[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.

[Nullabillity]

> Check out Getaround or Turo.

Both seem to be very US-focused, and CA specifically.

> In major cities there's zero paperwork,

For a very narrow definition of major, perhaps.

> 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.

For a very broad definition of cheap, perhaps.

And is it going to be available when you actually need it? Even the most congested highways are practically empty a pretty large portion of the day, but that doesn't help you for shit during rush hour.

> and the car is parked in a parking lot a short walk from where you already are.

I assume "huge parking lots everywhere with lots of space" is another US-ism.

[arcticbull]

Everything I said pertained specifically to San Francisco. You were replying to a sub-thread about San Francisco. Top of thread I said "You don't need a car in San Francisco." Were you expecting me to provide international options? I'm honestly not sure what the availability of Turo or Getaround is even in the US outside of SF.

Further, I said a car rental was $100 for the weekend, and yeah, I guess it was $106. The average American spends $800-1000 per month on their car in excess of the base price according to the AAA, so yeah, $53 per day seems pretty cheap within the context of this conversation.

[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?

[chgs]

Mine certainly doesn’t.

[arcticbull]

I ran these numbers at some point, on average.

Average monthly car payment for a new car in California is $738 ($532 used). A record share of Americans are payment $1000 or more on monthly car payments. [1]

Average monthly parking in SF is $340 according to SpotHero, if you have your own place and spot, that added $80-100,000 to the price of your home, so you can decide how you'd like to value that. Today 7.5% APR mortgage, that would add $7500 per year in interest, $625/month. Less if your mortgage is lower-interest.

Bankrate says the average annual insurance cost in SF is $2692 ($224 per month).

AAA says the average price of routine maintenance is 10c/mile. Average distance traveled is 14000mi/yr, so that's $1400/yr ($116 per month).

Add in gas, tolls, fines, registration, collision damage, etc.

Should be $800-1000 per month on top of your car payment.

Which is incidentally what AAA found. US average is $894 per month on top of the purchase price, or just shy of $11,000 per year. And one has to imagine it's a lot more than that in San Francisco. [2]

The GGP's $1K per month estimate is actually probably about half of what people pay all-in amortized over the ownership period of a car. 6.6% return is below the S&P average. I dunno man, the numbers check out, and may even be quite conservative.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/auto-loan-average-payments-2023...

[2] https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/cost-of-car-ownership...

[hehhehaha]

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