People who complain about the "cost of driving"

[Columbo]

A rant. Every time Translink or other groups propose things like a vehicle levy or a new bridge toll I always see comments like "That's so unfair, I already pay for gas and insurance, now you're asking me to pay ANOTHER cost for driving?" I've always found that very funny. Gas and insurance are NOT costs of driving. They are the costs of gas and insurance. Insurance is that thing you buy so that if you accidentally destroy your own car or someone else's or worse, you're not immediately in an irrecoverable financial hole. And the cost of gas is to pay for GAS, that thing that is taken out of the ground usually via great environmental damage, is highly processed and refined, transported by pipeline then by truck to your local gas station and put into a storage tank where it can conveniently come out of a nozzle directly into your car.

Simply put, there IS no cost for driving except maybe taxes which we all pay whether or not we drive. On the other hand, if you want to talk about a different kind of cost, the true cost of driving is to our air quality, our healthcare system, the damage being done to our planet to get all that oil out of the ground, etc. I don't mind if drivers (myself included!!) start paying a true additional cost for that, especially if it funds things like transit which gets more people off the roads (to the benefit, ironically, of the drivers who choose to remain).

Many of you will disagree with me but even if you do, please… stop complaining about the "high costs of driving."

[FlyLow_]

So you work for Translink, basically..

[Baka]

NEVER!!!! But really I don't mind gas but insurance can seriously be exploited for terms beyond relevance to yourself.

[Columbo]

So you work for Translink, basically..

Ha! I wish. If I worked for them they wouldn't be nearly as incompetent.

[Denguin]

The "cost of driving" doesn't affect me directly since I don't have my own car yet, but...


I can understand their train of thought. You'd be able to sit here all day and have an argument with people about how insurance and gas are costs of driving. They are, in fact, indirect costs of driving - you need either if you want to drive your own personal vehicle. Now I think people who do drive accept those as a fact to a certain extent, but when you have some of the highest gas prices around (not relative to Europe, of course), I can see why people complain.

When you add on that the demographic who pays the most for gas (I'm guessing) are commuters... if you were living hours away from your work because you can't make ends meet locally (or couldn't afford to live closer), wouldn't you complain about all that increasing money you have to keep pouring into your commute every day?

I do agree with you that the real "cost" is to the environment... I don't think there's any doubt about that. But there isn't any alternative out there for many.

[Buddhas Hand]

Well over a third of the price of petrol price here in Aus is taxes which they do not spend on the roads instead all new major roads/highways are toll roads , half the cost of my rego is paying for the frack-ups of people who seem incapable of driving a car correctly and to top it off our city planners idea of planning is to build more suburbs but not the transport infrastructure.

[thedestroyerofworlds]

There are many things out there that people mistake for a NEED, when really they are a WANT. Owning a vehicle is a WANT. You choose to buy. You choose what make and model. You CHOOSE. Complaining about the cost for a choice that you make is absolute garbage. If you cannot afford it, then obviously you made POOR CHOICES. Deal with it.

[Denguin]

There are many things out there that people mistake for a NEED, when really they are a WANT. Owning a vehicle is a WANT. You choose to buy. You choose what make and model. You CHOOSE. Complaining about the cost for a choice that you make is absolute garbage. If you cannot afford it, then obviously you made POOR CHOICES. Deal with it.

So let me present you with this scenario then:

1) Born into a poor, low-income family living in a community 100 + km out of Vancouver (for sake of argument only)

2) Push through education, taking out loans and achieving bursaries + scholarships to fund it

3) Get a degree in x

4) Get offered a job in Edmonton, but cannot afford to move and settle there immediately

5) Get offered a job in Vancouver as the only alternative, but need transportation to get to work everyday

Where is the poor choice in that, exactly? For some, a vehicle is a necessity. Transit outside of the Lower Mainland is absolute crap (with exception of some urban centres). How is said person supposed to get to their job? Or was it their "poor" decision trying to better themselves and not work at the local fast food joint instead?

[The Vancouver Connection]

what the hell is the point of this thread?

[Mainly Mattias]

A rant. Every time Translink or other groups propose things like a vehicle levy or a new bridge toll I always see comments like "That's so unfair, I already pay for gas and insurance, now you're asking me to pay ANOTHER cost for driving?" I've always found that very funny. Gas and insurance are NOT costs of driving. They are the costs of gas and insurance. Insurance is that thing you buy so that if you accidentally destroy your own car or someone else's or worse, you're not immediately in an irrecoverable financial hole. And the cost of gas is to pay for GAS, that thing that is taken out of the ground usually via great environmental damage, is highly processed and refined, transported by pipeline then by truck to your local gas station and put into a storage tank where it can conveniently come out of a nozzle directly into your car.

Simply put, there IS no cost for driving except maybe taxes which we all pay whether or not we drive. On the other hand, if you want to talk about a different kind of cost, the true cost of driving is to our air quality, our healthcare system, the damage being done to our planet to get all that oil out of the ground, etc. I don't mind if drivers (myself included!!) start paying a true additional cost for that, especially if it funds things like transit which gets more people off the roads (to the benefit, ironically, of the drivers who choose to remain).

Many of you will disagree with me but even if you do, please… stop complaining about the "high costs of driving."

Did you take transportation economics? Because that's sort of addressing the social cost - the costs that go unnoticed because no individual is responsible for it. Individuals only care about their own private costs (those that affect them: gas, insurance, etc).

That's why it's the responsibility of good government to assign a monetary cost to the social cost (for example, pollution of the environment) to make society avoid polluting the environment.

However, since most people haven't taken transportation economics, they don't understand and just complain that the governments are trying to gouge them and are favouring the non-tax paying cyclists/transit goers.

[Buddhas Hand]

There are many things out there that people mistake for a NEED, when really they are a WANT. Owning a vehicle is a WANT. You choose to buy. You choose what make and model. You CHOOSE. Complaining about the cost for a choice that you make is absolute garbage. If you cannot afford it, then obviously you made POOR CHOICES. Deal with it.

What's that got to do with BS third party insurance rates where i am paying for other peoples frack-ups , taxes that are collected to pay for roads but the money is spent elsewhere and we have to pay to drive on toll roads and really sh!thouse city planning ?

[Baka]

There are many things out there that people mistake for a NEED, when really they are a WANT. Owning a vehicle is a WANT. You choose to buy. You choose what make and model. You CHOOSE. Complaining about the cost for a choice that you make is absolute garbage. If you cannot afford it, then obviously you made POOR CHOICES. Deal with it.

You have clearly never lived outside of a city. Where I grew up if I wanted to catch a bus it was an hour walk to a bus stop then the bus ride itself. Unless I was lucky enough to get a job in that hour walk area. Owning a vehicle was a need unless commuting 4 hours a day was sane.

[surtur]

kinda like when people complain about the cost of living? and saying that food is to much money, clothing, housing , rent, heat electric, Cable tv , Internet , phone etc

am i doing this right?

[GLASSJAW]

A rant. Every time Translink or other groups propose things like a vehicle levy or a new bridge toll I always see comments like "That's so unfair, I already pay for gas and insurance, now you're asking me to pay ANOTHER cost for driving?" I've always found that very funny. Gas and insurance are NOT costs of driving. They are the costs of gas and insurance. Insurance is that thing you buy so that if you accidentally destroy your own car or someone else's or worse, you're not immediately in an irrecoverable financial hole. And the cost of gas is to pay for GAS, that thing that is taken out of the ground usually via great environmental damage, is highly processed and refined, transported by pipeline then by truck to your local gas station and put into a storage tank where it can conveniently come out of a nozzle directly into your car.

Simply put, there IS no cost for driving except maybe taxes which we all pay whether or not we drive. On the other hand, if you want to talk about a different kind of cost, the true cost of driving is to our air quality, our healthcare system, the damage being done to our planet to get all that oil out of the ground, etc. I don't mind if drivers (myself included!!) start paying a true additional cost for that, especially if it funds things like transit which gets more people off the roads (to the benefit, ironically, of the drivers who choose to remain).

Many of you will disagree with me but even if you do, please… stop complaining about the "high costs of driving."

i am totally baffled here, like i'm missing something entirely

in order to legally drive a car, you need insurance. in order for the car to actually move around when you try to drive it, you need gas. both of these things cost money. are these not, then, the costs of driving? in order to park some places, or access other places, you, too, need to pay a cost. that is the cost of driving to those places. just because we call that thing a 'bridge toll' doesn't mean it isn't the cost of driving

[Columbo]

i am totally baffled here, like i'm missing something entirely

in order to legally drive a car, you need insurance. in order for the car to actually move around when you try to drive it, you need gas. both of these things cost money. are these not, then, the costs of driving? in order to park some places, or access other places, you, too, need to pay a cost. that is the cost of driving to those places. just because we call that thing a 'bridge toll' doesn't mean it isn't the cost of driving

I'm talking about the context under which people complain about additional 'costs' like vehicle levies. If we were to impose a vehicle levy it would be the first and only true 'cost' of simply driving. Things like the costs of gas and insurance are costs for exactly that - gas and insurance. In a different context, yes these are costs of driving but in the sense that you need them to drive, not in the sense that we as a society are extracting a cost from you to make up for the negative impact of your driving.

What I'm trying to separate is the costs of things that are necessary to drive (gas, insurance) vs the cost of things that are not necessary to drive but that we might add on anyway as an extra cost (levies, bridge tolls). People complain about them as if they're the same thing, in the same bucket. But they're not.

I may not be explaining this too well. I'll try to think of an analogy and get back to you.

[TLindenIsGod]

You have clearly never lived outside of a city. Where I grew up if I wanted to catch a bus it was an hour walk to a bus stop then the bus ride itself. Unless I was lucky enough to get a job in that hour walk area. Owning a vehicle was a need unless commuting 4 hours a day was sane.

This.

Outside of the Lower Mainland and parts of Victoria, transit is completely ineffective. The thing that I always see though is empty buses, huge 30+ people capacity buses driving around without people in them (not out of service). I'm not up on where the dollars come from outside of translink but surely they could downsize in a lot of places and save some money.

[Gustavo Fring]

Most people who NEED to drive never really complain about the costs of driving.

What we really do complain about though is the nefarious car insurance company here in BC. Notice I don't even name them, they're like friggin Voldemort.

[Gross-Misconduct]

Interesting rant but too simple.

You are putting drivers in either

Group A :Bad drivers with no conscience who complain.

or

Group B: Good drivers with a conscience (like yourself) who don't complain.

I think most drivers are a bit of both like myself. It is possible to complain and care about the environment at the same time.

[thedestroyerofworlds]

So let me present you with this scenario then:

1) Born into a poor, low-income family living in a community 100 + km out of Vancouver (for sake of argument only)

2) Push through education, taking out loans and achieving bursaries + scholarships to fund it

3) Get a degree in x

4) Get offered a job in Edmonton, but cannot afford to move and settle there immediately

5) Get offered a job in Vancouver as the only alternative, but need transportation to get to work everyday

Where is the poor choice in that, exactly? For some, a vehicle is a necessity. Transit outside of the Lower Mainland is absolute crap (with exception of some urban centres). How is said person supposed to get to their job? Or was it their "poor" decision trying to better themselves and not work at the local fast food joint instead?

On the surface, no real bad choices (unforced) in this scenario. It's obvious that in this scenario that money is tight, and therefore, this person must really look deep into their finances and personal spending habits. Saying you can't afford to drive while making daily stops at Timmy Ho's is a little questionable

What's that got to do with BS third party insurance rates where i am paying for other peoples frack-ups , taxes that are collected to pay for roads but the money is spent elsewhere and we have to pay to drive on toll roads and really sh!thouse city planning ?

That's a whole other can of worms. I agree that crappy drivers should have to pay more so "good" drivers can pay less. But it is the cost of doing business.

You have clearly never lived outside of a city. Where I grew up if I wanted to catch a bus it was an hour walk to a bus stop then the bus ride itself. Unless I was lucky enough to get a job in that hour walk area. Owning a vehicle was a need unless commuting 4 hours a day was sane.

Where you live is a choice. All choices have their consequences. And I grew up in a rural area outside of the city I'm from fyi.

This.

Outside of the Lower Mainland and parts of Victoria, transit is completely ineffective. The thing that I always see though is empty buses, huge 30+ people capacity buses driving around without people in them (not out of service). I'm not up on where the dollars come from outside of translink but surely they could downsize in a lot of places and save some money.

I observe that also. This problem is a direct result of the past century and the "American Dream". This notion that it is one of your life's goals to own a house with a yard. All the problems associated with this movement and personal choice play out in the world today. Ineffective mass transit is but one of them.

[Denguin]

On the surface, no real bad choices (unforced) in this scenario. It's obvious that in this scenario that money is tight, and therefore, this person must really look deep into their finances and personal spending habits. Saying you can't afford to drive while making daily stops at Timmy Ho's is a little questionable

Well in a situation like this (which happens more often than you think), it's highly unlikely that the person stops for their double/double every day. My point is that for some people, having a car is not a luxury, it's a necessity, so you can't really generalize a statement like that.

That said, outside of that, I do agree that a significant portion of people do take their cars for granted.