America's Generation Y not driven to drive

[cpzilliacus]

Reuters via Yahoo!: America's Generation Y not driven to drive

[Brandon]

Wait till they start working and want to actually go someplace.  That'll change.

[corco]

Generation Y don't work, dawg- we sit at our parents houses and play XBox all day

[deathtopumpkins]

Speak for yourself - the main thing is that young people these days prefer living in urban environments where they can take transit to work. Especially up here in Mass, that's cheaper and easier than owning a car in the city.

[bulkyorled]

where they can take transit to work.

Lol'd first about where Gen Y likes taking public transport and then lol'd about Gen Y having jobs.

[deathtopumpkins]

where they can take transit to work.

Lol'd first about where Gen Y likes taking public transport and then lol'd about Gen Y having jobs.

I live in the city and like taking public transport. I have a full time job.
Many of my friends also live in the city and, guess what, have jobs that they get to via public transit!

My mother, on the other hand, lives in the suburbs with her car and is... unemployed!
The big difference here though is that I'm going to college, she didn't (at least until late in life and not any useful degree).

I notice you have your age hidden though, so I can't make any comment on whether or not you know what you're talking about.

[codyg1985]

I do like to drive, but I would much prefer to have access to public transit between home and work, but for the city I live in, it's almost non-existent.

[bulkyorled]

I notice you have your age hidden though, so I can't make any comment on whether or not you know what you're talking about.

I'm 20. Here the motto is "only take public transport if youre broke" and even people would rather walk. It's an LA thing, but be that as it may I've got friends and family all over the country and they all drive and wouldn't take public transport unless their lives depended on it. The only people I heard that take public transport are New Yorkers and people in DC. I suppose you can count people in SF who take BART, covers good. Safe? Sanitary? Hmmm try again
I'd walk before I'd take the bus or whatever in any city other than those two. Some cities pride themselves on their transit, yuck.

Say what you will about the LA transit system, I probably wont deny it. But still 

That's just me though. No judging coming from me if you or anyone take the transit. If it works for people thats great, that's just one less thing that we need to worry about. I personally would avoid it at all costs.

[NE2]

Complete and utter laziness. Why else would someone choose to walk or bike rather than drive?

[formulanone]

Never mind that statistically, much of Generation Y is (at the time of this post):

A) not yet of legal driving age
B) many do not yet have jobs; businesses aren't hiring as many 14-to-17 year-olds as a generation ago for various reasons
C) legal driving age has increased in most states by at least a year since Gen X first took driving tests
D) is burdened with insurance costs, tag/title costs, and cost of fuel have seen a steeper increase in the past 15 years
E) far more electronically connected to each other, rather than actually having to meet up in person
F) this is also likely an urban/suburban phenomenon, not a rural/micropolitan issue which usually has a lack of public transportation
G) able to play Gran Turismo or Grand Theft Auto to tap into their inner hoon/redneck/racer 

So all this will fade quite a bit, since many assumptions about Generation X, and earlier, Baby Boomers were made years and years ago (we're slackers, bad leaders, don't want jobs, draft-dodgers, handout-laden, gimme-gimme-gimme), but also came to pass. 

Sounds like a bunch of "you-kids-get-off-my-lawn" scare tactics (ma and pa will have to shoulder the burden of driving kids around), although I think we will indeed see a slightly larger percentage of folks use public transportation, as it does allow more time to use portable electronic devices, and in some cases, actually be a little bit more informed and/or productive at their jobs (partly because the jobs demand that you check your phone every thirty seconds, or they desire multi-taskers). In the latter case, I can see why people enjoy public transportation to some degree; after all, I have an aircraft take me close to my work site every week, and it sure allows you a little time to catch up on photos, watching a movie, or taking a nap...Either that, or they can play automotive simulators while being carried to their destination via bus or other transit.

Gotta love that stock footage used for first photo, too. 

[bulkyorled]

D) is burdened with insurance costs, tag/title costs, and cost of fuel have seen a steeper increase in the past 15 years

Hit the nail on the head there.
Adding onto that, its not just "get up off your ass and find a job to pay for it"  That doesn't cut it for some

[citrus]

I'm 25: does that make me part of Gen Y?

Either way, my take is this: I have a job (actually, it will start in September, but I have it lined up), and I have great interest in not having to drive my own car to/from work every day. I do like driving, especially for medium-distance excursions (100-400 miles). I just moved to San Francisco, and I was very attracted to living here due to density, the neighborhoods, the nightlife and food, and the culture. I like that I don't have to drive around the city!

I'm going to be working at a large, well-known company in Silicon Valley. My company (and several others) realize that a lot of people my age like living in the city, and they've provided shuttles from San Francisco to the office. (They have not realized it enough to actually open up larger offices in San Francisco itself, but that's a different story.) These shuttles are probably 5-10 minutes longer than driving myself, and run every 20-45 minutes or so.  I would gladly take a train or other truly-public transit for this, but sadly that would take 2.5 hours each way!

Many of my friends feel the same way, especially here in San Francisco and in the tech industry. I wouldn't go as far as saying that the entire generation feels this way, though. I know plenty of people my age who are quite happy living outside the city and using their cars daily.

[on_wisconsin]

Never mind that statistically, much of Generation Y is (at the time of this post):
A) not yet of legal driving age
B) many do not yet have jobs; businesses aren't hiring as many 14-to-17 year-olds as a generation ago for various reasons

Also remember Gen-Y covers all people in there early to late-20's as well, not just current teenagers. (Gen-Y started in the early to mid- 80's)

I'm 25: does that make me part of Gen Y?

100% yes

[YankeesFan]

i was born in 1983, so i guess that technically makes me a Gen Y...although i've always associated myself with more of a Gen X personality...i couldn't wait to get my license to start exploring. we always went on road trips as a kid so i guess it rubbed off on me. i've also been working a full time career job since 2007...ONLY 20 YEARS LEFT TIL RETIREMENT!!

[Scott5114]

I think a lot of this is just what city you're looking at. Everyone I knew at age 16 got their license as soon as they were able to. If you can't drive in central Oklahoma then you have to have someone cart you around. Oklahoma City and its suburbs are not optimized for transit, chances are good that either where you're at or where you want to go won't have a stop nearby. And there is no transit service on Sunday.

[Beltway]

They're busy texting and playing video games, spending most of their time indoors...

[corco]

Speak for yourself - the main thing is that young people these days prefer living in urban environments where they can take transit to work. Especially up here in Mass, that's cheaper and easier than owning a car in the city.

Yeah, I work fifty hours a week, go to school full time, and obviously drive. My parents wouldn't let me have a video game console as long as I was living in their house, and now I have no interest in gaming, so good decision on their part, I guess. 

I think a lot of this is just what city you're looking at. Everyone I knew at age 16 got their license as soon as they were able to. If you can't drive in central Oklahoma then you have to have someone cart you around. Oklahoma City and its suburbs are not optimized for transit, chances are good that either where you're at or where you want to go won't have a stop nearby. And there is no transit service on Sunday.

This is more like the real reason- I lived in a really rural area where it was a massive inconvenience for my parents to take me to school every day, so even if I wouldn't have been chomping at the bit myself to get a license (I was) as soon as possible, they would have forced me to. Same with pretty much every one else I knew.

I just went on a date with a twenty-year old girl who lives in Tucson and goes to school in Flagstaff and still doesn't even know how to drive- she says she's never had a reason or the desire (though her parents now have to drive all the way to Flagstaff to pick her up from school). One of the major reasons I won't be seeing her again is she lives on the opposite side of Tucson from me and I'm not about to drive all the way over there (about an hour at 30 MPH through traffic lights, or about an hour on the freeway) every time I want to see her. If she had the ability to come over here every once in a while or even meet in the middle, I'd reconsider because she was a nice girl.

The other reason would be that I'm not really compatible with the type of person that has no interest in driving, and an associated lack of interest in travel.

[Takumi]

I was somewhere in between. I didn't get my license until I was 19 because I didn't need it before then (for college), although I'd had my learner's since 15. When I did start driving regularly, it quickly became something I loved to do.

[jwolfer]

Reuters via Yahoo!: America's Generation Y not driven to drive

There are a lot more requirements to get a license than there used to be.  Here in Florida you can get your permit at 15 and you need to have a permit for over a year before getting your license, and then i think it is a graduated license.  My daughter is 15 and will be 16 in January but she is just now working on getting her permit so she wont be driving with a license until she is almost 17.  I know that a kids grades are tied to getting a  license as well.  If you don't have the grades or drop out you have to wait until you are 18.  Then there is the zero tolerance type laws that if a kid has even a miniscule amount of alcohol BAC under 21 they can loose their license and i believe that any drug arrest is also a reason to take away a license.

  Car ownership can be expensive ( insurance, gas etc) I think with the economic downturn some families just cant afford to add a 16 y/o to an insurance policy let alone buy an additional car.  If there isn't a car available to drive why bother with rushing to get a license.

A lot more hassle to get a drivers license.  When kids get jobs and have to have their own transport the DL is more of a pressing issue and worht the hassle

[triplemultiplex]

We've spent half a century building cities for cars more than for people, so it's physically difficult to resist the necessity of vehicle ownership in most places.

But there also some nice urban cores left where one has the option to not have a car.  For many of us 20-somethings, we want to live near where we can walk to bars and restaurants and stores, and hopefully, our jobs.  It also doesn't hurt that this self-selected group of people usually haven't started families yet and don't really care about schools for now.

I think older folks still have the opinions they formed about public transit from like the 70's and 80's, when more of the buses and trains were getting pretty bad.  But many cities have made improvements since then.  In Milwaukee, where I live, MCTS replaced over half their fleet of buses in recent years.   They're quieter, cleaner and better looking.  As a frequent rider, I consider waiting for buses no less inconvenient than dealing with traffic and finding parking.  I'm saving money on gas and not rolling the odometer on my already high-mileage vehicle.

It's not workable for every situation of course.  That is not a reasonable expectation.
It's a trade off.  I wait 10 minutes, maybe to catch a bus that moves slower than normal traffic; another person spends that 10 minutes driving through stoplights and subdivisions.  Many of us younger folks value access to amenities over having a really nice place of our own right now.  And it's perfectly reasonable that owning a car is an unnecessary expense in that situation.

[jwolfer]

We've spent half a century building cities for cars more than for people, so it's physically difficult to resist the necessity of vehicle ownership in most places.

But there also some nice urban cores left where one has the option to not have a car.  For many of us 20-somethings, we want to live near where we can walk to bars and restaurants and stores, and hopefully, our jobs.  It also doesn't hurt that this self-selected group of people usually haven't started families yet and don't really care about schools for now.

I think older folks still have the opinions they formed about public transit from like the 70's and 80's, when more of the buses and trains were getting pretty bad.  But many cities have made improvements since then.  In Milwaukee, where I live, MCTS replaced over half their fleet of buses in recent years.   They're quieter, cleaner and better looking.  As a frequent rider, I consider waiting for buses no less inconvenient than dealing with traffic and finding parking.  I'm saving money on gas and not rolling the odometer on my already high-mileage vehicle.

It's not workable for every situation of course.  That is not a reasonable expectation.
It's a trade off.  I wait 10 minutes, maybe to catch a bus that moves slower than normal traffic; another person spends that 10 minutes driving through stoplights and subdivisions.  Many of us younger folks value access to amenities over having a really nice place of our own right now.  And it's perfectly reasonable that owning a car is an unnecessary expense in that situation.

And no worries about getting a DUI on a train!
I would love to take the train or bus to work.  My brother lived in Silver Spring Maryland and worked in DC.  Walked to the metro station and got dropped off right across the street from his office.  That sounded nice, not putting miles on the car.  But i like having the option to drive in when you arent goign right home.  I resent the "intelligent " people telling me I **have** to live in the urban core. If the trend continues there will have to be a change in transit funding

They wanted to have land and live in the country( wife grew up on a farm) so now he drives to work

[J N Winkler]

I tend to agree with Jwolfer about it having gotten harder to learn how to drive.  Even in Kansas, where instructional permits are still issued to 14-year-olds, the regulatory burdens are now much higher than they were in 1992 when I was learning how to drive, and a lot of the infrastructure that was put in place to facilitate it has been dismantled.  New drivers in Kansas are now subject to a logbook requirement (50 hours of supervised driving, signed off by a parent or other responsible adult), and at least in Wichita, can now no longer take driver education through the public schools.  About ten years ago, USD 259--which covers Wichita and some of the surrounding area--decided to continue offering driver education in high schools but not to participate financially in it, which put the whole cost on parents and resulted in year-on-year declines in take-up.  Several years later the high schools stopped offering driver education altogether.

Corco points out that in the very rural part of Idaho where he grew up, he was encouraged to learn how to drive early so that he would not have to depend on his parents for school transportation.  In Kansas, farmers encourage their children to start learning how to drive at age 14 or even earlier so they can help in the fields and take themselves to school (school commuting is and has always been a protected use for restricted driver's licenses in Kansas).  (There is no minimum driving age on private land in Kansas, so children can start learning to drive much earlier as long as they stay clear of the public highway--my father, raised as a city boy for the most part, learned how to drive at age 10 when he was helping his uncle with chores on his farm/sheep ranch in far western Kansas.)  But farming counties in Kansas continue to depopulate, so this is increasingly a minority position.  Kansas' population growth has stayed relatively flat overall (slightly lagging the US as a whole between the 2000 and 2010 Censuses) and the only counties that have experienced significant growth either contain or are adjacent to major urban centers.

Auto insurance is also considerably more expensive since it is one of the ways in which higher healthcare costs are passed on to the driving population as a whole.

[J N Winkler]

I just went on a date with a twenty-year old girl who lives in Tucson and goes to school in Flagstaff and still doesn't even know how to drive- she says she's never had a reason or the desire (though her parents now have to drive all the way to Flagstaff to pick her up from school). One of the major reasons I won't be seeing her again is she lives on the opposite side of Tucson from me and I'm not about to drive all the way over there (about an hour at 30 MPH through traffic lights, or about an hour on the freeway) every time I want to see her. If she had the ability to come over here every once in a while or even meet in the middle, I'd reconsider because she was a nice girl.

The other reason would be that I'm not really compatible with the type of person that has no interest in driving, and an associated lack of interest in travel.

To me this reads like you are trying to convince yourself you should have nothing more to do with her.  In my experience, it is fairly unusual to make determinations of this kind on the basis of inclination or otherwise for driving, if only because that is something that tends to change within a very short period of time.

*  In six months she might learn how to drive and discover she likes it.  (This is how it happened for me--I didn't actually start driving until I was 17, and did not badger my parents to start learning as soon as I turned 16 and became eligible for a full, unrestricted license.  At first it was just another skill to pick up on the road to adulthood, like touch-typing.  Then I found I liked it!)

*  Her parents may gladly be driving her up to Flagstaff because they don't want to worry about her driving.  (My parents would not allow me to have my car with me my first year in college.  The first semester they allowed me to drive myself up, they insisted that I confine myself to a fifty-mile radius which kept the cultural facilities of Kansas City frustratingly out of reach.)

*  Has she actually said she doesn't like to travel?  Not being driven to learn how to drive and not wanting to travel are not the same thing.  (In 2010 I took an eight-country trip with only two powered transits down highways, in both cases because the parallel rail itineraries were indirect, poorly documented, and awkwardly scheduled.  In 2000 a friend and I spent two weeks in Turkey and relied entirely on intercity coaches and jitneys--an experience which taught me the value of being able to negotiate transportation even across a stiff language barrier.  I do like long driving roadtrips, but have not actually taken one since 2003.  Also, at age 20 she is kind of young anyway--I didn't travel off the North American continent for the first time until I was almost 24.)

I suggest that if she is really a nice girl, and that is really what you want, then you should give yourself a second chance.  Coups de foudre are rare; the true love of your life is just as likely to annoy the hell out of you the first time you meet her.  If nothing else, experience has taught me that it is unhelpful to fixate on relatively unimportant details, as I did once when a girl told me of her deep love for Cajun food and I envisioned myself keeling over dead at 45 (face-first into a plate of dirty rice) from eating étouffée every day.

[kphoger]

I have met a surprising number of Gen-Y folks who have little to no interest in driving; but, then, I've also met plenty of middle-aged folks who don't drive either.  I prefer travelling by other means (hitchhiking, train, bus), but it is no longer realistic for me.  I work outside the reach of public transit, most of our in-town trips done at times the buses don't run, and long-distance travel is very expensive for a family of four.  When I lived in the Chicago area, I used public transit and hitchhiked even during the few months I owned a car–just because I enjoyed it more.

Getting a DL was super easy when I was in high school.  I took the public high school's driver's ed course for a few weekends in the summer, and got my learner's permit at age 14.  Then, when I was of age, I traded it in for a real DL.  I've never even taken a road test, just the written one.  I even knew foreign exchange students who did that to make getting a European license easier.  Imagine that!  Learning to drive in rural Kansas–McCook, NE, was our "urban" driving location–going back to Munich or wherever, and just trading it right in for a national DL.

When I met my wife, we lived 500 miles apart, and I did not own a car.  I still went to visit her.  If she had refused to drive up to visit me every other time, I still would have stayed with her.  That sounds like a very lame excuse to get out of a relationship.

[corco]

I have been known to make up reasons why I don't like a girl that is interested in me, and I very well may be doing that here. I do have a tendency to find flaws in girls who express interest in me, always finding interest myself in the girls I can't have. Maybe I have a crippling paranoia of relationships and don't realize it, or maybe I just haven't found the best possible girl.  At least for me, though, I would date a girl that I had to drive a distance to see constantly, but my standards are much higher with that sort of complication. This girl was cool, but I feel like there has to be a girl as cool as her that's easier to access- it wasn't like it was love at first sight or something.

What she said about travel was that she has been to Australia twice and would love to go back, would want to go to Europe but thinks that's cliche because everybody wants to go to Europe, and wants to live in California (another red flag), and otherwise has no desire to travel. This is a girl that lives in Flagstaff and has never seen the Grand Canyon. That's a problem.

I'd be sympathetic if it were money related, but it sounds like her parents take very, very good care of her (another red flag).

I just...I can't fathom not wanting to drive, and it is a thing with the urban core of my generation, but I don't understand it- gosh, I mean, I remember in high school going out onto rural farm roads and testing the top speeds of our cars and spinning donuts in the middle school parking lot on wintry days at 3 AM, or putting the top down in 20 degree weather and going 70 to see who caved in first. My friends and I in high school went ten ways (two of them girls) on a 1976 Subaru on its last legs we bought for $200 just to drive the shit out of and jump and that was the life- for me the idea of being high school aged and not wanting to drive is just incredible.

Obviously those people come from a different upbringing, and that's great for them, but I couldn't see myself dating somebody who is so fundamentally different from me. I hate to sound so shallow as to say that driving is a major part of my identity, but it really is, and I'd be shocked if I was the only person on here who felt that way.