counterproductivity of driver culture
I'd seen some writing on ivan illich calculating the speed of a car after paying for it and gas and counting time spent in traffic and thought I'd look at present-ish day canada.
Running some quick numbers suggests riding a bike will probably save you at least a day of time a year on average for those living 4km from work after you've spend a month paying for a car.
used car cost: $4500
average national wage:$18.80
hours to pay for it at average Canadian wage:239.36
that's about 31.9 days spent doing nothing but getting the car.
the caa gives operating costs of 13.80 cents based on 18,000km a year for a cobalt lt, but I can't think of any reasons other than poor community planning that would require someone to put in that many kilometres(I guess people travel farther then they need when they believe it is easy for them to do so.) so I'll adjust that to a more reasonable and reasonably cycleable 2080km a year(8km for a 260 day work year).
That's about $287.04 a year to operate. or 15.268 hrs to earn that money.
then once you are in the car: The average Canadian spends close to 12 full days a year travelling between work and home
for those living 1-4km from their workplace the average round trip travel time is 33minutes(i was thinking 4km for my example but I'm willing to be generous here and use the average.)
that's 143 hrs a year based on a 260 day work year
That means after you've spent 31.9 days paying for the car your looking at about 6.55 days spent getting to work and back every year.(and we still need to pay for a licence, insurance and taxes for roads and spend time going to gas stations to fill up and I'm not sure if there stats include finding parking.)
"Beginner, short distance (say 10-15 miles): average speed 12 mph. Most cyclists can achieve 10-12 mph average very quickly with limited training"
So let's assume a city has reasonable cycling infrastructure that allows cyclists to reach beginner speeds of 16.09344 kph living 4 km(not an average of 1-4km) from work you are going to spend 129.25 hrs on your bike or 5.385 days.
A crude calculation is an $8000 average for a N.American to own and run a car: this accounts for the depreciation of the value of the vehicle. There are several ways to look at that savings. Short of a big raise, nobody is going to hand you that kind of money, year after year. As this is $8K saved off the top, it is as good as something closer to $11K before tax. $8K/yr is also enough to carry another $150K mortgage, or perhaps more if you account for money put into a mortgage having a different tax status (which I admit general ignorance of).
In addition to eventually owning $150K more home than you would have, you also have been able to live closer to work, because you had more money to play with. A hell of a lot more, if you've avoided two cars. You've been able to live in the city for the same cost as living in the suburbs, because you realized that moving to the suburbs is a false economy, so long as you were not set on owning a car.
According to Statistics Canada, you are thus likely not to have gained the extra fifteen pounds that ex-urbanites have on urbanites in Canada, primarily because you have not made the majority of your trips sitting on your @$$. You are healthier, likely less prone to depression or aggravations of other mental and physical ailments, and because your commute is shorter you have also been able to spend more time with the people, or doing the things, you love. There is a reason that the politics of anger are more successful in the 905, and 'Ford Country', than the 'old City of Toronto'.
Since I have tossed the car, I lost fifteen pounds, am happier, and have a far better 'portfolio' with less effort. People don't get it. Perhaps it is a good thing for me that they don't: if more Toronto households had another $300K mortgage to play with we'd have to deal with Vancouver prices!
I do not disagree with the numbers above. Yet when you put them to practice for a person who lives in Toronto and who's family income is under $50K it is a challenge in many different ways.
It is well documented that the people who work at the lower paying jobs in Toronto tend to live the farthest away from them because of housing costs. It is not unheard of these people spending one to one and half hours on transit getting to their jobs. These also tend to be distances that are too far for the same to commute by bicycle. Many of you do but think of someone who has done hard menial labour all day. The last thing they want to do is spend 45 to 90 minutes riding a bike to get home. I currently ride 13kms one way but would have serious thoughts about not riding if my ride got further than 15-20kms. My TTC commute time, if everything times out well, is almost two hours a day for the same trip.
All of these calculations need to consider time factors and the life outside of work, things like family etc.
Consider someone spending 3 hours a day on transit. They end up spending ((52weeks -2 for vacation) x 5days) x 3 hours) over 32 days commuting. Essentially equal to the cost of owning a car.
So now with a car they can be more like the average Canadian and spend 19 fewer days commuting.
The question now becomes more complex. Does one want to lose money commuting with said car and get more time for life's other things?
My argument would not be for more people buying cars but the need to realize that the choice is not that simple. We have a transit system that hails from the stone age. I have visited other American cities where comparable commutes to those I do in Toronto are done in half or three quarters of the time.
In the short term, while we wait for transit city, we could cut commute times by designating certain lanes as express bus routes for use by buses that would hustle. This could almost be literally done overnight. Mix this with some things like Bixi we could really get people moving.
The TTC is aptly denigrated as 'Take The Car'. It was once true that it was useful downtown and along the subway lines, but even that is less true as the crowding gets worse, the physical infrastructure gets older and prone to breakdown, and the subway and streetcars are filled beyond capacity long before they reach the core during rush hour. Someone once said we have a great transit system for a N.American city... thirty years ago.
I appreciate the brutality of the economic, class and social reasons that drive people to car ownership who can little afford it. It is a shame that most of our peers are blind to it. My economic argument did presume that one was able to choose where to live/work with some freedom, and that is not often enough the case. That said, I think the argument shows that there is reason to make some sacrifice of perceived convenience, both because of the savings and health benefits, and because driving too is becoming nearly as unpleasant as transit in this city.
I also did not account for transportation costs when not owning a car. For myself, that is about one-third what I would spend on ownership: this includes transit, taxis and Autoshare. On the other hand, I save $100/mo. by cycling, rather than going to a gym. Each person should make their own 'back of the envelope' calculation, taking into account their other costs and benefits, but start with the $8K/yr basic cost of car ownership. People will tell you, "I already own the car", but forget about the fact of depreciation. The main problem is people do not take a proper accounting of the costs at all!
Toronto's population is 2.5 million. I'll take a wild guess and say that there's perhaps a million cars here. Suppose all the money spent on cars was instead taxed away and spent on cycling and public transit provision. At $8,000 apiece, that comes to eight billion dollars per year, every year.
Spending eight billion per year on public transit and cycling would get us Transit City style LRT on every arterial road, fully-separated Dutch-style cycle infrastructure on all arterial roads, all the planned subway extensions and enough money to purchase and operate enough LRT vehicles, legacy streetcars and busses that there would always be a seat available even during peak hours.
Sounds nice, doesn't it?
What is the opportunity cost of not having a car? Your argument makes sense if it's all hunky dory on a bicycle today.
What is you can't take that job 30km away that pays 15% more and increases seniority?
Lets face it, the breadth of the job pool possible with a bicycle is significantly smaller than the car's.
Mobility is the hallmark of the north american worker. Most people will need a car, everything is laid out like that. It is a slippery and unfortunate slope of car dependency.
Yes, @dances_with_traffic, that is all too true, but it is not invariably true. My point is that people do not even ask themselves if they can make a 'work-around' to car ownership, or to owning a second. In Tokyo presently, but when I lived downtown, but worked in Mississauga, I was able to make the 'work-around' and far happier (and wealthier) for it. It is a question of making your commute work. If you can commute without a car, you do not need a car: you can use taxis, transit and car-share with abandon, and still spend much less than on ownership. Sadly, if you do not live in a pre-WWII neighbourhood, and work along a decent transit corridor, the commute more and more begs for a car.