This is the question posed on CityNerd video titled “Walkable Cities But They Keep Getting More Affordable”
If you ditched your car, could you afford to leave the suburbs for a great urban neighborhood?
Ray Delahanty answers the question in the 26 biggest US cities.
The analysis assumes the all-in cost of owning and operating a car is $1,000 per month, including purchase, insurance, fuel, and maintenance.
In the city, transportation costs might total about $250 per month for transit passes, biking, ride-hailing, and other small expenses.
This results in an effective $750 per month increase in the housing budget for city center residents who do not own a car.
The results of the video are quite interesting, as you can get more m² in walkable areas in most cities
Short version: yes, 100% and I kind of already have…
I am (somewhat unhappily) living in a suburb, but I have transit stops for multiple lines within a 5 minute walk, and a bunch more options if I’m willing to walk 10-15 minutes. I was paying something like $500/month (lease, gas, insurance) for my car before being hit by a semi and not replacing it. That was 2-ish years ago and I haven’t really looked back.
Now I pay about $100/month for basically unlimited transit use. My commute time tripled, but in theory got slightly more consistent because car traffic could get bad on the route to work. The transit system here is far from perfect, so sometimes I’m still late, but I’m lucky enough to have a fairly flexible start time. I’ve got 3 roommates with 2.5 cars between the 4 of us (one borrows a car from family periodically). I’d love to be a 1 car household, but two of the roommates “can’t give up their independence”, which I kind of shake my head at. One works further out of the city fully in a rural area, so I suppose it is kind of necessary for them to have a car, and then still having one car at home available for the rest of us works out fairly well.
I actually quite like the longer commute. It gives me time to read, or just listen to music, browse the internet, nap, whatever. Plus I’ve discovered a ton of small, local businesses I now love!
Do you live with your roommates because you want to, or are you all working adults who cant find affordable homes on their own?
Bit of both. They’re my best friends, and the way the rent works out it was a cost improvement for all of us. I won’t get into the whole story. We are all mid to late 20s (I’m about to turn 30 😅) and all very far from being able to afford homes of our own. Though even if we did I think it would still be together. None of us want to have kids, so we operate as a family unit with two cats making up for the chaos of not having kids running about.
If you are all friends that at least sounds nice, much better than random roommates just for the rent.
I can of course sympathize with being far away from being a homeowner myself lol (mid 30s here)