Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

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> I live in a big city with decent transit. I'm in my late 20s. Neither I nor any of my (white-collar professional) peers own cars. Do you have any idea how much money we save?

None. You're losing money by not living in a cheaper place and overpaying for transit. Transit is FREAKISHLY expensive in time and money, it's not even funny how inefficient it is.

> Our bike lanes are packed with bicycle couriers and the impact on traffic is practically zero.

So you're in Manhattan? Figures

> High rent is caused by low supply of high-density housing.

Wrong. Hint: Manhattan is one of the most expensive places in the US. And recently elected a socialist who was promising state-run grocery stores.

> Yeah, you know why people don't live in those places?

Because toxic urbanism strangled the democracy with bike lanes. There are no jobs because it's cheaper for companies to build offices in Downtowns of large cities, offloading the externalities.

This in turn makes housing near Downtowns more expensive because workers have to live there in order to get a job. This further increases the talent pool nearby, incentivizing more companies to open offices there.

Rinse, wash, repeat, and you get a misery-density housing spiral.

> None. You're losing money by not living in a cheaper place and overpaying for transit.

Oo, totally wrong! Fun guess though. The average monthly cost of car ownership is $1,300. The cost of a one-month transit pass is $150. I'm not gonna save $1,150 on rent by moving to a shitty suburb.

> So you're in Manhattan?

Nope.

> Wrong. Hint: Manhattan is one of the most expensive places in the US.

Yeah, because there's a shortage of apartments—that's what I said. Manhattan Island (being a rather small island) has physically run out of room for buildings, but that's not true of other areas.

> And recently elected a socialist who was promising state-run grocery stores.

Ok? So what? Maybe they'll expose private-sector price fixing & maybe they'll just be grocery stores.

> Because toxic urbanism strangled the democracy with bike lanes.

I'm honestly baffled. What makes you think bike lanes are undemocratic? Bikes are super cheap and take up very little space. Bike lanes really cut down on traffic.

> This in turn makes housing near Downtowns more expensive because workers have to live there in order to get a job.

Have you heard of industrial parks? It's pretty common for offices in big cities to be outside the city centre—far more common on the whole than downtown offices are.

The big advantage of downtown offices is that a city's downtown is the nexus of its public transit: If you work downtown, you can easily live a ways outside the city on cheaper land and then come in by train. So no, the point of a downtown is that you don't need to live there to work there.

Do you actually live in a city? I feel like you don't have a very strong understanding of how they're structured.

> Oo, totally wrong! Fun guess though. The average monthly cost of car ownership is $1,300. The cost of a one-month transit pass is $150. I'm not gonna save $1,150 on rent by moving to a shitty suburb.

The TRUE cost of one month's pass is about $3000 (with capital cost). The pure "just-keep-the-lights-on" cost is around $750. It's that you're paying it from your taxes and rent.

> Yeah, because there's a shortage of apartments—that's what I said. Manhattan Island (being a rather small island) has physically run out of room for buildings, but that's not true of other areas.

Yes, and it is metastasizing into other neighborhoods.

> Ok? So what? Maybe they'll expose private-sector price fixing & maybe they'll just be grocery stores.

Think about it again. If density works so well, why is there a significant number of people too poor to buy groceries?

> Have you heard of industrial parks? It's pretty common for offices in big cities to be outside the city centre—far more common on the whole than downtown offices are.

Not anymore.

> The TRUE cost of one month's pass is about $3000 (with capital cost).

Lol as if you can't just look up the transit commission's budget. (Annual budget) ÷ (average daily ridership × 12 months per year) = $180 per month per rider at most (since the pool of riders is larger than the daily average).

> Yes, and it is metastasizing into other neighborhoods.

Good. More apartments means cheaper rent.

> If density works so well, why is there a significant number of people too poor to buy groceries?

The cost of living is high because rent is expensive, obviously. I never said it was cheap to live in NYC. Focus on the actual subject of our discussion, please. Do you think rent in Manhattan would be cheaper if there were fewer apartments?

> Not anymore.

You're just saying stuff now. Only 40% of jobs are located downtown in my city, and compared to the other cities I saw when I was poking around for this data, that's high.

> Lol as if you can't just look up the transit commission's budget. (Annual budget) ÷ (average daily ridership × 12 months per year) = $180 per month per rider at most (since the pool of riders is larger than the daily average).

The farebox recovery rate for NYC is 20%, which is higher than usual, actually. So you can just multiply the price by 5 for a rough estimate.

Or you can do it your way, the 2023 operating budget for MTA was $19.379B and the annual ridership was 1.15B (2023). It works out to about the same: ~$17 per trip or ~$500 per month. Figures are from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Au...

Also, WTF are your car numbers? The average total expense for _new_ cars in the US is about $1000 per month ( https://www.way.com/blog/the-real-cost-of-car-ownership-in-t... ), and for used cars it's about $600.

But wait, there's more! This is not an honest comparison. Not at all. It completely misses the capital spending on transit. Just one mile of tunnel in Manhattan now costs more than 1500 miles of 6-lane freeway! Unfortunately, there is no easy way to estimate the total capital expense wasted on public transit.

So the _real_ numbers for transit and cars are not even close. And not in the favor of transit.

> Good. More apartments means cheaper rent.

Nope. More apartments mean more _expensive_ rent. This is an ironclad law of real real estate.

The ONLY way to reduce the housing costs is to decrease the city population.

> The cost of living is high because rent is expensive, obviously.

Yup. And the rent is high because...?

> You're just saying stuff now. Only 40% of jobs are located downtown in my city, and compared to the other cities I saw when I was poking around for this data, that's high.

The problem is the continuing enshittification. Look at the dynamics, check the average pay in areas that don't have direct access to the city cores and the average pay in Downtowns. The gap is exploding.

> Nope. More apartments mean more _expensive_ rent. This is an ironclad law of real real estate.

I don't know how to explain to you that an increase in supply results in the price of a good decreasing.

> Yup. And the rent is high because...?

High demand, low supply. Obviously.

> check the average pay in areas that don't have direct access to the city cores and the average pay in Downtowns

Yeah, because downtown office space costs more & goes disproportionately to higher-paying finance jobs. That has nothing to do with density—that's just finance bros wanting to work in the fanciest skyscrapers.

> The average total expense for _new_ cars in the US is about $1000 per month

Your source refers to cars generally: "As of 2025, the average annual cost of owning a car in the U.S. has reached approximately $12,297, translating to about $1,025 per month." Even with your $500/month figure, transit is still much cheaper. And that $500 isn't just distributed among riders—drivers pay some of it too, as they should, since every person on the subway is person not driving on the road, reducing the need for road infrastructure maintenance & expansion.

> Just one mile of tunnel in Manhattan now costs more than 1500 miles of 6-lane freeway!

Again, Manhattan is unique. I don't know why you keep referring back to it as if its problems are easily generalizable. They put their trash on the street in bags because they don't have room for dumpsters. Also, yes, that's why LRTs are popular—no tunnel required.

> I don't know how to explain to you that an increase in supply results in the price of a good decreasing.

You assume that the _demand_ is constant. It's not. And the supply increases can't feasibly outpace the demand increases.

> Yeah, because downtown office space costs more & goes disproportionately to higher-paying finance jobs. That has nothing to do with density—that's just finance bros wanting to work in the fanciest skyscrapers.

And why does this happen in Seattle, SF, Chicago?

> Your source refers to cars generally

New cars. An average car is now 13 years old.

> Even with your $500/month figure, transit is still much cheaper.

I literally provided you the source that proves that just the OPERATIONS budget is the same order of magnitude as the _total_ cost of car ownership, including capital expenses, insurance, and financing. This ensures that the total cost of transit will dwarf the cost of car ownership.

> Again, Manhattan is unique.

No, it's not. Seattle's failrail will cost about the same amount per track mile. It's so far projected to cost $120B, or over $120k for each and every houseshold.

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