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Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere
I've gone over this several times - cars are indeed expensive. They do NOT need to be *that* expensive though. Running a high-mileage, older, reliable model can be done for about twice the cost of a bus pass provided you have somewhere to park it.
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Twice the cost of a bus pass? Maybe if you drive 5000 km per year. I have the kind of car you are taking about. Gas, insurance, consumables (oil, tires, wipers, washer fluid) easily average out to $300-400 per month. Insurance alone is a $100/mo in many places. And we drive ~15 000 km per year, close to average in Canada. You're also assuming you never pay for parking anywhere and the car doesn't break down. Ever. You may be parking for free at home. But it's not likely that places you visit are always free.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere
No doubt transit is cheaper. But is a car a real luxury? Not really. It certainly doesn't have to cost $1,000+ a month to own and operate.
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I agree. But the fact that the average new car price is $66k and used car price is like $37k or thereabouts, says people have actually become habituated to $1k/mo car payments.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere
There is a good chunk of the population where $400 a month is too much money and the bus is the best way forward, but outside of Canada's biggest cities, a car is such a huge leap forward in quality of life over even the best bus networks that I would argue it's well worth that $200 a month for basically anyone that has that money to spare.
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It isn't about somebody outside a big city spending on a car. The real question is why so many folks inside big cities own them. Or more specifically why so many people inside big cities (whose metro areas have half of the country's population) own so many large and expensive cars. Average suburb has at least $80k sitting in their driveway these days. Not uncommon to find much more than that.
Bizarre too that as birth rates fall cars are getting more expensive. Fewer kids should mean fewer and smaller cars. But we're going the other way.