value? Indoor space cannot be directly compared against a spot in a garage that’s not climate controlled and is more vulnerable to vandalism.

[supertrope]

For more on this solution read The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup.

[eduction]

None of those numbers address the question at issue, which is,

"What percentage of vehicles used in Manattan on a given day are from outside Manhattan?"

>Of those working in Manhattan, 30% commute from within Manhattan.

Most commuters terminating in Manhattan are on mass transit so this stat doesn't really speak to the car question. Also a lot of vehicular traffic in Manhattan is not to do with commuting.

(I suspect the person you are replying to is incorrect, incidentally; I take no position in this argument. Your comment is a bit of a non sequitur is all.)

[mgce]

Some review from 2007: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/nyregion/12traffic.html

> Census data show that more city residents than suburbanites drive to work in Manhattan every day, according to Mr. Schaller. He estimated that 263,000 people in 19 counties in and around New York City drive regularly to jobs in Manhattan below 60th Street. Of those, 53 percent, or 141,000, live in the five boroughs, Mr. Schaller said. The greatest numbers are from Queens, with 51,300, and Brooklyn, with 33,400. About 23,900 auto commuters live in Manhattan, while 17,400 are from the Bronx and 15,200 from Staten Island. The suburban area with the most auto commuters to Manhattan is Nassau County, with 22,091 people driving to work in the borough, followed by Bergen County, with 19,975.

So 53% from NYC, 10% from Manhattan, 47% from outside the city. Only counting commuting as you note.

[timr]

The primary mode of transportation is rail, but even ignoring taxis and Ubers (which we all use sometimes) we depend on things delivered by cars. They don't bring groceries or Amazon deliveries on the subway.

This stuff adds up, and is a big reason why it's expensive to live here.

[arcticbull]

I guess so, but a $15 toll vs whatever it is now isn't going to impact the price of goods materially unless all those trucks are mostly empty, in which case, good?

[timr]

It's $24 for small trucks, and $36 for large trucks. Plus the $1.25/$2.50 for taxis and Ubers, of course.

I grant you that it's relatively small when amortized over a truck full of packages, but it's stupid to include trucks at all. They haven't thought it through beyond a superficial level (or worse: they have, and this was intentional).

Regardless, Manhattan is not City of London. City of London is one tiny little corner of London. This tax is closer to the equivalent of putting congestion pricing on all of London inside of M25.

[Symbiote]

Both zones cover around 8 square miles.

[timr]

Yeah, you said that on the other thread. How big is London? How big is Manhattan?

(hint: one is about 30x bigger than the other.)