Great article, except it ends on such a short-sighted note:
> To be sure, Helsinki is not proposing to go entirely car-free. (Many people in Finland have a summer cottage in the countryside, and rely on a car to get to it.)
I've never understood why people are so hung up about renting vehicles (not hourly rental; traditional, daily rental). Considering the cost of buying, maintaining, depreciating, and parking a car it is SO much cheaper (and easier) to simply rent from a traditional rental company for these long road trips. Need a 4x4? Rent it! Want a convertible for that coastal road trip? Rent it! Want to race on a track? Rent it! (this last one is still prohibitively expensive though).
In fact, some companies (Enterprise) will even pick you up at your home, making the rental process that much easier. If you have a good credit card it often includes insurance, which reduces the cost considerably (making daily rental competitive with hourly-rental services over a few hours of use).
Combine daily-rental vehicles with this sort of Helsinki plan and I literally can't see a reason why anyone would want a car.
I think it's because the typical car rental process can be so time consuming and pedantic. Choosing and booking, the pick-up and drop-off, checking for damage, signing a load of terrifying legal documents, avoiding the upsells, etc.
Once booked a car in Scotland, arrived and was stuck waiting for 1-2 hours for the car to be returned. When I returned that same car in London, I showed up and the guy in the office told me where to park it in the underground carpark. I was gone 5 minutes and by the time I got back, he'd closed for the night and they charged me a late fee.
Wish there was some sort of rental broker intermediary that knew you were reliable and signed general waivers, and vetted you for all the various rental companies.
I hesitate to rely on being able to rent a car to go to my cottage in the country on the weekend, because everyone else will be doing the very same thing at the same time. The possibility that I show up for my rental and there isn't one available is really discouraging.
The number of rental cars available in the fleet would approach the number of cars we have now.
You are making two assumptions. First, everyone goes to their cottage every weekend. Second, none of those wouldn't own their own car.
I can see no reason to believe these two to be even remotely true, hence why I see no argument there. Of course, it's your own point of view, but I think you are exaggerating here by a large margin.
You do know how car rental places are renowned for rip off's and scams?
And for country's like finland that have very cold winters having a 4x4 is not an affectation if you don't live in the centre of a small number of cities its a requirement.
I suspect car ownership will decline over the next decade or two, regardless of what most governments do, because self-driving cars and services like Uber look likely to make on-demand transportation more convenient and economical than owning a vehicle for the vast majority of people.
More economical? Almost certainly. That day is already be here for many with services like ZipCar and existing taxi and taxi-esque services.
I don't see the current technology making car sharing/ride purchasing more convenient than owning a car anytime soon. It's hard to beat the zero waiting for a given trip, and even if you include the implied waiting time at the end of your prior trip (finding a parking place, etc), people get more annoyed waiting to begin doing something than they do if doing something takes a little longer.
I don't see the current technology making car sharing/ride purchasing more convenient than owning a car anytime soon.
I respectfully (albeit strongly) disagree.
I used to own a car and after my ex totaled it (she was my ex already when she smashed the car and we're still good friends) I didn't bother to replace it.
Instead I bought a share of a car sharing cooperative and for the few times a year, when I need a car their offerings are more than adequate.
Granted, there are a few factors that make this arrangement work very well:
Public transport is so abundant and flexible where I live that it's super rare that I ever need a car.
I have, literally, a dozen cars that I can hire on short notice (peak hours like Saturday, excluded) within a 5 minute walking distance. The models represent the range from a Smart to a Mercedes transporter
The vehicles are always well maintained, clean and if necessary outfitted with winter tires in a timely manner
When I need a car, I couldn't care less what model I'm driving, except maybe: a Smart is not too ideal to transport bulky goods
I don't have to bother with the dirty business of owning a car
It's much cheaper than owning.
If you need a car during peak times some planning is advisable. The worst case was when I needed to take a tram for a couple stations to get to the nearest available vehicle.
So, I think it really depends on how it's organized, availability of vehicles and the quality of public transport. So you don't need a car most of the times to begin with.
I've been living in Stockholm, Sweden for the past 3 years and I never owned a car until this May.
Now I can testify based on my last 3 months usage that owing a car in Stockholm is more expensive/headache than the public transport + membership with some X car service.
I live in the Chicago suburbs with minimal public transportation options. It would not be cheaper to use Uber/Lyft than to own my own car.
Your use case exists, and while the majority of people are living in cities now, plenty of people (myself included) are still willing to pay the full sunk costs of owning a vehicle for the flexibility that it provides.
GGP comment included the text "for the vast majority of people" and that's the context with which I was responding.
I agree there are situations today for which it is more convenient. The better the public transport and the worse the parking situation, the more likely it is to be a winner in convenience. Even in Boston (with good [relative to the rest of America] public transport), it's tough to make car sharing feel more convenient. That's largely because of the distances involved.
Do you want to take Uber 25 miles up to the beach, and then take Uber back? Or do you want to pray that you can rent a ZipCar for an entire weekend day to make that same beach trip? (I agree that people who do that are STILL saving money; I just don't find that to be as convenient.)
> It's hard to beat the zero waiting for a given trip
What if it's 5 minutes and then no need to seek parking - which can take a long time ?
And what about being driven and able to surf/rest instead of fighting traffic ?
Hell, from reading user reviews of google's bus service it seems that public transportation can easily win the comfort battle. All that's left is winning the total "time to destination battle". And according to simulation results - car sharing can to 1.5X of regular trip maximum and less on average, And that's without "right of way" preference - with can have a big effect on those numbers.
> It's hard to beat the zero waiting for a given trip, and even if you include the implied waiting time at the end of your prior trip (finding a parking place, etc)
In Helsinki, the urban architecture is essentially designed for horse driven carriages in the 1800s and the city is surrounded by sea from three sides. Parking is really difficult to find and expensive. Unless you're going to the city center with underground parking spots (which are rather expensive), taking the bus is going to be faster than driving to the city center, searching for a parking spot and finally walking to your destination.
Renting a parking spot in Helsinki is more expensive than renting a flat outside the metropolitan area. It would cost me 200€ per month to rent an underground parking spot near my office. Any other parking options would need a 5 to 10 minute walk which would kill any time savings I get from driving a car and not a bus.
This coupled with the ridiculously high taxation and cost of ownership for automobiles means that taking the bus is almost always cheaper, faster and easier than driving a car.
Very few people live in the center or South Helsinki. Everywhere else and outside the core peak of the rush hour the car is so much faster that it's like a superpower. Car is king, bicycle comes second and with public traffic you can get to places eventually.
It is frustrating to experience slightly broken public transport infrastructure all the time. Whereas if I drive my car, I have spent enough money that it just works. I don't get angry or sad when looking at my car. It is a good car. I do get angry when I sit in a thrashing tram or know to ignore the metro ETA signs. Or have to wait 30 minutes for an urban train. So psychologically, public transport feels like you just being there and having to passively take what is given. And it is not always very good. If they can't be arsed to fix a display that shows minutes to the next metro, do the passengers feel respected and cared about?
I blame bad procurement/manufacturers in case of the trams and metro. There have been atrocious design errors by international big companies. Luckily some have been avoided in later procurement.
Maybe its the case like with government web sites. A lot of money is spent and results are often meager.
Didn't think we'd see this sort of algorithm-driven group transport until driverless cars took the labour cost away and made it more economical, but here it is.
If they succeed at Finland I would fund start-up to help owners to bring their cars from other EU countries. In EU you can stay with your car in other country up to 6 months, before it is subject to local road tax, registration and import duties.
I've never understood why people are so hung up about renting vehicles (not hourly rental; traditional, daily rental). Considering the cost of buying, maintaining, depreciating, and parking a car it is SO much cheaper (and easier) to simply rent from a traditional rental company for these long road trips. Need a 4x4? Rent it! Want a convertible for that coastal road trip? Rent it! Want to race on a track? Rent it! (this last one is still prohibitively expensive though).
In fact, some companies (Enterprise) will even pick you up at your home, making the rental process that much easier. If you have a good credit card it often includes insurance, which reduces the cost considerably (making daily rental competitive with hourly-rental services over a few hours of use).
Combine daily-rental vehicles with this sort of Helsinki plan and I literally can't see a reason why anyone would want a car.