Who needs ’em? Of course the soccer mom and sales folk amongst us really “need” the perpetual motion of a second car. But what about the married schlep who walks to work? Or the enterprising couples that work together? For them a second car may be nothing more than an inconvenience and an expense. Some folks in high places (and low places) say you should go for an alternative that conserves resources and costs less. Fair enough. But is that always a rational choice?
I disagree with the PC folk and their anti-car orientation on this one. Like most of you, cars are a fun filled adventure for me. But for the automotively apathetic out there I will concede that a car is essentially a tool. A very unique and important tool. It’s a point-to-point transportation appliance that is mostly safe, very comfortable, and simple to operate. Let’s assume that a Toyota would be the best type of car for those who simply don’t give a damn because in many cases, it really is. What really competes with the Toyota that doesn’t have four wheels?
Motorcycles? Definitely more fun . . . but usually not as safe, comfortable or simple to operate. One bad accident and you’re toast. The same is true with bikes. I will say from my experiences that they can work well in places with little rain and small commuting distances. Weather’s a bitch. Families require toting and the only way you’re going to get four people on a Trek is if the handlebars are tied to a trapeze.
Public transportation? Again, sure if it’s near work and play. But otherwise it’s neither convenient nor comfortable in most places. If you take the waiting and the sheer number of crazies into consideration, public transportation is usually a non-starter for most folks. Especially for the suburban folk.
So, let’s see. Overall America is unique in that much of our country isn’t really suitable to any of these alternatives. But I’ll tell you what is. A second car. A third car. A fourth car. Lots and lots of cars. But for those who don’t need one every day, why not share? Financially, it can pay off for about ten folks in the same neighborhood to own three or four types of second vehicles for occasional use. In fact I’ve crunched the numbers and so long as the maintenance and driving styles are on the normal side, it works great.
If you need hauling or towing a few times a year one of the vehicles can be a pickup. For part-time folk, and those on a budget, a beater for an occasional A to B jaunt is all you really need. Parents and friends come to town? Get access to a large car or a minivan. The real trick (and this is the big “but” in the equation) is to share the costs with others who live in walking distance and have similar driving habits and maintenance standards.
That’s tough. Even when $4 gas encouraged this type of conservation, most folks ruled out car sharing. There’s a lot of planning involved and the “unknown” is always a fear factor.
Like most things in life though, you do get an a lot of benefits if you really do think it through. Fixed costs decline substantially (insurance, depreciation, purchase price, opportunity costs) while your variable costs for the most part remain the same. Newton’s first law of motion also helps. A car that is constantly running, and stays running, will have fewer mechanical issues per mile you drive it than one that just sits around and collects dust.
Then there’s the reduction in maintenance that can come from using the same type of engine and powertrain in multiple types of vehicles. Familiarity not only breeds acceptance. It also lowers repair bills and let’s you find small problems before they get big. Especially if someone else can find them first. From my vantage point, running cost for a shared second vehicle that isn’t “always” needed will usually cost far less than owning it alone.
A second car is much, much cheaper than divorce.
However, regarding the point about large specialized vehicles like pickups and vans, many people would do well to remember that there are companies that rent those out.
I’d rather not have a second car because it’s just another added expense. But I also don’t want to have to drive my wife all over the place, and I don’t think she’d want to do the same for me. To try to minimize expenses, I actually own two Jetta TDIs. They share a lot of similar parts even though they are 3 years apart in age, and use the same filters, oil, etc. So that’s one way to save, just buy two cars that are the same.
Someone in our neighbourhood has 3 Kia Spectras that are all the same body style, so I guess they have the same idea.
“Financially, it can pay off for about ten folks in the same neighborhood to own three or four types of second vehicles for occasional use.”
Sounds good in theory, but try finding ten or more highly responsible, easy to get along with, geographically stable people to share an asset with. Some ideas are very hard to implement in practice. Check out the history of communes for real world examples. I count myself very lucky to have a few local friends with which to swap occasional use tools like a tile saw, utility trailer, hydraulic press, lathe and welding rig … but it has taken years to build this informal network, it still is way under 10 people, and doesn’t include high cost, high liability motor vehicles.
Rental agencies and car sharing services (Zipcar, et al) are the real world providers of low cost occasional use vehicles. Need to bring a load of stuff back from Lowes? They will rent you a truck on the spot.
If you live in a ‘normal’ semi-urban location, you pretty much need a second car. Growing up, my dad had to take small business trips to nearby cities, and my mom worked. On top of all of this, there was the simple round of school, soccer practice, etc.
What made the most sense was having a ‘good’ car, and an old, high mileage but still-reliable-enough car to put the miles on.
A guy on our block has a van and three Cavaliers. One of Cavaliers seems always to sit on blocks and I don’t think it’s always the same one.
Huge lots and zoning rules make a car per driving age member of the household almost mandatory. I wonder if building houses the short side toward the road and allowing small stores and shops in the residential area would help.
I’d rather a third car. Which I have. And it keeps the wife happy. Isn’t that what (married) life is all about?
It does take a while. I will give you that. But I can see it happening in a multitude of places.
A lot of folks live in older neighborhoods and far out from the cities. My neighborhood for example has 23 houses. The overwhelming majority of people here have remained in their homes since I moved here back in 1996. I know them. They know my kids.
Many of them buy vehicles that they only use for their real purposes 1% of the time (pickups, SUV’s, minivans). Gas is cheap now… but last year it was a far different story.
I can see having three to four older vehicles that would be parked in the middle and used by whoever needed them at the time. If you eliminate depreciation (by buying 2000 to 2002 model year vehicles) and substantial up front costs from the equation (again by buying used), the real long-term costs are thousands less than owning outright.
I can see it working in many different places. Apartment buildings where the folks know each other quite well. Suburbia where this holds true as well. Heck, any place where the social network has been familiarized and firmly established.
The idea of a local car cooperative intrigues me and it offers an advantage over a rental service… Using the vehicle represents taking advantage of something you already own and there is incentive to take care of an asset of which you are part owner.
However, a situation similar to the one you describe, where people don’t really need that second car all the time… the good car/old car strategy of mikeolan would work pretty well and with a minimum of hassle and expense.
So, it seems to me where this co-op idea really works, in the suburbs, is that it frees people to buy two small cars for their everyday use and use large co-op vehicles as necessary. Whereas today, a suburbanite might buy a compact and a crewcab pickup because he needs a crewcab pickup often enough that he’d rather not rent, a co-op might make it possible to buy two compacts and simply use the co-op vehicle as necessary.
The Internet also makes it much easier to manage the allocation and maintenance of the resources.
—
John Horner,
For a venture like this, a formal partnership would be required.
Even then, the idea requires that people build good relationships with neighbors… which is something that’s becoming increasingly rare.
I’m actually looking for a 3rd car at the moment. My wife and I live in rural WV and work different schedules (her nights in one town, me days in another). We experienced the single car suffering when I hit a deer with my car recently. Our 05 MINI Cooper S and 07 VW GTI are incredible daily drivers as far as getting good gas mileage (both are 30+ regularly), being practical hatches, and being fun to drive. I’m looking at a 2000 4Runner as a 3rd vehicle for light towing, camping/mtbiking, winter excursions across the App. Mountains, and a spare vehicle for when the GTI and MINI inevitably need maintenance. Basically, the 4Runner fits every need that the GTI and MINI fail miserably at while only being a $9k expense and likely very little maintenance due to not being a daily driver.
As someone who ditched the second car years ago but is now reconsidering as his kids reach driving age, let me throw another wrinkle into this.
A guys comes into the dealership where I worked in my younger years, asking for a $10,000 used car for his wife. He drives a $40,000 Volvo, so safety is important. He just can’t afford two Volvos right now. Kid sells him a slightly-used 5-star rated subcompact, and six months later sees it on the front page: Tragic accident kills mother of two. It was a relatively minor side impact that looked survivable, if only for a little more steel.
So the question now is, do I put my kids in a 2,000 pound tin can while I drive a 4,000 SUV, because it is “just a second car”? Or do I switch to two 3,000 pound cars, just like the other guy probably wishes he’d switched to two $25,000 cars?
Don, interesting idea. But that’s the equivalent of saying…
“If lightning struck once near my home should I spend $25,000 protecting myself from lightning?”
You should definitely drive something you regard as safe. But you only need about a tenth of that outlay to find something that is safe and reliable. Think about cars driven by older folks. Heck, even a midsized domestic that is seven to nine years old is safe.
A Geo Metro? An underdesigned early 90’s compact? Now that’s an entirely different story.
1) Having to have separate insurance on every car is a ripoff. Insurance should be on the driver with a small rider regarding the value of the car. If you have 4 cars and 2 drivers, you should pay for 2 policies. As it stands you can afford to buy a ratty old pickup for all the crummy odd jobs, but insurance is ridiculous. Same with a sports car
2) The problem with joint ownership is that your partners may not take care of it (See: Tragedy of the Commons). I had part ownership of a 3/4 ton GMC pickup and one of the other partners ruined the engine…in a way that a careful, technically knowledgeable person wouldn’t have.
We have a good community in our culdesac, three families. We’re retired, the other two couples have kids growing and jobs, but we share similar politics and we get together now and then around a campfire or just to talk. But I couldn’t see even as tight a group as us sharing vehicles. Heck, we don’t even do communal dump runs.
If anyone cares, here’s my multi-car pickle. I want to drive a sports car, something I can take to the track (current car, AW11 MR2, probably getting a 370Z). However, I have a jet ski that I like to take out at least once a week. Sports cars, other than Subarus or Evos, don’t really tow well.
So we got my wife a used Rav4 – it gets 30 mpg, but it also tows a jet ski. Here’s where the trouble comes in – my wife doesn’t want to drive a stick (and if I do get the Z, I’m not sure I’d trust her in it). So if I want to take out the jet ski, and she needs the car, I’m S.O.L.
Well I’d love to just be able to rent a pickup for conflicting weekends; at $100/weekend, about 6 weekends a year, it would be 4 years before I could even buy a beater truck to do the towing, and that doesn’t include maintenance, insurance, etc.. Perfect. The problem is that car rental places don’t rent vehicles with trailer hitches. You have to go to industrial rental for that, which is more expensive, farther away, and generally more of a PITA.
The moral of the story: a third vehicle may be the only reasonable option if you don’t want to drive the tow vehicle or an automatic yourself full time, you want to tow once a week, and your wife doesn’t want to drive a stick ;).
On the topic, having a neighborhood tow/hauler makes a huge amount of sense. I would pitch in for one without question, but I do see the problems with communal property – breakage, maintenance, lack of availability, etc. In my case, car rentals have been a great solution. Trucks and SUVs are cheap if you only rent them when you need them, and then you don’t have to worry about cleaning them out. In fact, they’d be the perfect solution… unless, of course, you need to occasionally tow… :p
Car ownership has many reasons – utility is only one of them. My wife and I work together but have two cars – one is sensible and gets us to work, the other we own purely for the fun of it.
There is really nothing un-PC about it as the fun car gets very few miles.
I have a second car to back up my WRX. It’s a ’91 Integra LS with a 5-speed and only 115K or so on the ticker.
I’m getting rid of it. Why? I like driving the WRX too much, and the Integra just sits there collecting dust, waiting for my dad to call me and borrow it for a day here and there when his car’s in the shop.
If you live in a ‘normal’ semi-urban location, you pretty much need a second car
And that’s the problem: the design of the community, not the second car. If we designed communities sensibly (and no, “sensible” is not a twenty-plus-floor condo or a fifty-plus block) neither car nor public transit would be nearly the issue it is.
But we don’t. We build either big lots, or superdense apartment blocks and we put both miles away from stores and employment, and we make it as hard as possible—if not outright dangerous—to get from and to anywhere.
The car isn’t the enemy, it’s the symptom. Terrible urban planning is the real problem.
Hey Steven,
The story about the accident wasn’t really meant to justify a bunker mentality. I was just musing at how easily we lower our standards because it is “just a second car”, even though we would never say “it’s just my family” riding in it. Witness the number of driveways which have a Yaris parked next to a Sienna.
You make a valid point about buying an older car if safety on a budget is the primary objective. A 2002 Impala might be a creaky, leaky old horse with all the panache of a $15 toaster, but for occasional use it actually makes a fair bit of sense.
“The car isn’t the enemy, it’s the symptom. Terrible urban planning is the real problem.”
As someone who cut his driving in half (and eliminated the second car for several years) I agree 100%. Young couples these days are instinctively drawn to the remotest suburban jungles, where cheap square footage and faux quality are all the rage.
I used to be one of them, but I now live on a quiet older street with mature trees, only eight minutes from downtown. I drive an SUV that burns less gas than the average Prius, because it only goes about 18,000 kilometers a year. A bad day for me is spending 15 minutes in traffic.
When people cite “lifestyle” as the reason for living in the outskirts, I can’t help but chuckle to myself.
Sorry but car co-operatives won’t work.
“The Tragedy of the Commons” is an influential article written by Garrett Hardin and first published in the journal Science in 1968.[1] The article describes a dilemma in which multiple individuals acting independently in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long term interest for this to happen.[2]”
Outside of a few Eastern cities built on the European model, the US is the first nation in the history of the planet to be built around the private automobile. It’s also very clear now that this model is unsustainable, there is no future in private motoring, not the way we do it now in any case. America will ultimately transition back to something like the pre-1940 version. This transition will not take place until people have no choice, and it will be slow, painful, costly and probably bloody.
Hello, psarhjinian
Not to be a “kunstler”, but the autocentric environment – especially the inches between the human ears – is the problem. But the bad planning is not accidental; it has been actively promoted and subsidized at the behest of both governement and industry to promote single-family homeownership and create fortunes in highway infrastructure construction and maintenance; just follow the money. (There are plenty of books documenting GM/Philips/Goodyear’s nefarious trusts). Talk about malinvestment; I grew up in Detroit, and the sprawl in just the last 10 years is horrifying. What were once nice, smaller towns are now horribly congested exurbs. Everything – and everyone – is an hour away when I visit there.
I spent 15 years in Boston, mostly because I wanted to live someplace as different from Detroit as possible. Sure, we had a car, but only for fun, grocery shopping, getting away for weekends and vacations, and visiting our friends who lived in the far suburbs. Never used it to commute; it was a short walk to the subway in our medium-density neighborhood (mostly 2- and 3-family houses). Between walking, riding the subway, buses, streetcars, commuter rail, and Amtrak, I ran a regional business for 8 years and never used a car. (We even had an office bike for nearby projects). It was a great lifestyle. True freedom. Of course, people will pay a real premium for living car-free; we were priced out of homeownership there.
Look at the most expensive cities to live in: Boston, NYC, SF, DC, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver (not LA!); all places with at least decent, if not great, transit.
Moved to wife’s hometown of Cleveland. Bought a great old house in Lakewood ( a dense inner suburb, mostly single-family homes; 52K people in 6 Sq. Mi.), can walk everywhere, can drive anywhere fast (15 min. downtown), and only got a 2nd car when I took a job that was not downtown, so I could not use what transit we do have here, which is not nearly as good as Boston but beats Detroit by a mile.
The question is, how do we retrofit the last several years of malinvestment in public and private infrastructure that has created an inherently unsustainable situation? A lot of us are working on this very problem. And non-polluting cars are not the answer; sprawl is the destroyer, even in a ZEV. (Ask any resident of Riverside, CA how they like their commute). If someone can afford a huge house on a huge lot in the country and afford the time and money to drive? That is their priviledge. Living in a Manhattan co-op? Same thing. But for most of us, I think, a good option (one that is hard to find) lies somewhere in between: a place with decent schools where we can own a not-too-big home; walk, bike, or ride a local “circulator” bus for our daily needs; and commute to work by transit. If this choice were more prevalent, then we could go back to owning cars for their absolute best purpose: THE JOY OF DRIVING! Because it’s FUN, when you don’t HAVE to do it…
Marquis Dee
Skor:
Just like that, huh? Bummer. Good thing the Mayans predicted the world will end in 2012.
Does this eventual transition also entail a sudden re-urbanization as we all abandon the suburbs? (I’m picture the 50’s, only backwards) If so, I’d like someone to tell me NOW, so I can purchase real estate downtown before the other 230 million people move back to the cities.
Just for fun, can you explain to me how it’s “very clear” that a nation built around the private automobile is going to destabilize and just quit using them?
Theoretically, this NCV plan (Neighborhood Communal Vehicle) would work great for lawn mowers, snow blowers, chain saws, and so on.
In reality, I don’t see much merit to this plan because I don’t see much in the way of communal living. That doesn’t surprise me.
Cars aren’t point to point transportation appliances when you use them for motorsports.
skor :
April 21st, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Sorry but car co-operatives won’t work.
Zipcar and similar companies are actively demonstrating that car-sharing works quite well.
Steven Lang: The same is true with bikes. I will say from my experiences that they can work well in places with little rain and small commuting distances.
Bikes work fine in the rain (you just get a little wet), and mine seems to do perfectly well for a 30 mile round-trip commute.
So, what exactly IS the imbedded number of gallons in a car?
On the one hand, the greenies always want us to trade down to a small car, and CRUSH our SUV’s. That implies a really low number of gallons used to make a car. If they are correct, then what is the problem with having a second car? Is it because the second car necessarily means more gasoline use? Or is it the need for more gasoline use that necessarily results in the second car?
Car sharing companies are great ideas where they work at a profit. Good idea.
Truck rental is often touted as a reason the privately owned pickup or SUV is just stupid. In most cases the stupidity is on the part of the touter, not the owner who likely got to the right conclusion without having to do the math. Renting more than a couple times a year actually costs more than driving an SUV or pickup. As a spare vehicle, the truck makes even MORE sense. But hey, I am talking reason to combat emotion, and that’s just stupid.
When two of your three vehicles are paid off its makes alot of sense to keep them around (provided you have the space). In my case I need a truck to tow my boat on the weekends, but at 13 mpg it doesn’t make any sense as daily driver so we keep an older Passat around for that duty. Now, technically we could sell the Passat and take the train/bus combo to work, however we live in South FL where public transportation is a joke and communities are built MILES from the downtown area. Thus me and my wife have THREE vehicles.
When I visited Europe a few summers back I was amazed at how easily you could live car-free in those cities (Paris/London) thanks to the awesome public transportation. I think the only city in the US that works that well is New York due the subway system and the mix of residential and commercial buildings on the same block.
skor and Marquis Dee, you have it all wrong. Americans buy a house in the suburbs to have some control over who they live near and to provide some level of isolation from people they don’t want as neighbors. The patterns of land use, street layout, inconvenient public transportation, school district boundaries, etc. that isolate home owners from underclass renters is purely intentional with literally a buy in by home owners. In addition, most of the people I know actually like driving a car where they want when then they want. What they don’t like is population density getting so high that traffic prevents one from driving where they want when they want.
Stuart Dean, I fully agree. Fixed cost for liability insurance plus vehicle registration is the main reason I sold my beater 2nd car. The extra cost never made sense to me because I can only drive one car at a time.
I couldn’t imagine sharing a car with anyone but my wife (but only because she is… LOL). People just don’t take care of their stuff these days, and I do. My neighbors can’t event take care of their yards. Screw that collective idea.
And I do have a third vehicle as well… it’s a Jeep! It’s my weekend/ off-road toy. Right now she’s sitting home in the garage covered with last weekend’s mud, all alone. :(
“Sorry but car co-operatives won’t work.
Zipcar and similar companies are actively demonstrating that car-sharing works quite well.”
Zipcar isn’t a co-op, it is a different way of doing rentals. The Zipcar model makes sense. The co-operative ownership / partnership proposed by Mr. Lang isn’t as viable as Zipcar.
@ George B:
Controlling who your neighbors are is more a function of real estate cost than of urban vs. suburban. I’m sure that a person who lives in a 10 million dollar duplex in Manhattan has more “control” over his neighbors than you do residing in out Faux Stucco Estates.
@JuniorMint: The nation isn’t going to destabilize, it is already experiencing a major upheaval and it looks like it’s far from over. There are a number of factors that are now converging that will cause a major shift in the “American Dream”. For one thing, our days of revolving credit nation seem to be over — permanently. Secondly, the US seems to have lost a large amount of its overseas influence and power. Them thar backward folks in places like Yurp just ain’t all that impressed anymore. Thirdly, the population of the third world continues to explode, placing ever increasing demands on finite resources, like oil. There will be fluctions, but from here on out, the real price of oil will trend higher. It’s just not going to be possible for people to drive 200 mile round trips to get to their jobs from their particle board specials out in Shitzburg. That is the long term reality of it, and no amount of dreaming about hydrogen or EV’s is going to change it. People will cope by exchanging the Escalade for an Elantra, after that they will trade their homes out in the Xburbs for something closer to work. Cities and first ring burbs, will experience growth, while the xburbs will dry up and blow away. The people left in rural areas will be people who have a reason to be there, like farmers, ranchers and miners. This is not my fantasy or desire, it is the reality of where we are heading.
“the remotest suburban jungles, where cheap square footage and faux quality are all the rage”
“their particle board specials out in Shitzburg”
Hope it doesn’t rain while your noses are turned up so high.
“I was amazed at how easily you could live car-free in those cities (Paris/London) thanks to the awesome public transportation. I think the only city in the US that works that well is New York due [to] the subway system and the mix of residential and commercial buildings on the same block.”
And mainly because New York’s population density is far greater than other American cities. NY is atypical. Very atypical.
“Terrible urban planning is the real problem”
Ah, yes, we need more central control. Without it, people will live anywhere they please! Actually, there’s been a large-scale experiment in comprehensive planning: in East Germany under the Communists. Lots of state-built apartment towers in “planned” urban setting. Strangely, however, once the regime toppled, the apartment dwellers bugged out as fast as possible. Mostly to get a little house with a bit of dirt around it. And a car that wasn’t a centrally-planned Trabant.
@50merc:
The only reason you can “live anywhere you please” is because of central planning. The native Americans didn’t build the interstate you ride on daily, that would be the federal government. The federal government built all those interstates out in the red states with tax money they squeezed out of the blue state elitists you despise. Fact is that the northeastern states send more money to Washington than they get back. The “freedom loving real Americans” out in the red states typically get more money from the feds than they put in. Your “free” lifestyle really is free because you ain’t paying for it, I am. I’ve always been amazed by the ingratitude of welfare queens.
Skor I pretty much agree with your assessment of the future. Anyone who thinks the earth has infinite resources, infinite real estate, and has the potential for infinite economic growth clearly doesn’t spend enough or any time reflecting on the world they live in. The tough thing to nail down though is time frame. Like when they thought oil was going to run out in the 1880s because West Pennsylvania was the “only place in the world that had it”, and that turned out to be a little uninformed. Or when whalers kept whaling because the bounty of the sea was “endless”. So is it a good time to buy inner-ring real estate? Could be a long investment if you get the timing wrong. Is it a good time to buy a 1,100 HP Shelby Ultimate Aero TT because you might as well enjoy the fun while it lasts? I would if I could :)
@flomulgator: Just when, exactly, all this is going to happen beats the shit out of me. If I knew the answer to that question I could become a billionaire overnight. The people who bought houses out in the xburbs aren’t just going to say, “Yup, guess I’m an idiot for buying this place.” People will resist right up until the bitter end. The McMansions will remain occupied until the flat panel goes dark, and the jacuzzi crashes through the floor of the rotting deck. Like I said before, this lifestyle is not sustainable long term. The transition to our new lifestyle will lurch and sputter and heave and lurch some more. It’s going to be ugly and painful, that’s about all I can be certain of.
My fiance and I own three cars. She has a 2007 Mazda 3 s. I have a ’98 Honda Prelude, and an ’01 Saturn SL1 (both are paid off). The Saturn was doing daily-driver drudgery for me until its transmission blew up. I’d originally purchased the Prelude as a project, but it has since taken over as my transport to work.
For what the Prelude cost and how cheap its insurance is, it’s not inconvenient at all, despite that people try to break into it constantly– twice in the past few months, unsuccessfully. Hondas are a big target around here. It’s damn annoying, because if they can’t get in, they vandalize your car instead.
Anyway, I’d love to just have two cars, or just one, but we work too far apart, and she doesn’t drive stick
Isn’t that Enzo Ferrari holding the bike?
Ah, yes, we need more central control. Without it, people will live anywhere they please! Actually, there’s been a large-scale experiment in comprehensive planning
Yes, yes, raise the spectre of communism whenever someone dares suggest Americans adopt a sense of social responsibility. I suppose that roads, potable water and sewers are all tools of communist oppression and that real Americans dig holes to crap in because that’s the individualist way.
You’ll note that I explicitly advised against “stuff people into apartment blocks” kind of housing because it doesn’t work. What we need is something where people actually want and can live, with commerce and residential spaces integrated and easy to get to, instead of apartment blocks, “Agrestic”-style suburbs and big-box stores that you cannot walk between, let alone to. Sensible urban planning would obviate not only traffic and fuel problems, but would reduce the pressure on public transit as well.
If you look at the downtowns of most smaller towns and cities, you’ll see a more-or-less idea form of development: boulevards of stores, surrounded by medium-density housing and the occasional higher-density (4-6 story) rental block. Instead of walling people off in huge surburban lots that isolate people, you have a community that actually encourages interaction and commerce between citizens and business.
But such a system requires planning and forethought. It’s also not as cheap to build, so developers don’t like it, and thusly they won’t be making McMansions. Finally, it’s not as tax-revenue-friendly (lots of services for that kind of density, and no big-block stores that net big bills) so city councils don’t like them, either.
I’m all for freedom to live where you choose, but the suburban lifestyle is heavily subsidized and it’s about time we asked why we’re building them when they’re good for everyone except the people who live in them in the long term.
Oh, for goodness sake, the point isn’t communism, it’s that to keep people from living where they please (such as a one-family house with a patch of dirt around it) there have to be constraints on their choices. And the commies are masters at constraining individual choice.
The affordable personal-use automobile demolished the old time/distance limits. Ever since, planners have been pining for the good old days when trolley lines defined the limits of urban expansion.
Sneering at “McMansions” or their residential equivalent, the Cadillac Escalade, is no way to get their proud owners to surrender political power to planners so the latter can compel elitist aesthetic standards.