King-Victoria Transit Hub

[danbrotherston]

You can rent a car every weekend of the year and still come out ahead of owning.

I don’t follow the math on that... can you help me out?

Let’s conservatively say you can find a place that will rent you a vehicle all-in for $150 for the weekend (which I don’t think you can). That’s $7 800 a year, and you have to wait for their office to open, do an hour’s worth of paperwork every time... huge inconvienence.

I’ve owned our current car since 2008, we paid cash about $30 000 for it. (Over that same period, you would have paid $78 000 for rentals.)

To make your argument valid, we would have had to spend greater than $48k in fuel and maintenance. In fact, we have spent $12k in fuel (~25k km/year) and about $4k in oil changes, tires, and other basic scheduled maintenance (all other costs). I track this meticulously so I have all this data.  Also, this car has lots of life left in it. I expect to have it for another five years at least, if not double that.

Additionally, without a bus pass you couldn’t go anywhere during the week. What’s that, $50/mo? So add another $6k to your $78k.

Off topic, but I needed to expand on your statement.

I’m glad you’ve found a solution that works for you! This one works for me. I guess this is engrained in my brain growing up in rural Ontario - there, without a vehicle you literally can’t do anything.

Your ownership costs are likely lower than average.  CAA reports the average yearly TCO for a sedan is $9,500: https://www.caa.ca/caa-provides-real-pic...ing-costs/

And I think Pheipdippides comments might have been technically true, but facetious, the point is, just because one does not own a car, does not mean they do not travel outside the city--I travel frequently, but not every weekend.  But I do agree that living downtown is a big part of the reason why I can get by without a car here.  And honestly, it's a challenge even then.

As for convenience, I find it very inconvenient to own a car, I had to deal with all that maintenance myself, I always stressed about what would break next, how much it would cost, whether it would break down when I go on a long trip. For a car share or rental, I just pickup a working car every time with no hassle, and if it breaks down, I have someone else who will deal with most of that--I find it very freeing. And at least for car share, I just book the car in the app, and walk across the street to pick it up (again, a benefit of living downtown--or at least near a car share vehicle).

But please don't mistake my opposition to parking at central station as opposition to parking.  I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any parking--in fact, in a city like ours, I think we should let the market dictate parking in most places, i.e., no parking minimums in most places.

But for central station, we're talking about prime realestate. Building parking has very real costs, both directly, in money to build it, and in opportunity cost.  Every parking stall is 250 sqft of housing, office space, and commercial space that we *don't* build at central station, and I think that building that space at the most convenient location is better than building parking.  I'm not saying there shouldn't be parking, and have discussed several different locations where there exists parking, or where more parking would make sense.