Owning a car is expensive

Car costs - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_costs

Cars are expensive. This is a page from wikipedia detailing all the costs of owning a car.

How much does one parking spot add to rent?

https://www.reinventingparking.org/2015/06/how-much-does-one-parking-spot-add-to.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/rgayyc/add_cars_to_the_list_of_things_i_cant_draw_lol/

Cars require parking. Parking increases rent.

The high cost of free parking - YouTube - Vox

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akm7ik-H_7U

The parking lots doesn’t come cheap. We pay for them even if we don’t use them in the form of higher groceries prices, etc.

Why free parking is bad for everyone - Vox

https://www.vox.com/2014/6/27/5849280/why-free-parking-is-bad-for-everyone

This is the long text format of the video but it has more and better points on why free parking is bad.

For starters, when there is free parking, there is induced demand for those parking. More of those parking spaces gets filled up, people roam more to find empty parking space, which contributes to more congestion and more pollution.

Those free parking is not exactly free. It is paid by everyone in terms of rent and grocery prices.

The experiment stated in the article is pretty interesting. The meter costs change depends on how many people use it. When more people use it, the cost increases. It found that cruising gets cut in half, amount of driving fell by 30 percent, parking citations and double parking also fell.

How to Reform Your City’s Bad Parking Requirements - Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-20/how-to-reform-your-city-s-bad-parking-requirements

Parking affects a lot more than you think such as affordable housing, climate change, economic development, public transportation, traffic congestion, and urban design. They reduce the supply and increase the price of housing. Parking subsidies lure people into cars from public transportation, bicycles, or their own two feet. Cruising for curb parking congests roads, pollutes the air, and adds greenhouse gases.

Parking increases the price of everything else.

A study found that the parking spaces required for shopping centers in Los Angeles increase the cost of building a shopping center by 67 percent if the parking is in an aboveground structure and by 93 percent if the parking is underground. Retailers pass this high cost on to all shoppers, regardless of how they travel.

Because many cities require the same number of spaces for every apartment regardless of its size or quality, the required parking disproportionately increases the cost of low-income housing. One study found that minimum parking requirements raise housing costs by 13 percent for families without cars.

He recommended three steps to fix them:

  1. Remove off-street parking requirements. Developers and businesses can then decide how many parking spaces to provide for their customers.
  2. Charge the right prices for on-street parking. The right prices are the lowest prices that will leave one or two open spaces on each block, so there will be no parking shortages. Prices will balance the demand and supply for on-street spaces.
  3. Spend the parking revenue to improve public services on the metered streets. If everybody sees their meter money at work, the new public services can make demand-based prices for on-street parking politically popular.

Apartment Blockers - Sightline Institute

https://www.sightline.org/2013/08/22/apartment-blockers/

https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/rgayyc/add_cars_to_the_list_of_things_i_cant_draw_lol/

Underground parking costs a lot of money to make. These costs add to the rent.

The Hidden Cost of Bundled Parking – ACCESS Magazine

https://www.accessmagazine.org/spring-2017/the-hidden-cost-of-bundled-parking/

Parking increases rent by 17% but varies on the type of parking.

[OC] Non-Mortgage Household Debt in the United States : dataisbeautiful

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/rtoqsv/oc_nonmortgage_household_debt_in_the_united_states/

https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/rtvgqm/everyone_talks_about_student_loan_debt_burden_but/

The auto loan burden is second only to student loan. People should not be in debt just because they have to own a car.

Average Monthly Payment for a New Car Hits $636 | Edmunds

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/average-monthly-car-payment-for-new-car-636-dollars.html

Charlotte workers who didn’t commute last year saved more than $3,000 - Business Today

https://www.businesstodaync.com/charlotte-workers-who-didnt-commute-last-year-saved-more-than-3000/

Charlotte workers who worked from home saved $3,021 and 4,319 pounds of CO2 emissions by not commuting.

Other cities are mentioned in the article too.

Atlanta residents benefited the most, saving an average of $3,987 not commuting in 2021. Dallas and Houston tied for slots 2 and 3 with $3,800 saved. Phoenix, Nashville, Detroit, Birmingham, Chicago, St. Louis, and Charlotte fill out the remainder of the Top 10 cities that benefited from not commuting in 2021.

The lifetime cost of driving a car - ScienceDirect

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800921003943

For the typical German travel distance of 15,000 car kilometers per year, the total lifetime cost of car ownership (50 years) ranges between €599,082 for an Opel Corsa to €956,798 for a Mercedes GLC.

This is unfair to those who cannot afford private vehicles.

Lifetime Cost Of Small Car $689,000; Society Subsidizes This Ownership With $275,000

Not only the car is expensive, but you’re not even paying for it. Society pays some of it for you.

What Is the True Cost of Car Ownership?

https://www.treehugger.com/what-is-true-cost-of-car-ownership-5095664

This is an excellent article on the true cost of car ownership. There are direct and indirect sources.

Direct

  • Cost of the car
  • Cost of gas
  • Cost of insurance
  • Cost of maintenance

Indirect

  • Infrastructure
  • Costs of free parking
  • Cost of policing
  • Cost of sprawl

Running a car costs much more than people think — stalling the uptake of green travel

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01118-w

People overestimate how much their cars cost by half via these 4 factors: fuel, depreciation, repair, and tax and insurance.

The actual cost of a car can be as high as $1 million — and society pays for much of that | Salon.com

https://www.salon.com/2022/02/18/the-actual-cost-of-a-car-can-be-as-high-as-1-million-and-society-pays-for-much-of-that/

Typically, the driver of the car don’t bear the costs of driving. Society have to bear the rest.

The All-In Cost of Car Dependency 2022: How Driving Wrecks Your Finances (Without You Noticing) - YouTube - CityNerd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2rI-5ZFW1E

This video is a break down on how much owning a car is. He goes into different aspects of owning a car like depreciation, parking, gas, insurance and maintenance.

After 5 years, you lose 37% of your car’s value [5:06].

Who Pays for Roads?: How the “Users Pay” Myth Gets in the Way of Solving America’s Transportation Problems

https://uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/Who%20Pays%20for%20Roads%20vUS.pdf

Many people believe that drivers pay the full cost of the road through gas taxes. But this has never been true. General taxes paid by everyone covers them. In fact, income taxes and sales taxes cover them, not gas taxes.

Some more quotes from the study:

Governments spend more non-user tax dollars on highways than on transit, bicycling, walking and passenger rail travel, combined.

People who walk and bicycle pay their fair share for use of the transportation system.

The True Cost of Owning a Car | Credit Karma

https://www.creditkarma.com/auto/i/what-it-costs-own-car

Expenses like car insurance, gas and maintenance can drive up your monthly costs.