America's Generation Y not driven to drive

[Beltway]

<<< What it really boils down to for me is that I don't give a rat's arse if someone wants to live in the city on a subway line and not own a car, but I take offense when those people try to tell me I'm living the wrong way because I live in the suburbs and my wife and I own three cars. >>>

You have the right to own as many cars as you want! 

Regardless of what the urban planning tyrants think, who want everyone to live in hives and ride mass transit.  [redacted]

[Let's not start making baseless accusations against a general group of people and what they would like to do to the Constitution. That way lies political madness. -S.]

[J N Winkler]

squeegeeing sweat off my back

doesn't that negate the benefits of evaporative cooling?

It can--the key variable is whether the squeegeeing increases the surface area available for evaporation.  I only do it when I have come back into the A/C and within easy reach of ice water, and the real purpose is to get rid of excess sweat which would otherwise shift fabric dyes in my shirt.  (I have ruined several shirts this way.)

[Scott5114]

People often speak as if your own car and public transit are the only two options for getting around.  When I lived in the outer Chicago suburbs, where public transit exists but is quite spotty and runs daytime only, I used a combination of walking, cycling, rollerblades, bus, train, hichhiking, and asking friends for rides; for a time, I shared a ride to and from work.  Between all those modes of transportation, I don't recall ever being completely stranded.

Some of those just aren't an option for a lot of people. I would wager the vast majority of the populace wouldn't consider hitchhiking a valid form of transport (it is illegal in some jurisdictions, most would say it's not safe, and you're at the mercy of someone driving by thinking you are safe-looking enough to consider stopping). Asking friends for rides is doable occasionally but many people want to use this option sparingly lest they become a nuisance to their friend (putting strain on the friendship). Of course, this assumes they can get a ride at all–I go to work at 1am and until about six months ago there were no other employees on my shift that lived in my part of the city, so carpooling was pretty much impossible. (I now live with my girlfriend who works the same shift as I do, so we take turns driving.) The rest of the solutions are probably acceptable to many, but most people simply would not want to, say, rollerblade in icy weather, or cycle in 100°+ heat. Oh, you can do it sure, but to most people walking around outside in the heat/cold for two hours isn't worth the $5 in gas you'd save by not driving (not to mention the old adage 'time is money'...you could get to and from work in much less time and be able to use the time you would spend walking on something more pleasurable).

My personal situation prevents anything but driving...my workplace lies at the foot of an I-35 bridge. There is no feasible way to get to work without using this bridge–routing around it would involve a 20 mile detour. So nothing pedestrian-oriented is going to get me there. I can't take transit because, even if it ran nearby both here and my workplace–which is outside city limits so it's doubtful on being able to ride it clear into work–as mentioned, I go into work at 1am, so no transit is going to be available at that time.

[corco]

That's one of the great equity issues in transit- we assume that transit can be useful for poor people, but a lot of people in service sector and other lower income jobs are working 6-2/2-10/10-6, not nine to five, but most bus systems nationwide are catered to the nine to five schedule.

When I first moved to Tucson, I lived 11 miles from the hotel I work overnights at now. About a month after I moved here, my car got stolen. At the time, I was a bellman, so I made about $70 a shift. Since I'd just moved there and didn't have any social structure yet, my only option to get to work and back was to use a taxi at $65 roundtrip. If my grandmother hadn't stopped driving and kept her car anyway and then been kind enough to let me have it, and if my parents wouldn't have lent me the money to fly back to Idaho to get it on my next day off, I would have been totally screwed.

There have been credible arguments made that it would actually be cheaper to buy all poor people a used car than to continue running bus systems, but that will obviously never happen. Even as a fairly staunch social liberal, I don't think I could ever be ideologically okay with just giving away cars to people.

I guess the argument is that bus systems shouldn't just exist to ferry around low income people, but that is a huge part of their market share. That's a big issue with the light rail movement- buses are significantly more inexpensive and efficient to run, but have the "poor person" stigma, so people with tax dollars on wealthy neighborhoods advocate for rail, and then these systems end up bypassing poor neighborhoods, preventing them from being effective to the people who need them most.

[Zmapper]

Corco, bingo. Perhaps I am being cynical, but why it seem like the transit system only runs when the welfare office is open? 6a-6p transit simply does not work well for most people.

My city, Fort Collins, is building a $90 million BRT system with "free federal money" right now. Look at the system; the routes are mostly hourly and the system shuts down at 7pm and all day on Sunday. The $90 million would have been a heck of a lot more useful expanding the existing fixed route system, instead of pouring needless concrete.

Your city, Tucson, is building a $220 million mixed-lane streetcar, that is slower than a bus in the same traffic. How many buses could you purchase and operate for the same amount of money? In a smaller city like Tucson, that may mean the difference between a bus every 30 minutes and a bus every 10-15 minutes.

Unfortunately, due to our federal funding system the money can't be used in ways that actually help the poor (and everyone else), they must be used a way that the Senators and Congressman from Alabama and New York like.  My thoughts in more detail on this are here.

In contrast, look to Canada. They don't have federal funding, yet service in any city over 100,000 is at least 5a-Midnight, and in some cases it may be 24/7. How many bus routes near you run every 3 minutes at 3pm, let alone 3am!

[corco]

For sure- the ugliest example in my mind is the Seattle light rail. That was built at huge expense and is basically a toy for rich people to get to the sports stadiums and the airports.

I remember when I lived there jumping on Metro 194 at Spokane St/Busway and riding an express bus full of TSA workers and other service-type folk that got straight on I-5 and went to the airport.

That route (and all express routes from the downtown area to the airport) were discontinued once light rail was built, and now the line detours way out of the direct path to the decidedly wealthier Mt Baker and Rainier Valley, forgoing the more direct path along the west with more and poorer population in South Park and White Center.

There's a couple reasons to do that
1) Gateway effect- you don't want people flying into Seattle for the first time and dumped onto a train that's going through the ghetto, so it is good for tourism.
2) Access to downtown/stadia is also good for tourism/recreational activities.
3) Wealthier congressional districts have more money and more lobbying power to get stops.


and those first two are definitely valid reasons, but definitely not at the expense of facilitating the flow of commuters, which the rail has definitely done.

[1995hoo]

That's one of the great equity issues in transit- we assume that transit can be useful for poor people, but a lot of people in service sector and other lower income jobs are working 6-2/2-10/10-6, not nine to five, but most bus systems nationwide are catered to the nine to five schedule.

....

This is one of the reasons buses are not popular amongst large segments of the white-collar workers, at least not here in the DC area. Consider the number of attorneys downtown, for example, who can't really know when they'll leave on a given night. Many of the bus lines seem to run once an hour, and I think a lot of people quite understandably don't consider an option viable when it might require them to sit and wait for an hour if they miss the bus (especially when you consider that many riders no longer trust the subway's ability to be on time in getting them to the bus-transfer point).

[PHLBOS]

That's one of the great equity issues in transit- we assume that transit can be useful for poor people, but a lot of people in service sector and other lower income jobs are working 6-2/2-10/10-6, not nine to five, but most bus systems nationwide are catered to the nine to five schedule.

....

This is one of the reasons buses are not popular amongst large segments of the white-collar workers, at least not here in the DC area. Consider the number of attorneys downtown, for example, who can't really know when they'll leave on a given night. Many of the bus lines seem to run once an hour, and I think a lot of people quite understandably don't consider an option viable when it might require them to sit and wait for an hour if they miss the bus (especially when you consider that many riders no longer trust the subway's ability to be on time in getting them to the bus-transfer point).

Similar could be said with respect to SEPTA serving Greater Philadelphia... especially the Regional Rail system.  The schedules for the rail system still represents a 1954-era mindset that everybody comes and leaves their workplace at the same time.

[formulanone]

There have been credible arguments made that it would actually be cheaper to buy all poor people a used car than to continue running bus systems, but that will obviously never happen. Even as a fairly staunch social liberal, I don't think I could ever be ideologically okay with just giving away cars to people.

I think it's one of those things that sounds great in theory, but would have plenty of loopholes and pitfalls.

Pros:
- Money spent on fuel, repairs, maintenance helps stimulate the economy.
- In turn, related service industries (auto parts, for example) might have more traffic.
- Money spent on tagging, titling, and insuring a car doesn't hurt either (who's paying for that).

Cons:
- If they can't afford a car, then expensive repairs mean a poor family is working to feed a car.
- If vehicles were distributed randomly, repair costs would be a game of roulette.
- If the owners are poor, the cars aren't likely to be kept in any better shape of fitness and safety.
- What if it doesn't pass local safety laws? These vary from state to state.
- And if the cars are unsafe or irreparable, what happens next? Just give away another car?

From the perspective of my industry, I would approve of the measure...but in the greater-good reality, I think it's a terrible idea, unless a private industry wants to jump aboard with the idea for PR and test the waters.

As for "Cash For Clunkers", I don't think it really took that many perfectly-good cars off the road (yes, there were isolated cases of oddball exotics and generally well-valued performance cars cubed), but it took far more junk that cost more to repair-than-entirely-replace off the road. But exporting those cars to somewhere that has little to no automotive infrastructure might have been an interesting trade proposition (parts replacements, fulfillment, and distribution would be an export that wouldn't hurt our books).

[Zmapper]

The idea that people of means won't ride a bus isn't entirely true. Sure, there are some people that would die before they step foot on a bus, but on the other hand people will ride the bus, if it is frequent, reasonably time competitive, and runs where they are going. In Toronto, 60% of riders on the subway transferred from a bus. Go to the TTC's website and just pick schedules at random; notice how not many routes drop below a 10-15 minute headway during the weekday. Another key component of Toronto is how the buses pull inside the fare-paid area to drop off customers inside a weather enclosed station, where all they have to do to take the subway is walk a few feet to the nearest escalator down to the rail platform.

Denver doesn't have very frequent buses, but it makes the most of what it has through the use of timed transfers. 40% of rail passengers transferred from a bus. Typically, the buses would all arrive at the same time, then the train would stop, then the buses would depart and this would be repeated again in 30 minutes. After 9pm, despite the light rail only running a 30 minute headway, the trains are timed so that the D and E trains would arrive at the same time at I-25/Broadway, in order to enable a cross-platform transfer.

Seattle seemed to unnecessarily gold-plate their light rail for some reason. Tracks aren't just regular steel on regular ties on regular ballast, but steel on concrete slabs. The route is gerrymandered through wealthy neighborhoods, and includes a cost-increasing tunnel. Trains are high-end models from Japan.

Denver took the cheap route, but made up for it with a larger service area. First, the starter line ran from I-25/Broadway (a major bus/rail transfer point), through Downtown, and terminated in Five Points, which wasn't the nicest of neighborhoods back then. Not only does the line service wealthy suburban-downtown commuters, it also ran to the poorer neighborhoods as well.

After the initial line, extensions occurred where they could be installed for the least cost; parallel to the rail tracks along US 85/Santa Fe Drive, and down I-25 as part of the TREX expansion. Trains aren't needlessly high-end, they are proven high-floor models built in Sacramento, from Siemens. The biggest downside to staying in rail and highway corridors is the lack of weekend destinations along the route, which means that the trains run fairly empty during the weekends.

[kphoger]

People often speak as if your own car and public transit are the only two options for getting around.  When I lived in the outer Chicago suburbs, where public transit exists but is quite spotty and runs daytime only, I used a combination of walking, cycling, rollerblades, bus, train, hichhiking, and asking friends for rides; for a time, I shared a ride to and from work.  Between all those modes of transportation, I don't recall ever being completely stranded.

Some of those just aren't an option for a lot of people. I would wager the vast majority of the populace wouldn't consider hitchhiking a valid form of transport (it is illegal in some jurisdictions, most would say it's not safe, and you're at the mercy of someone driving by thinking you are safe-looking enough to consider stopping). Asking friends for rides is doable occasionally but many people want to use this option sparingly lest they become a nuisance to their friend (putting strain on the friendship). Of course, this assumes they can get a ride at all—I go to work at 1am and until about six months ago there were no other employees on my shift that lived in my part of the city, so carpooling was pretty much impossible. (I now live with my girlfriend who works the same shift as I do, so we take turns driving.) The rest of the solutions are probably acceptable to many, but most people simply would not want to, say, rollerblade in icy weather, or cycle in 100°+ heat. Oh, you can do it sure, but to most people walking around outside in the heat/cold for two hours isn't worth the $5 in gas you'd save by not driving (not to mention the old adage 'time is money'...you could get to and from work in much less time and be able to use the time you would spend walking on something more pleasurable).

My personal situation prevents anything but driving...my workplace lies at the foot of an I-35 bridge. There is no feasible way to get to work without using this bridge—routing around it would involve a 20 mile detour. So nothing pedestrian-oriented is going to get me there. I can't take transit because, even if it ran nearby both here and my workplace—which is outside city limits so it's doubtful on being able to ride it clear into work—as mentioned, I go into work at 1am, so no transit is going to be available at that time.

I don't mean to presume that every single person could make it work.  What I do mean is that most people could make it work but choose not to.  As far as odd scheduling goes, I've occasionally found regular rideshare drivers by random means.  For example, getting out from college after 9:00 PM, I would frequently hitchhike back home; often the driver was going the same way at the same time every day or almost every day I needed a ride.  Other times, I had a driver stop because they'd seen me another day and knew I was (a) not a homocidal maniac, but someone with a schedule, and (b) going their way.  It wouldn't necessarily work for your schedule and route, but it might.  And there's always Craigslist.

[kkt]

For sure- the ugliest example in my mind is the Seattle light rail. That was built at huge expense and is basically a toy for rich people to get to the sports stadiums and the airports.

I remember when I lived there jumping on Metro 194 at Spokane St/Busway and riding an express bus full of TSA workers and other service-type folk that got straight on I-5 and went to the airport.

That route (and all express routes from the downtown area to the airport) were discontinued once light rail was built, and now the line detours way out of the direct path to the decidedly wealthier Mt Baker and Rainier Valley, forgoing the more direct path along the west with more and poorer population in South Park and White Center.

There's a couple reasons to do that
1) Gateway effect- you don't want people flying into Seattle for the first time and dumped onto a train that's going through the ghetto, so it is good for tourism.
2) Access to downtown/stadia is also good for tourism/recreational activities.
3) Wealthier congressional districts have more money and more lobbying power to get stops.


and those first two are definitely valid reasons, but definitely not at the expense of facilitating the flow of commuters, which the rail has definitely done.

You have some major misconceptions about Seattle.  The Rainier Valley is the poorest section of the city, featuring cheap but rundown housing, poor schools, high crime, the whole nine yards.  I don't see how you could have ridden through it and not seen that.  The light rail was routed through that area specifically to improve it and give the people there a more convenient way of getting to work downtown.  More people live along the Rainier Valley route than through the Airport Way-Boeing Field route that was the alternative proposal, as far as I recall.

The Mt. Baker neighborhood is a little better but far from rich, except the view properties right along the lake (where the light rail does not go).

The light rail is not as fast as the 194 used to be to the airport, but it's much more comfortable and steadier ride.

The rich continue to drive or get driven to the stadiums or to the airport, but the light rail is very convenient for the middle class and poor.  It does serve the stadiums, which is good, because there's not nearly enough parking there for everyone who'd want to drive.  The airport service is convenient for anyone who doesn't mind schlepping their luggage through the train, and for lots of the people who work at the airport.

Now if you want a route that's a plaything for the rich, look at Paul Allen's South Lake Union Trolley.  He wanted it to increase the value of his real estate, so the public paid to build it for him.  It doesn't get even enough ridership to justify a bus line, let alone a trolley.

You could argue cost-benefit for the light rail, but it's simply not the case that it's primarily for the rich or that it's unused.

[sp_redelectric]

"Now if you want a route that's a plaything for the rich, look at Paul Allen's South Lake Union Trolley.  He wanted it to increase the value of his real estate, so the public paid to build it for him.  It doesn't get even enough ridership to justify a bus line, let alone a trolley."

Not to mention the entire S.L.U.T. line is duplicated by bus routes that continue north.

The Streetcar bandwagon is a joke...it's using transportation funding to fund developer's pet projects, and in the end transit loses - here in Portland TriMet is decrying that it can't afford its basic services, as it increases its $6 million subsidy to the Streetcar to over $9 million a year.  AND doubling its contingency budget, and operating one of the worst designed commuter rail lines (that also couldn't support a bus line by its ridership)...  The failure of public transit is designing transit for politics and developers - not meeting the needs of the travelling public.  Transit planning is about "attracting riders" in theory, rather than meeting demand.

[kphoger]

Agreed.  I've said for a while now that Amtrak would do better if it stopped trying to be like an airline, and tried to be more like a bus line.  Buses are so versatile, while trains are not.  Don't get me wrong:  I'd much rather ride a train than a bus.  But buses make so much more sense.

[NE2]

Agreed.  I've said for a while now that Amtrak would do better if it stopped trying to be like an airline, and tried to be more like a bus line.  Buses are so versatile, while trains are not.  Don't get me wrong:  I'd much rather ride a train than a bus.  But buses make so much more sense.

You mean like in California, where there are buttloads of bus connections to Amtrak?

[kphoger]

Agreed.  I've said for a while now that Amtrak would do better if it stopped trying to be like an airline, and tried to be more like a bus line.  Buses are so versatile, while trains are not.  Don't get me wrong:  I'd much rather ride a train than a bus.  But buses make so much more sense.

You mean like in California, where there are buttloads of bus connections to Amtrak?

Well, yeah, I guess.  Imagine a rail system trying to serve the same customer base as all those bus lines.  Impossible!  Yet I would say the Amtrak lines they connect to could quite easily be converted into bus lines.  Now if only you could take a bus from Chicago to San Francisco (oh, wait, Emeryville..) without having to get off the bus!

(I've never used California's Amtrak, so I don't know how well its operation works.  I'm also not sure if you were being serious or sarcastic.)

[NE2]

I was being serious. http://www.amtrakcalifornia.com/index.cfm/travel-info/where-we-go/

Yet I would say the Amtrak lines they connect to could quite easily be converted into bus lines.

At what increase in power consumption or decrease in capacity?

[Riverside Frwy]

Giving out free cars to lower class would be disastrous on the general principle because it would add like 1 million extra cars to the already strained LA freeway system.

The Seattle Central Link Light Rail will do much better ridership-wise with the U-Link extension. What LA's Light Rail shows if anything is that the extra cost for grade separations is well worth the price. LA's Expo Line is horrendously slow toward downtown, with no signal preemption what-so-ever. They made the train cross Adams Blvd at-grade which is already on constant grid-lock from the HOV and General Purpose off-ramp letting cars off at the same damn intersection. Add to the fact that it has to share tracks with the already busy-as-hell Blue Line and you end up with a complete mess.

Seattle made the right call IMO by building the expensive grade separations. Really future proofs the line, especially when the East Link light rail comes online.

As for people getting attacked over owning 3 cars and living in suburbs, I see nothing wrong with those things. What I have a problem with how we worship and cater everything to cars. You haven't "made it" UNLESS you own 3 cars and live in a cul-de-sac. People taking a car just to go a few blocks. What about walking? Biking? Skating? Cars are fine but I don't see why if every once in while, we could use transit or take the train to go into town. If we all started to use something else every so often, freeways wouldn't need to be 20 lane monstrosities.

[corco]

Giving out free cars to lower class would be disastrous on the general principle because it would add like 1 million extra cars to the already strained LA freeway system.

The idea is that most of them aren't commuting during peak hours so the added strain would be minimal- a million extra cars at 4:30 AM and 12:00 AM wouldn't really hurt anything.

[Riverside Frwy]

Giving out free cars to lower class would be disastrous on the general principle because it would add like 1 million extra cars to the already strained LA freeway system.

The idea is that most of them aren't commuting during peak hours so the added strain would be minimal- a million extra cars at 4:30 AM and 12:00 AM wouldn't really hurt anything.

Not sure I get how this is suppose to work, since transit systems have the same peak hours as the freeways. If the idea is to get people out of buses, those same people riding for example on the El Monte Busway will just spill over to I-10's already congested general purpose lanes. However, I think this would work if you can prove that you work unusual and unpredictable work hours. Please elaborate.

[corco]

The idea isn't to get people out of buses- the idea is that right now transit does a terrible job of serving lower-income people precisely because it operates at peak hours. This leaves two alternatives
A) Expand/realign transit to accomodate for that
B) Give everyone a car

It has been credibly argued that B) is actually cheaper than A).

I'd tend to go for A) with the hope that it encourages everyone to work weird hours. There's no reason society as a whole has to work from nine to five. Folks probably shouldn't work in the middle of the night because that is proven to be bad for health, but if there were a way to further spread out people's working hours we'd be putting less burden on existing infrastructure.

If there's a way to make highways operate at just under peak flow most of the day instead of way above peak for a few hours every day, that's a much more efficient use of infrastructure- right now we build urban freeways for five hours worth of use a day. A) would help to encourage that expansion moreso than B) long term, I think, but as a short term fix there is good argument to be made that B) is cheaper.

I work graveyards right now, so excluding the insane number of miles I put on the roads as a roadgeek, my actual commute subsidizes those people who commute during peak times- I'm essentially paying for road capacity I don't need.

[CL]

As for people getting attacked over owning 3 cars and living in suburbs, I see nothing wrong with those things. What I have a problem with how we worship and cater everything to cars. You haven't "made it" UNLESS you own 3 cars and live in a cul-de-sac. People taking a car just to go a few blocks. What about walking? Biking? Skating? Cars are fine but I don't see why if every once in while, we could use transit or take the train to go into town. If we all started to use something else every so often, freeways wouldn't need to be 20 lane monstrosities.

AMEN.

[flowmotion]

As for people getting attacked over owning 3 cars and living in suburbs, I see nothing wrong with those things. What I have a problem with how we worship and cater everything to cars. You haven't "made it" UNLESS you own 3 cars and live in a cul-de-sac.

That gets to the heart of the issue.

The WWII generation "made it" when they moved to the inner-ring suburbs, bought a car, and commuted 15 minutes to work. The Baby Boomers "made it" when they moved to third-ring suburbs, bought two cars, and commuted 30 minutes to work. Generation X "made it" when they moved to the exurbs, bought three cars, and commuted 60 minutes to work.

Hey Gen Y, buy a place in remote outer Elbonia, buy a lot of cars, and commute 90 minutes to work. HELL NO! they say, build me a subway instead.

[Duke87]

What you are also seeing is that the latest generation isn't as prosperous as previous generations were. A lot of college grads right now are unemployed or working below their potential for less money. In addition, with the way college tuitions have gone through the roof, young college grads are now saddled with student loan debt in a way their parents and grandparents never were.

The result of this is that where previously owning a car, owning a house, etc. was seen as a rite of passage and a sign of success, now it is seen as a burden and an expense which is best avoided if practical.

The city I grew up in (Stamford, CT) is seeing a bit of an interesting demographic shift as a result of this. Young people have moved into apartments downtown, not into houses in the more suburban parts of town. Developers built lots of apartments designed for young singles downtown anticipating this, but what's happened that is changing the way the city operates is that those young singles are getting married, starting families... and still living in apartments downtown, rather than moving outward and buying houses. The city is looking at doing a major redistricting of all the schools on account of this. And if you look at the houses in town, you won't find too many owned by someone under the age of 40. In ten years, you probably won't find too many owned by someone under the age of 50.

This is essentially undoing the trend of the half century following WWII where suburbs grew while cities slowly decayed. Now cities are growing like mad and in some places you are already seeing suburbs start to decay as homes are foreclosed upon but there's no one to resell them to.

[kkt]

I'm agreeing with Duke87, though I'm seeing it in Seattle.  It's not even primarily a prosperity issue, although that's part of it.  I see it as mostly a time issue.  Who wants to spend 10 hours a week driving to and from work?  I see more Generation Y people deciding to live in possibly a smaller house, definitely with less land and nearer neighbors, in order to have a short commute to work.  That might mean apartments or condos, or it might mean small to medium size ranch houses.  But not the quarter to half acre or more lots that were a sign of prosperity in the 1950s through the 1990s.  The housing bubble has mostly burst for the outer suburbs, although city and inner suburbs have fallen some, not nearly as much.