Millennials Don't Drive--And Here's Why They Aren't Likely To Start Anytime Soon

[Duke87]

I was also surprised by the article posted upthread that most Americans don't drink.  When I was in college, you were a social outcast if you weren't nursing a hangover a least a few times per semester.  Maybe it's generational.

I don't think it's generational so much as it's just an age thing. My parents drank a lot back when they were in college but today they typically only have a few drinks per week. That drunken party culture is college culture and has been so for quite some time. But it has also been true for quite some time that people later grow out of it, usually as they start settling down in life. Most hangover nursers are young and single.

Which, then, feeds into the previous point about how cities are amazing places for people who are young and single, but are not really great places to raise a family. Hence why a lot of people move (back) to the suburbs after they get married.

Still, even within the suburbs, lifestyles can change. It used to be that around where I grew up the only people you saw out on bikes were athletic types who were serious about riding for exercise. It is now not unheard of for someone to use a bike merely as a means of getting around. This was always possible, but it wasn't done because people just used their cars.

Something very important that I think has changed is that crime rates in the US have gone down a lot compared to in the 70s and 80s. The height of the suburban boom happened because people were fleeing crime-ridden cities, and being in a car was seen as offering more protection from shady activity than biking or walking. So the planning of that era revolved around leaving your garage at home in a shielded bubble known as an automobile and then not exiting said shielded bubble until you have reached your destination. Now that crime has gone down, people are more comfortable traveling without a metal shell surrounding them.

[DandyDan]

I don't think it's generational so much as it's just an age thing.

I have to agree with that.  I never owned a car until I was 22, which was mostly because I could always either get a ride from one of my parents, who I still lived with then, or else they let me borrow their car, or heaven forbid, my dad's truck, or else I lived close enough to work that I could ride my bike.  During my college days, they had a bus system in town I used, so I'd use that, or else ride my bike, or I'd even walk once in a while.  Of course, getting a car changed everything.

[Laura]

A new article was just posted on the Baltimore Sun about how millennials are moving in large numbers back to Baltimore: http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-millennials-20141025-story.html#page=1

"A new analysis of census data has quantified the explosive growth. It found that the number of college-educated people ages 25 to 34 living within three miles of Baltimore's central business district increased 92 percent from 2000 to 2010. Their numbers grew from about 13,000 to 25,000, according to the study released last week.

The increase was the fourth-highest among the 51 metro areas in the study, which included Boston, Memphis and New York. And it occurred despite an overall decline in population in those Baltimore neighborhoods during the period."

"We lived in Bethesda, so we did a long trek downtown to D.C. ... The environment wasn't – I don't want to say not as friendly – but it just seemed to be more lighthearted and less serious in Baltimore," she said. "There's always something going on, and everything we could possibly want is within walking distance.""

"Young people helped move public transportation – including the Red Line, which would snake through neighborhoods such as Canton – to the fore of public debate. And they're pushing the city to be more bike- and pedestrian-friendly, said Cole of the BDC, a former city councilman who represented South Baltimore and other neighborhoods."

"Irvine and her fiance, who works at Legg Mason, bought a home in Federal Hill in May, choosing a location from which they could walk or bike to work.

"We absolutely bought a house that is more space than the two of us need right now," she said. "We're pretty open-minded to staying here long-term. I have friends who have little kids in the city. The more of those types of people that are around, the more we want to do it.""

[1995hoo]

.... I suck at parallel parking and still got a perfect score on both.

Heh. Not all states include parallel parking on the road test. Virginia doesn't, for example. I strongly suspect many southern states don't as evidenced by (a) the frequency of on-street diagonal parking in many southern cities and towns and (b) the prevalence of designated "spaces" for parallel parking where they stripe actual spaces instead of just allowing you to park if your car fits.

When I was a college freshman in '96, my college said freshmen must park at the football stadium about a 20 or 25 minute walk from the dorms. No problem until it rains. So I found a friend who had a slightly off campus apartment and parked there. The other people on my floor were quite pissed I thought of that and they didn't.

We weren't allowed to have cars first semester of first year. That meant if we brought cars for second semester, we got the least desirable parking passes up near the basketball arena, a 20-minute walk (probably similar on the bus). I used to try to parallel park on the street near the church close to my dorm but didn't always succeed. Second through fourth years was a crapshoot depending on where you lived. The building where I lived second and third years guaranteed one parking pass per apartment (worked well for me, I was the only one of the four of us with a car) and then had a lottery for the remaining passes. Where I lived fourth year, they just sold as many passes as people wanted, which meant they oversold the lot, but at least the basketball arena was right across the street so overflow parking was easy.

The risk in Charlottesville of parking your car somewhere not on-Grounds for any length of time was the county/city decal issue. Back then every jurisdiction in Virginia required those things. If the city or county cops saw your car parked on city or county land for too many days without a local decal, you would get a ticket and the hassle of that would wind up outweighing the advantage of not getting the University parking permit.

Regarding bringing cars during your first year, my brother went to William & Mary and I thought their system made sense. First-years were not allowed to bring cars EXCEPT for the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas (to aid in getting home for Christmas break, when many people would take home extra stuff) and during final exams in the spring (for the same reason). Of course they got stuck in crappy parking, but I thought it made a lot of sense to allow cars at the end of the semester like that, especially since it's a public university with a high percentage of in-staters.



I never got a parking ticket in college, but I was an expert on the economics of parking violations. UVA gave you one free "warning" ticket within a 12-month period unless your violation was a fire lane or handicapped space. So I quickly realized it was cheaper to park on the grass or the sidewalk ($10 fine, eligible for "warning" ticket) than it was to park in a fire lane ($50 fine, no warning). If I had to nip into one of the buildings in a hurry, I sometimes drove up the little handicap-access curb cut, parked on the sidewalk, and ran inside to do whatever. Somehow I never got a ticket. I believe in the 20 years since then they have raised a lot of the fines in part because they got wise to people doing that sort of thing. Of course, they've also built more parking options in the meantime too.

[roadman65]

I do not know about any of this, but here in Orlando we have too many young drivers that are millennials!   There is even a group that congregates at Wal Mart on Sand Lake Road on Saturday evenings that love to cruise around town with about 50 or so millennials after their meet.

Now I do not know if they meet up at Wal Mart anymore, but they were on Orange Avenue a few weeks ago blocking traffic.  Yes, all parked in six lanes of both NB and SB Orange Avenue near Meadow Woods, FL where no one could get through.  They're must of been more than 50 cars and all young Hispanic millennials just gathered for whatever reason they chose.  Anyway the group's nature and what they are doing is another story, but the fact is that many young adults of today drive around Orlando. 

I am guessing it depends on where you are in the country as different regions have different traditions.  Though I find this topic to be interesting that some are waiting before they drive.

[PHLBOS]

Adele Peters is a writer who focuses on sustainability and design and lives in Oakland, California. She's worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley.

The above-author bio/description tells me right there how limited perspective (read slanted) the article findings probably are.

Yes, there are some that have held off buying a car of their own; but that doesn't necessarily mean they're not driving at all.  Many cities, Philadelphia being one of them, have car-share companies (examples: ZipCar and Enterprise Car-Share) that basically rent vehicles by the hour as opposed to by the day.  These vehicles are parked at pods located throughout the city.  One need not head to a rental office to reserve nor pick up a vehicle.  One can do so on-line or via phone, provided they have an account (account users are given a special fob that unlocks the vehicle).

Their marketing usually contains buzz words/phrases such as "the convenience of having a car without the costs of ownership".  I'd be curious to know how many of these urban millennials that don't own cars either rent them or have similar fore-mentioned car-share accounts?  Such would be an interesting supplement/rebuttal to the posted article.

[ZLoth]

Quite frankly, I don't buy it. It may work in high-urbanized areas like San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York City, but not in Sacramento.

FTFY - LA and SF (for SF outside the city itself) depend on cars to get around due to the sheer size of the areas.  LA's transit system is not as extensive as SF's or NY's

From my perspective, Los Angeles has a more extensive transit system compared to Sacramento. And, from the author's perspective, you should be living in the more urban (more expensive) area than the cheaper 'burbs.

[Duke87]

Yes, there are some that have held off buying a car of their own; but that doesn't necessarily mean they're not driving at all.  Many cities, Philadelphia being one of them, have car-share companies (examples: ZipCar and Enterprise Car-Share) that basically rent vehicles by the hour as opposed to by the day.  These vehicles are parked at pods located throughout the city.  One need not head to a rental office to reserve nor pick up a vehicle.  One can do so on-line or via phone, provided they have an account (account users are given a special fob that unlocks the vehicle).

Their marketing usually contains buzz words/phrases such as "the convenience of having a car without the costs of ownership".  I'd be curious to know how many of these urban millennials that don't own cars either rent them or have similar fore-mentioned car-share accounts?  Such would be an interesting supplement/rebuttal to the posted article.

Plenty, but the point stands that someone with a ZipCar account is probably not driving nearly as many miles as someone who owns their own car. Because on account of where they live and work they don't need to.

The real statistic to look at is how many people are commuting via car. That number is shrinking. Not even so much because of increased transit usage but simply because 1) more people are working from home, and 2) baby boomers are retiring.

[PHLBOS]

I'd be curious to know how many of these urban millennials that don't own cars either rent them or have similar fore-mentioned car-share accounts?  Such would be an interesting supplement/rebuttal to the posted article.

Plenty, but the point stands that someone with a ZipCar account is probably not driving nearly as many miles as someone who owns their own car. Because on account of where they live and work they don't need to.

So.  I also know people, myself being one of them (I take the SEPTA Regional Rail to/from work to save on parking), that own cars but don't use them for commuting.  They're also accumulate less miles than those that use their cars for commuting and/or work.  Typically, they change/buy cars less frequently as well.  One friend of mine who drives less than 5000 miles/year, because he lives not too far from where he works (suburb-to-suburb commuter BTW), traded in his '95 Saturn that he owned since new for a 2014 Honda Civic.

The real statistic to look at is how many people are commuting via car. That number is shrinking. Not even so much because of increased transit usage but simply because 1) more people are working from home, and 2) baby boomers are retiring.

IMHO, your second point could put automakers in this country in a bit of a quagmire in terms of lost customers down the road; the highest percentage of drivers either driving less or literally dying off.

[froggie]

IMHO, your second point could put automakers in this country in a bit of a quagmire in terms of lost customers down the road; the highest percentage of drivers either driving less or literally dying off.

They will either adapt, or they will wither away with the rest of the baby boomers.  Though it was slightly different circumstances, 2008 should have been a wake-up call to all of them.

[jeffandnicole]

The real statistic to look at is how many people are commuting via car. That number is shrinking. Not even so much because of increased transit usage but simply because 1) more people are working from home, and 2) baby boomers are retiring.

I want to know where that stat is coming from, because I travel 40 miles mostly by highway for my commute, and traffic has been getting very noticeably heavier over the past few years.  When I started this commute 16 years ago, I could set the cruise control on some sections of highway. Those same sections are now congested with traffic. 

Maybe the *percentage* of people that aren't commuting via car is decreasing, but the actual *number* of people commuting is definitely increasing.

[J N Winkler]

I want to know where that stat is coming from, because I travel 40 miles mostly by highway for my commute, and traffic has been getting very noticeably heavier over the past few years.  When I started this commute 16 years ago, I could set the cruise control on some sections of highway. Those same sections are now congested with traffic. 

Maybe the *percentage* of people that aren't commuting via car is decreasing, but the actual *number* of people commuting is definitely increasing.

Has there been any additional suburban development leeward of your commute route?  That could be where the additional cars are coming from--this is how you get congestion without any increase in either the percentage or absolute numbers of people commuting.

[Laura]

So yesterday the lunch keynote speaker at the DE/MD APA conference pretty much based his talk on this very topic.

He hit a lot of points in this thread (moving back to cities, smartphones, etc.) but something else that he mentioned that we haven't yet is the media.

Movies and TV shows help create new trends in city and suburban living. In "I Love Lucy" in January 1957, Lucy and her family move to the suburbs. The next week, Fred and Ethel visit, and then the next week they buy a house near Lucy.

However, starting in the 1990's with Seinfeld, TV show plots started happening in the city. Young adults who are unmarried were living together and having a good time.

Anusingly, he pointed to Back to the Future's vibrant 2015 to show that people were moving back to the city center.


iPhone

[1995hoo]

Funny, I think of Hill Valley in Back to the Future as being a suburban town rather than a city ("alternate 1985" excepted, I suppose)–to use a local example, a place like Upper Marlboro or Manassas.

[PHLBOS]

Anusingly, he pointed to Back to the Future's vibrant 2015 to show that people were moving back to the city center

Anusingly?  That's a new one for me.   

Obviously a typo. for amusingly I presume.

[froggie]

Funny, I think of Hill Valley in Back to the Future as being a suburban town rather than a city ("alternate 1985" excepted, I suppose)–to use a local example, a place like Upper Marlboro or Manassas.

Manassas would fit the bill, but I think Leesburg fits it better....an old, rural town swallowed up by suburban development.

[jeffandnicole]

I want to know where that stat is coming from, because I travel 40 miles mostly by highway for my commute, and traffic has been getting very noticeably heavier over the past few years.  When I started this commute 16 years ago, I could set the cruise control on some sections of highway. Those same sections are now congested with traffic. 

Maybe the *percentage* of people that aren't commuting via car is decreasing, but the actual *number* of people commuting is definitely increasing.

Has there been any additional suburban development leeward of your commute route?  That could be where the additional cars are coming from--this is how you get congestion without any increase in either the percentage or absolute numbers of people commuting.

Like most suburban locations, there has been residential growth.  But nothing substantial over the past few years, when we're being told that car usage is nearly stagnant or going down.

It could even be something like a new, large employer opened in the area.  Several hundred employees could be using the road, and that would bring a sudden jump to the volume of traffic. Amazon did open a new warehouse in Robbinsville off of 195 which added over 1,000 full time jobs (according to a newspaper story).  So it's entirely possible several hundred of those people live along 295, and if they're standard working hours, it could make a dramatic, sudden difference on the roads.

And no doubt the issue isn't just related to this area; but is probably country-wide.  Car usage may be going down overall, but rush hour usage could be rising.

[1995hoo]

Funny, I think of Hill Valley in Back to the Future as being a suburban town rather than a city ("alternate 1985" excepted, I suppose)–to use a local example, a place like Upper Marlboro or Manassas.

Manassas would fit the bill, but I think Leesburg fits it better....an old, rural town swallowed up by suburban development.

Heh. If you've been around here long enough, you remember Manassas being way out in the sticks in the not-so-distant past! (Heck, the AAA map of Northern Virginia in the late 1970s did not include Burke Lake Park because it was too far out in a rural area to merit inclusion!)

[vdeane]

So yesterday the lunch keynote speaker at the DE/MD APA conference pretty much based his talk on this very topic.

He hit a lot of points in this thread (moving back to cities, smartphones, etc.) but something else that he mentioned that we haven't yet is the media.

Movies and TV shows help create new trends in city and suburban living. In "I Love Lucy" in January 1957, Lucy and her family move to the suburbs. The next week, Fred and Ethel visit, and then the next week they buy a house near Lucy.

However, starting in the 1990's with Seinfeld, TV show plots started happening in the city. Young adults who are unmarried were living together and having a good time.

Anusingly, he pointed to Back to the Future's vibrant 2015 to show that people were moving back to the city center.


iPhone

Interesting.  I grew up watching Home Improvement and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, both of which are suburban (well, at least Sabrina was in the first few seasons while she was still in high school).  Additionally, the neighborhood I grew up in was part of a first ring suburb that had many characteristics that are unusual for suburban development (like a "downtown" area within a mile of where I lived).  While my neighborhood was built in the 50s, many of the surrounding ones date to the 40s or earlier.  In many neighborhoods in Rochester, one can clearly see which development pre-dates the 50s and which is newer simply by looking at where the sidewalk randomly dead ends.  The area where I live now, on the other hand, while not modern, is significantly newer (I'd guess late 60s or 70s) and it's significantly less dense and less walkable than what I had growing up.  Instead of being within a mile of what acts like a village square, it's 2.5 miles just to get to the corner gas station, and strip malls beyond that.  This probably skews may views of cities vs. suburbs since I'm used to this urban/suburban hybrid thing.

[algorerhythms]

Anusingly, he pointed to Back to the Future's vibrant 2015 to show that people were moving back to the city center.

I'm not really sure I agree that BttF is a good example of that... The characters are depicted visiting the city center, but they actually live in Hilldale, which is apparently at least an hour's drive (by skyway in bad traffic) from the city center, which sounds more like suburban living than urban living.

(why yes, I have seen the Back to the Future movies far too many times; why do you ask?)

[Brian556]

I really think it's mostly due to money issues.

I'm wondering if there are more young people whom are not able to get cars due to their parents not providing them.

In the past, most people got married and then had children. Children were a lot more likely back them to grow up in a proper two-parent household, in which the father did a good job of providing financially for the family.

Nowadays, way more children are born out of wedlock. People just screw wildly without protection, without thinking of the consequences of bringing a child into this world without first doing what needs to be done to make sure they have the proper financial resources to care for the children.

I think, because of this rising irresponsibility, parents are not providing cars to their children as much as they used to.

Our society has gone downhill.

[J N Winkler]

Like most suburban locations, there has been residential growth.  But nothing substantial over the past few years, when we're being told that car usage is nearly stagnant or going down.

Even a little steady residential growth can have a rather large effect on traffic volumes and level of service.  My "home" three-digit Interstate--I-235 in Wichita--was built around 1960, when the city had 254,000 people, and was forecast to carry 6635 VPD along its southern flank in 1975, when the city population was about 279,000.  Now city population is about 380,000 (only 50% higher than 1960), but the same part of I-235 carries 35,700 VPD and is teetering at the point where cruise control is unusable during the peak commuting period.

It could even be something like a new, large employer opened in the area.  Several hundred employees could be using the road, and that would bring a sudden jump to the volume of traffic. Amazon did open a new warehouse in Robbinsville off of 195 which added over 1,000 full time jobs (according to a newspaper story).  So it's entirely possible several hundred of those people live along 295, and if they're standard working hours, it could make a dramatic, sudden difference on the roads.

And no doubt the issue isn't just related to this area; but is probably country-wide.  Car usage may be going down overall, but rush hour usage could be rising.

These are all possible factors.  The nationwide decline in car usage has actually been quite modest on a per capita VMT basis, and it may also be that because housing has gotten much less affordable, due to tight supply in many areas exacerbated by tight credit post-2008, VMT drops due to baby boomers retiring, millennials not starting to drive, etc. are being largely offset by an expansion in hypercommuting.

[Scott5114]

Anusingly, he pointed to Back to the Future's vibrant 2015 to show that people were moving back to the city center

Anusingly?  That's a new one for me.   

Obviously a typo. for amusingly I presume.

When replying to other posters, messages should focus on the content of the post being replied to, and not its presentation (spelling, grammar, usage, etc.)

If you can tell what someone meant to say, just let it go.

[vdeane]

I really think it's mostly due to money issues.

I'm wondering if there are more young people whom are not able to get cars due to their parents not providing them.

In the past, most people got married and then had children. Children were a lot more likely back them to grow up in a proper two-parent household, in which the father did a good job of providing financially for the family.

Nowadays, way more children are born out of wedlock. People just screw wildly without protection, without thinking of the consequences of bringing a child into this world without first doing what needs to be done to make sure they have the proper financial resources to care for the children.

I think, because of this rising irresponsibility, parents are not providing cars to their children as much as they used to.

Our society has gone downhill.

Finances are an issue regardless of family size.  It takes two incomes to do now what one income could do in the 70s.  In a two parent family, it's likely that both parents work and have to pay for daycare.  College costs are also a big faster as they have risen by an ASTRONOMICAL amount.  It used to be possible to pay for college with no financial aid by flipping burgers in the summer.  Now, you can't even pay for textbooks doing that.  Now, you could buy a brand new Tesla for the cost of one year of college (and I'm NOT exaggerating; the 2015-2016 cost for year at Clarkson University is about $57,000, which is the base price of a Tesla Model S BEFORE the tax credit).

[cjk374]

I really think it's mostly due to money issues.

I'm wondering if there are more young people whom are not able to get cars due to their parents not providing them.

In the past, most people got married and then had children. Children were a lot more likely back them to grow up in a proper two-parent household, in which the father did a good job of providing financially for the family.

Nowadays, way more children are born out of wedlock. People just screw wildly without protection, without thinking of the consequences of bringing a child into this world without first doing what needs to be done to make sure they have the proper financial resources to care for the children.

I think, because of this rising irresponsibility, parents are not providing cars to their children as much as they used to.

Our society has gone downhill.

Finances are an issue regardless of family size.  It takes two incomes to do now what one income could do in the 70s.  In a two parent family, it's likely that both parents work and have to pay for daycare.  College costs are also a big faster as they have risen by an ASTRONOMICAL amount.  It used to be possible to pay for college with no financial aid by flipping burgers in the summer.  Now, you can't even pay for textbooks doing that.  Now, you could buy a brand new Tesla for the cost of one year of college (and I'm NOT exaggerating; the 2015-2016 cost for year at Clarkson University is about $57,000, which is the base price of a Tesla Model S BEFORE the tax credit).

AMEN vdeane!   

Back when Ward and June were raising Wally and Theodore (the Cleavers from "Leave it to Beaver" for you youngens who were deprived of watching fine quality TV programming  ), one income could easily support a household, allowing the wife (in 99% of the households) to stay home and tend to the house and children. Inflation and value of the dollar (gold standard vs market trading value especially) really put a hurt on "the traditional family".

I had to buy my 1st car because my mom couldn't afford to buy it.  I had to pay my own insurance, my bills, yadda yadda yadda because she couldn't.  My child has a parent who is more well off than my mom...but I'm not gonna buy his car for him.  I want him to know what it's like to make big purchases on his own and hopefully he will feel as much pride in his ride as I do now.  I will help here and there, but I want him to know what it means to be fiscally responsible.