car-less days extended

[meganursula]

As it turns out we needed to drop the car off this morning because the check engine light was on. It turns out that there were some rats in the engine, and they wreaked their havoc. It will take $500 and at least four days for us to get it back. God, i do NOT like this car. Can i blame the rats on the car? Probably not. However, i had my Subaru for a decade with nary a rat anywhere, and the Dodge just attracts them. I wish we could just go car-less indefinitely.

In some ways this turns out to be a decent test for us. Decent, but not perfect. Josh and i have discussed before going this route, maybe getting a Zipcar membership, and just embracing a non-driving lifestyle. We can do this for this week - we are able to do our daily necessities via bus and walking and have nothing weird that requires us to drive. Its a good time for it. But I have been thinking of how hard it would be to do on a regular basis. Contra-indicators:
- our weekly opportunity to go to a friend's house - how would we get there and home in the dark of the night with no car? We could, sort of, make people come to us, but this really sort of cheats our way out of the car - it doesn't reduce global total trips, just our total trips.
- what about after school classes? There is no way we could have gotten to soccer without a car.
- what about extras? Usually, in order to make doctor's appointments or zoo trips we drive. True, true, we could do more of this with bus trips, but sometimes we just couldn't fit it in.
- we generally do a big shopping trip every week - this would be much harder without a car. Not to mention the periodic Costco or something like that.
- Zipcar has some appeal, but we'd end up using it a lot. Additionally, the idea of lugging three car seats to a zip car location just to make a trip to the store?

Well, we'll see how the week goes. Maybe some sort of inspiration will strike.

Comments

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

I didn't see the word "bicycle" anywhere... Lots of cyclists have bike seats or trail a kid on a bike -- only issue would be who gets to cart *two* kids. Though your oldest must be riding by now, no?


The main way to avoid driving is to move to a denser neighbourhood. I try to drive at least twice a week, otherwise I get a ticket. But that's because I have dozens of shops within a very short walk, most of them on my street (I was starting to list every shop I frequent on my way to the nearest bank branch 500m away, but it got silly). Many locals are in fact completely carless. Those that use car-shares don't have to go very far lugging their car seats.

In return, we don't have lawns and gardens.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

PS: "I like to do car-less days occasionally. The idea is pretty simple: don't turn on the car for the duration of the day."

That kind of gave me a jolt. I'd forgotten how almost all North Americans live. Not just crazy red-state birthers who think the EPA is a communist plot, but everyone who isn't in the densest part of the densest cities, for whom not using a car requires real sacrifice.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

It is a bit odd, and it is a gigantic problem, in my opinion. Many cities just aren't at all conscious of designing towards non-car activity. Seattle is so-so.

There are many cities that I believe Josh and i could live in car-less. Seattle is not one of them. It is not as bad as it could be; as a child-less couple we regularly went a week or so without driving. But, I find that having three very small kids makes many of our options so difficult as to render them rarely possible. I also find that having kids creates the more frequent need for trips we might not normally do (like a soccer class, or play-date, or William's beloved museum).


It is, perhaps, a bit of weakness on my part. I can take the bus to the store, but it will frequently use up all my energy for an entire day. And, i admit that i drive more than i want to sometimes merely because the alternative is so daunting.

Still. I love where my in-laws live, and find it to be a great place to visit. When i evaluate living there - they have no sidewalks, no bike lanes, no public transportation... And that is normal, for many people in the US. It was true of where i grew up, too, although our proximity to town was closer so i could walk or bike as an older teenager or adult.

I suppose my car-less days are my very private stand on the matter.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

Well, Seattle is not that city. We could move to a more dense area, but we'd have to commute our kids out to get any of the services that we have close by here. (There are very few schools serving the down-town core, for example.)

I am an unabashed bicycle advocate. I miss my bike commute, still, quite regularly. I hope that some day cycling will be a much bigger part of my solution. But right now?

Madeleine can ride a bike, but not without training wheels. This along poses problems, since i think the training wheels ultimately limit the surfaces she can ride on. It is also a symptom of some of the other issues she has - she has trouble going up any sort of hill fast enough to balance. This morning Madeleine and i went 3/4 of a mile to the store. I walked, she rode her bike. Some of the riding required me to push her to help her get up speed on hills. The excursion was definitely an excursion, not merely expedient.

Right now Marie can not ride in the bike trailer - she isn't old enough for a helmet. So no solution can include Marie for another three months.

At that point, my ability to bike around is dependent on me being able to pull a trailer containing at least 60lbs of kids up the sort-of hilly terrain near our house. Both of Madeleine's pre-schools had major ridges between them and our house. Our closest generic grocery stores have similar ridges. Add to this that my kids uniformly hate our bike trailer (which i use as a double stroller frequently).

I admire the crap out of families that can do more biking. I hope that i will be to do more biking in the future, and i hope to instill a love of it in my children. I would love to get to the time when we can do a family ride. Its just not now, and i don't see it happening before next summer at the earliest. Even then it will have to be a controlled and carefully calculated ride.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

We have an odd (but, I think, typical of older cities on the continent) situation downtown: nobody lived there, so there are few stores and shops, but suddenly there are condos popping up like a bad case of chicken pox. Condos with large parking garages underneath, so the residents never walk out the front door, the get in their cars -- which makes sense since there's nothing to walk to. Just outside downtown, however, we have university and residential neighbourhoods aplenty. You have some of that in Seattle. But where you are, you're far from most everything.

I'm not suggesting you're a bad person for not moving, just that we're a bad civilization for building unwalkable cities.

For some reason I was thinking of Madeleine being 10 already. If she's biking with training wheels, you can hitch her bike rather than dump her in a trailer. Then she can feel like she's helping (she's not, but it's not 60lbs either). People do that with 5-yo kids around here. That works if you don't all need to go somewhere and you can just leave the boys at home. You don't see that many bike trailers around town, because they're not really practical. They emerge on the bike paths on the weekend.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

Pittsburgh was that way, huh?

You know, we live in one of the more walkable/bussable/bikable areas in Seattle. Its not the best, but it is far from the worse. We deliberately considered that when we were looking for a home; its why we both can commute on public transportation.

I also can't really express how exhausting it is to do some things with the kids. You know, we have three right now - Madeleine is 5, William is 3 (today), and Marie is not yet 1. For me to bike alone i'd need a trail-a-bike followed by the trailer (its doable, and i've seen it done, but i don't think i'm up to the task right now).

A walk or bus requires that i carry a twenty pound baby, or push a stroller. Neither solution is great, especially since i also have William who doesn't yet have the stamina for miles of walking a day. It doesn't leave me any room for something going wrong, which it will, because i have a three year old.

I feel like i'm being defensive, and perhaps i am. I appreciate that you prod me to think about these things. I'm not sure i've had a breakthrough where i think its actually possible, but perhaps if i sit on it for a while i will.

[safetybitch.livejournal.com]

This is easy. Arrange from your sister to buy the house across the street & share a car. It will need to be a mini-bus with all our kids, but there ya go. ;-)

[eub.livejournal.com]

Rats? What the heck is up with that.

Yeah, Zipcar and small kids, I've thought about that problem before. They really don't have a good answer for car seats, I don't think. Even if you bring your own (I bet somebody makes a bike trailer that mounts car seats?), installing them adds overhead.

I saw families in Zurich who lived downtown and were naturally doing their shopping on foot (not that a car would fit down their street; European cities must have some very special narrow-gauge fire engines?). It looked idyllic. No doubt I'm romanticizing.

[katybeth]

Different ages make for different challenges, I guess. We do most of our grocery shopping by stroller these days, at the store half a mile away, and for appropriately short distances I find stroller or front packs easier than putting them in and out of the car. But I have not figured how I could possibly take both kids on the bus by myself until they can walk better.

We have not even attempted any bicycling yet. (Gotta try out a trailer.)

[mh75.livejournal.com]

You are welcome to borrow my trailer to try. Maybe i'll even give it to you some day if timing works out.

Taking the bus with William and Marie, i have one walker and one packer. I could do this with Madeleine and William up until i got too pregnant with Marie. Having William in my frame-back-pack on at least one trip, it still worked, even though i couldn't sit well. Question is, can you pack one and walk one?
I see people with strollers on the bus, but i dread the idea myself and haven't tried it.
In six months or a year, though, you can probably walk them on, so long as you don't have a long walk on either end. Thats not so long.