Millennials Start With Sharing, End With Individual Ownership

It's true. High insurance premiums for young people, especially in Ontario, are a major factor in pricing any car ownership out of their reach. Since you can't amortize an insurance premium over more than a year, a young person could end up with a monthy insurance bill of over $400. That's insane by any measure. Even the slacker young people that are mentioned so often in the comments here would love to have a car of their own if it was within financial reach. The operating costs are the real problem as there are plenty of cars available at a cheap entry price. If automakers wanted to get young people into newer cars with those low monthly payments the dealers scream about in advertisements, they should figure out a way to get these kids insured. I know VW explored such a program a number of years ago, but it appears nothing became of it. I imagine the costs just weren't workable.

I am assuming and forgive me if I am incorrect that you are presenting a rural or suburban American perspective. In large urban centres and in Europe quite the opposite is true (and you won't find too many Suburbans in those environments). In the Toronto area, things used to be as you described. Now nearly all of those that I know under the age of 26 do not own cars. But many have joined car sharing organizations and these are available at many university campuses. The era of high schoolers in urban areas, owning their own cars and driving them to and from school has long since passed due to high insurance premiums, expensive gas, mandatory safety and emissions testing, traffic congestion, the conversion to urban condo living and the fact that there is a shortage of good used cars available. In fact many condos are built without parking spots for the owners/tenants.

@Arthur Dailey I grew up in the Phoenix Metro area, I went to school in Colorado and currently work in Utah. I guess based on where I have lived nearly every residence has to car spots, the only time I had a problemb was visiting a friend in denver last year in the down town area whose apprtment had only 2 spots one for him and his roommate so i had to find on the street parking for the Raptor. I was the oldest of six growing up the suburban was pretty much the only thing that could transport the family especailly since my dads job took him out of state half the time. Also you live in the 4th most populated city in north america with only Mexico City , NYC and LA being larger. I think it has more to do with how cities are laid out than anything else, Phoenix is larger than san francisco but we have more car owner ship and use because of how the city is laid out, with more thrououghfares there is less congestion, resulting in lower accidents and lower inssurance, there is more parking and cheaper fuel, even LA its hard to get by without a car same thing with Dallas-Fort Worth which as a metor area is bigger than Toronto, and has 2 million more people than Boston but has a lower population density.

Yes. I thought they were being satirical at first. Quite a bit of woman-hating expressed here too. I wonder if there is a connection with being a gear head. Car sharing is a fairly straight forward proposition made possible with just a bit of technology. The need has always been apparent. 20 years ago I would have bought my college student a used car. Now $500 bucks a semester covers it. (Zip car of course).

@jim brewer Whenever Caroline Ellis writes an article here, you can bet there'll be 200+ comments eventually. $500/semester makes my sister's parking fee at UNL ($200/semester) go from "ridiculous" to "highly illogical, Captain," especially since her closest parking lot was a bus ride away, where my $76/semester meant I could see my car from my dorm on all but the foggiest of days. But I guess that's what you get with 20K students versus 3,500.