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

[NE2]

Everyone has the right to establish their personal ground rules without criticism.

My ground rules prohibit ground rules. And cars.

[The Nature Boy]

Quote

When you start saying things like "I refuse to use meters" you realize you're stacking the deck, right?  Tiny towns have parking meters.  Suburbs have parking meters.  At a certain point, requirements like this add up to "being difficult".

Everyone has the right to establish their personal ground rules without criticism.

I actually used to work in the mayor's office in a small town that DIDN'T have parking meters in their downtown core. They frequently complained about fiscal issues so I recommended that they install meters to raise at least a tiny bit of revenue. They didn't take my suggestion seriously.

I think it's a mistake to assume that having a car in a city means using it for intra-city transport. If I had my car right now, I wouldn't because it makes more sense to walk or use public transit. A car IS useful for getting to areas that public transit doesn't go and getting outside of the urban core. When I lived in a small town where most people drove from point A to point B, I'd usually opt to walk because it's more enjoyable. If a distance is 3 or fewer miles, I'll just walk it even if my car is in my driveway because I take pride in being in shape. I also go hiking in my spare time, a habit that is actually VERY difficult if one doesn't have a car. Good trails aren't exactly in the middle of urban cores. Having your own mode of transit does vastly expand your "things I can possibly do" list.

[NE2]

I also go hiking in my spare time, a habit that is actually VERY difficult if one doesn't have a car. Good trails aren't exactly in the middle of urban cores.

Boston has a decent number of large parks with easy bus/train access.

[The Nature Boy]

I also go hiking in my spare time, a habit that is actually VERY difficult if one doesn't have a car. Good trails aren't exactly in the middle of urban cores.

Boston has a decent number of large parks with easy bus/train access.

The best hiking in New England though is a relatively short drive north in either New Hampshire or Maine (or a slightly longer drive into Vermont). If you don't have a car, the parks in cities will do. Boston has absolutely gorgeous parks, as do a number of other cities. Part of the fun of hiking though is possibly discovering something new and pushing yourself to try harder and harder trails.

I'm a nature person and a history buff, my lifestyle isn't well suited for living in an urban area without a car.

[kkt]

Until recently, I often took the bus in Seattle.  Overcrowded during commute hours, often passed up because the bus was too full, and hardly ever got a seat.  I lived with that for years, but faced with many needs to leave work, do an errand, and come back, I finally shelled out for a parking permit about six months ago.  If/when the errands decrease, I may go back to busing to work.

However, in the late evening, the character of the bus riders changes markedly.  A theatre downtown has info nights I take my daughter to some weekday evenings, and they are a dilemma.  The traffic downtown is terrible until past 7:00 on weekdays, one can easily crawl for an hour to make it 1/4 mile from the freeway exit to a parking garage.  The bus has a grade separated tunnel that would make it downright easy to get downtown then.  But then the theatre lets out around 9:30 or 10:00, and there are so often other passengers that are throwing up drunk, violent, or inappropriately affectionate that I will no longer take the bus then.  Drivers won't get involved and there's no security on the buses.

[Brandon]

I also go hiking in my spare time, a habit that is actually VERY difficult if one doesn't have a car. Good trails aren't exactly in the middle of urban cores.

Boston has a decent number of large parks with easy bus/train access.

There's a big difference between an urban park and a large, rural natural area.

[Pete from Boston]

I also go hiking in my spare time, a habit that is actually VERY difficult if one doesn't have a car. Good trails aren't exactly in the middle of urban cores.

Boston has a decent number of large parks with easy bus/train access.

There's a big difference between an urban park and a large, rural natural area.

True, but you can hike in the woods quite a lot of places on the MBTA:

http://www.oocities.org/hikeinfo/

[The Nature Boy]

Yeah, but the Boston T is unusually extensive and probably 2nd only to New York in that regard. You can't use Boston as a measuring stick for how easy it is to do things while being carless in a city.

[Pete from Boston]

Yeah, but the Boston T is unusually extensive and probably 2nd only to New York in that regard. You can't use Boston as a measuring stick for how easy it is to do things while being carless in a city.

Maybe you can and maybe you can't, but if that's what one is looking for, this is a place it's possible.

[vdeane]

Personally, I never understood how people can live their lives according to the transit schedule.  I like being able to just go somewhere wherever I want.  Plus I wouldn't want to be limited to wherever transit goes (especially since I never learned how to ride a bike; too scared of falling).

Living with transit schedules has become much easier with the advent of arrival-time apps.  And as for going off the network, use a car.  Not every mode serves every need. 

Guess who doesn't have a smartphone?

So that means I'd need a car.  And parking is NOT fun in a city; it's typically all on-street, even for residential areas, and parking in commercial areas often isn't free (and I refuse to use meters or their more modern equivalents because of the need to guess how long you'll be parked).

When you start saying things like "I refuse to use meters" you realize you're stacking the deck, right?  Tiny towns have parking meters.  Suburbs have parking meters.  At a certain point, requirements like this add up to "being difficult."

In the metro areas I've lived in (Rochester and Albany), it was the cities with parking meters, and in the suburbs parking was off street.

And on-street parking is a HUGE hassle in winter when you have to play musical parking spaces with the legality of where one can park constantly changing due to snow removal.  And traffic isn't fun either; it takes forever to drive anywhere until you get to the freeway (at least suburbs have SOME areas where you can avoid slow moving strip mall corridors; in cities, EVERYTHING moves at that pace!).

Huge hassle?  What would you call having no legs, then?  It's an inconvenience for most, little more.  Almost all of the time there is not a major snow emergency going on even here; in most cities it's not even that much.  And no, everything doesn't move at a crawl.  Your experience is limited or you're exaggerating.

This winter, there was a multi-day snow emergency EVERY SINGLE WEEK.  The news was full of stories about people frantically digging out their cars with nowhere to put the snow because there were five foot snow drifts next to their car.

Urban areas are great for someone who likes walking/biking, is in reasonable shape (enough that the idea of hauling groceries to/from the bus stop isn't a daunting prospect), willing to be flexible enough with their routine and scheduling to accommodate the transit schedule, and like to go out often within the area but don't need to go outside of it often.  I would wager that this set of traits is more likely to be found among students and recent grads than the population at large.

See, urban areas are good for people who like the amenities, culture and feel, and easy accessibility they provide.  They are not repositories for people who never go anywhere else and lug everything around in a cart (though there certainly are some of those people).  Most people I know in this one own cars, use a mix of modes, and handle the minor issues of things like parking and making room for other people with calm and perspective.

I couldn't really care less where you live nor what obstacles you choose to put in your way, but I think some of the assumptions you're presenting about how it works to live in a city do not accurately reflect most city-living experiences.  Most cities are not Manhattan nor like it. 

You are right on one thing, though–we do tend to be in reasonable shape.

Yeah, I'm not in reasonable shape.  The idea of hauling four bags of groceries to/from the bus stop does NOT sound like fun for me.  And my flats tend to irritate my toes and ankle if I walk too much in them.

[wphiii]

I feel like it'd actually be better to be living in a denser urban area during a snow emergency. Like, do you really want to be living somewhere that necessitates total car dependence when you get several feet of snow suddenly dropped on you?

[J N Winkler]

Living with transit schedules has become much easier with the advent of arrival-time apps.  And as for going off the network, use a car.  Not every mode serves every need.

Guess who doesn't have a smartphone?

As someone who did without a smartphone until 2 1/2 years ago, I am very hesitant to advocate spending another $720 a year just for on-the-hoof data access.  Rooting or jailbreaking a smartphone is also a nontrivial job, and unless it is done the phone cannot be outfitted with a HOSTS file to provide adequate protection from ads or viruses.  I also know people who use their smartphones as their sole means of Internet access (no computer at home, no broadband subscription); since data plans are highly constrained, and smartphones (in spite of the prevalence of mobile website versions) are a very awkward way to access many websites, this has the potential to lock in digital illiteracy in a family.

All of this said, however, there is a huge gain in convenience from not having to waste time scavenging data access to book hotels, check position on the map, etc.  When I took my 6750-mile road trip last September, I had data everywhere but in Death Valley and I estimate it saved me several hundred dollars in lodging costs.  I did take along an old laptop to take advantage of free wifi access where I could find it, and ended up hardly using it because in this age of video streaming and ubiquity of consumer data access devices, community wifi can no longer provide the bandwidth to keep up with demand (largely because the additional devices and configuration required to provide adequate connectivity to a large population of connected devices are an order of magnitude more than is required to set up a simple modem and router).

In the metro areas I've lived in (Rochester and Albany), it was the cities with parking meters, and in the suburbs parking was off street.

Parking meters are not just a revenue source--they are an essential tool for rationing parking.  Pretty much every largish city I have visited (it does not matter whether it is administratively independent from its suburban areas) has meters in its downtown area and free off-street parking further out.

I don't like feeding meters either, but I feel it imposes too great a cost to refuse ever to use metered parking.  Wichita has a standard charge of one dime per half-hour and one quarter per two hours, so I always make sure I am carrying a coin purse with dimes and quarters when I think I may have to use metered parking.  Credit-card parking meters are also increasingly common--Denver has them now, for example.

Yeah, I'm not in reasonable shape.  The idea of hauling four bags of groceries to/from the bus stop does NOT sound like fun for me.  And my flats tend to irritate my toes and ankle if I walk too much in them.

Spoilage of perishables can be a consideration as well--I would never "bus it" to buy fresh milk.  This said, there are plenty of people who do their shopping without cars, including not just out-of-shape young people but frail elderly, bicyclists, etc.  The secret is to have means of expanding cargo carrying capacity for the mode you are currently using.  When I was living carlessly in Britain, I had a basket on the back of my bike that could be used for carrying groceries, and I could pack any overflow into my backpack.  Quite often I saw elderly women pulling wheeled carts with enough room for a week's groceries.

[The Nature Boy]

I feel like it'd actually be better to be living in a denser urban area during a snow emergency. Like, do you really want to be living somewhere that necessitates total car dependence when you get several feet of snow suddenly dropped on you?

This depends on how good your locality is at snow cleanup. Some areas are good about getting plows out ASAP and keeping up with the snowfall. Snow emergencies are relatively rare too.

As an aside, I would not advocate living where there is regular snow and not having covered parking. When I lived in New Hampshire, I did not have covered parking and digging my car out of the snow was not a fun chore.

[Crazy Volvo Guy]

You went from NH to Washington DC?

As someone who lived in NH, and would be back if not for the property taxes (and their resultant high rents), I don't know how you did it.

I feel like it'd actually be better to be living in a denser urban area during a snow emergency. Like, do you really want to be living somewhere that necessitates total car dependence when you get several feet of snow suddenly dropped on you?

I can't remember a snow emergency being declared at any time when I lived in NH.  They know how to deal with it.  Snow emergencies are for places that don't know what they're doing with it, either due to lack of experience with it, like Georgia, or simple recto-cranial inversion syndrome, like Massachusetts. <snicker>

[The Nature Boy]

You went from NH to Washington DC?

As someone who lived in NH, and would be back if not for the property taxes (and their resultant high rents), I don't know how you did it.

I feel like it'd actually be better to be living in a denser urban area during a snow emergency. Like, do you really want to be living somewhere that necessitates total car dependence when you get several feet of snow suddenly dropped on you?

I can't remember a snow emergency being declared at any time when I lived in NH.  They know how to deal with it.  Snow emergencies are for places that don't know what they're doing with it, like Massachusetts. <snicker>

I'm only here for another couple of weeks (at most). I'll probably be heading back to New Hampshire within the next month. I miss that place.

And I will echo how good New Hampshire is at handling snow. Plow trucks are deployed immediately and they make a real effort to keep up with snow removal. I do hear though that a snow emergency was declared in the Seacoast during this year's snowpocalypse.

And since NH and snow came up, I feel compelled to share this:

[GCrites]

You went from NH to Washington DC?

As someone who lived in NH, and would be back if not for the property taxes (and their resultant high rents), I don't know how you did it.

I didn't know about that. "Live expensively or die" huh?

[kkt]

When I lived without a car, I did small grocery trips every couple of days, and rarely bought more than one bag at a time.  There are also delivery options in a lot of cities, though I didn't use them myself.

[The Nature Boy]

You went from NH to Washington DC?

As someone who lived in NH, and would be back if not for the property taxes (and their resultant high rents), I don't know how you did it.

I didn't know about that. "Live expensively or die" huh?

With no income or sales tax, the state has to make ends meet somehow. Jacking up property taxes is the way to do it.

[vdeane]

I feel like it'd actually be better to be living in a denser urban area during a snow emergency. Like, do you really want to be living somewhere that necessitates total car dependence when you get several feet of snow suddenly dropped on you?

Let's see... my commute is mostly on state highways, my local town is generally good with plowing, as is my apartment complex.  Getting snow/ice off the car is generally only an issue in the event of freezing rain.  If it's really bad, I can just stay home from work.  So it's not too much of an issue.  The issue the cities have is because they need to get the cars out of the way to plow the street, especially when the snow drifts don't have a chance to melt in between storms (most areas in upstate NY are dependent on this to have somewhere to put the snow; these past two winters, that has not happened, and contrary to most, I consider them to be a new normal).  Once the drifts get high enough, cars wind up parked in the travel lanes, and getting to the car becomes a challenge.

There's also the fact that I can leave my car where it is until needed when in a driveway or parking lot (my landlord desires people to move their cars to cleared spaces to facilitate snow removal, but in practice this isn't enforced, and there are plenty of spaces).  In a municipality with on-street parking, you're moving your car every few hours until the streets are cleared.  If there are no spots, tough.

Parking meters are not just a revenue source--they are an essential tool for rationing parking.  Pretty much every largish city I have visited (it does not matter whether it is administratively independent from its suburban areas) has meters in its downtown area and free off-street parking further out.

I don't like feeding meters either, but I feel it imposes too great a cost to refuse ever to use metered parking.  Wichita has a standard charge of one dime per half-hour and one quarter per two hours, so I always make sure I am carrying a coin purse with dimes and quarters when I think I may have to use metered parking.  Credit-card parking meters are also increasingly common--Denver has them now, for example.

I have NO PROBLEM with paying for parking as long as the rates are reasonable.  My issue is that you has to pre-pay and guess how much time they will use.  Guess too little, and you might get a ticket and/or towed.  Guess too much, and you just wasted money.  Even the new "smart" meters are just adding technology to doing the same old thing - the only benefit is not having to use coins.  If I had my way, we'd use truly smart meters that no longer needed to be pre-paid.  You'd enter your plate number, insert your credit card, and you'd get a slip.  When you left, you'd insert the slip and your card would be billed for how long you were there (if someone tried to cheat the system by not inserting the slip when leaving, they'd be billed for 24 hours plus a decently sized fee).  Of course, the reason this doesn't happen is because minute maids would be writing a lot fewer parking tickets that way.

As for groceries, I prefer to shop every six days - the length of time it takes me to use up a carton of eggs (and bagel package, and 2/3 of a loaf of bread - I like everything in sync).

[NJRoadfan]

With no income or sales tax, the state has to make ends meet somehow. Jacking up property taxes is the way to do it.

Yeah, most states seem content with doing all three.

[J N Winkler]

I have NO PROBLEM with paying for parking as long as the rates are reasonable.  My issue is that you has to pre-pay and guess how much time they will use.  Guess too little, and you might get a ticket and/or towed.  Guess too much, and you just wasted money.  Even the new "smart" meters are just adding technology to doing the same old thing - the only benefit is not having to use coins.  If I had my way, we'd use truly smart meters that no longer needed to be pre-paid.  You'd enter your plate number, insert your credit card, and you'd get a slip.  When you left, you'd insert the slip and your card would be billed for how long you were there (if someone tried to cheat the system by not inserting the slip when leaving, they'd be billed for 24 hours plus a decently sized fee).  Of course, the reason this doesn't happen is because minute maids would be writing a lot fewer parking tickets that way.

I see having to guess how long I will be at a particular place the same way I do having to break eggs to make an omelet.  I think there are pay-and-display lots in Europe that work much as you describe (billing in arrears based on the time actually spent in the parking space), but unless technology upgrades are in the picture somehow, payment in arrears for actual time in the US usually means a parking facility with a small number of ingress/egress points that can be controlled.  That can often translate into higher unit parking charges because it is expensive to staff a payment booth.  Facilities of this type also tend to be multi-story parking garages instead of flat lots, which is another cost driver.

As for groceries, I prefer to shop every six days - the length of time it takes me to use up a carton of eggs (and bagel package, and 2/3 of a loaf of bread - I like everything in sync).

With the other people in this house, I am lucky if there is an agreed "meal grid" so I know which days I am to cook dinner and have all the fresh ingredients I need on hand.  On my own, I tend to shop on a shorter cycle (two or three days) for freshness.

[kkt]

I have NO PROBLEM with paying for parking as long as the rates are reasonable.  My issue is that you has to pre-pay and guess how much time they will use.  Guess too little, and you might get a ticket and/or towed.  Guess too much, and you just wasted money.  Even the new "smart" meters are just adding technology to doing the same old thing - the only benefit is not having to use coins.  If I had my way, we'd use truly smart meters that no longer needed to be pre-paid.  You'd enter your plate number, insert your credit card, and you'd get a slip.  When you left, you'd insert the slip and your card would be billed for how long you were there (if someone tried to cheat the system by not inserting the slip when leaving, they'd be billed for 24 hours plus a decently sized fee).  Of course, the reason this doesn't happen is because minute maids would be writing a lot fewer parking tickets that way.

That's a good idea.  I wonder if it's ever been tried.  There would still need to be parking enforcement (minute maids? what century is this?) to catch people who didn't pay at all, and people who stayed parked longer than the maximum stay.  The parking enforcers would probably still collect enough fines to pay for their salaries.

[wphiii]

Even the new "smart" meters are just adding technology to doing the same old thing - the only benefit is not having to use coins. 

Our "smart" meters here in Pittsburgh are horrible. All of the transactions are done at one kiosk per block where you enter your plate # and decide how much time you want to spend there. The problem is, there's no way to "top up." You literally have to wait until your previous allotment runs out in order to buy more time, which is a nightmare to deal with when you're planning to visit several different places in a particular neighborhood and just want to tack another half hour on when you happen to be passing by your car on your way from one store to another.

[MisterSG1]

Yes I know I'm reviving this topic, but I'd like to get it back to where it was a bit earlier as I can sort of relate.

At least where I am, I don't think the latter millennials are skipping on getting their license. I of course grew up with the earlier millennials, and even here in Brampton when I went to high school, everyone was eager to get their license, so I don't buy that nonsense myself. Like many have suggested, I believe it's simply a financial barrier.

Even though I was always interested in roads, I was a bit hesitant in getting my license, well I got my permit (which they call a G1 here) at 16 (which is the minimum age here), but didn't move on to the second step until I was close to 18, I had a school bus ride to high school so it wasn't an issue for me at all.

Just an aside, I think Ontario is the only one of our 63 Canadian provinces/territories or US states that RESTRICTS any freeway driving at the learner's permit level......and when I got to the second stage of graduated licensing, I was on the nasty 401 Toronto section a few days later, and it didn't bother me one bit.

Now since I'm a recent student now at Ryerson University, which is in downtown Toronto. I was actually shocked to learn than they actually have permit parking at all, sure, it's not cheap, roughly $800 for one full year, but it's a bargain compared to if you were to drive down and park everyday, where daily rates easily top $18-$22 close to that area. My commute involves driving to the train station and taking the train, as I think that's better than the unnecessary headaches of dealing with the Gardiner, I remember once I drove from my place in Brampton to go to a Blue Jays game, and it took me 2 hours to reach my parking spot for sporting events (which is a brisk walk away and only costs $6 for the night). Those are the kind of headaches I'm talking about and it's not worth it, I see some of my professors taking trains for the exact same reason.

But when some of us from outside Toronto proper on the first few days of classes discussed our routes in how we got to campus, I was shocked to hear that there were people from Vaughan who drove to Wilson Subway Station and took the subway in, and mind you, these are the students 10 years younger than me straight out of high school. I'm actually surprised at the amount who claim that they have their full license and are of that age, as you need to be a minimum of 17 years 8 months to get a full license in Ontario.

I think there are many millennials who will chase the city core, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I definitely don't see suburbia disappearing anytime soon. Give it enough time and the millennials will be back to the suburbs.

[vdeane]

New York City is actually more restrictive than Ontario: not only are people with permits explicitly banned from driving on freeways, they are also banned from driving vehicles that don't have dual brake controls (which functions as a de facto ban on learning from one's parents like a normal person; it's drivers ed only for teens in NYC).

Down here, graduated licensing is cited as a reason why millennials are delaying learning to drive.  In many areas, the restrictions on teenage drivers are enough that "why bother?" is the question that many are asking (for example, teenagers are NOT allowed to drive their friends under any circumstances, are restricted from driving at night unless to/from work, and if below 17 in NY, cannot even drive at all unless it's to/from work or school).