You're celebrating the fact that people don't own something that they probably (judging by looking at other people) would find quite useful. Many, many people pay a lot of money every month to own their own private mode of transportation. So are these 46% really voluntarily abstaining or are they forced into abstinence?
I know that many, especially young, childless, people think they don't need a car. I know several such people that happily pay (and can afford to) quite a steep price for leaving their city, either by train, plane, or rental car. But they're not typical, I'd say.
In my case, our family car is moved only very little, say 10000km/a. There are some use cases where a rental car or train tickets just don't cut it - we would pay double the price and still have longer travel and additional complications (mental load is a real thing for parents).
Obviously, I am not driving through the city if I can avoid it. But every now and then I want to leave it/return to it. I consider ownership the best option here and I gladly pay for the parking space.
So in conclusion, I think that every city should make it trivial to rent a parking space in some garage. People that don't own cars might benefit from such additional storage space as well. I also don't think it should be more expensive than renting a very simple apartment. But instead, cities try to cram more and more people with less and less space into the same buildings.
And I would not be surprised if these road projects were designed with a much smaller and less densely populated city in mind.
This argument doesn’t take account of the impact on others of the thing that stays in your garage most of the time. The environmental impact of manufacturing it, of creating infrastructure to carry it etc.
We should absolutely celebrate lower car ownership in cities and work towards making it a viable option for more people.
I don't buy the infrastructure, except for parking, it's needed for logistics anyways. the environmental impact of manufacture is a red herring as it's pretty much impossible to spend money without a similar impact.
> In my case, our family car is moved only very little, say 10000km/a. There are some use cases where a rental car or train tickets just don't cut it - we would pay double the price
Have you actually done full lifetime cost analysis of the owned car vs. a rental car under this scenario?
The outcome can depend on a number of things, notably how much you pay for your own car initially. It's also obviously somewhat subjective how you price the inconvenience of picking up/dropping off the rental car.
When I did this in Philadelphia in the mid-90s as neighborhood car shares started to become a thing (briefly, sadly), my conclusion was that since we already owned (outright) a small, useful vehicle at that point, it made more sense to continue doing so, but that if we were about to buy a more expensive replacement vehicle, the car share made more financial sense. This was with a child, btw.
Yes, I did. We buy our cars out of a saving account where we put a monthly fee in. I know relatively well what our car costs us and yes, it's a significant amount of money.
Unfortunately, the alternatives are nearly always more expensive (rental) or don't cover all the use cases (train) or both (car sharing, sometimes trains).
The thing is, once you decided on ownership, the cost of doing more with your car is relatively low compared to the alternative (like using the car for grocery shopping instead of buying a cargo bike for the task).
In our case it's the weekend trips with the kids. Cars big enough to carry all kids are expensive and relatively rare. Renting over the weekend is expensive. And working on Fridays and Mondays makes it difficult to go out to a rental station and get one of those cars or return it in time.
So in the end, it's certainly doable but more expensive than owning and creates more stress/hassle.
E.g. pets. Most rental companies don't allow pets in their cars.
And there might also be situations where the next rental company is far away and you'd spend a lot of time going there. Depending on how often you need a car, having your own in front of your house might be the better choice.
Same for long holidays where the rent for a car can easily be a big chunk of your holiday budget even if you only need it for a few days during your trip.
I know that many, especially young, childless, people think they don't need a car. I know several such people that happily pay (and can afford to) quite a steep price for leaving their city, either by train, plane, or rental car. But they're not typical, I'd say.
In my case, our family car is moved only very little, say 10000km/a. There are some use cases where a rental car or train tickets just don't cut it - we would pay double the price and still have longer travel and additional complications (mental load is a real thing for parents).
Obviously, I am not driving through the city if I can avoid it. But every now and then I want to leave it/return to it. I consider ownership the best option here and I gladly pay for the parking space.
So in conclusion, I think that every city should make it trivial to rent a parking space in some garage. People that don't own cars might benefit from such additional storage space as well. I also don't think it should be more expensive than renting a very simple apartment. But instead, cities try to cram more and more people with less and less space into the same buildings.
And I would not be surprised if these road projects were designed with a much smaller and less densely populated city in mind.