Statistics from Steve Sattler:
WHAT? New Zealand beats us on cars per 1,000 residents!
Intolerable! You people better get busy out there! Remember what Dale Earnhart said...
"Second place is the first loser!"
Oh, the shame...
It's all those NYC people who don't drive!
York1 John
And the environmentalist says "Bully for them!"
York1 It's all those NYC people who don't drive!
Man, if I lived in the City I wouldn't drive either, owning a car there (depending on the borough, of course) is more trouble than it's worth.
And New York's mass transit is pretty good anyway, so in many cases you don't need a car to begin with.
I knew a woman who used to live in Manhattan. She paid over $3,000.00 a month just to park her car at her apartment. Then there's the car itself and it's related costs. All that would sure pay for a lot of taxis. But "I like the convenience," she said.
The rich are different from you and me- F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Yes, they have more money- Ernest Hemingway.
54light15But "I like the convenience," she said.
I assure you it's convenient to have a car if you live in Manhattan and go one of a thousand different places beyond practical cost-effective taxi range ... even if you could stand to be crammed into a wretched back seat and listen to Somali music as you repeatedly jerk to a stop in traffic. There is a Hampton Jitney, but it won't get you to your cottage ... or even close. Most of the places you actually want to go in areas like Scarsdale are far away from the train station, and prior to Uber the cab service could be wretched if indeed present at all. If you are truly 'rich' you'll have a staff, and a winter rat or something that they can drive to get you. But most mere Manhattanites don't work on that level.
Sometimes not as different as you might think. Remember the joke about the Manhattanite who walked into her bank asking to borrow $10,000? When asked for collateral, she offered her Rolls-Royce Phantom, about a $300,000 car at the time. The bank looked at the LTV, quietly agreed, and made arrangements to keep the car in careful climate-controlled storage to protect their investment.
A couple of months later, the woman comes in and pays off the note. "Why did you need to borrow money for so short a time?"
"I don't need money. I went to Europe for a couple of months. Interest on your loan was considerably cheaper than I'd have had to pay for inside storage and security on my car in a garage all that time..."
It is convenient to have a car. I live in a big city and need a car for my work which is mostly out of town and to keep the insurance on my old cars valid as I can't use a classic for daily use. But having said that, I do not drive in downtown Toronto for any reason, the traffic is maddening. I have a Presto card, similar to an Oyster and it works well for me considering that the 504 King streetcar stops right across the street.
1970 - 1996 I lived in Manhattan and worked 1971 - 1996 at an office close to the Whita Plains North Station. I sold my car, driving from my vacated Westmont, IL, apartment to Cambridge, MA, where a friend wished to buy my Corvair, then going by train to my new Manhattan apartment. I used public trainsit and trains and occasionally buses 98% of the time. But two or three times a year I rented a Herz car for one-to-three days.
It does have to be said that keeping a car, particularly a large car, in Manhattan is an excessive expense, often fraught with the rigmarole of having to arrange hours and even days in advance when you're actually expecting to start driving the thing.
It also needs to be said that there is little reason to live in Manhattan and pay high gamed prices for rent or property when you could live across the river on two acres with trees and cats, and be reliably crossing York Avenue at 71st to get to the crosstown bus in eleven minutes from your driveway, most of the day. Of course a large part of this hinged on access to the New York Hospital staff garage, but the trick would work just as effectively for, say, the sort of large parking facility every block or so that one finds along parts of the riverfront in Memphis.
Of course when everyone so situated wants to travel at the same time, you get some peculiar flow-control effects. If I left Englewood at 5:55 in the morning, I'd be in the garage about 6:05. If I left at 6:00, I'd start to hit bridge traffic and it might take half an hour to make the trip. If I left at 6:05, the bridge traffic would delay me into the East River traffic, which would delay me into the Triboro traffic ... and it would be fortunate for me to get in by 8:30 or so.
And if I left around 9:00 I'd be there around 9:10.
Mass transit on Manhattan is a wonderful thing; there were a select few reasons to drive to midtown (usually to minimize dwell going multiple places close to, say, the Hippodrome garage) but you have to be prepared to drive really, really well and have plenty of shp at your disposal to do this most of the day, and have the correct sort of New York attitude regarding other drivers, alluvial shoals of pedestrians, and various sorts of parked or abruptly moving opportunities for disaster. Like driving an English car, you'd better relish the adventure far more than the 'transportation'.
The existence of Uber and Lyft has revolutionized need for a car on Manhattan still further, as did -- for a while, at least -- the revolution in car rental that has led to reasonably good cars being available easily when needed. I note with some despair, however, that you cannot rent a Budget car and drive it into "New York" and I suspect other rental companies have similar proscriptions. How much of this is attributed to that ghastly Mortimer Snerd of a Bloomberg I can't say, but it certainly seems to have originated on his watch. I certainly would have as little to do with driving in midtown now as I can ... which is probably, of course, the intent. But it is fun to contemplate the mastermind of a ticket policy criminalizing other states' motor-vehicle violations -- expired registrations or improper credentials display being prominent among them -- as opportunities for multi-hundred-dollar City summonses as a potential candidate for President. (I have had enough of one expedient over-rich New Yorker there to last me the rest of my lifetime; I certainly don't need an even worse one.)
daveklepper Statistics from Steve Sattler: Cars per 1000 residents. New Zealand 860, USA 838, Finland 752, Australia 730
Rio Grande Valley, CFI,CFII
PJS1According to several New Zealand co-workers, the largest single source of personal vehicles in New Zealand, at least at the time, was the used car market fed by pre-owned cars coming from Japan.
And, unless something has changed in a surprising way, NZ still has one of the highest tariffs for vehicle importation in the world.
Two reasons I sayed with Herz for rental cars. 1. 1957-1971 I worked for Bolt Beranek and Newman, who at the time used Herz, and thus I already had a good relationship with the firm. 2. They had and may still have a Manhattan rental office and garage in the East 20s, not far from my aparment and 3rd Ave. and 16th St. Thus, not only convenient for pick-up and drop-off, but also free overnight storgage when keeping the car two or three days.
By two or three times a year, I was referring only for driving in New York City. There were more times when I would fly or train somewhere and rent car for local transportation, paraticularly the Los Angekes area, with only the Blue line opened before moving to Israel. At times, away from New York, other rental firms were more practical and/or economic than Hertz.
Thank You.
Exactly. Owning a car or relying soley on mass transit depends on your living situation (compact vs. spreadout city).
In New York, it makes more sense to use mass transit becuase of limited parking.
In a Los Angeles, you can anywhere a lot faster and easier if you own a car.
The US car ownership numbers may be skewed by the fact that pick-up trucks or vans used in family businesses may be considered as cars. Another big difference is that students in the US often have cars which is much rarer in other countries. At one point I had 4 cars. Wife and I both worked and my 2 then HS students each had totally different schedules due to sports and other activities along with part-time jobs at different employers. [Their cars were older hand-me-downs from 2 different grandparents.]
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