house math
Jul. 2nd, 2008 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutIn the previous post, I assumed that the miles/year number was immovable, other than observing that the fewer miles you drive, the more money you save in _any_ car, the longer _any_ car lasts, and the longer it takes to justify switching to a higher mpg car.
When I was young, I learned (and took until recently to unlearn) the idea that an average mileage car had 10K miles on it per year. Turns out this number is representative of, say, the early 1980s. While I recognize that most commentators in the MSM tend to think of returning to the lifestyles of the early 1980s as akin to returning to, I don't know, washboards and hauling our own water and firewood, I think this is a valid indication that we could curtail our driving by a quarter to a third without the world coming to an end. Real estate agents and commentators concur that outer burbs values are suffering by comparison to inner burbs, city neighborhoods and the "inner city", with walkability being a major factor.
Over at SeattleBubble, a blog I find generally amusing, there have been a couple of posts and an unspeakable number of comments on _why_ moving closer in does not make sense. Now, this is _really really weird_. I mean, like, _so_ weird. Most people who are all over the it-was-a-bubble thing are equally all-over the finally, sprawl will go away meme. Some are lusting over rotting slums in exurbia. I feel some sympathy. The author of the blog has run two sets of numbers as to _why_ it makes no sense for [pronoun] to move from Marysville to Shoreline.
Some of my readers are familiar with Seattle. If you're not, let's just say that neither one of these is actually in Seattle proper. Shoreline was, when I grew up, in unincorporated King County (with a good school district). Marysville was farmland just shy of Everett. On the _wrong side of Everett from Seattle_. Things, needless to say, are different (and yet I am young enough to be pregnant without technological intervention. Go figure.). The author's location in Kenmore (further away from Seattle than Shoreline, altho I'd have to ask around to discover commute time comparison to Marysville because of the way the highways run, I suspect not as far as Marysville) goes some way to explaining his unwillingness to believe people will move closer in.
Why did I say [pronoun]? Well, the author uses they/their in a way that could be interpreted as a single person of unspecified gender or as a family. He then mentions family, but always assumes there is one (1) person commuting into Seattle. And at this point in the original analysis, and in the second analysis and about 40 comments deep, that I cried bullshit. I mean, who the fuck has a family and _one_ driver? Even if there isn't a commute, there _are_ store runs, school runs, library runs, blah, blah, blah. _I_ grew up in the 1970s in a house with one (1) car and one (1) driver because my mother is crazy and my father is controlling and they worked out some kind of deal (she also had no access to the checkbook, a very limited allowance and they did the grocery shopping together. Think prison. It was close). As soon as my eldest sibling reached 16, she got a license and she drove us around in a second (used) car that was acquired for the purpose. Various siblings stepped in as chauffeurs thereafter, with my mother never driving. To this day. I don't know _any_ other middle class household, then or now, where this is how things worked. There were _always_ two drivers and usually two vehicles. Even if there weren't two commutes -- as is overwhelmingly the case now, even with parents of very small babies -- there were errands that added up to a commute. Which is why the walkability thing keeps coming up. If you live right in the middle of everything, you can get by with a single car -- which R. and I did for a year and a half in the Central District in Seattle. And we put precious few miles on that car in the meantime.
This is why calculating the gas/car cost of living close in vs. far away is tricky. If you live really close in, in the right kind of city, you don't need any car. If you live close in in other cities, you can use one car for 2+ people. If you live moderately out, you'll need one car per person, conceivably more if you've got some kind of capacity/towing vs. commuting issue. It isn't just the gas: it's licensing, insurance, the general cost of owning and operating two vehicles rather than one (or n vehicles, versus some number less than n). In the Marysville v. Shoreline comparison, there are also differences in quality and availability of public transportation as well. Generally speaking, in addition to less service, the time-cost of public transportation goes up more per mile than driving your own car; while your family might be okay with you taking an hour to go each way on the bus v. 30-45 minutes in the car, they probably draw the line at losing you for 1.5-2 hours each way, five days a week.
What would a real comparison of Marysville vs. Shoreline look like? I think I'd start off by saying that you don't need to buy an equivalently large house/yard closer in, if parks/services/etc. closer in are close enough to be walkable and are sufficiently desirable. A smaller yard, for example, might imply less need for yard equipment to maintain the yard (push mower vs tractor). Maybe you don't need to buy a playset if there's one down the block that is better. You don't need a second car to go buy eggs and whatever if there's a Red Apple across the street. Or your first car will be available for errands if everyone at work can take public transport to work. Or bike. Etc.
Let's compare our hypothetical 2 x 13600 milers (at 4.30/gallon, paying $6150+ in gas) and move them to where they can reliably take the bus to work and sometimes bike or walk, without excessive time cost. This should drop their mileage down to maybe 7K. And then they can buy a Fit, which they'll drive more like me, and get 30ish per gallon. Their annual gas cost has now dropped under $1000. They're only insuring one vehicle, rather than two (that should be good for another $1000+ savings over the course of the year). Plus they don't have to buy/finance/maintain/whatever a second vehicle -- let's call that another $5K in savings.
I think our family has just saved $11K/annually. Assume they stay in their new home the average 7 years. That $77K. Even if they had to pay $100K more for the privilege of moving closer in to the city, these numbers are starting to look _really_ similar, and when you figure the resale closer in will be higher than the resale further out, and their one car is essentially immortal given how few miles they're putting on it. . .
Yeah, no freaking wonder people are moving closer in.
ETA: also missing from the SeattleBubble Marysville vs. Shoreline analysis: the train. Which, as near as I can tell, is how people are commuting from Lake Stevens to Seattle. There's a chance -- albeit a small one -- that Marysville beats Shoreline for some job/house locations, especially if you can work on the train but can't on the bus because you're wedged in standing instead of sitting down. Altho RHI that train is getting pretty crowded, too. I gotta wonder why the hell anyone would live in Marysville and commute to Seattle (rather than, say, Everett, which is what the usual deal was in the past), but I know people moved to Arlington and commuted to Seattle. Hell, I heard stories of people moving to Sedro Woolley and commuted to Seattle, but that's either a lie, or an indication that immigrants to the PacNW from California are truly capable of anything.
When I was young, I learned (and took until recently to unlearn) the idea that an average mileage car had 10K miles on it per year. Turns out this number is representative of, say, the early 1980s. While I recognize that most commentators in the MSM tend to think of returning to the lifestyles of the early 1980s as akin to returning to, I don't know, washboards and hauling our own water and firewood, I think this is a valid indication that we could curtail our driving by a quarter to a third without the world coming to an end. Real estate agents and commentators concur that outer burbs values are suffering by comparison to inner burbs, city neighborhoods and the "inner city", with walkability being a major factor.
Over at SeattleBubble, a blog I find generally amusing, there have been a couple of posts and an unspeakable number of comments on _why_ moving closer in does not make sense. Now, this is _really really weird_. I mean, like, _so_ weird. Most people who are all over the it-was-a-bubble thing are equally all-over the finally, sprawl will go away meme. Some are lusting over rotting slums in exurbia. I feel some sympathy. The author of the blog has run two sets of numbers as to _why_ it makes no sense for [pronoun] to move from Marysville to Shoreline.
Some of my readers are familiar with Seattle. If you're not, let's just say that neither one of these is actually in Seattle proper. Shoreline was, when I grew up, in unincorporated King County (with a good school district). Marysville was farmland just shy of Everett. On the _wrong side of Everett from Seattle_. Things, needless to say, are different (and yet I am young enough to be pregnant without technological intervention. Go figure.). The author's location in Kenmore (further away from Seattle than Shoreline, altho I'd have to ask around to discover commute time comparison to Marysville because of the way the highways run, I suspect not as far as Marysville) goes some way to explaining his unwillingness to believe people will move closer in.
Why did I say [pronoun]? Well, the author uses they/their in a way that could be interpreted as a single person of unspecified gender or as a family. He then mentions family, but always assumes there is one (1) person commuting into Seattle. And at this point in the original analysis, and in the second analysis and about 40 comments deep, that I cried bullshit. I mean, who the fuck has a family and _one_ driver? Even if there isn't a commute, there _are_ store runs, school runs, library runs, blah, blah, blah. _I_ grew up in the 1970s in a house with one (1) car and one (1) driver because my mother is crazy and my father is controlling and they worked out some kind of deal (she also had no access to the checkbook, a very limited allowance and they did the grocery shopping together. Think prison. It was close). As soon as my eldest sibling reached 16, she got a license and she drove us around in a second (used) car that was acquired for the purpose. Various siblings stepped in as chauffeurs thereafter, with my mother never driving. To this day. I don't know _any_ other middle class household, then or now, where this is how things worked. There were _always_ two drivers and usually two vehicles. Even if there weren't two commutes -- as is overwhelmingly the case now, even with parents of very small babies -- there were errands that added up to a commute. Which is why the walkability thing keeps coming up. If you live right in the middle of everything, you can get by with a single car -- which R. and I did for a year and a half in the Central District in Seattle. And we put precious few miles on that car in the meantime.
This is why calculating the gas/car cost of living close in vs. far away is tricky. If you live really close in, in the right kind of city, you don't need any car. If you live close in in other cities, you can use one car for 2+ people. If you live moderately out, you'll need one car per person, conceivably more if you've got some kind of capacity/towing vs. commuting issue. It isn't just the gas: it's licensing, insurance, the general cost of owning and operating two vehicles rather than one (or n vehicles, versus some number less than n). In the Marysville v. Shoreline comparison, there are also differences in quality and availability of public transportation as well. Generally speaking, in addition to less service, the time-cost of public transportation goes up more per mile than driving your own car; while your family might be okay with you taking an hour to go each way on the bus v. 30-45 minutes in the car, they probably draw the line at losing you for 1.5-2 hours each way, five days a week.
What would a real comparison of Marysville vs. Shoreline look like? I think I'd start off by saying that you don't need to buy an equivalently large house/yard closer in, if parks/services/etc. closer in are close enough to be walkable and are sufficiently desirable. A smaller yard, for example, might imply less need for yard equipment to maintain the yard (push mower vs tractor). Maybe you don't need to buy a playset if there's one down the block that is better. You don't need a second car to go buy eggs and whatever if there's a Red Apple across the street. Or your first car will be available for errands if everyone at work can take public transport to work. Or bike. Etc.
Let's compare our hypothetical 2 x 13600 milers (at 4.30/gallon, paying $6150+ in gas) and move them to where they can reliably take the bus to work and sometimes bike or walk, without excessive time cost. This should drop their mileage down to maybe 7K. And then they can buy a Fit, which they'll drive more like me, and get 30ish per gallon. Their annual gas cost has now dropped under $1000. They're only insuring one vehicle, rather than two (that should be good for another $1000+ savings over the course of the year). Plus they don't have to buy/finance/maintain/whatever a second vehicle -- let's call that another $5K in savings.
I think our family has just saved $11K/annually. Assume they stay in their new home the average 7 years. That $77K. Even if they had to pay $100K more for the privilege of moving closer in to the city, these numbers are starting to look _really_ similar, and when you figure the resale closer in will be higher than the resale further out, and their one car is essentially immortal given how few miles they're putting on it. . .
Yeah, no freaking wonder people are moving closer in.
ETA: also missing from the SeattleBubble Marysville vs. Shoreline analysis: the train. Which, as near as I can tell, is how people are commuting from Lake Stevens to Seattle. There's a chance -- albeit a small one -- that Marysville beats Shoreline for some job/house locations, especially if you can work on the train but can't on the bus because you're wedged in standing instead of sitting down. Altho RHI that train is getting pretty crowded, too. I gotta wonder why the hell anyone would live in Marysville and commute to Seattle (rather than, say, Everett, which is what the usual deal was in the past), but I know people moved to Arlington and commuted to Seattle. Hell, I heard stories of people moving to Sedro Woolley and commuted to Seattle, but that's either a lie, or an indication that immigrants to the PacNW from California are truly capable of anything.
Cool text.
Date: 2008-09-24 08:59 am (UTC)