Once Upon a Car Ownership: 8 Months Later 59

Great post and awesome t-shirt. Keep on doing what you’re doing…it’s very inspiring and motivating. Good job.

Darryl

Great post!

I went carfree in Calgary about 18 months ago and I can say definitively – there is no going back for me. Aside from the economic savings, which are substantial, the biggest benefit I have experienced is a “downsizing” of the world I live in. Calgary is a very spread out city but for me and my family Calgary is really about 10km in diameter. Everything we need for services, fun, recreation is all within that circle and it makes it seem like we live in a small town.

In about 18 more months the new LRT line will open with a station placed 300m from my home – that will be a nice treat too!

As we get ready for our second child we briefly debated getting a car to make errands a little easier until the bean is big enough to handle the chariot (how we get around with our 3 year old)

The costs and stress don’t even come close to the benefits to shopping locally or even shopping alone with the bike. 1 kid or 2. Going carless makes us fitter and richer.

My daughter loves her bike and is ready to enjoy the Trail a Bike!

Great accounting of the detailed numbers. I think about this a lot too. We just paid some $600 for the 120K mile maintenance on our one car, and another $350 for another six months of insurance. In a few months I’ll need to replace the rear struts and sway bars for another $700 or so. After that I don’t feel bad about spending a lot for my Pashley Roadster!

Right now I commute by bicycle most days, with some use of the bus in extreme rain or snow. My wife uses our car to take my son to preschool. I keep wondering if once my son is in grade school and taking a school bus, we could get away with selling the car and just using car sharing, taxis, and rental cars when necessary. The closest car sharing hub from my house is 2 miles away right now, but we might move closer to the city center in a few years (depending on where my son ends up attending school), so perhaps it will be a more feasible choice then. It seems like a nice idea to me, to have all these options for getting around without being tied to the expense of car ownership, but I think we would need to have easy and ready access to a car and being 2 miles from the car share car would not cut it for my wife. We live in Buffalo, which is making great strides in the right direction (e.g., our local non-profit car sharing service just started up a year or two ago) but is still a city that is laid out in a way where not having your own personal car would just be too inconvenient, especially for families. (Which is rather sad considering 30% of the households in the city do not own a car.)

What is written in this post is valid for people who don’t mind spending most of their lives in the city. There are people (like me) who need to get out of the city into real nature during the weekend. As practical public transit for this purpose is nonexistent in the Greater Toronto Area, the only way to do it is by car. Renting a car for ten bucks per hour may be cheap for a three hour rental, but going for a day trip would escalate the price and wouldn’t be cheaper than owning a reliable car. As you can tell I own a car, though I use it quite seldom – pretty much only for the weekend out-of-city trips. Paying 2200 bucks per year for insurance + some money for maintenance (which is very little as it’s a reliable car) is not more than renting a car for a full day every weekend and possibly for vacations. Note: to bike from my place to
outside of the Toronto area is way too far for practical transportation.

Michael, I use Autoshare for short trips, but leaving the city for a weekend is indeed a different can of worms. I normally rent a car for $35 a day. Of course, doing this every weekend would cost about $3600 a year, so it wouldn’t be worth it. But if you leave the city once every month or so, then it might make it worthwhile to consider. Though there are a host of other factors to consider (e.g. how far away is the rental shop, etc). Cheers.

I have been car-free for about 2 years now and I really have no desire to acquire one =) I am much healthier than I was two years ago, and I am actually able to save money instead blowing it out on insurance that would not cover my old car… And as well as reducing pollution which is a great plus for everyone around =D

Here’s a little story. The U.S. has something called “The Bicycle Commuter Act” that allows employers to offer $20 per month to employees who regularly cycle to work to be used for anything bike related (purchase, improvements, repairs, …). Good so far right!

Here’s the bad news. The program is completely voluntary. There’s no requirement that employers offer this plan and there is no requirement to maintain state or national statictics on participation. Little loop hole.

But $20 is $20 (or $240 a year) so I asked my employer to participate and their response was it would be “an administrative burden” to do this for one person and unless there were at least 10 employees in the program, forget it.

Where I work I’m the only bike commuter. But I want my $20 on principle. So here’s what we came up with. We have a “Y” (YMCA) two blocks away and they offer a corporate membership discount which my company agreed to offer since it would benefit all employees. Since I’m a member anyway and I grab my shower there each morning, the corporate discount more than made up for the $20.

I guess this is a half-win. My employer did recognize the value of offering a healthy life style option but they failed to recognize the value of commuting by bike.

BTW: I’m a VP in the company and I was asked if biking to work was appropriate for my position … funny right?

Here’s another way to enhance the benefits of biking. Bicycle Benefits http://www.bicyclebenefits.org/ is a concept where a business provides a reward for bikers. I’m not sure how the business model works but it sounds interesting.

I wrote my experience of being car-free for last 30 yrs. of my life. Based on CAA’s data, I’ve saved over $220,000 in total.
http://thirdwavecyclingblog.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/30-car-free-years-cycling-pumps-money-into-my-wallet/

I’ve been cycling for the past 19 yrs. But what the blog post doesn’t indicate, that I was living in a car-free home for first 14 yrs. of my life (yes, I’ve been around in life for awhile. Cycling keeps me in shape/looking young.) Parents too poor to afford a car. But we did live in downtown Waterloo, close to schools, services, shopping and public transit.

A family of 6 children…so imagine that in a small Ontario city (at that time).

My partner used to drive alot for his job in his former career because of business trips across North America, but he has been now car-free for last 20 yrs.

We are both ex-Torontonians, know cycling routes very well since he was one of the lead cycling advocates there. I lived there for over 20 years and was cycling there from early 1990′s to early 2000′s.

Acutally, I believe there are alot of people who live a car-free life for many years: they just don’t blog nor write/speak English. But they are poor. Toronto has enough residents who are car-free –it’s obvious when there is a transit strike.

Hello James,
Good article. I’d like to share some interesting info about a new bike trail in Charleston, South Carolina, actually on James Island…Fort Johnson Road. We have very few bike lanes and walking lanes in Charleston, but this new bike trail will provide a good precedent, and likely will add strength to future expansion of bike trails for commuters and sports folks. FYI
PB

Lost my insurance to a $37 late payment while I was out of work and doing chemo treatments 8 years ago.
I held onto the vehicle for five years, but never really looked back. I do hitch-hike, which happens to be illegal here and with understandable concerns, and do borrow a friend’s truck when needed (fill with fuel for compensation) but have accepted a mindset that would make David Suzuki proud (always biked a lot, anyway, including a cross-continent tour, but now do it for just about everything). 10km to the nearest city, 10-30km to friends and other services and regular destinations; takes time, yes, but still better than “spending money we ain’t go” as Stompin’ Tom would say.
I would still like to have a vehicle, somthing that can be converted from recreational vehicle to heavy-duty transport to gaz-mizerly personal transport when it is raining or snowy, but find it difficult to ultimately justify.
I do encourage others, but know that the auto-culture brainwashing is a difficult whirlpool to escape from.

Surprised at how low the figures are

Thanks so much for all your great information.

Thanks so much for all your great information.

It usually takes a conscious decision to live car-sharing services in a thriving urban environment, cycling, public transport or on foot can be your main mode of daily transportation.

A buddy of mine that is involved in construction tells e that it’s really great that they have access to services like perth skip hire whenever they’re in a pinch and need the extra muscle to move objects.