Plaidophile

Lately I've been going down to the South Bay rather often, mostly to mingle with one particular close friend. I usually take BART and Caltrain, but that has a few pretty big issues:

• It takes me about two hours each way
• Caltrain only runs once an hour on the weekend
• The last train North leaves at 9:10 on Sunday

The next obvious option is Zipcar, which is pretty handy and flexible (if you book a car far enough in advance), but the cheapest car near me costs $70/day, meaning that going down for one day every other week costs $140/month, and if I stay overnight that's more like $280/month. Plus, it's not really set up for full-day rentals — it's really more for quick spur-of-the-moment things like shopping trips and the like (which I basically never end up using it for, since it ends up being too much of a bother for that sort of thing anyway unless it's something I really must do).

Another obvious option is Enterprise. It's quite a lot cheaper, at $20/day + gas (so probably around $100/month for my use case), but the rigamarole around pickup and dropoff of the car makes it approach BART+Caltrain in terms of inconvenience. Plus, it requires even more planning.

So, finally, that leaves just buying my own car. Based on a quick quote from Esurance it looks like insurance will cost me around $45/month (assuming I get a used 2000 Honda Civic sedan). I wouldn't drive much so gas and maintenance would probably be around $10-20/month. Registration and smog checks work out to around $3-$4/month. My parking is free. So we're looking at around $70/month for owning a car, which would also lower the bar to taking quick trips various places (instead of putting things off for several months until I get around to something). It also makes it much easier for me to consider doing live shows more often when I can actually take my instruments places, for whatever that's worth.

Right now I do enjoy having a parking spot available for friends when they come over, and for my sister whenever she goes out of town for a week or two, but for the most part my spot just goes completely unused (well, aside from people parking illegally in it, which happens rather a lot). When friends come over they usually find street parking anyway, and my sister is resourceful enough to have others take care of her car for her too.

So, when looking at it all written out, it seems like buying a car actually isn't that bad of an idea after all.

I'm sure there's something I'm not considering fully, and there's probably some Really Good Reason for me to not get a car after all (I mean, aside from smugness and so on), but as much as I like being car-free and having to really pay attention to my transportation (and naturally limiting my environmental impact as a result) and so on, it doesn't seem as if getting a car would really make that much of a difference to me, economically or environmentally. I'd still probably take BART and Muni for commuting and in-town hanging out and the like (since that's still cheaper and convenient enough, and anyway parking in the city is horrible).

Also, I'm tired of being the burden who always needs to be driven everywhere when it comes to out-of-town day trips and the like.

In any case, if I do decide to buy a car, it will definitely be something used. And probably a convertible, because California driving is just better that way.