I've been pretty happy with swapping driving, insurance, parking, maintenance etc. for living right in the middle of the city very close to work and using Lyft for everything else. Actually saves me a ton of time/money. For just the cost of a parking spot in SF (~$300) I can get a good 40 lyft rides a month to most of the locations I need to access.
What if you want to go for a weekend camping in Yosemite, or drive down the coastal highway to LA, or maybe up to Portland and Seattle? I agree owning and keeping a car in the middle of a city is expensive and tough. There are certainly some benefits to having a car though.
My fiance and I live in San Francisco; neither one of us owns a car. On the occasions that we need a car for a couple of hours (e.g., large purchases) we use City Car Share. For trips out of the City, we just rent a car. We save thousands of dollars a year in gas, insurance and maintenance. We also save time and aggravation in not having to worry about things like parking and street cleaning. We can't see ever going back to owning a car.
I did the same thing. It was basically break even for weekend trips and more profitable to have the car for week long trips. If you like the woods and places off the beaten path car shares aren't going to work.
Rent a car? If you divide the cost of car owning by the average number of such drives, you will get a sum that can send you to Antarctica and back several times.
As I said, don't quite recall what those fees are, generally haven't affected me because I don''t have to travel over 180 miles very frequently. If I do, I generally get on a bus or on a plane, but I can see how someone else's use case would be vastly different.
I currently do take a plane, but how about when you have a spouse & kids? That's 4.5 airfares for the average family. Have you ever noticed your co-workers who have kids, very rarely fly places?
4.5 airfares to visit family would run me ~$1400.
Families seems to be the biggest absence in the echo chamber that has built up around car-free lifestyle. Families don't have to have a car- but it doesn't seem like worrying about more than just one person (themselves) has even crossed the mind of many of the car-free advocates I have read.
Renting a car for a long trip is almost always more cost effective, if you plan to drive the max every day, due to maintenance/depreciation. Highway miles are relatively soft miles, but they still add up.
