Reducing Car Dependence (@ content in posts)

[wawa]

It's the day after earth day.  It's about a month from Bike to Work Day. 
Let's revisit the topic of why we all feel we need to drive our own cars everywhere and how we shouldn't because we're killing ourselves.

Last time we talked about this a few people mentioned that car sharing or transit or biking is difficult because you need room in a vehicle for "X".  
So I'm sharing this video that gives some inspiration to moving past that particular obstacle.  

mobilitylab.org/2019/04/22/heres-some-inspiration-to-stop-treating-your-car-like-a-storage-unit/

I'm totally guilty of this one.  I recently got a new work bag to help with the problem (the bag itself is lighter, has backpack straps, etc).
I also finally scoped out the bike route from my house to the county to the south, which has cheaper bus lines that go directly to my office (office is next door to a major transit center) and have bike racks.  The only transit choice from my county to my office is an expensive commuter bus line, but if I just head 6 miles south, which I can do by bike, I can snag a regular city/county express bus which is only a hair slower and a lot cheaper.

Only issue with it is that since it's an express bus it runs on some SERIOUSLY long headways, so if I miss one bus I'm late to work since the next one doesn't show up for 20+ minutes.
I have to say, the actual bus riding though was incredibly pleasant.  Quiet, clean, etc.  And I can sit there buried in my phone the whole ride instead of having to deal with traffic.  It's everything a driverless car could be, for a few bucks a ride.  If you have to pay for parking at your place of work it's a damn steal.  

Shorter headways would be key though, and I intend to voice that opinion to the relevant transit and funding agencies on a regular basis.    If you've never at least scoped out your transit commute options I encourage you to check, and then set aside a few days where you have limited time sensitive obligations and test it out.  I know the vast majority of us just don't have decent options (or any) but some of us do, and just haven't figured out what it would take or assume it would be slow or unpleasant.  Don't know unless you try it!  Even if this isn't something I'll do daily - it's nice to have a fall back.  Like, MH's vehicle started leaking oil and it was no big deal for him to take my car and drop me off at the bus stop on his way!  Awesome!

[just]

I love this!

Again, I know it's not always possible for people based on their own mobility or their home environment, but a few tips I give people who are thinking of starting to walk or bike to work in my area.

- Do a dry run a few times. The weekend is a great time to try the route out and see how long it will take. You can take your time, get as sweaty as you need to and feel confident with biking/walking the route without feeling pressured by time or traffic.
- I keep a full change of clothes at work for the days I forget to put my work pants in my bag.
- Check to see if your bike will fit in the back of your partner's car. We have a bike rack so it's always nice to know that I can ask my DH to pick me up on his way home from work if I've had a long day or don't fancy a rainy ride.
- You don't have to do it every day for it to make a difference. Pick a quiet day at work, when the weather is perfect, and enjoy.

[waverly]

We lived in NYC for 4+ years, and did not own a car. Now we have 2 because we are in the suburbs in a different location. However, DH takes the train to work daily. We bought our house so we could walk to the train. Train itself is a bit on the crappier side due to the times (no weekend trains) which we did not know going into it, but it is great for work commutes, and his office is right by the station.

When DH was going to grad school, we also only had 1 car and we both walked to work and school.

Unfortunately I have to drive now because there is no public transit available between my house and work, and it is too far to bike/ walk. Its a suburb to a suburb, so no trains or buses. We did also used to have a Prius. So since we can't make it work right now to get rid of 1 car commute, at least we can feel good about making it work to not commute by car for over 6 years.

[Deleted]

Well, we live in a rural area with no bike lanes and no mass transit. It would take me over 2 hours to get to work on a bike, if I wasn’t killed first.

We have instead been focusing on vehicles with better fuel economy, and limiting or combining trips as much as possible (I do errands on my way back from work instead of making a separate trip on the weekend). Next year C will be attending the school that H works at, so that will be one very short trip in the least fuel-efficient vehicle, and I make the longer drive in the more economical vehicle. For now I think that’s the best we can do.

[oswin]

@@ below (sorry for the belated tagging)

Thanks for starting a conversation! I used to commute by bicycle every day, when I lived in the Bay Area. It was great. I stopped when I was super pregnant, and then we moved to Texas and it is so much harder to get around without driving here. Our biggest excuse for driving is that we have 3 little kids. But now that I think about it, it may not be as impossible to bike places as I thought. DD is finally comfortable on a 2 wheeler, and actually she biked all the way to school (3 miles downhill) with DH a couple of times recently. We're hoping that she'll get to ride to elementary school at some point, but the logistics are complicated - if she rode her bike to school in the morning, she'd have to be able to bring her bike on the shuttle bus to after care so that she could ride it home, otherwise it'd be making a one-way trip.

We actually have a bike trailer that fits two kids, so DS1 and DS2 could ride in it, with *just* enough storage space for their backpacks. So in theory I could ride behind DD on her own bike, pulling the boys, all the way to school. Then lock DD's bike there and ride the empty trailer back home (I work from home). Maybe I'll try that at least some of the time.

The other reason/excuse here of course is that it's almost dangerously hot outside for a good chunk of the summer. I used to sometimes ride my bike 3 miles to the gym where I coached classes, then ride home. But I'd be riding home at 1pm and it'd be 90+ degrees outside. I'd even soak my shirt in water before I left and it'd be nearly dry by the time I got home (so it was doing its job cooling me).

Lastly, sometimes it's hard to bike places because the roads or even sidewalks are not safe. Most of the 3 mile route to daycare/school (which is right by the gym I used to go to) is along a boulevard with a 45mph speed limit and 2 lanes of traffic each way. There's no bike lane, and while it's technically possible/legal to ride in the lane, I generally only do that when I'm going at least 25-30mph (only possible the downhill direction). It's not very safe, and I couldn't ride in the lane. The alternative there is the sidewalk, which is weird. There's some ordinance that I think says that sidewalks on major artery streets must pleasingly meander or some shit like that, which means that the sidewalk distance is approximately 25% longer than going in a straight line. Sometimes the meandering is to avoid trees, which I get, but at those spots there are also big bumps in the sidewalk (hello tree roots!). Oh, and every time you cross a minor neighborhood road, the sidewalk turns sharply so that the crosswalk can be like 10-15 feet from the major road, which is super unsafe because then you have to slow down quite a lot and then you're so far from the main road that you have to awkwardly look over your should to see the cars that are trying to turn into that side street and hope they don't hit you when you're crossing. Riding on the sidewalk is way more dangerous at intersections than riding on the road, so they need to just stripe a damn bike lane. There's even technically room, because the curb lane is 15 feet wide (and the other lane could be made slightly narrower), but it would go against their guidelines to make it narrower. I'm pretty sure that studies have shown that when a driver is presented with a wider lane, they go faster, and narrower lanes actually make drivers drive more cautiously/safely/slowly. It's a perception thing.

Oh, and there's almost zero transit here.

[pixy0stix]

@@

I'm on the hunt for an e-bike to make a bike commute feasible on daycare days. I need to talk to my H, but I think we might switch how we do daycare drop-offs/pick-ups so that each of us can ride our bikes in 2 days a week.

ETA: I have no excuse to not bike. We have great weather to bike in, and my city is recognized in the top 3 in the nation to bike in for it's bike facilities and trails.

[Deleted]

Fun fact: for our first anniversary, I changed into my dress at work. My H took the bus from our apartment, and I met him on the bus, which we rode to one of the fanciest restaurants in town.

We took the bus all the time when we lived on the other side of town. But we couldn’t afford a house on that side, and the transit situation isn’t as good here. WOMP WOMP. We do still carpool and use the bus sporadically - it comes in helpful for me particularly for medical appointments because I basically need Xanax just to go to the doctor.

But alas, we actually just bought a second car after six years of the one-car life.

Also - and hear me out on this - I haaaaaaaaate biking.

[picaflora]

H did this about 2 years ago, and now bikes to work once the weather warms up above freezing most days. Before he built up the stamina both ways (we live in a valley, it's all downhill to work, and uphill home. And the route home is brutal hill-wise to avoid some major traffic snares), H would bike to work and found an express bus to get back. There was only one bus time that he could catch before the lines switched to night service and didn't come out our way. If he got held up at work and missed the bus, he would ride as far as he could and I'd go get him. It happened all of 5 times in a period of a year.

Now he bikes both home and back, and adds extra miles using the city's greenway system. His work just moved to a flex schedule, so he goes in earlier and leaves earlier to avoid "rush hour" traffic (heavy traffic is really just 15-30min). He has access to a shower at work as well, which means he doesn't have to worry so much about a hot ride in or being smelly throughout the day. There's also a good spot to store his bike, and other co-workers bike in as well. For reference, it's about an 8 mile trip one way to work for him.

I work on the outskirts of town, and there are no public transportation options out this way. I also have to cross a major highway (either an interstate or a beltway), and there aren't any bike/pedestrian friendly bridges to cross without going 5 miles out of my way. I do work 10min away from a commercial district where we run most of our errands, so I try to hit those during lunch or on my way home. That way during the weekend any errands we run are fairly close by. I think next we need to figure out if we can bike to the grocery store on the weekends and get everything we need back up the substantial hill. The store is only a block down the main road - probably right at a mile from the house.

And now that we have an electric car, I can take that on the days H bikes, and we both have a "zero" carbon emissions commute. I'm still adding a car which causes other issues (wear and tear on the roads, adding to congestion), but it's better than where we were before.

[karinothing]

My work is about 2 miles away and I could totally bike except there are gigantic hills and I am not strong enough to make it via bike. I do wish I could take the bus more. I used to take the bus in my old apt, but now I am closer to work and the bus route takes 3 times as long. So frustrating. We have pretty decent buses here, just not a good one for this location to my work. I really love the bus though.

[glw]

@

I don't have kids.

Having one fewer child = 58.6 tCO2e emission reductions per year...
Living car-free = 2.4 tCO2e emission reductions per year

I'll continue to drive my 2-seater to work. 

Source: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541

[Dumbledork]

@@@@

We were so excited about frequently using the bus and train for transportation here.

DH’s work will even pay for a monthly bus/train pass.

But he and the kid get intense motion sickness on each.

DH can almost fight through it, but with the heat in the summer, the bus just never gets quite cool enough to help him deal with it so he ends up getting sick in the nearest trash can.

[isabel]

I wish alternate transportation was an option for me. My office is 30 miles from home (and we just moved closer!). It would take me over two hours each way to take public transportation and I am not willing to bike 60 miles a day. My goal for my next car is full electric though. I am hoping that by the time I need a new car there will be good options for this and that I will have a different job that is much closer to home. There are plenty of opportunities in the area I live in to get my commute within biking distance. I would love to do that if I can eventually find a job that is close enough.

Since we moved, DH has been driving to the light rail station and taking the light rail downtown. He doesn't love it. I have no idea why. I am so jealous of his uninterrupted free time to just sit. I would love to do that and just read the whole time. But he does like that he doesn't have to sit in terrible traffic and it's cost effective because light rail costs about as much as parking, but he's not using gas or putting miles on his car.

[oswin]

Apr 23, 2019 10:44:34 GMT -5 karinothing said:

My work is about 2 miles away and I could totally bike except there are gigantic hills and I am not strong enough to make it via bike. I do wish I could take the bus more. I used to take the bus in my old apt, but now I am closer to work and the bus route takes 3 times as long. So frustrating. We have pretty decent buses here, just not a good one for this location to my work. I really love the bus though.

Get an electric assist bike! We've got some friends who sometimes bike to get places from their house, but they live in a super hilly neighborhood so they got one. The electric assist makes it so that when you're going up hills, you're still pedaling but more like if you were going on a flat surface.

[scm1011]

We are a one-car family, but both take public transit to work. We just traded in our 12+ year old car last week and it had 51k miles on it (mostly from trips between Boston and my in-laws in Hudson Valley, NY).

It is 1.05 miles each way from our house to daycare in a direction that isn't served efficiently by public transit. We walk. Ran, shine, snow, 10 degrees, we walk. This boggles my suburban family's mind.

We could still do better. DH drives to the grocery store on weekends with DS even though its like a half mile away. We have a wagon, so I might try and convince him use that to transport DS and groceries instead. I don't bike as much as I could because every few months there is a fatal bike accident around here and that scares me, but the city is adding new bike lanes all the time so I should revisit that. 

[isabel]

Apr 23, 2019 10:44:34 GMT -5 karinothing said:

My work is about 2 miles away and I could totally bike except there are gigantic hills and I am not strong enough to make it via bike. I do wish I could take the bus more. I used to take the bus in my old apt, but now I am closer to work and the bus route takes 3 times as long. So frustrating. We have pretty decent buses here, just not a good one for this location to my work. I really love the bus though.

Can you walk once a week? That actually sounds really nice to me. And two miles shouldn't take too terribly long (although much longer than driving, obviously).

[karinothing]

oswin,I shall look into it!

isabel, hmm. maybe. I start work at 6am. So it would mean I have to leave the house by a little after 5am. I am not sure I want to walk in the dark by myself.

[dexteroni]

We gave up a walkable neighborhood with nearby transit when we bought our house, and I miss it so much. We'll definitely make it a dealbreaker rather than a "nice to have" feature in our next house.

[isabel]

Apr 23, 2019 10:59:09 GMT -5 karinothing said:

oswin ,I shall look into it!

isabel , hmm. maybe. I start work at 6am. So it would mean I have to leave the house by a little after 5am. I am not sure I want to walk in the dark by myself.

Yeah, that's early. I also start at 6, which is one of my reasons for not considering public transportation more. I am not willing to start my commute at 4am to get to work on time. lol

[karinothing]

Apr 23, 2019 11:00:37 GMT -5 isabel said:

Apr 23, 2019 10:59:09 GMT -5 karinothing said:

oswin ,I shall look into it!

isabel , hmm. maybe. I start work at 6am. So it would mean I have to leave the house by a little after 5am. I am not sure I want to walk in the dark by myself.

Yeah, that's early. I also start at 6, which is one of my reasons for not considering public transportation more. I am not willing to start my commute at 4am to get to work on time. lol

I do telework 3 days a week, so I figure that helps reduce cars. We do walk a lot (just not to work). I just wish the one main hill (nicknamed superman hill) had an escalator lol. My kid can now just make it to the top (walking) at almost 8! Now to get the other one there lol.

[litebright]

Also just throwing out there that the best commute (IMO) is no commute, if you can come up with a way that makes teleworking possible for you, even a day or two a week and propose it. The flexibility is great and there are environmental perks, too. I drive SO much less because I WFH -- so I spend less on gas and I've even been able to knock our insurance on my vehicle down to the bare minimum because I put way less than 12K miles a year on my car. I drove my minivan for eight years after buying it with 20K-odd miles on it, and it still only had 80K-some miles on it when we traded it in.

[oswin]

I know that Mr Money Mustache isn't PC and is downright offensive in a lot of his posts, but most of his numerical calculations are sound. Hence I'm posting this old post about commuting costs: www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/

In particular (since it's a long post), this bit:

To put things back on par, let’s whip up a couple of quick commuting equations. Let’s assume the average person’s marginal driving cost is halfway between the Ultra-Mustachian driver figure of 17 cents per mile, and Uncle Sam’s generous 51 cent allowance. So, 34 cents. Let’s also assume the value of a person’s time is $25 per hour, since this is close to a median wage for a suburban commuter. (If you don’t think you’d use your newfound leisure time that productively, you need to think more like an Early Retiree. I used mine for plenty of learning and domestic insourcing).

For each mile you drive across two times on your round trip to work daily, it multiplies to 500 miles per year, or a $170 annual fee

For each of these miles, you waste about 6 minutes in the round trip, adding to 25 hours per year ($625 of your time).

So each mile you live from work steals $795 per year from you in commuting costs.

$795 per year will pay the interest on $15,900 of house borrowed at a 5% interest rate.

In other words, a logical person should be willing to pay about $15,900 more for a house that is one mile closer to work, and $477,000 more for a house that is 30 miles closer to work. For a double-commuting couple, these numbers are $31,800 and $954,000.

Obviously there might be other legitimate reasons to live far from work, but hearing about some of the crazy commutes some people here have makes me wonder why they chose the place to live that they did. Plus of course it's hard to live near work if you want to buy a house, when in a lot of industries (like tech, where I work), you have to change jobs every couple of years to get any reasonable raises. If your workplace is always moving it can be hard to make sure you live really close to it.

[Jalapeñomel]

Apr 23, 2019 10:51:32 GMT -5 Dumbledork said:

@@@@

We were so excited about frequently using the bus and train for transportation here.

DH’s work will even pay for a monthly bus/train pass.

But he and the kid get intense motion sickness on each.

DH can almost fight through it, but with the heat in the summer, the bus just never gets quite cool enough to help him deal with it so he ends up getting sick in the nearest trash can.

eyesonboard.com/products/anti-motion-sickness-glasses?variant=27705201197161

[juliej]

We only have one tiny car (Honda Fit 4 LYFE!), but we've structured our lives up to this point around driving as little as possible - living in smaller places so we could save money and/or be closer to the city center, actively looking for jobs on transit routes or with easy bike commutes (or, in my case now, no commute at all) that are comparable in time to driving, carpooling when possible, etc. We bike or walk everywhere in nice weather (or even crappy weather, if our kid is motivated), if we have conflicting travel needs that require more than one vehicle we use Lyft, and our four-year-old car has less than 15k miles on it. It took a while to get to where we are now, though, and I acknowledge a lot of privilege and resources involved in our situation that others won't have access to (and honestly, we couldn't afford to make the choices now that we were able to make 4 years ago in terms of where to live).

[BicycleBride]

My H is big in to biking and among his accessories is this thing:
ridekick.com/
It’s basically an electric motor that you attach to the rear of any bike and gives it a push much like an ebike. So if you already have a bike you like but need to extend your range or make the trip a bit easier, this is a great option. We mostly use it with our recumbent tandem tricycle aka clown car.

[BicycleBride]

Apr 23, 2019 11:24:16 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Apr 23, 2019 10:51:32 GMT -5 Dumbledork said:

@@@@

We were so excited about frequently using the bus and train for transportation here.

DH’s work will even pay for a monthly bus/train pass.

But he and the kid get intense motion sickness on each.

DH can almost fight through it, but with the heat in the summer, the bus just never gets quite cool enough to help him deal with it so he ends up getting sick in the nearest trash can.

eyesonboard.com/products/anti-motion-sickness-glasses?variant=27705201197161

Have you tried these? I keep seeing them advertised on Facebook but they sound too good to be true.

[amberlyrose]

Our city just put in new bike lanes on a main thoroughfare and I'm stoked. It will also make it easier to get to the train to downtown LA, where our office is relocating this fall.

[Jalapeñomel]

Apr 23, 2019 11:34:36 GMT -5 BicycleBride said:

Apr 23, 2019 11:24:16 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

eyesonboard.com/products/anti-motion-sickness-glasses?variant=27705201197161

Have you tried these? I keep seeing them advertised on Facebook but they sound too good to be true.

I haven’t, but they have a 90 day return policy, so I’m going to try them!

[karinothing]

Apr 23, 2019 11:37:39 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Apr 23, 2019 11:34:36 GMT -5 BicycleBride said:

Have you tried these? I keep seeing them advertised on Facebook but they sound too good to be true.

I haven’t, but they have a 90 day return policy, so I’m going to try them!

I wonder if these really work for flying. I have gotten sick on our last two flights despite medication

[Susie]

@@@

I'm so bummed that I have to shelve my bike + kid trailer for most of this summer because I will have a newborn who won't be old enough to ride in a trailer for a year.  I really enjoy taking DD to the park, library, errands, etc. via bike.  Our neighborhood is not walkable, but it is bike-able.  We already have a double trailer, so next year we can get back to it with both kids.

I would love to making biking to work a regular thing, it just seems so daunting with kids added into the mix.  It's a ~9 mile ride each way downtown, to where H and I both work and the kids' daycare is.  We currently all ride together in one car, so we'd have to get all 4 of us down here via bike in order to put a dent in the family carbon footprint (and right now I'm super pregnant so that's a non-starter).  Even when we don't have a pregnancy or a <1 year old to deal with, neither of us has a shower at work, there's ice on the roads for like half the year, and I'm really skeptical about the safety of pulling a trailer on the downtown streets.  There's no bike lane, drivers don't watch for bikes, and I constantly feel two seconds away from getting doored by a parallel parked car or hit by a city bus or a car.  I used to do it on nice days pre-kids, but haven't since then.  I never felt safe when I did.  I would love to live in a more bike friendly city, but the climate really slows adoption here, and change on old roads is hard.  

We use the bus system too sometimes, whenever one of us needs to deviate from our shared commute schedule.  There's a park & ride 2 miles from home, and as wawa mentioned I actually find it pretty enjoyable to ride the bus.  DD loves it, she loves maps and all the routes and talking about where every bus we see is going.  But it only comes at :21 and :51 after the hour, which is tough.

I guess I'm mostly going with a little bit of everything -- relatively high MPG car, carpooling, some bus use, some biking.  Once we are out of the tiny baby phase I want to do better.

[isabel]

Apr 23, 2019 11:23:15 GMT -5 oswin said:

Obviously there might be other legitimate reasons to live far from work, but hearing about some of the crazy commutes some people here have makes me wonder why they chose the place to live that they did. Plus of course it's hard to live near work if you want to buy a house, when in a lot of industries (like tech, where I work), you have to change jobs every couple of years to get any reasonable raises. If your workplace is always moving it can be hard to make sure you live really close to it.

You're kind of contradicting yourself here. Sometimes people end up with bad commutes because they changed jobs and the new job isn't very close to where they own a home. To your point, it's not always that easy to ensure home and work line up, not to mention when a family has two working adults, they could be working in completely opposite directions.

I feel like DH's commute to downtown is pretty normal. We live in a suburb south of the city and plenty of people around us commute to the local business district (which is much closer) or downtown. My commute is quite long, but there are a lot of reasons (some of them @) that we chose to stay south of the city when we moved (even though I work north of the city).

The numbers you posted are interesting, but there is not a chance in hell we could afford a house twice as expensive as what we own, even though my commute matches up with his numbers. Even factoring in gas and car payments/maintenance/purchasing new vehicles, we don't even come close to what he's suggesting. That said, we did move this month specifically for the reason that our commutes were too long. We spent more than we wanted to in order to be in an area that was closer, but we really would not have felt comfortable spending more to get even closer to the city.