350htrr

Yes it sure does, up to a point... and it also depends on the price of the car you want to drive. IF it costs $10,000. a year (or put your own costs into the equation) to own and drive a car how long do you have to work to have that car...??? Well now,
if you make 10$ an HR it would take 1,000Hrs of work to have that car to use and not need to ride the bus.
if you make 20$ an HR it would take 500Hrs of work to have that car to use and not need to ride the bus.
if you make 40$ an Hr, it would take 250Hrs of work to have that car to use and not need to ride the bus...

So it would depend on how many Hrs you spend riding/waiting and the cost for the bus rides in a year as compared to how many Hrs of work you need to do to have that car, as to whether it's "worth" the extra wait and the bus riding and not having a car... and guess what, you would almost certainly still spend about the same amount of time driving your car/siting in traffic as you would have, getting there on the bus...

McBTC

True, true... it's a fictional narrative indulged in by about 4 people who use this sub-forum to engage in a social-political catharsis, motivated by issues that have zero to do with cycling or even commuting, which has its own sub-forum.

McBTC

...sure, sure but, not in the real world.

350htrr

THAT is, the real world, you do need to work, (most people do anyways), and the time spent working earning the $ to buy a car and insurance, and maintenance, and fuel... IS still time spent doing something most people do not really want to do,(that is why it's called working, not playing). It boils down to what you rather not be doing as much of, working extra to not ride the bus, or riding the bus and not need to work as much... and if you still work a full time job, then, you have the extra $$$ to do different things you want to do.

Walter S

tandempower

The following implicitly validates discrimination against non-motorists:
[quote]The end of your post implicitly blames cyclists for traffic congestion instead of motorists:
Plus you go ahead and throw in a passive-aggressive accusation at the end with an exclamation point:
Then there was the person on the LCF discussion forum who makes you feel like you're to blame for hiring discrimination against you and holding up traffic mostly consisting of people blocking entire lanes with their fat cars . . . Oh that was you!

Rollfast

Come on...I miss my border collie too, and that was 43 years ago.

Walter S

McBTC

You do have a point--e.g., if you bought a car $30k and drove it to work 5 days a week and sold it for $2K, 4 years later, that'd be ~$7K /yr in expenses not including operating costs, tolls and etc.-- all together, say $10K per year in transportation costs. Given personal and employment taxes you'd probably need to earn anywhere from $12-20K to afford that extra $10K compared to walking or cycling to work... depending on your total gross income, which at a lower wage rate would be and extra, ~$5.80 /hr. And, that's pretty much where the free market comes in... i.e., employers are willing to pay that much extra to enjoy the benefits of drawing on a labor pool that is larger than a bike ride or brisk walk away from the workplace.

Walter S

Rollfast

It's Sunday folks, if you aren't going to ride a bike there is still golf or preseason football or something *like potluck after the sermon maybe.

Why don't we start a thread called This is arguments, you want two doors down to your right?

tandempower

I see I was too optimistic to assume you would acknowledge the meanings of your words if I laid it out clearly enough for you.

tandempower

The 'labor pool' doesn't actually have the money to fund employer choice as you describe it. They are lent the money by making cars and selling them on credit so people will go get jobs to pay them off.

It is like printing money except what is being printed are financing agreements that can be traded so that financial institutions can borrow money against the paper, which they can then invest in business to hire people and pay off their cars. So people are funding their own jobs by buying cars, but ultimately every middle-man between them and their employer is getting a cut.

If we just made the economy more efficient, we would be able to accomplish everything we need with less resource waste, land environmental damage, less pavement/sprawl, less time spent working, etc. etc. Making the economy overblown by everyone driving everywhere for everything and paving and developing all the land to support it is just a way of converting more free time into money so our time will be managed instead of free. We're not actually getting more for our time and money; it just seems like it because the ratio of fat to meat is higher, so to speak.

Walter S

Rollfast

How do you make the economy more simple? And tone down the back and forth with Walter etc. please? This is a forum that is mostly about making personal choices, not taking over the world. It's not our right to dictate, only advise.

Even the Blues Brothers made their mission from God in a Plymouth Gran Fury.

350htrr

OK, now we are getting somewhere. Time is left, but time is money as they say, if it takes me

1Hr to bike to work on my bicycle but it only costs me 500$ a year, or
1/2Hr a day to take the bus/public transportation and costs me $1,500 a year, compared to
15minutes by car but it costs me $10,000 a year...

What actually will cost more in both time and $$$? I again will propose that transportation in a car will cost more, and take more time, when you add the extra time you MUST work to make the extra moneys you would need to achieve transportation by car, what would seem to get you a step ahead, but not really... JMO as I see it.you are actually/really a few steps behind, in time & money driving the car. Yes, out of the box thinking BUT quite logical... No?

Rollfast

I've never seen this with a bicycle, it takes a lot of money to buy tires, liners, slime sealant, parts and accessories (lights, horns, tanks, baskets, racks) and occasionally rims and truing...

The scale of maintaining a bike is almost on par with that of keeping up a car. Once you get to a certain point however and treat it right, either one will have stable operating costs, other than fuel in the case of the car. You have to keep both serviced regularly to achieve that and there are no guarantees.

And I have six bikes, No. 7 is actually for a relative when it's done. I've owned at least two dozen bikes in my life.

350htrr

I have owned 20 cars/trucks, 3 motorbikes & 2 bicycles... and the scale of upkeep on my cars is/was out of this world more expensive than the two bicycles... Just saying

$14,000 over the last 20 years for the bicycles...
$480,000+ for the last 40 years for my vehicles...

I wonder how may extra Hrs I worked just for my vehicle's compared to if I only used bicycles & public transport…

EDIT; OK I can't help it, I figured it out... 30$/Hr, 2,000 Hrs a year = 8 years out of my last 40 years working life I spent working, just to have vehicles...………
and, yes I know my numbers are NOT close to most peoples numbers, BUT, everyone who own/driver a vehicle has a number like that even tho it's smaller, most people just ignore it and only focus on the good part of owning a vehicle... 15 minutes to drive to work not 1Hr to ride to work or 1/2Hr on public transportation, both mush less $$$ overall.

McBTC

AAA puts the avg. operating cost at about 56¢ /mile.

350htrr

Hey, I guess I am doing "better" than I thought... having driven almost a 1,000,000 miles in my lifetime... I guess I am "emotionally attached to my cars"...…………..

Sir Lunch-a-lot

FWIW, I think I-Like-To-Bike - however brash he may come across - has a valid point: A lot of what is being thrown around here looks like conjecture and speculation rather than being solidly evidence based. While much of the conjecture "feels right" (and, in many cases, seems to me to be way off topic ), it may or may not have much basis in reality - though it would probably make for an illuminating study.

Anyway, I suggest that if we wish to continue discussing the socio-economic factors behind transportation choice that we start a thread for that. Otherwise, I would request that this thread remain focused on things to do with our emotional attachment to automobiles as it pertains to the journey/desire to go car free - if there indeed is anything more to be said on that topic.

Rollfast

I think you can still close your own threads as well. Saves wear and tear on the gods of mod.

LCF threads tend to move toward the emotional quickly.

Sir Lunch-a-lot

Good thought, but I can only find the option to delete it in "thread tools" (which, I would assume, is where it would be located).

350htrr

What happened in this thread happens in almost every other thread that people have opinions about... It expands, it changes/evolves, I would say if the mods were more strict about keeping things "on track", there would end up something like 50% of all threads being closed, or 50% of people being "banned". JMO as to how thing seem to work in my 6 years on here... If you enjoy the read keep on reading, for any particular thread, keep reading and maybe even say something, if you don't enjoy it, don't open said thread... it's that simple. Yes, the OP would like more "proper" input, but there's a certain flow that happens, and the subject can even get totally corrupted & that is when the mods need to step in JMO and I am sure others WILL, dis-agree.

I-Like-To-Bike

That figure includes fixed costs (depreciation, full coverage insurance, and financing) which does not provide "operating" (variable costs) per mile. That figure is calculated on the costs of trading in a relatively barely used car with only 75,000 miles on the odometer and buying a new car every 5 years, thus absorbing the high cost of depreciation. Anyone interested in saving money on car expenses could cut down both their fixed costs as well as the variable costs by buying and selling cars more economically than this scenario. They might even select an economy car, or even a low mileage used car and not trade it in every 5 years and take such a big hit on depreciation.

But why talk realistic dollars and cents calculations when there is an emotional attachment to inflating the expense of owning a car to serve an agenda?