Life without car ownership

[metawidget]

Life without owning a car is something that gets enough questions asked of me that I thought I'd post a few things about it. Also, I like reading this sort of thing from other people (hi, asimplelife!), so I thought I'd give back.

So, for starters, here's the situation: I live with my wife and toddler son in an older residential neighbourhood in Hull. We're within walking distance of most of the basic necessities of life, none of us have any mobility-reducing disabilities. I've got the lone driver's license in the household.

Year 'round, we walk to a lot of stuff. This means groceries one backpack-load at a time, mostly, but that in turn means that fresh stuff generally is in the fridge in quantities that don't go bad too often. In the summer, I grab CSA veggies on the way home from work — the weekly pick-up generally fits in a bike pannier or two. We have a lot of good food close to home and to our two workplaces (Little Italy and Hintonburg), so getting small amounts of tasty food often is easy. When we're walking, for now, Oscar can come along worn in a carrier or riding in a stroller. Unfortunately, our main big grocery store, Maxi, only has carts, and stroller plus cart is hard to manage. In the winter, I much prefer the carrier because pushing a stroller through snowbanks is hard — although we took Oscar out skating on the canal last year in the stroller, and that was worth fighting through snowbanks for. The walk to any groceries is long enough that if one of us and Oscar go grocery shopping, the other parent has enough time for a decent break from child-care. If we have a late night out and the weather's okay, the 45-minute walk from the Ottawa side with sleeping baby strapped on is a nice chance for us to have grown-up conversation, too — it's not quite a date with babysitting, but it's got similar sanity benefits.

When it's relatively sane out, we bike. This means about eight or nine months out of the year. We got a hand-me-down child trailer from Elizabeth's parents — even after a couple of decades out of circulation, we just needed to replace a few bits of hardware and it was good to go. It has room for Oscar, baby gear and another pack or so of stuff. Oscar needed to get used to the bike helmet at first, but he often goes to sleep once we get going. Before we got the trailer, Elizabeth was really feeling the mobility hit of not being able to bike with Oscar, so it was a very welcome acquisition. We both usually get to work by bike when there are not snowbanks or heavy rain cramping our style.

We make lots of use of public transit. Elizabeth and I both get bus passes for part of the year (Oscar is "luggage", as far as bus fares go — he rides for free). The very late night is not so workable, and it's often faster to bike, but when the weather's bad or the distance is long, we've got the system more or less figured out. We both get to work by bus in the winter; my novel consumption goes way up when there is snow on the ground.

Because our workplaces are closer to each other than to home, however we're getting around, Oscar comes to work with Elizabeth most days, and I meet the two of them and keep going with Oscar.

We use cars for a bunch of specific things: moving large, bulky things (like bulk quantities of food, or Elizabeth's keyboard when she's gigging, or furniture), getting to faraway places (like camping, or my parents' place, or the local birthing centre — it is accessible by transit, but it's sort of deep in old Gatineau and getting there during off-peak hours is sort of epic by bus ). We own a baby seat, and can install it quickly, by feel, in the dark, by now. We get a car one of three ways.

Sometimes, we have travelling friends, or friends who aren't going anywhere by car for a day or two. When we have the option to borrow a car and we have things we want to do with it, this is great. I learned how to drive standard due to one of these situations.

If we have a short-distance and/or last-minute car need, I have a Communauto membership (Vrtucar in Ontario). I have a key and an RFID dongle that let me get at either a car-specific key in a box, or activate the car and unlock the doors. I have to book the car ahead of time, but that can be half an hour ahead if the cars aren't taken. We have four cars in easy walking distance of home, and another few close to my work, and stations scattered around Ottawa-Gatineau. Some of them even have a baby seat included with the car. They're great for local hops for heavy things — they bill modestly for time and sort of steeply for distance — even with fuel included, I would be reluctant to leave a radius of about 150 km in one. The nearby cars are all Yarises, but there are larger cars around for couch-moving and similar tasks.

For longer-range trips, or a weekend, it usually works out to book an Enterprise car on the Web. Our Hull location's staff all recognize me, and it's fairly low-hassle and reasonably-priced as long as I book about a week or more ahead. The car we get when we book a compact car is surprisingly variable. They're often out of compact cars, and we have driven away with pickups, SUVs and full-size boat cars and sporty things.

For even longer, or into downtown Montreal, the train is really nice. No parking or security to worry about, quite baby-friendly, and low-emission. On the downside is the rather limited schedule and the cost — once in a while, there's a good seat sale, and we take advantage of points, but it is still a bit more costly than other means of getting from place to place.

Speaking of cost, the nice thing about our cocktail of options is that it is definitely cheaper than car payments — some months we spend nothing on motorized transport, or just bus fare/pass, and other months it might be as high as $400 for all our family transport, but it averages pretty affordable. Some Communauto users extol the presence of a cost every car trip as an incentive to use the car less, and I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it is nice to have basically no constant fixed cost of a car on the budget.

When Oscar was on the way, we heard predictions that we'd be buying a car (or maybe even a minivan!) soon 'cause young kids require cars — we (well, mostly I) did consider getting one (by buying or hand-me-down), but so far we're managing pretty well with a toddler and all the options we have. I know of one co-worker who's thriving with school-aged children and no car, too, so apparently parents in the right situation can manage with multiple kids and not owning a car.

I guess that's a fairly broad picture of how we manage transportation in our little family. I've been wanting to write that out for a while, I hope it's useful or interesting to some people out there...

Comments

[zingerella]

Here's us: We lived car-free in two different houses in downtown Toronto for a couple of years. Now that Red is working for That Union, he takes the UnionMobile to work, because work is technically accessible by transit, but, practically speaking, loses him about three hours/day to transit, which messes with other things.

Up until I moved two weeks ago, I lived a 15-40 minute walk from Red and the Lad (15 minutes at my pace; 40 at the Lad's when he was very small), across the street from the Lad's school. I lived a 2-minute walk from the greengrocers' (plural because there were three greengrocers on two corners. It was a very convenient place to live.) Red's place is in Chinatown East, a 5-minute walk from various Chinese groceries.

So, starting from Red's, one or both of us would walk the Lad to school. When he was little, he would often take a kick-scooter; this made a 40-minute walk into a 25-minute walk). On truly disgusting days, we might take the streetcar up the big hill and the subway one stop across.

When I was working at the office and Red was at home, he mostly did the walk to school, then walked home. During cycling season, I would bike to my office. During glop season, I took the bus (from the subway station near my house) for 45 minutes, or the streetcar and subway (from Red's house), for about the same amount of time.

Shopping was mostly a matter of picking stuff up at one of the groceries on the way home from school/work: I lived a stone's throw from three greengrocers, a 10-minute walk from a grocery store, and a 15-minute walk from a bakery. Red lives around the corner from several Chinese groceries; for non-Chinese groceries, he goes to the grocery store about a 20-minute walk up the hill (one of the possible routes home from G's school).

We borrowed his parents' car for long trips, and car-sat while they travelled; when we had the use of a car, we did exactly what you mention, and arranged to buy furniture, go places you can't go on transit, etc.

In my new neighbourhood, I'm a longer walk from groceries, etc (like 20 minutes). So I plan a little more, and don't just go to the store at 6:00 because I want some beets for dinner tonight. Come cycling season (which for me is when the roads are more likely to not have ice on them, and also when I don't have a horrible cold), I'll use the bike for groceries.

What astonishes me about Red's having the car is how easily the Lad has grown to expect that we will drive places to which we generally take transit.

[raccoonbonapart.livejournal.com]

I also don't have a car! When I take the stroller to the grocery store I usually hang a basket off of the handles, or I just take the wagon. I made Eliot walk to the grocery store a couple of weeks ago because there was too much snow for the stroller and we really needed some basic items. That was a disaster! I should have remembered that we had the wagon! It's pretty good in snow, but not really an option for the bus.

[sabotabby]

I don't have a car either—never have, God willing, never will. Granted, I live in a big city and don't have kids, but it always boggles my mind a little when people expect me to have a car.

[tocityguy.livejournal.com]

I've had similar questions / responses from people when I told them I gave up the car. They can't quite seem to grasp why I might want to do so - and that's with a 15 year old daughter. I think telling them your situation (you with young child) would only blow their minds.

[michaelsjournal.livejournal.com]

You've also got a grocery delivery option (A&P) for moving heavy foodstuffs, should it be necessary. That's how I tend to get my food -- while I'm a short walk to a decent supermarket, I find the cramped aisles and rushed customers disconcerting -- so I order online, and boxed food just shows up when I tell it to. (I use Metro now that I'm on the Ontario side.)

Also, no one EVER asks me why I don't drive, or how I get anywhere. Funny, that.

[rottenfruit.livejournal.com]

That is kind of funny! I was telling metawidget that people seldom ask me why I'm carless. I think it's because of my job - people don't expect music teachers to be able to afford a car. Civil servants, on the other hand...

[asimplelife.livejournal.com]

A neighbour recently got a super swanky car and a second neighbour said to me, "They really need that car though - her husband is a manager! You have to have a nice car if you are a manager!" Wow, no wonder people are broke if they think like that!

[sorceror.livejournal.com]

I got my driver's license almost eight years ago - not because I needed a car, but because I thought that driving was a skill I should acquire. I passed the test on my first try, and have never driven since.

Next, I plan to learn how to ride a bike. :-D

[stalkingsilence.livejournal.com]

We don't have a car, either! Actually, neither of us has a driver's lisence. We live somewhere where we can get pretty much everything we need by walking or transit, and when it's not ridiculously cold/snowy, bike.

[stalkingsilence.livejournal.com]

Uh, license even.

[metawidget]

I like seeing vague sketches of your car-free movements on buses and sidewalks in your DITL posts. I was reading somewhere that Winnipeg was pretty sprawly (second to Calgary in land area per resident); it must take a little bit of doing sometimes.

[asimplelife.livejournal.com]

We have LE MINIVAN right now but honestly I am bussing to work and Nick works from home, soooo. We could totally live without the car, but instead we're doing the minimal use thing right now.

[the-arachne.livejournal.com]

I never said you should get a minivan, I said *I'd* need one to cart everyone around! You, E, O, D, D & me nearly fills a minivan, so we`re stuck using alternate forms of transportation or multiple trips for all major get togethers in the foreseeable future.