Having lived in some places around Europe, my quality of life is always increased by owning a motor vehicle. I do not use it daily, I do not commute with it, but there are trips which are far more practical with a personal motor vehicle than otherwise, like fetching people from an airport, taking a pet to a vet, driving further out for a hike, hauling groceries.
Having lived in both Europe and the US, yes you are correct that owning a vehicle does make many things more practical.
On the flip side, being required to drive everywhere because there is no transit option is a negative impact on quality of life, especially in cities.
Ultimately it comes down to how good the transit infrastructure is. Some cities make transit feel effortless and get you anywhere you need to be; others make you battle your way through it and lose a lot of time.
The solution to this is a car sharing programme. You pay your membership and get access to a fleet of cars and vans that you can pickup whenever you like. Tax, insurance, and petrol is all covered in the price (usually) and you can pick the right vehicle size for the trip you're making (no need to own a truck for the rare occasions you need to move large items).
Obviously not a solution for every situation, but if you only need a car occasionally then it would likely work out well.
Personally I only drive once a week at most, but there isn't a car share scheme locally. If one started up that was cost effective and convinient enough then I'd consider it.
Carsharing can be recommended only by somebody who never have to share a car.
- Car won't available when you need it.
- You will come to a car, which will have steering wheel and driver's seat in a setup incompatible with your physique, so you need to waste your time to set it back. Every. Damn. Time.
- Car will be dirty. All the time. Dog hair, food crumbs, trash (i.e. coffee cups, cans). You will take it out and next time it will be back
- If you are sharing with a smoker, I hope that you like smoky smell of your car.
- Car will be always empty (gas, battery) because previous user has no incentive to fill it up.
- Minor accidents will go unreported, and then you will be wondering, where this scratch came from, why is this mirror busted or why I need to hold my steering wheel 10 degrees to the left to drive straight.
- Everybody will try to evade maintenance fees - You want money for winter tires? I don't drive in winter man... 2 weeks later your co-owner will want to drive, because it is his car too!
Carsharing is a dead end and whoever will try it, will quickly revert back to his own car. Less headache.
Carshares don't imply that the end users are liable for the upkeep financially, they just need to flag the issues to the car club, or at least that's how I've seen it be implemented in all the car clubs I've used.
To start off, smoking in the car is not allowed. If they detect dog hair and can deduce who introduced it, the user will be banned. If someone left it with less than either a quarter or a half a tank of fuel, the offender gets reprimanded or ultimately banned. Minor incidents and maintenance items are taken care of on a complaint basis - once a user complains, the company fixes it. Eventually. It's not as bad as you're making it out to be.
It really depends. A road trip in a car share can cost as much as a monthly lease payment, yet due to the way no one user feels responsible for the car, the tire was showing 4 different colors of threads. A trip to ikea can be really burdensome if the front right brake has a soft lock or if the bearing has gone. Or if someone's left the car with barely any fuel in it for that one time when the booking was made to make a tight deadline. For odds and ends, it can be perfectly serviceable, but I've had those three and some other less than savoury anecdotes in my 5 years of using a car share.
owning a car is almost always the convenient option, especially if you disregard all the downsides like the (monetary) cost to one personally and to society at large. i agree that living car-free is not practical for many, mostly those living in rural or suburban areas, but even here the car is part of the problem, having made this possible in the first place for people who shouldn't even live there. we've got to break the self-reinforcing loop on car dependency, starting with the cities. we'll lose a lot of convenience and some things will be unreasonably hard compared to before but i think it's the future and it'll pay off in increased quality of life.
Maybe some sort of distance-dependent taxation on cars may be a more viable option, so that people can enjoy private commutes when they absolutely need it, while still pushing people towards public transport.
If you add a ban on parking on public spaces and remove parking minimums for new construction that starts to make sense. Otherwise you'll still spend 10-20% of your city real estate on cars.
