Sparked by this article, which mentions the increasing number of car-less households in rural areas.
If you are old, and drive infrequently, at what point does it make sense to just quite owning a car and rely on UBER instead?
Basically never.
If you own a car, the marginal cost of owning it is pretty small, especially if you don't drive it much. You are basically only paying for car insurance, and I have to imagine car insurance is quite low for old people. Metrics like accidents by cohort are probably pretty good--the rate per mile is (likely) high, but the mileage is low. And old people drive like old people--slow and careful--no high-G turns, no abrupt moves.
As a teenager, many of my friends inherited the 'grandma car': usually an old, low mileage, usually well maintained high-end sedan. Either grandpa had died, or grandma was so old that she no longer drove and needed to be chauffered regardless.
If you elderly mother dies, you can sell the car, and take the cash. But cash is fungible, and that has to be split with siblings, or dealt with by the tax authorities. So it's often easier, psychologically, to keep the car. So there is no reasons to even suggest that grandma sell the car while alive, especially when there is a grandchild who can simply 'borrow' it on a semi-permanent loan.
So if you are old and rural and car-less, when are you giving up your car? You aren't. So whence come these wonderous carless rural households? Hint - they aren't wondrous. The statistic on households without cars always peeves me, because it conflates two phenomena--that of car-free households, and that of car-less households. The former does no lack for a car, while the latter does.
Car-less, you live multi-modal: walk, bike, bus, train, scooter, lyft, uber, rides from friends (1) (helps if you are willing to provide some gas money, something Venmo now makes trivial). But most of those forms of transport are urban: the old walking cities and their streetcar suburbs. Once you get into FHA designed (non-market) suburbia, the options are more limited.
So anyone who has a car and can keep it, does. So the only people in rural areas which lack a car are thus not the 'car-free', but rather the 'car-less'--the rural poor, once freed by automobility, are now trapped by auto-dependence. Historically, there might have been a general store (2), scattered about. But now, there is only Wal-Mart. Which everyone needs to drive to, or be driven to. It's seems unfair that Wal-Mart is the place where all the bus-lines go, but it makes a certain amount of sense-without an existing main street or shopping district, where else to get one-stop shopping done?
(1) In rural areas, the traditional form of 'ride-sharing' is called hitch-hiking. It was how my uncles got to and from the family farm to a town where they could actually catch a bus.
(2) Dollar General a notable exception.
If you are old, and drive infrequently, at what point does it make sense to just quite owning a car and rely on UBER instead?
Basically never.
If you own a car, the marginal cost of owning it is pretty small, especially if you don't drive it much. You are basically only paying for car insurance, and I have to imagine car insurance is quite low for old people. Metrics like accidents by cohort are probably pretty good--the rate per mile is (likely) high, but the mileage is low. And old people drive like old people--slow and careful--no high-G turns, no abrupt moves.
As a teenager, many of my friends inherited the 'grandma car': usually an old, low mileage, usually well maintained high-end sedan. Either grandpa had died, or grandma was so old that she no longer drove and needed to be chauffered regardless.
If you elderly mother dies, you can sell the car, and take the cash. But cash is fungible, and that has to be split with siblings, or dealt with by the tax authorities. So it's often easier, psychologically, to keep the car. So there is no reasons to even suggest that grandma sell the car while alive, especially when there is a grandchild who can simply 'borrow' it on a semi-permanent loan.
So if you are old and rural and car-less, when are you giving up your car? You aren't. So whence come these wonderous carless rural households? Hint - they aren't wondrous. The statistic on households without cars always peeves me, because it conflates two phenomena--that of car-free households, and that of car-less households. The former does no lack for a car, while the latter does.
Car-less, you live multi-modal: walk, bike, bus, train, scooter, lyft, uber, rides from friends (1) (helps if you are willing to provide some gas money, something Venmo now makes trivial). But most of those forms of transport are urban: the old walking cities and their streetcar suburbs. Once you get into FHA designed (non-market) suburbia, the options are more limited.
So anyone who has a car and can keep it, does. So the only people in rural areas which lack a car are thus not the 'car-free', but rather the 'car-less'--the rural poor, once freed by automobility, are now trapped by auto-dependence. Historically, there might have been a general store (2), scattered about. But now, there is only Wal-Mart. Which everyone needs to drive to, or be driven to. It's seems unfair that Wal-Mart is the place where all the bus-lines go, but it makes a certain amount of sense-without an existing main street or shopping district, where else to get one-stop shopping done?
(1) In rural areas, the traditional form of 'ride-sharing' is called hitch-hiking. It was how my uncles got to and from the family farm to a town where they could actually catch a bus.
(2) Dollar General a notable exception.
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