Author Topic: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?  (Read 5030 times)

Cork

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Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« on: February 09, 2017, 07:40:54 PM »
Does anyone here live without a car?  What are some issues you run into that you didn't plan for?  Anything much harder or difficult?

My details:
1 mile from light rail. 
2 miles from grocery
2 miles from work
Lots of friends 30 miles away :/

I'm considering selling my amazing, paid off, 5speed honda fit for 6 grand and buying a ~2 grand electric bike with a trailer.  I'm a car addict, but if my life doesn't justify a car, then I'll get rid of it.  The choice is situational, but would like to hear from people anyway :)


Freedomin5

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #1 on: February 09, 2017, 09:14:16 PM »
We sold our car when we moved to a different country. The only times I miss having a car are:

1. When the subway is so packed that I can't squish myself on three subways in a row. My solution is to now arrive at work at 7:45 AM so I am ahead of the rush hour crowd. Likewise when returning home from work. I leave an hour later (work longer days, but work fewer days each week).

2. When I have really heavy or bulky groceries, such as when I run out of oil, rice, diapers, and flour all at the same time, and have to lug them all home. I miss our car even more when I have to do so in the pouring rain. To address this, I order most heavy items online. Some of the grocery stores here provide free delivery. I may not be getting the best deal, but I try to save as much as possible by taking advantage of e-coupons. Plus, I do save the taxi fee home, so I guess it's a wash overall. Not throwing out my back and incurring several hundred dollars in medical fees is also a good thing.

3. Doing fun day trips is kind of a pain. I don't have a driver's license for the country in which I'm currently living, so day trips are limited to whatever is reachable by bus/subway. If I had a driver's license, I could easily rent a car for the day.

I do find it a bit harder to meet up with friends. I deal with this by not having friends...j/k. I find myself spending time with friends who live close by. It was one of the factors we considered when we moved to our new place. We actually chose to stay in our neighborhood and live a 5-minute walk from one of our friends, and a 10-minute walk from another friend, so we didn't have to make new friends. We see friends who live outside of  our radius less frequently.

Other than that, it hasn't been more difficult, per se, just a different type of difficult. I don't have to worry about finding parking and paying for parking. I don't get stuck in traffic. I don't have to remember to bring my car in for tune-ups, renew the registration, etc.

As a caveat though, it's important to note that I live in a large, metropolitan city with a sprawling subway network and buses that come every 5 to 10 minutes, so having a car is not really necessary. I can get anywhere in the city (and even to the airport) within an hour using public transportation.

If I were living in an area with limited public transportation options, I would probably consider having a car even if I lived close to work. For example, when I lived in Vancouver, it would have taken me two hours to get to the airport, and going to church would have taken over an hour on Sundays because buses don't run as frequently. In that situation, even though I lived a half hour bike ride from work and a 15-minute bike ride from the grocery story (and frequently biked these shorter distances), we chose to keep our car so that our mobility wasn't limited.

skeptic

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #2 on: February 09, 2017, 10:54:13 PM »
Our family loves living without owning a car (and rarely using one).

But we live in a place that has great walkability, bikeability, and transit. Also a HCOL area of course.

0.3 mi to a real grocery store (plus a corner store closer), and 0.8 miles to school. 3.5 mi to work.

We mostly bike, and the kids either ride in kid seats on our bikes or ride their own bikes depending on the distance. Occasionally we take the bus, or we rent a Zipcar to go visit friends/family in the suburbs or to go camping or to the beach.

We really like biking, so I guess if you didn't this would probably be a miserable lifestyle. It does take a little while to get the hang of it, and get whatever you need to make it work (proper rain gear, lights, waterproof saddle bags, kid seats, skills, etc.).

I've never done it in a situation where the closest grocery store was 2 miles. I think I would probably still bike it but it's a different animal.

When I worked in the suburbs, a lot of my co-workers drove everywhere and so socializing with them tended to be in far-out car-oriented places. Now I work in the city where I live and that doesn't come up. But if you are living in car-country, you may feel a lot of social pressure to have a car so you can access your community. Going car-lite (doing minimal auto trips) is also an option.

We purposely moved to a place where we wouldn't need to be car dependent. We pay more for housing, but much less for transportation, and for us personally, we find the quality of life better this way. But I know that isn't how everyone feels about cities.

deborah

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #3 on: February 09, 2017, 11:29:07 PM »
For many years I had no car. I chose to live where I did because it gave me plenty of public transport options and the shops within walking distance provided most of my needs. Other shops were within a public transport trip, even the most specialist of shops for my hobbies. I really enjoyed catching public transport everywhere, and completed a lot of my hobbies on the tram. It is a much more relaxing way to get to work. One day I took a wheelbarrow on the train when I was shoping for something particularly large, so it's easy to do without a car if you are creative enough and you live in a good place.

iwantfreedom

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2017, 12:08:36 AM »
When selling your car keep the threshold low for buying transport services: taxi, rental, uber etc. A gradual switch may make the change easier. For instance, allocate something in your budget for transport. This is still going to be way cheaper than owning your own car. This alleviates the hardship when saying goodbye to your car. I plan to sell my Volvo V70 in a month and it's terrible how comfortable you get.

Cranky

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2017, 05:17:22 AM »
Stop using your car for a month, or limit it to once/week. See how that goes.

RyanAtTanagra

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #6 on: February 10, 2017, 12:15:49 PM »
I don't own a car (though I do own a motorcycle).  Life in a good city without a vehicle is easy, even ideal, imo.  I only use my motorcycle if I'm leaving the city, and every time I drive a car I'm reminded of why I don't own a car in SF.  It is by far the most frustrating way to get around here.

The hardest part about not owning is getting out of the city easily and cheaply.  Zipcar is easy, but not cheap if you want to get away for more than a few hours.  Regular rental cars can be cheap, but they're not spur-of-the-moment easy.  So I would say work out the specifics of that first.  How often do you leave your 5-mile bubble?  How will you do that going forward?  How much will that cost?  How much additional time will that take for each trip?

Also, are you ok with biking/walking in the rain/snow?  2 miles from work is nice, that's easily walkable, which is much more attractive than biking when it's nasty out, imo.

KittyFooFoo

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #7 on: February 10, 2017, 12:45:46 PM »
We live without a car in NYC out of necessity (owning one is an obscene expense and hassle). It makes out of town travel expensive and a giant pain in the ass (you must take bus/train into NJ to avoid ass-gouging NYC rent car prices). It also makes occasional errands unreasonably time consuming and hard.

In your situation, it seems like selling the car reduces your options for a trivial amount of cash. Without the car, you can never haul anything huge, take a spontaneous out of town trip, avoid poor weather, go 5 miles in a reasonable amount of time, on and on.

I would just keep the car and not drive it much. If you go 6 months or more never driving, not even once, then reconsider.

JLee

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #8 on: February 10, 2017, 01:13:16 PM »
I wouldn't do it.  Having a car is well worth the $4k price premium over an ebike -- plus you can likely extract more value on resale later from the car than the bike.

NoStacheOhio

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #9 on: February 10, 2017, 01:30:54 PM »
In your situation, it seems like selling the car reduces your options for a trivial amount of cash. Without the car, you can never haul anything huge, take a spontaneous out of town trip, avoid poor weather, go 5 miles in a reasonable amount of time, on and on.

I would just keep the car and not drive it much. If you go 6 months or more never driving, not even once, then reconsider.

^This^

Do you have a normal bike? Spending $2k from selling your car to buy a bike seems a little facepunchy.

chesebert

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #10 on: February 10, 2017, 01:33:22 PM »
What's the cost of keeping the car? For me it came down to money. My building wants $200 a month to park and I said FU. Been carless for over a year and do fine between bus, subway, rail, uber and zip car.

Walk score of 99 made the decision super easy for me.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2017, 01:39:52 PM by chesebert »

frugaliknowit

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #11 on: February 10, 2017, 01:40:30 PM »
I LOVE living without a car, but I have many options in a big urban area, and my friends are close.  Over time, I have found I much prefer biking to transit (how can you beat combining cardio with tranportation?).  I am also using Uber more, because the APP is so much better than trying to hail a cab.  Transit is a drag, because it is SO slow relative to biking or Uber (except for lengthy North-South trips).

If you REALLY want to save money, you CAN do it, but yours is not a strong case, since you don't have much transit.

I would start by parking your car for a full month (maybe at one of your suburban friends houses) during the summer (if you are in a cold climate...only because I want you to "break in" during better weather).  See how you manage on a bike...I would not invest in an Ebike (at least not yet), because you're not sure you will like biking around....

mindy

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #12 on: February 10, 2017, 01:46:29 PM »

We purposely moved to a place where we wouldn't need to be car dependent. We pay more for housing, but much less for transportation, and for us personally, we find the quality of life better this way. But I know that isn't how everyone feels about cities.

This! We did the same thing and don't regret it. We pay more to live downtown, but when we factored in the cost of owning a car and extra time spent driving every day, it made way more sense to pay more for housing. We also love not having to worry about traffic or paying for parking, both of which are really common around here.

I would also like to add that car sharing can be a great tool if you don't have a car. We have car2go and zipcar, which are really handy if we want to buy a lot at Costco or something. We don't use it very often but it's nice to know it's there if we ever really, really need a car.

Megma

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #13 on: February 10, 2017, 02:07:50 PM »
I went about 7 years without a car, most of that was in Washington, DC and some of it was in the Netherlands. A few things to consider:

1. 2 miles from a grocery store is kind of far without a car.
I walked to the store in DC & biked in NL. In both places I was a lot closer to the store than you and it still really impacted how much and what I bought. I'd try it for a while and see how you do. In my case, the store was on my way home so it wasn't as problematic to stop in and buy 5 things every few days but sometimes I bought too much and shit got heavy or I dropped a bottle of wine while biking home and it broke getting wine all over me :-/

2. Can you host the 30 mile away friends and get them to come to you a lot? This could help. Most people will drive if you feed them dinner.

3. How good is the public transport? Can you go everywhere you'd like without it taking a long time or being really expensive? Are there safe walk/bike routes to your job, store, other places?
Even if it's only 2 miles you need a bike lane or safe route. In NL the transport was reliable, cheapish, and there were really nice(seriously y'all we in the US could learn tons from the Dutch on this) bike lanes. In DC, yeah not so much. The metro was always late, trains were often 15+ minutes apart, there are very few bike lanes and in lots of areas it's not very safe (ok this is relative but compared to NL biking in DC is down right scary).

When I left DC I was seriously dreading buying a car because I hate driving but sometimes, it's really really convenient. I think the suggestions to try and go car-free for 6 months before you sell your car are good ones.

lthenderson

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #14 on: February 10, 2017, 02:25:32 PM »
I live where the nearest grocery store or rental car is 60 miles away. The nearest taxi, bus, or airplane is is 140 miles away. I can't imagine life without a car or living in a city so I guess I'm suited to where I live.

meghan88

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #15 on: February 10, 2017, 05:43:49 PM »
With work and groceries only 2 miles away, I'd just go for a cheap Craigslist bike or two and be done with it.  Longer trips can be an adventure if and when you're ready.  You'll save tons of $ and get fit.  And there's always uber/lyft/rideshare when you need it.  My bet is that once you've gotten into the groove, you'll wonder why you didn't do it earlier.  Groceries are really easy with a backpack and a couple of saddlebags.  If you have loads of stuff to buy, you can consider getting a bike trailer.

galliver

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #16 on: February 10, 2017, 06:13:24 PM »
Bf has one now that he generously gives me pretty unlimited access to, but we both lived car-less in cities 3 hrs apart before we moved to California. Back then, buses were every half hour and it was a 20 min(+) ride to the bigger/cheaper grocery store in a non-bikeable area, or there was a smaller store on my way home from work. Campus gym was 1mi from my office and 2mi from home; 20 min bus ride if I didn't bike in. All of this didn't actually register as that difficult or inconvenient, it just became part of the routine. As did Greyhound buses to see bf.

I think the hardest thing for me was/would be justifying Uber/cab/Zipcar/car rental on a somewhat regular basis, esp for less critical things. It was a no brainer when I had my wisdom teeth out or my friend had a baby, but I kind of hated doing it when I was moving and wanted to go drop off donations around town. I only got one to go hiking once, for an anniversary date (not that there were lots of options for hiking in the area...). So, it's easy to miss out on activities you might like to do because it's too hard to get to. That's actually why we got a car in CA; couldn't fathom not having the ability to go hiking/camping/to the beach/to visit family at the drop of a hat. :) Now I'm spoiled.

I'm a red panda

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #17 on: February 10, 2017, 07:01:13 PM »
What is the cost of keeping the car and just using it infrequently?
Do you pay a huge premium for parking?
 How much exactly is your insurance? If you reduce your mileage will the rate go lower? Could you consider liability only, not comprehensive?

I guess I don't see the reason to sell it, unless it is a hugely expensive car that will get you a lot of money from the sale (and even then I'd consider replacing it with a less expensive car to have available). Especially if you'll be relying on Uber or rentals for some of your transportation needs.

darkadams00

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #18 on: February 10, 2017, 09:12:46 PM »
We've been a one-car family with a stable of bikes for a few years now. Weekly items we need are within 1.5 miles with other, less frequent items within a ~4-mile radius. Work is about 9 miles one way for me and 5.5 miles one way for the missus. However, our church is > 10 miles away, and I have to drive over to the next city about twice each month (~15 miles one way) for meetings with a client. Our suburban town and our lifestyle are just not quite dense enough to get rid of the one car. But that works for us, still requires a bit of occasional juggling, and is out-of-the-norm enough to warrant plenty of inquisitive conversation among friends and coworkers.

I concur with the "try it first" group. We passed along our well-used, second car to a son moving away to college and decided to try the car-lite/bike-centric life for a while. If we didn't like it, we could always find someone willing to sell us a car. Fortunately the timing worked out well, and we've never looked back.

The other thing to consider--If two people are involved in this decision, then the vote must be unanimous. As much as one might like to go in a less-car/car-less direction, the one who is extremely hesitant or unwilling to deal with the occasional juggle or inconvenience wins. Transportation is a frequent need for most folks, so any disagreements here will pile up fast and lead to some serious relationship fallout. Even our continued success is tempered by occasional disagreements that just wouldn't exist if we owned the typical two cars and fit the standard American mold.

Cork

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #19 on: February 13, 2017, 06:15:23 PM »
Thank you to all who responded.  I'll take the advice of trying life without using the car once spring rolls around.  Then re-asses after 1-3 months :)    Really appreciate the help, everyone.

misterhorsey

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #20 on: February 13, 2017, 07:17:02 PM »
I've lived car free for about 5 years.

I'd been wanting to get rid of the car for a while.  The discovery that the car needed a bit over $2k of work (despite being worth $1.5k), and that I could easily carry a case of beer split between my pannier bags, made me decide to finally get rid of the car.  Even though I decided to get rid of it I left it sitting in my parking space for about 8 months before I finally donated it to a charity. I wasn't sure i wanted to exit from society in this way.

Some context.
I live in inner city melbourne (australia) which has pretty good public transport. Trains, trams and buses. And excellent bike paths.  I'm also a keen cyclist tho and am currently cycling about 300km a week for commutes and fun. Plenty of rain in winter, and wind all round, but no snow.

Some discoveries.

I told myself that liberating myself from car registration costs, insurance, maintenance, petrol would liberate about $50 in fixed costs a week, that I could easily spend on taxis if i needed a car.  Turns out I can't ever bring myself to catch a taxi and I prefer the exercise, fun and fresh air of a bike to paying for taxi and sitting in traffic.

Day trips - I don't bother with day trips anymore.  Unless a friend drives.  I can always rent a car from a car sharing scheme, but I rarely bother.

I have rented vans to move furniture from car sharing schemes.  It's about $50 a day.

Shopping - Groceries are easy. Buy in bulk when things are cheap, maximise your load when you are at the shops, and you rarely run out of things.

Discretionary luxury spending has become harder. I can't go to further flung suburbs to buy bulky items anymore.  I still go to further flung suburbs to deliver crap I sell off ebay, but no more buying of hard to carry things.  My world has become more local. And more minimal.  I've realised the car is an enabler for a consuming lifestyle (i.e. shall we drive to the shopping centre 15kms to buy things? Why not?).  Having effectively a luggage restriction and a distance restriction means that you can't go at the drop of a hat and buy something at a super cheap price at a distance location - but even though you are buying things at a premium, more locally, overall you're saving money by reducing your fixed costs.

The economies of scale of big box retailers are dependent on people driving and loading up their cars. If people drove more sparingly these shops wouldn't be viable.  "Things" would likely get more expensive.  So you'd buy less stuff. But I daresay overall quality of life would improve.  Not sure this will happen tho.

Fitness - So much fitter.

Gear - I do have a nicer steel framed bike, with good quality saddle, puncture resistant tyres, fenders for rain, good wheels and a lot of cycling specific clothing. This stuff doesn't come cheap. It makes it a lot more pleasurable tho - and faster as well.



Cork

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Re: Life without a car. Can anyone here enlighten me?
« Reply #21 on: February 18, 2017, 08:03:29 PM »
Funny how your life literally changes when you change your mode of transport.  And not in small ways.  Values reorient. Very cool.