It probably isn't possible to own a car for much less in Brooklyn. At least without committing some

Last July, our old Saturn wagon finally gave out after 17 years, lasting five more years than the GM subsidiary that built it. It was the second car we had ever owned, with the first being a used Plymouth Horizon daytona beach hotels motels cheap that lasted six years. Both had a manual transmission, and no AC. If one’s choice of motor vehicle is representative of one’s sense of style, daytona beach hotels motels cheap well, there you have it.
Or, perhaps, our current situation, with no private motor vehicle at all, is better representative of our sense of style, a better deal, a better lifestyle. That’s what we have to decide – whether or not to replace our former car with a new one. Our personal situation has changed – we didn’t own a car before we started to have children, and now the children are grown and, for the moment at least, elsewhere. And they have both already learned how to drive, and drive a stick shift at that, and have had two years of practice, so keeping a around car so they can learn is no longer necessary. So should we get a new one, or do without one, and how do the policies of the City and State of New York affect our decision? Let’s review the parameters.
daytona beach hotels motels cheap My block has 800 feet of lot frontage on each side of the street, daytona beach hotels motels cheap with five driveways (7 off-street parking spaces) and 3 hydrants. The three hydrants and three of five driveways are on one side. Based on a count there are a total of 70 parking spaces on the street, give or take one or two based on how large the vehicles are and how efficiently they are parked. Plus the five off-street spaces, for a total of 75 spots. But some of the off-street spaces are used for non-auto storage some of the time, with their owners parked on the street as well. That is one reason additional off-street parking is banned in much of our neighborhood – to preserve the on-street spaces that would otherwise be lost to curb cuts.
On one side of our block there are 34 one-family row houses, a two-family rowhouse, and a three-family rowhouse, for a total of 39 housing units. The other side has 30 two-family rowhouses for a total of housing 60 units. That is a total of 66 buildings, and 99 housing units – compared with 70 on-street spaces and 75 overall. Moreover, some families (fewer than in the past) have more than one motor vehicle. And on some adjacent blocks the ratio of housing units to motor vehicles to housing units is even more unfavorable for parkers, leading some of those living daytona beach hotels motels cheap elsewhere to park on our block. One block over, for example, there are two- and three-family houses on both sides of the street, a situation more typical daytona beach hotels motels cheap in Brooklyn where one-family homes are rare.
The real nightmare is alternative side of the street. Since so many people in my part of Brooklyn do not drive to work, they need a place to put the car all day during the workday. daytona beach hotels motels cheap And on Monday and Tuesday, only half of our street is available for parking all day – with fewer than half the spaces on Tuesday, on the side of the street with the three hydrants and three curb cuts. So if one decides to own a car for use on weekends, but are among the last to return on Sunday night, they face a nightmare finding a way to park legally before going to work Monday morning.
How bad is it? At one time the neighborhood go-to spot for Monday was on the park side of Prospect Park Southwest, where it curves between 16 th Street and 11 th Avenue. But now those spots are sometimes taken. At one time it one could to drive to Flatbush Avenue between Prospect Park and the Botanic Garden and be certain to find a legal spot there, then take a bus to the subway to work. That area is getting loaded as well.
Obviously, not everyone who lives on my block can have their own car, and park it. In theory everyone has an equal right to use those spaces on the street. But some have to give that right up for others to be able to park reliably. Those who give up their right to park on the street, daytona beach hotels motels cheap by not having their own car, get nothing from the city, except an equal tax bill to maintain that on-street real estate. Clearly my neighbors do NOT want me to buy another car. But with that incentive – free parking to have a car, more and more people have them. With the supply of free parking spaces fixed, the more people have them the more inconvenient it gets for everyone.
With large numbers New Yorkers living without their own cars, and seeking to rent cars mostly for trips out of town, there aren’t enough rental cars for all of them on the most popular weekends and holidays. We’ve already booked Zipcars for Thanksgiving daytona beach hotels motels cheap and Christmas, but what if our plans change and we need a car for two days rather than one? I know these days sell out. I had intended to visit relatives last weekend, but as it happens that was Columbus Day weekend, and a week ahead virtually all the cars were sold out. All that was left was a van for huge money. And Amtrak was sold out at the time I would have wanted to travel.
No rental car company can make money paying for vehicles that only get used a few times a year, so one would expect daytona beach hotels motels cheap a shortage on the most popular days.  In New York City, however, there is now a shortage most weekends, a situation that seems to be getting worse.  If you don t reserve far ahead you end up out of luck, or paying through the nose.
Mass transit within metro New York?  I learned the hard way 25 years ago not to count on it during a major holiday, and have been renting daytona beach hotels motels cheap or owning a car ever since.  Though we found out on Easter a few years ago that you can t count on the toll takers either.
As it happens I’ve been curious about the tradeoffs of owning and not owning a car in Brooklyn, and have kept careful track of how much each costs. At the time we purchased the Saturn Wagon the average car lasted 13 years, and for the first 13 years our fixed cost of ownership was $372 per month in $2010: $193 for its purchase and major repairs, $136 for insurance, $22 for taxes and fees, and $21 for maintenance. That would be $406 per month in today’s daytona beach hotels motels cheap money, when adjusted daytona beach hotels motels cheap for inflation, daytona beach hotels motels cheap or $4,872 per year. That’s a lot of money, compared with the median family income of $58,000 in New York City in 2013 (American Community daytona beach hotels motels cheap Survey data) and it doesn’t include gas, tolls and parking.
It probably isn’t possible to own a car for much less in Brooklyn. At least without committing some kind of insurance fraud – claiming daytona beach hotels motels cheap you live elsewhere, for example. The Saturn was an inexpensive small car, and in addition to buying the car stripped and with saved cash (no finance charges or interest) and parking on the street for free, we generally daytona beach hotels motels cheap only used it for trips out of town and drove an average of just 7,000 miles per year.
As for insurance, the primary driver (me) has never had a speeding ticket or an accident, and we qualified for every break on liability insurance there was. We also changed carriers when we thought we were being ripped off, and threatened to on a couple of other occasions. We maxed out the deductible daytona beach hotels motels cheap on our comprehensive insurance, and then dropped it after just four years. Our only insurance claim, lifetime, has been for a break-in and airbag theft that, thanks to the deductable, daytona beach hotels motels cheap we mostly paid for ourselves. And we didn’t bother to repair all the dings and bashes the car took from being parked on the street. For the last couple of years, the plastic panels were held together in spots with duct tape.
We did have the car for four additional years beyond the average of 13, as a result of consistent maintenance and safe driving, but I doubt we saved much per year. For one thing the frequency of repair began to escalate. For another we had inexperienced drivers under age 21 at the time, and our liability insurance cost jumped to $2,500 per year. It would have been $4,000 per year if we didn’t threaten to take our business elsewhere. And that’s with two girls. If we had boys? Forget it.
The big factor in the high cost of owning a car here? Auto insurance in Brooklyn is extremely expensive, for reasons that have nothing to do with an individual’s driving record (mine is clean), driving pattern (ours was low mileage and not to work or school), or even credit score (which the insurance companies and everyone else now seems to go by, meaning you can’t do anything unless you have a record of borrowing money). For those with our characteristics, insurance is far less expensive elsewhere. Far less expensive seemingly anywhere else. Even in other parts of New York City. Those who have clean records in Brooklyn, or at least our part of Brooklyn, are made to pay for someone else.
And are made to pay extra to make up for all those who are uninsured, and for those who pretend to live elsewhere? With most of the parking on the street, the City and State of New York could crack down on those groups simply by requiring that a vehicle be licensed and insured at a Brooklyn address to receive a permit to park on the street overnight here. And by issuing license plates with codes unique to each county or part thereof, to ease enforcement. The city and state have made a non-decision to favor the scofflaws.
Having done it recently, I can tell you that the time and money needed to get children a license and teach them to drive is prohibitive in Brooklyn. In addition to a five hour course, daytona beach hotels motels cheap New York State requires a minimum of 50 hours of supervised practice driving with at least 15 hours at night (after sunset) at least 10 hours in moderate to heavy traffic. I didn’t really feel comfortable until each child had twice that. But those under age 18 are not allowed to drive in New York City without a dual control car, so practice meant driving out of the city from Brooklyn – the only borough that is not adjacent to a suburb – before we could even start. Perhaps others skimp on the practice time, but my children each passed the driving test on the first attempt, while many of their friends flunked – and have given up on getting daytona beach hotels motels cheap a license.
In addition daytona beach hotels motels cheap to the time there is the money – an additional $1,300 per year f