Living in a City without a Car: Classic or Dud

I currently live in a suburb of Boston and I'm almost sure I'll be moving to an apartment somewhere in Boston relatively soon. I have a car, but I'm looking forward to not having to deal with it anymore; I kind of just want to sell it. (Check engine light went on, had it fixed, check engine light went on again! Insurance! Gas money!) So, can any of you who have lived in Boston or another city with decent public transportation without owning a car tell me how not having your own vehicle has worked (or not worked) for you? Do you run into any trouble? Do you like not having a car?

got rid of mine living in brooklyn - you will feel regret for about three weeks and never miss it again, especially if there are any parking restrictions in your neighborhood and/or parking is in high demand.

Lived in London all my life, never learnt to drive, never felt like I'm missing out at all by not owning a car. London is notoriously terrible for driving in though so it's probably not reasonable or helpful to compare the experience of not having a car here to not having one in a more car-centric US city.

kshighway where are you from?

don't bring yr car if you don't absolutely need it.

I did it until I was 30 years old. Worked fine for me. But getting to work can be a pain, if the transit service is shit poor, as it is for many mid-sized-city dwellers.

I live about 30ish minutes outside of Boston.

lol do u not want to say what town? i'm from wakefield

i lived in a city with bad public transportation w/o a car for 3 years and it was fine. i might get one next year because i'm getting old and i have less friends in new place but i like not having it. no insurance to pay for, no parking problems, no people breaking into it, no accidents.

i mean it was good for me because i lived close enough to a real grocery store to go there at least 2x per week, and close to movies and bars which is about all i care about tbh

hahahah i drove around for 30 minutes tonight finding a space that did not have street cleaning tomorrow so i could enjoy my day off.

Who the fuck isn't going to vote classic on this?

Classic yay.

in my new place i watch an entire row of cars get towed every afternoon and lol to myself

xxp i think he's just trying to figure out if he's going to miss it--as well all know he is not.

Yeah, classic. Four years, car free. I can see very little reason I would ever want one again. I hate driving. Have an iGo car if need be, but probably only reserve it a couple of times a year.

it depends on the city

did this for 7 years, was totally convinced it was the greatest thing ever, then we had a transit strike and i had to get a car. quickly realized how much not having a car had actually sucked, will never return to carlessness (barring some amazing new magical not sucky transit option appearing in the future)

*note: no subway here, so that might make the difference tbf

i love not having a car. i go into road rage mode way way too easily, and i think this helps my sanity.

my car broke down in July (taking tehresa to a baseball game lol) and i just figured fuck it, why spend the money. i'm not into the bus or anything but it works. living in a big enough city, close enough to the center, helps.

dud if you live in a city and own a car and fuk u too

call all destroyer, w4kefield, eh? me too! hahahaha

u guys shd meet up for a beer!!!

pause

The other thing is that you will make adjustments as needed -- there are already millions of other people like you getting by without cars in cities who have all kinds of ways of doing this. For example you'll find that you can buy a nice collapsible pushcart for your grocery shopping and laundry. And when you occasionally need to move big stuff, you can rent a car or van -- the cost will be dwarved by what you'd pay in car insurance alone.

i don't drink!

tea

pause (again)

I went to college in boston and only had a car the last semester I was there. And I gotta say that I loved having it. The T can be slowest thing in the world, and having a car to haul groceries etc is so much better. Obviously I am horrible, mother earth is weeping, etc etc.

though I currently live in chicago and need a car to commute and I would love to work somewhere El-accessible.

Man, I'm *always* considering getting rid of my car, and have come quite close to doing so a couple of times (*nearly* did so while living in Seattle and not driving it AT ALL). I won't have much a of a choice eventually if it continues to deteriorate as it has been though.
The dealbreakers though are 1) I live in SF, work in San Leandro. BART is great but my job is inconveniently far away from the SL station and there are no lunch options in the area, so I need to drive to/from BART (I leave it there at night) and around SL on my breaks. 2) My parents live in San Jose and I drive down every 2-3 weeks and 3) I often need to transport records, synthesizers, furniture, laundry, etc. between various points in and out of the city.
For these reasons I just haven't been able to let go.

tbf I know nothing about boston - might be 10x easier in NYC

I used to live in the Midwest (suburban STL, STL, then Chicago), and grew up with super car love, drove my '87 Camry into the ground, had a deep abiding adoration for the roadtrip, etc. Then I moved to Portland w/o my car, and withith a few months I was to the point where the few times I had to drive a friend's car or something I was filled with loathing for the whole operation.

Bike/transit/comforatble shoes/a big bag just make life straight up better and cheaper.

P.S. When you don't have to drive, you can totally get drunk on a whim with no big stupid risks.

xp oh what the hell fine if you don't drink just get a hummer and enjoy, planetkiller

Also, and I realize this is lame, I just love the sheer pleasure of driving. It feels SO GOOD. I even looove city driving.

one other note - the minute you get a car after not having one is the minute that all your friends will suddenly let you know how much they resented giving you rides to stuff that cant be done carless. thx dudes!

yeah i've probably spent several weeks of my life waiting for the bus, and a lot of extra time riding it places, but you adjust to that too. i no longer expect to get anywhere quickly. everything is slooooooowwwwww

if I lived in america, I wd own a car btw otherwise I wd be a fule and lolololol at myself

cozwn otm

actually my gf doesn't have a car and having 1 car per couple seems like a good balance.

I can't wait to live somewhere with more practical and reliable mass transit so I can get rid of my fucking car and save like 3-4k a year.

I used to wait for buses, but the bus tracker has been pretty reliable and is now in place for all routes. Even if the wait is 15 minutes, it is so much better knowing that I'm going to be there around 15 minutes.

Also, I use this awesome iPhone app.

^completely otm, if it's late and I know the bus isn't going to come for 45 minutes, that means I have 40 minutes of beer/reading time somewhere warm, whereas before I'd be freezing/wet/bored at the bus stop that whole time just in case

if you can't do this in your city, it's not worth living there

if you care, you don't deserve to live

xp eh whatever, most people I know have cars. the city i live in doesn't have a large population, but it's very spread out. And public transport is ok, not great. I drive to work most days.

..and i do enjoy living here

maybe you should stop enjoying it

u___u

i'll prob enjoy it more if/when we get a bridge named after the go-betweens tho

Sell your car!

I had one for 5 years, growing up in Missouri. I got rid of it when I left the country for a while, and since then I've never missed it in the three cities I've lived in (Chicago - why the fuck would you want a car? Ithaca - smallish town but great public transportation; Washington DC - why the fuck would you want a car?).

Boston - Why the fuck would you want a car?

Honestly the only thing I miss about having a car is listening to music loud by myself a few times a day. But the benefits of going carless far outweigh the convenience of going grocery shopping, which is basically the only real plus a car has going for it.

great job, another 10,000 UAW dudes out of work because of this thread

as someone who bought their first car at 35 (and spent most of that time in sydney which has a lot of public transport) i say DUDDUDDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUUDD. so incredibly lame. i mean, it depends on the city but off the route places taking 30+ minutes to get there vs 5 minutes there and back in a car.

I agree. The only real benefit I can see in my situation would be greeniness\carbon emissions\etc. Time-saving and general freedom to go where ever whenever far outweigh the (not enormous in my cirumstances) cost saving of not having a car.

admittedly I don't live or work in the centre of town where parking and shit could be a big problem.

<OWLGORE>

If/when the economy "recovers" $3 to $4 gas is going to be the floor price in the summer, and higher than that if there are any political disruptions, and higher than that in the next decade (lol peak oil), so you might want to factor that in too.

</OWLGORE>

anyway i'm not retardedly pro-car or something, i was just mostly taken aback by the challop of if you can't do this in your city, it's not worth living there

I like the convenience of having a car in Chicago, but I only ever drive it on weekends.

i've been on the job hunt and i'm finding that for a lot of jobs where even minimal "travel" is a component, applicants need to drive and have insurance. i don't drive, so even if i'm otherwise well qualified, that can knock me out of the running.

most of the time i don't mind being car-free -- los angeles' transit system is sooooo not as bad as people say -- but honestly it might be nice to have a cute little smart car at the ready, just in case. i probably wouldn't use it that much, cuz i hate worrying about parking and all that crap.

If/when the economy "recovers" $3 to $4 gas is going to be the floor price in the summer, and higher than that if there are any political disruptions, and higher than that in the next decade (lol peak oil), so you might want to factor that in too.

ya I go between being gleeful at how seriously this is gonna fuck people in every GOP-voting county in the country and being 'oh shit' about the serious prospect of the american economy imploding when we are incapable of moving things or people

Trains dude

f'real

Oh wait we tore up a bunch of tracks for hobby biking and sold the rest to companies so that non-Acela Amtrak would totally suck and not compete with Private Enterprise.

Whoops.

We're gonna die :(

http://www.zipcar.com/

several people OTM when they say the availability of parking determines the classicness or dudness of this situation. I drove to high school my senior year and having to get there half an hour early in the morning to look for parking in center city Philly = d u_u d.

another factor to consider: how hot/humid it gets in the summer, whether or not you have an aversion to walking around in shorts and flip flops looking like a tool (but a comfortable one).

re: zipcar, I signed up for one of them (streetcar actually) (in london) about three years ago, still have never used it once.

Mind you I do snag a lift off friends every time we go cycling.

Living in Paris now without a car and it's awesome...helps that we have a hypermarket like 3 minutes away by foot, though. When I moved to the Bay Area (the peninsula) a few years ago, I asked people there before moving if I'd need a car and they were like "lol yes" and it was true, carless folks there had a hard time doing anything fun, let alone shopping (to be fair, all anyone does there is work so it didn't matter that much).

@Euler, do you also use the Paris bicycle program, Velib? Always seems like something that really works to me.

I've lived in Helsinki all my life, never had a driver's license nor (obviously) a car. I've never thought I'd need to have a car, and I don't think I've missed anything by not owning one. The public transport here is quite good, and it isn't a huge city, so you can get basically anywhere in Helsinki within an hour or less using the public transport. At the moment I'm working in Vantaa, a neighbouring city in the Helsinki metropolitan area, and I can get there within 30-40 minutes using two local train lines. I think it would actually take me more time to go to work by car than by train, because the route would be more complex and there would be traffic jams etc. Also, Helsinki isn't the sort of a car-centric city where you can only buy groceries in big supermarkets you have to drive to; there's small neighbourhood grocery stores everywhere, I've never lived further than a five minute walk away from one. Actually, I kinda hate those big supermarkets packed with people, I've always preferred to shop in the smaller neighbourhood stores.

The only time I wish I had a car of my own is when I need to haul shit back from Ikea or similar.

Zipcar + Hertz can provide you with all your car needs at much lower cost and pain.

streetcar >>>>>> zipcar, in london anyway.

I haven't used Velib yet but it looks like fun! I'm just waiting for the right (leisure) time to try it out.

I did this for 5 years in San Diego, which was a bad city to be without a car in.

I never chose apartments more than a few blocks from a major grocery store. Back during the grocery strikes, hauling all my food halfway across town on the bus from Trader Joe's or Whole Foods was doable, but seriously not ideal. If your grocery bag breaks in your trunk, you can always just carry your groceries back into the house one at a time; if it breaks on the bus, you are fucked.

o yeah, the rise of reusable grocery bags played a big part in making this possible for me. because you only need 2 of them and they don't break.

velib can be pretty annoying at times - you often have to factor in an extra five minutes at the end to find a 'parking space' for it.

also those motherfuckers are heavy.

Yeah unless I'm doing it for fun, Velib doesn't seem worth it; I can probably walk as fast as it would take to ride while negotiating Paris traffic, or if it's pretty far, I'll just take the train.

Mostly I see tourists using it, but summer's just ending so maybe this place will cool out that way.

I've managed perfectly well living up to 20 mins walk from shops/supermarket and never driving all my adult life. You just get used to it when you have no choice. Granny trolleys and calico bags for grocerys are yr friend.

Mind you it is apain in the arse not being able to pick up furniture or hardware/plants easily.

"You just get used to it when you have no choice." does not equal "tremendous fun and a great use of your precious time" though.

It was far easier for me to pick up furniture and stuff because you can just go to U-Haul and rent a truck for $50 or so.

things a car is good for in a city:
1) going places that are not in the city that you live in
2) hauling drums and amps and guitars and band members to shows if you're in a band

i don't have a car, can't even drive. i know people who can though. it's classic.

only wish i had a car when i want to get out of the city, never to go places within it

The last time I had a car, people kept hitting it. While it was just parked on the street. You'd walk by your car in the morning and see that someone had scraped down the side and taken off the side view mirror.

I lived without a car in a near suburb of Cleveland for about 2 years. Getting back and forth to work was fine -- two bus lines, one from either end of my street, went straight downtown. But grocery shopping, on foot, in a Cleveland winter? Massive motherfucking dud. Getting back and forth to the orthopedist's office after leg surgery? Dud, dud, dud. Getting anyplace at all that wasn't straight downtown? Huge dud.

Also, the 7 years I spent living in the Northern Va. suburbs would have been unbearable without a car. If you live in DC or in Arlington, great, you can get away with it. If you live in Loudon or Fairfax or Manassass, forget it.

I'm married to capital-J Jeff so I pretty much share his opinions on carless living in Chicago. I've also not had a car in northern CA and Boulder, CO and Delaware and was generally happier without one, although I was young and reckless and hitchhiked with abandon, which is not something I would recommend to anyone who is thinking about getting rid of a car. The only place I've lived where I can say that I definitely needed a car was Greensboro, NC. I tried to figure out how I could get from my home to my job using their bus system and it would have taken about two hours, included a mile walk at the beginning and the end of the commute, and actually would have been more expensive than just driving. alksdjfa;lksdjf

Here, I'm most turned off by the parking hassles and also the myriad of stickers and registrations that one must be very vigilant about keeping up to date because I swear the cops just want on street corners for registration stickers to expire at midnight so they can start slapping tickets on your car every two hours, the fuckers. I-Go cars are the best thing ever because it solves all of these problems.

want wait

I lived without a car in a suburb of Boston and usually found it very easy to get around, the only times i really disliked it were when i was leaving the city and had to rent cars to visit people far away (but the rental prices were still, overall, cheaper than owning a car).

Now that I own a car, last weekend I drove back to the Boston suburb to visit people, and I found driving around the area a huge fucking headache of traffic circles and one-ways and bad signage. Overall it was less stressful to just bike or take the T. Due to parking cost alone, not to mention traffic, I would never want to commute into the city center by car. I guess you might need one if you work in the outer suburbs, though, it's annoying and sometimes ridiculous to get from suburb to suburb by public transit. So I'd say get rid of it if you work in the city, keep it if you don't.

To catch up anyone who doesn't know me, I live in NYC and don't have a car; enjoy driving but can't afford it at all, and don't need it.

However, I'm v v sympathetic to sunny's comment about going places off-route -- someone above said you can get anywhere in their city in less than an hour, but if it takes 45 mins to go 3 miles on the bus, "less than an hour" is not a good timetable. I care much less now that I've been biking in the city for a few years, but before that, running errands in Brooklyn was RIDIC.

My roommate went to go pick up some dishes and things from the East Village the other day -- it's only maybe 5 miles away but it took 4 hours. That's half a day. Who has that kind of time??

Also, I've been looking for free/cheap furniture on craigslist a lot lately, and I've seen A LOT of cool stuff that I could have had for free or for less than $50 if I could get out of NYC to get it. But I have neither a license nor a credit card for renting vehicles, and you'd need a van.

Could have furnished my whole apt stylishly by this time if I had what midwesterners consider normal, which is to say SOME kind of utility vehicle per family: van, truck, etc.

I keep postponing my drivers exam but I gotta say: having a car is MAD AWESOME. Mad because I could do without but god damn going for (heavy) groceries is so much fun. So's going to places outside the city centre. I could reach it with a bus but it's often very hard to do so. It's classic... until you have to lug something heavy to/from your place.

I totally agree wit Sunny. How classic is it when you have to take your kid to the doctor which takes a bloody HOUR with a bus but with the car would take me about TEN MINUTES.

(I say would cause as a result of not having a car and being slightly disappointed with the doctor, I switched to another one.)

no car is classic. no car but knowing a bro WITH a car is doubly classic.

living in nyc my entire adult (post-college) life I've never owned a car. rent cars perhaps a dozen times a year for weekend trips, and even at the insane prices it's cheaper than maintaining yr own. even ten years ago when I had to take care of my aging/infirm relatives' empty houses, and I was driving to pennsylvania every week and down to virginia once a month, renting made more sense than owning a car. it's a weird thing, though, not owning a car, because most people in the US (big cities included) can't rely on public transportation the way we new yorkers/east coasters do. this may be one reason why new york city seems "un-american" to some people. owning a car -- it's a near-universal experience, a touchstone of american adulthood that I may never experience.

Our local zipcar as a toyota tacoma pickup which is great for the sort of errands that Laurel described, we've used it for moving furniture, dirt, barbecues all kinds of stuff. I just wish they had a panel van as well because the weather isn't always nice round here.

you can rent panel vans from u-haul for a day for probably cheaper than zipcar iirc

I've never had my licence so I'm probably never going to even hire out a car: I contemplated it when I still lived back home but Melbourne has trams and some screwy toad rules (and shit drivers) so I'd rather not, tbh.

SteveM OTM though: would be handy for getting out of town. If I want a holiday I have to jump on a plane and go to perth or somewhere. I cant just pop down to the great ocean rd for the weekend, and sometimes, I do miss that (in the past, I had bf's with cars. That hasnt been the case for about 10 years now).

Also yeah band stuff = royal pain. Watching my bloke load his amp and pedal case onto a trolley and clamber into a taxi every monday rehearsal is bleh.

haha screwy toad rules! Nice typo :/

I really thought that was an Australian expression.

Regardless of what Ned maintains, LA SUCKS without a car.

pretty much. I mean you can "get by" with out a ride there but that shit isn't often fun.

Never really considered it a problem until (a) I started applying for jobs and loads were either out in the sticks (there are a lot of sticks in the South West) or needed you to have a driving licence; and (b) my mate started driving and going on day trips and finding it easy to go to Ikea etc and I thought it looked like fun. I fully intend to get a car and a licence - sorry, license - when I move to SF... but I guess mainly for exploring purposes.

I live in a city.

I have a car.

I drive it when/where it makes sense.

I don't drive it when/where it doesn't make sense.

I win.

Also, suckers w/o cars who want rides: u payin' for gas.

I get weirded out sometimes thinking about people driving cars. I mean, it's humans driving around these hunks of metal that weigh thousands of pounds and our health and safety is at the whim of their attention and reaction time. They're like deadly weapons!

I totally agree wit Sunny. How classic is it when you have to take your kid to the doctor which takes a bloody HOUR with a bus but with the car would take me about TEN MINUTES.

― Nathalie (stevienixed), Thursday, September 3, 2009 9:49 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Now that I am responsible for someone else's life, not owning a car is completely out of the question.

I get weirded out sometimes thinking about people driving cars. I mean, it's humans driving around these hunks of metal that weigh thousands of pounds...

This feeling is the strangest thing to get while you're driving down the street and you see other people in the other lane and you just realize how life is much stranger than it seems.

http://www.subdamage.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/neutralmilkhotel-in-the-aeroplane-over-the-sea-thumb-500x500.jpg

How strange it is to be anything at all...

sometimes you are driving down the street and your head turns into a tambourine, which is really strange

walken's syndrome vs. jeff magnum head

humans driving around these hunks of metal that weigh thousands of pounds

I get this feeling from time to time when I'm driving. Say, speeding along the freeway and looking out the window, making the realization that I'm not watching images pass by, but I'm actually driving a big ol' machine at 65 mph. And I could easily kill myself of others if I turned the wheel a bit. And I'm surrounded by hundreds of other people in the same situation, with the same potential to kill.
It's a little crazy that anyone can be easily licensed to do this, but there you go.

for the record, that's looking out the *front* window while driving, not gazing at the view to my left

haha oh man, that's a tambourine? I always thought it was a slice of a pear or potato

I just walk down the sidewalk and hope none of you crazy people in the hunks of metal decide to take me out with one of them.

oh, it might be, i just guessed it was a tambourine because it looks like those metal pieces on the side. could be a potato.

Now that I am responsible for someone else's life, not owning a car is completely out of the question.

this logic is bizarro

well it makes sense if it means "responsible for bringing someone else all over the place" but not as much if it means someone else's safety

Well to be fair I don't think I'm *that* crazy.

I'm with Jeff and kshighway - when I drive I think about how sometimes there are only *inches* between these two huge objects going very fast, and how there are thousands and thousands of things that could go wrong every single second of the time.

This is the same sort of thinking that makes me too freaked out to ride my bike on streets.

I sometimes think about getting a car, but even if I never were able to borrow a friend's car, I would still pay less for cabs, CTA, I-Go cars, and U-Haul than I would in insurance, registration, and tickets, b/c come on - tickets are inevitable.

It depends where you live and what you do ... as numerous people have mentioned upthread.

I grew up in a small town where you needed a car to go anywhere interesting, and I think that feeling of car ownership =freedom and independence has stuck with me, even when I was living in San Francisco and racked up over $1000 of parking tickets/fees in a year, regularly got up at 6:30am to move the car for street cleaning after having gotten home from work at 2:30am, climbed through the hatchback trunk to get out of the car when people parked so close to me on both sides that I couldn't get in the driver's or passenger's doors.

I totally agree wit Sunny. How classic is it when you have to take your kid to the doctor which takes a bloody HOUR with a bus but with the car would take me about TEN MINUTES.

it's called a taxi!!!

and how much does it cost?

less than $1000?

b/c come on - tickets are inevitable.

Nah, I haven't had a ticket in, like, 15 years. (And so my insurance is correspondingly lower, too.)

It's worth taking a taxi if your kid is sick and it's an emergency. It's probably not affordable to take taxis to run all your errands because it takes so long to catch the bus and you have to take a kid or three with you and pay their fares and stop them from screaming in public and keep them from running away from you and snotting on other passengers and it's just easier.

Not that having a car isn't difficult in other ways, but I can't imagine life with kids without some vehicle unless you have a lot of other advantages. Like a grandparent living in the household, or a nanny.

i'm just gonna avoid this whole dilemma by not having kids

I know there's a parenting thread in which someone asks if they're being ridic to have kids and not get a car, and I think the answer was "no" and I support that and admire them, but I can't criticize any parent or 1 or more kids for wanting a vehicle of their very own.

I can see it -- it could take me a couple of hours to go the hardware store otherwise, even for something silly like ONE SCREW or ONE WASHER that I need for a bike or home repair job. That's really freaking annoying. A bike cuts it way down, but if my life was like that more often, I'd care more about having a car.

xp iatee: well yeah, it costs less than $1000 for one cab ride ...I dunno, maybe in other cities cabs are cheaper, but in Oakland and San Francisco they are pretty expensive.

Pancakes: maybe he means parking tickets? But, on the other hand, even counting tickets, for me, registration, maintenance, insurance, and gas on my car comes in at well under $2000/year.

Laurel: that's one of the reasons that I'm glad I do have a car - I'm constantly having to run a bunch of errands, and plenty of them where it's like, "Does this store have this? No? Let's go see if this other one has it."

Being carless is mostly doable if you live in the right part of town but is still a pain in the ass about 20% of the time.

It does prevent me from shopping out of boredom. That actually saves a lot more $$$ that not having to do payments/insurance/gas/maintenance/etc.

My estimate is that it would cost me at least $1500 more per year to own a car. This is a *very* conservative number, as it assumes I would have the car paid off and it does not take into account that even if I owned a car I would still take cabs and public transit at times. But I probably would have a car payment.

Pancakes and sarahel: I'm talking about parking tickets. In Chicago, unless you only ever park in garages, you're probably going to get a ticket. Jenny and captial-J-Jeff are super conscientious people and they got their share of parking tickets.

it makes me go O_O when i hear about how much people pay to park in garages for work or even by their apartments. or even at school where students routinely paid something like $550 per year to park. that fact made me feel really smug about walking to school.

it could take me a couple of hours to go the hardware store otherwise

Where do you live in NYC that there's not a hardware store in your neighborhood?

Parking for my building would be $65/month, which is pretty cheap. For work it would be $130/month. Street parking is hard to get in the evenings where I live. (Weird, somebody just walked into my office to offer one of our lawyers a newly-available parking space.)

I have a driveway to park in in front of my apartment building, and my car is 20 years old and used to belong to my dad (before he got a new one), so it cost me a $15 ownership transfer fee, and $3 BART fare, plus a $7 Caltrain ticket to go pick it up. If my dad hadn't picked me up at the southernmost San Jose station, it would have been 3 1/2 hours on transit plus 30 minutes walk to get there, though. By car, it takes a little over an hour to get from where I live to my parents' house.

Oh yeah, visiting the family in SJ would be hell without a car. As it is, it's just a 40-45 min. drive.

(eh plus I like to bring my laundry)

ha ha ... I brought my laundry with me when I stayed at my parents' in G1lroy over Christmas ... I had forgotten that their dryer takes forever to dry anything.

I still haven't used a laundromat since moving to the city. I am shameless.

In Chicago, unless you only ever park in garages, you're probably going to get a ticket.
I dunno about this -- I drive to work 2 days a week, where we have our own lot (also not in a fancy part of town where there would even be a garage) + we have our own parking spot behind apt = haven't had a parking ticket since i can remember. it just all sort of depends on your situation and how you use your car.

i couldn't do my job well without a car (too many locations, lugging stuff everywhere). plus, let's be honest -- those people who have three kids and are doing their errands on the bus? i would bet $10 they would rather be doing their errands in a car, registration fees be damned.

all sort of depends on circumstances etc

I did have a couple of weeks of buying a TON of new socks/underwear for awhile though.

There's a hardware store a few blocks away but it's limited in supplies and in hours too. The good one is a mile away. Someone else might walk it; I can't. But it could be up to a half hour wait for the bus and a 10-20 minute bus trip each way.

Oh, yeh. I meant without a dedicated parking spot of some sort, not necessarily a garage.xps

The worst thing is taking public transit after a trip to Home Depot. I have carried shelving, lumber, and a grill on the bus and train and it's terrible.

I didn't have a car when I lived in Providence because I was in college and I didn't want to deal with driving/maintaining a car where it snowed. I would take a shopping cart from the supermarket and get several weeks worth of groceries and push it 2 miles home. Sometimes in the snow.

up hill?

Both ways.

Yes, uphill, until I discovered another supermarket about the same distance away that didn't have so many hills between it and home.

to add something useful to the thread - i've lived downtown without a car for about 4 years now and love it. in the summer i can get most place by bike - i have work, grocery/hardware stores and all that nearby. in the winter i can walk or take transit depending on the weather that day. i estimated i saves $550 a month - on the lease, gas, parking and the inevitable parking tickets that come with being downtown. alot of spare cash for the odd cab ride.

the drawback is you're rather trapped if you need to get out of the city. my mom had a stroke last week in the next town over and getting out there is sort of a pain.

and insurance. that cost alot. fucking insurance.

and actually getting to the hospital in Hamilton isn't that hard either. there's an express bus every hour that has a bike rack on the front, which does make it pretty easy now that i think about it.

If only our buses carried bikes!!!

I think the ideal situation is to have a significant other who owns a car.

xp- can you take bikes on the subway in NYC? (our buses have new and improved bike racks - improved in that they don't drop bikes)

when you're that significant other, sometimes it isn't all that ideal ...

Yes, but they can be so difficult to get through the gates/turnstiles and up and down the stairs that frequently it's not worth it.

on the other hand, I may have a stronger guilt reflex: "No, I'd feel bad about you spending $5 and an hour of your time to return the movies to the video store, I'll drive over and drop them off ... it'll only take me 20 minutes."

I've lived car-less for for about 7 or 8 years and I've recently moved back to London where my gf (who loves driving) has brought her car here. She wants me to GET INSURANCE ON THE CAR! Now I can't see that it will be very useful and mostly a pain in the ass. Who needs a car in London Zone 1? I'm secretly hoping the stress of driving (and parking) will convince her otherwise.

+ I think I've forgotten how to drive.. or lost confidence with it.

Is insurance not mandatory on cars in England?

I tried to take my bike through an exit turnstile once (one of the ones that go floor-to-ceiling) and I got stuck and blocked people. I have learned to ask the attendant to unlock the gate for me, or go through the handicap gate.

the whole "omg it would take me a whole hourrrr to do my chores" attitude is so lame. the underlying american entitlement factor - "I want it now, daddy!"

likewise, the "oh, just wait, you'll realize how important cars are when you have kids" attitude reminds me of "you'll become a republican as soon as you get robbed / pay taxes."

this bugs me constantly in sf - so many people drive here despite the fact that:

a. you really don't need a car to get around. you don't. in fact, a good portion of the time, you're gonna make your life more difficult.
b. people not taking public transportation = less money goes to public transportation, more money goes to roads and parking lots, more reasons to complain about public transportation. (the bus that went to my house in southern california got its service cut because *people weren't taking it* - it's always a self-fulfilling prophecy)
c. the fact that so many people here think of themselves as environmentally conscious but aren't willing to make real sacrifices. buying a prius doesn't count. at least people in texas don't pretend like they give a shit.

yr right, nobody should have cars; in fact, they should be made illegal posthaste.

"a. you really don't need a car to get around. you don't. in fact, a good portion of the time, you're gonna make your life more difficult."

I am totally sympathetic to this attitude except for those times in SF where you really need a car (like if you have to take the fucking 24 DIVISADERO which is the worst bus on the goddamn planet.)

Of course I don't own a car so I just end up walking up Divisadero most times when I need to get to the Castro, but that's really an option for everyone at every time of day.

not really an option

Ironically I'm being cap'n save-a-car-owner here when I'm using my car less and less these days! I bike to work, I walk or bike to a lot of shopping, and our RTA buses in Cleveland all have bike racks and liberal rules about taking them on trains.

xxxpost

the whole "omg it would take me a whole hourrrr to do my chores" attitude is so lame. the underlying american entitlement factor - "I want it now, daddy!"

Fuck this, tbh. It's one thing if it's occasional, it's another if it's every time you need something. I don't know how many hours are in your day, but there are only 24 in mine, and I'm only willing to spend X% of those waiting at bus stops. In fact, between the years I did live without a car and the years in Northern Va., I think I've maxed out on that number.

"In fact, between the years I did live without a car and the years in Northern Va., I think I've maxed out on that number."

Waaaaaaaaaaaaah. Boo hoo.

usually when i'm looking for a place to live i make sure there's a grocers nearby. but that's just me. waiting for the bus is annoying.

ya, he put in his hard time, doesn't have to care anymore

xp

Oh, eat a dick, Alex. Where do you suppose you get off telling other people how they're to spend their time?

I don't get off on anything except pointing out that you sound like a fucking douchebag.

the bus stop, probably xp

LOL

I've always felt that a car would be a liability within a city, due to the traffic and expense and difficulty of parking. I know that it would be useful occasionally, but the for the most part, unnecessary.

I'm generally pretty sympathetic to those who have a big problem with drivers in SF, but to those of you without cars here, do you travel much to the outlying suburbs? If so, how often? SF itself is pretty doable without a car, especially if you love riding your bike and don't need to transport large objects, but much of the rest of the bay suuuuuucks (as I was just reminded when catching the San Leandro shuttle back to BART earlier... waited for about 45 mins before just giving up and getting a cab).
Yeah whining, etc. but 45 minutes is a pretty obscene amount of time just to wait to catch a 20 minute ride to the place where you wait 10 minutes for another 40 minute ride which is a 15 minute walk from your destination.
Again, the SF side (BART, walking) is all gravy, but a lot of the surrounding area just is NOT built to support carless travel.

"I'm generally pretty sympathetic to those who have a big problem with drivers in SF, but to those of you without cars here, do you travel much to the outlying suburbs?"

I don't. I bike to Marin county on occassion and once or twice a year I'll hitch a ride to the East Bay, but that's it. I live in San Francisco for a reason. There is very little in the outlying suburbs which attracts me.

Also the suggestion that if you live in a place that doesn't support non-car living you should move to a place that does is, uhhh, impractical? Like as far as relocating 95% of the US population goes? I'm all for solutions but that's sort of not a helpful suggestion.

I'd say the same here re: outlying suburbs, but you know jobs and family

i had a car for 2 years in LA and it opened up the city for me in a MAJOR way--i had spent 2 carless years there and barely went anywhere outside my own neighborhood; when i finally got a car i was out and about all the time. i cant imagine living there without one, tho more power to jbr for being able to do so!!

that being said i was really psyched to move to NYC and not have to deal with a) parking b) gas and insurance and c) (and MOST IMPORTANT) needing a designated driver, or at least a driver who would only have a couple beers, which was almost always me. and i LOVE having a super-comprehensive (at least in manhattan) subway and a semi-reliable, all-over comprehensive bus system: commuting was more pleasurable, i felt safer, spent less money, and (MOST IMPORTANTLY) could get as drunk as i wanted when i went out!

even so: until nyc public transportation builds some new subway lines in brooklyn (and other outer boroughs) that actually service those boroughs' neighborhoods, and until mta can guarantee more frequent trains and busses, its basically a wash. having a car can be stressful and expensive but its so INSANELY convenient that it almost feels worth it.

caveat: if i had enough money to take cabs more often--i.e. late at night when im drunk and tired and dont want to wait 20 minutes for my train--i wouldnt miss having a car at all

xp My work is moving to Walnut Creek and I will do the reverse commute for as long as I can tolerate it (or I can find a better job in SF.) I was born and raised in SF. It's a great place to raise kids.

like theres nothing about "cars" that i miss specifically, tho i do like driving--if there was for example a decent north-south subway in brooklyn and trains still ran every 8-10 minutes late nights and weekends, i wouldnt ever miss having a car

I can't imagine living in LA with or without a car.

Yeah the reverse commute is what I do, and it sucks cuz I'm RIGHT by BART over here but it's just too dang inconvenient once I'm in the East Bay.
And I agree about the city being a great place to raise kids (not that I'm really qualified to say). It always bums be out that it's seen as such an impractical/expensive place for families and so few exist here.
Also I'm jealous that you're from here. I'm from SJ which is not quite* as beautiful or fun (though as a native I'll defend some neighborhoods/aspects).

*understatement

xpost: the one city I lived in where I never had a car at all was LA. I, uh, managed. It wasn't exactly a blast though. The city where a very nearly sold my car was Seattle. I drove it once every month or two there and barely needed to even then.

And I still wouldn't care a bit if my car burned down or was stolen. Thought the latter might have happened a while back and my main though was "eh, ok."

ok not burned down that's bad

I saw a fire-bombed Escalade next to Kelly's Mission Rock last weekend. I'm pretty sure it was an insurance thing.

i lived in jp and cambridge w/o car - boston is super doable def - now i live in ny where its a pain in the ass to have a car - i did have a car once for a couple years tho

Also the suggestion that if you live in a place that doesn't support non-car living you should move to a place that does is, uhhh, impractical? Like as far as relocating 95% of the US population goes? I'm all for solutions but that's sort of not a helpful suggestion.

the idea that we're gonna be capable of keeping up this sorta lifestyle when gas costs $7 a gallon is about as ridiculous an idea as forced relocation out of their suburbs.

and so my suggestions:

a. support for existing public transit (which involves *taking it*) +
b. significantly increase taxes on cars, gas, parking to make the incentive structure more logical. there is no reason why a car trip should be cheaper than a bus trip, and if you factor in the environment it *actually* isn't cheaper.
c. move closer to dense parts of your city. w/ the money you save on your car, you can move downtown.

w/ the money you save on your car, you can move downtown.

okay, this depends on the city. but main idea - you can try to live near grocery stores and transit - even in suburban cities - and it's worth paying extra money to do so.

d. cheaper cabs

(x post)

Well yeah when gas begins its rise in cost again that'll help push things along. The earlier reduction of "if your city doesn't support this lifestyle, then move" seemed a little oversimplified. And for some people born and raised and still living in a remote suburb, it might take some more thought and planning to change their living situation than just being told to do so. Incentive is obviously a bit deal here.
But there still will be some logistical work in terms of getting the Urban Cores of America to be able to support a massive massive influx of relocating populations if that's the plan. Like this is many many millions of people that will have to move. It's easy to suggest to a guy that he should consider moving. It's a little harder to suggest that we need to relocate half of the US population. Not that it isn't a worthwhile goal (seriously there are additional benefits involved in moving populations to denser and more centralized locations).

I guess my biggest issue is the entitlement thing - the 'I deserve to get everywhere quickly, despite the fact that I live in a place where things are far away.' the entitled attitude some people have in this thread (and 95% of people have in real life) when it comes to cars is absurd. owning a car is not a human right - by using it, you are undermining whatever public transit exists in your city, creating more demand for roads and parking lots (lol stimulus bill) and creating unnecessary pollution.

which is to say, you should feel at least a little guilty.

I mean, yes populations need to move, but if everyone who fit the description of not living in a no-car-needed environment took the advice to relocate to the city... well there just would be no physical way to accommodate that.

xpost

Sure ok, but it'll take a little bit more time I think (I realize that time is of the essence and all, but like I said it's physically impossible to house the population relocation that I think you're talking about right now, and also people need incentive... in THEORY these are things that public policy should be addressing [part of which would be improvements to public transportation so that it wouldn't feel like such a sacrifice to those who are used to having their cars]).

(like making BART 24hrs)

ps they had guys on BART today handing out forms for feedback on the system and ridership info

we don't have to accommodate suburbanites into the city, we have to figure out a way to urbanize the suburbs. (at least in terms of transit.) incentives *are* the big deal. some of them are gonna arrive on their own, some of them we can create now.

making BART 24hrs would be pretty nice.

yeah I scrawled "24 hr service" on the form they gave me. It was very hard to read.

I guess my biggest issue is the entitlement thing - the 'I deserve to get everywhere quickly, despite the fact that I live in a place where things are far away.'

It has nothing to do with "deserve." It has to do with there being a limited number of hours in a day and different people prioritizing their use of them differently. And in some cases it has nothing to do with "far away," but with how close to a bus stop you live, how frequently buses run on your route, how many transfers you have to make, etc.

I'm fortunate enough to live very close to downtown. If I drive to work, it takes me about 40 minutes. If I bike, it takes me 30-35 minutes. If I take the bus, counting the time I take walking to the nearest stop a mile away, it takes me an hour and 10 minutes, assuming I catch a bus right away. (The route runs every half hour.) Just on a time basis, biking is the rational choice -- and that's what I've been doing, all summer long, to the tune of 400+ miles of bike commuting -- but if conditions aren't good for biking, I'm not going to leave the house at 6am to ensure I get to work by 8am.

I'm not going to leave the house at 6am to ensure I get to work by 8am.

+

It has nothing to do with "deserve."

how far from your job do you live?

me or him?

you... wondering how long your commute is

lol I'm unemployed :( - but my last job was about 30-40 mins by bus, tho sometimes I'd walk there and it was about an hour. would always walk home.

Yeah that sounds pretty reasonable... re: commutes though if it really were to take 2 hours each way (as above) and if your job is anything like mine (8 working hours plus lunchbreak) I can see that spending more than half of your day ( 13 hrs) at work/lunch/traveling could seem like a very unappealing lifestyle choice. And of course it's difficult to simply switch jobs. I can understand someone deciding to stick with the car in that situation if they're unable to change the situation itself. I mean if you sleep 8 hours a day, that's only 3 waking hours per day at home, which isn't much time in which to live.

That's me trying to present the time argument in a non-selfish way, and in more of a healthy living way.

Or at least accounting for how people consider this to be a rational decision.

and so my suggestions:

a. support for existing public transit (which involves *taking it*)

You should read up on the issues Melbourne is having at present. Due to the cost of petrol and us having fairly wide ranging PT, there's been a MASSIVE surge in patronage of said PT in the last 5 years or so. Great, right, more money for more and better services?

Well no, because they privatised the PT in the late 90s and now Connex have been taking all the money, sending it back to France, and not even maintaining the existing fleet much let alone adding new rolling stock or rail lines. Trains and trams in peak hour have become a joke, and in summer, services are cancelled heavily because "the airconditioning doesn't work when its over 30dC".

And for people like me who rely on PT and have no choice we're now stuck being crammed in with yuppies yammering on their phones about being on the "godawful tram" that they hate but hey theyre doing their bit for the environment right?

I just wish they'd fix and add more rolling stock!

Is privatized public transportation a common thing?

sounds like this is france's fault

Mr. Jaq and I seriously considered getting rid of our sole car last winter when it quit running and needed some work. We live in a city with pretty good public transit (yay new light rail!!) and we chose to live in a very convenient neighborhood for catching buses, walking to groceries and other services, etc. We have Zipcar and have used it a few times - there are 5 vehicles, including a truck, within 6 blocks. We decided to keep the car because his mom is not in great health and lives an hour south with no other family members close, the car is paid for and gets great mileage (it's an older Prius), and we have secured parking in our building. He drives to work on Mondays in order to get to his piano teacher's place and still have time for a bite to eat after work; otherwise, he either rides his bike (5 miles) or takes the bus. I take the bus (1 transfer, 1.5 hours each way in good traffic) or work at home. If the car totally bites the dust, we won't be too stressed out and probably wouldn't replace it. So, classic, for us.

Is privatized public transportation a common thing?

Not sure tbh! The govt here privatised a lot of public services in the last 15 years: our phone network, Melbourne's trains, electricity companies. I got the impression the UK's done a bit of it too.

Honestly, I'm frequently working two jobs in a day, at least one of them in a neighborhood that isn't particularly safe/comfortable for a woman to be walking alone through, especially after dark.

I'm still trying to figure out why the time argument needs to be presented in a non-selfish way. I mean, I'm sure Alex and iatee both live their lives completely selflessly and all for the benefit of others, but we can't all be Jesus, you know?

I never felt terribly virtuous waiting 30-45 minutes for a bus

xp Stop whining for chrissake. Someone called you out for sounding like a spoiled little baby and what do you do then? Decide to up the ante by sounding even more spoiled! Woo hoo good plan. Just shut the fuck up already.

It is pretty common, the EU thought it would be a good idea if they directed countries to tender competitively for concessions to run transport, and this has spread round the world. As is typical the british go whole hearted for the directive and privatised anything they hadn't done already, the germans and most other went half way, and the french did bugger all in their own country but their state owned utilities and transport groups went and won franchises all over the world. Trayce, Connex is owned by a french water and sewerage company that, and this will come as no surprise to you, distinguished itself in Britain by being the first company to have it's franchises removed prematurely for crap service.

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

makes ya think......

makes me think that the first line should be in the subjunctive tense ...

I just like this idea that, even though my car essentially sits in my driveway all summer, because I don't feel like trudging a mile through waist-high snow, then waiting for a bus in -10 weather, suddenly I am an entitled douchebag. I don't know how deep the snow gets in SF in the winter*, but you're welcome to come stay in my spare bedroom this winter and see how smug you feel by February.

*THis is a lie. I actually do know.

xxp "Spoiled." For saving more than 400 driving miles over the summer by biking. Fuck you, and the horse you commute on.

Someone called you out for sounding like a spoiled little baby

Uh no, not "someone," you, and iatee. At least a couple of people seem to think I have a reasonable argument here.

is it really selfish to want the trip to work to take less than 2 hours

In the U.S., I'd say that San Francisco is probably one of the very easiest cities to be car-free in: even if public transit isn't as good as NYC, Boston, or Chicago, the fact that the worst weather you have to contend with is heavy rain a few weeks out of the year, makes up for it.

My complain with Pancakes argument is solely with the tone in this completely pathetic sentence:

"In fact, between the years I did live without a car and the years in Northern Va., I think I've maxed out on that number."

and

his whiny bitch-ass:

"but we can't all be Jesus, you know?"

I wish everyone drove less, but I totally understand people gotta live and a lot of places are not well set up to do anything but drive. What they don't gotta do is come off as defensive entitled dickheads.

Oh, fer crissakes, it was a joke, Alex. Last week, when my bike was having a new handlebar stem put on, I took the bus back and forth, including the requisite walking to/from the stops a mile from my house and four blocks from my office. I could've easily driven, but I didn't, because parking is between $2 - $5 a day depending on how far from the building I want to park, and gas ain't cheap. So clearly I'm more than amenable to using the bus.

Me, I think calling someone "selfish" because they prioritize time differently is pretty douchebaggy.

having spent in aggregate probably weeks at bus stops in ohio i think you should try it before you say he's acting "entitled" xp

All I know is that I'm way to wussy about weather to live in Cleveland.

xxp Yeah you're almost like Jesus, dude.

^ just a joke btw. You are nothing like Jesus. Okay maybe the beard.

^ j/k btw. Unless you actually have a beard.

http://www.hippy.com/php/flowerpowerpentagon.jpg

Alex in SF channeling Alex in NYC tonight.

At no point have opined that Killing Joke are the greatest band ever and that Beyonce is a robot so no. ;-)

having spent in aggregate probably weeks at bus stops in ohio i think you should try it before you say he's acting "entitled" xp

yes yes I know you all have spent hours and hours of your lives at bus stops. that doesn't change things. cars are a privilege for the world's upper middle class - they are not a human right. as such, acting like your car is something that is owed to you (through all those hard labor hours at the bus stop, or just by virtue of being an american) is, yes, acting entitled.

But iatee it was a JOKE!

I don't know that anyone is saying it is "owed to them" ... I think it's more like, it is a luxury I grant myself that I don't feel terribly guilty about.

the internet is a privilege for the world's upper middle class

everyone in cleveland should just pick up and move to SF

because it's one of the most affordable cities in the US!

and yeah, obviously i didn't mean you're racking up credits with your time at the bus stop that entitles you to drive a car later in life. what i meant was, you try

Honestly, I'm frequently working two jobs in a day, at least one of them in a neighborhood that isn't particularly safe/comfortable for a woman to be walking alone through, especially after dark.

if by 'neighborhood' you mean ALL OF OAKLAND, then i totally agree with you!

the city i lived in back in nz: never had a car, never had a problem with getting round - but it's a very compact city and has ok-ish bus service. here in oakland, i feel like everything is far away. but i prefer catching the train into SF because driving/parking there always seems to be a huge stress. not getting caught on one of the streets where you really need to turn left, but there are NO LEFT TURN signs for like 5 miles is pretty frustrating.

but then... lol i don't even know how to drive! my husband does the driving.

I imagine sf w/o a car can be cheaper than cleveland with one

yeah but a person employed in cleveland might be very unemployed in sf

It's a little harder to suggest that we need to relocate half of the US population

If memory serves, I believe that the population has already relocated themselves. (wasn't there a 'more Americans live in cities than rural' news item in the past year?)

cars are a privilege for the world's upper middle class

Hahaha somebody should tell all those people in Delhi and Beijing.

Anyway, nobody owes me a car, or anything else, for that matter. But I own one, and if I need to use it, I will.

In the interest of comity, here is how I got home from work today, using my own two legs.

I imagine sf w/o a car can be cheaper than cleveland with one

Maybe, depends on a lot of "ifs." My mortgage payment for a smallish house 8 miles outside downtown is less than a thousand a month. I don't think I could swing that in SF.

Hahaha somebody should tell all those people in Delhi and Beijing.

uh, welcome to 2009 dude

like you can talk about cars being a privilege of the world's upper middle class and i agree with you but people in suburbs and rural areas live there for a lot of reasons. it's not feasible for them to all to go 100% car free. they aren't all being selfish. xps

xp - well, SF can be inexpensive if you've lived in the same rent-controlled apartment for a long time, or inherited a house ... there are plenty of options for cheap food, and public transit within SF with a monthly fast pass is pretty inexpensive ... but I'm guessing that for the amount of rent people pay on small apartments in SF, they could buy a pretty great house in Cleveland.

in SF, you could get a room in a shared apartment/house for less than $1000/mo or maybe a small studio apartment in the Tenderloin.

we pay $940/mo for a 2 bedroom apartment in Oakland - which has gotten safer in the almost 12 years that I've lived there, and maybe some of the areas I think of as sketchy aren't that sketchy anymore, but I remember them being that way for years.

I pay $600 a month in a shared apartment, utilities included

admittedly I get really lucky w/ these kinda things

wait do you live in SF or Oakland?

sf, haight

hah ... I was paying $600/mo for a room in a shared apartment in the haight in 1996 ...I think that is pretty cheap.

BTW is it supposed to be some amazing insight that cars are a privilege and not a human right? Public transport isn't a human right either, it's just a good idea. I mean, we could do away with all of it and just rely on feet and bikes and rickshaws, but that seems like a pretty bad idea to me.

I mean, we could do away with all of it and just rely on feet and bikes and rickshaws, but that seems like a pretty bad idea to me.

another thing we're gonna have to disagree on

but if we just rely on feet, bikes, and rickshaws, just imagine how long Alex in SF would have to wait to get his movies from Netflix.

on the other hand ... they could just put more of their collection online, so I'd have even more options to choose from when drunk at 1:30am.

i really like not having a car and i do think stuff like iatee all the time, like people should stop falling back on "errands take too long" and "i have kids" but it's easy for me to say. i have a lot of privileges!

if we stopped using cars and just used bikes i would probably need a car because i rely on UPS to bring me stuff so i can avoid the mall

u should consider living at a mall imo
http://www.americanaatbrand.com/excelsior.html

living at the mall is the solution to all transportation problems. everyone should live at the mall.

and work there.

societal solutions 4u

"but if we just rely on feet, bikes, and rickshaws, just imagine how long Alex in SF would have to wait to get his movies from Netflix."

Oh I'm sure Netflix would work out some sort of streaming service which would allow me to watch. . . wait they have?! Oh.

Ohio cyclists unite!

I mean, we could do away with all of it and just rely on feet and bikes and rickshaws, but that seems like a pretty bad idea to me.

another thing we're gonna have to disagree on

Looks like. In my experience, people who think that others should just suck it up and walk or bike everywhere don't live in a place that actually has weather or seasons.

I do agree with you that the suburbs need better planning and transit solutions, though. And more walkable neighborhoods and better development so that people don't have to drive 10 miles just to go shopping, and sidewalks don't just suddenly disappear.

In my experience, people who think that others should just suck it up and walk or bike everywhere don't live in a place that actually has weather or seasons.

Hey have I mentioned how I love living in SoCal? :-D

Quiet, you! All my work colleagues work in our LA or Newport offices and they're constantly lording it over me.

xp nothing can help suburbs, besides razing them down and rebuilding them in the pedestrian friendly urban format known as a 'city'

iatee and alex in sf exhibiting that out of touchness with the rest of the country that has given rise to broad dislike of the stereotypical san fran liberal. KIU you're giving me some good laughs here.

I'm not even sure what I said that indicated I was out-of-touch, but it is true that like any stereotypical SF liberal I could really give a shit that the rest of the country dislikes me (us).

seriously this thread is making me want to buy a hummer and join the republican party

if you read my post upthread, most of my disgust on this subject is actually targeted *at* the stereotypical 'san fran liberals' who still drive. people who live in places where they're incapable of even theoretically not having a car? I feel sorry for what's gonna happen to them when the recession is over and they're spending 50% of their income on gas.

I feel sorry for what's gonna happen to them when the recession is over and they're spending 50% of their income on gas.

Gas would have to be $75/gallon for me to be spending 50% of my income on gas.

Yeah for real. If gas gets that high, I think you would have bigger concerns than feeling sorry for OTHER people, iatee.

There's a million things people today have a sense of entitlement about, a good number of them directly or indirectly harming the environment. I don't understand why not wanting to spend hours taking the bus somewhere when one can use a car in 1/10th the time gets the brunt of holier-than-thou bashing.

But I'm sure you guys have fashioned a computer out of nuts and berries and power it via smugness.

get off the computer and write epistles imo

Nabisco's Epistle to the LBZCesians

...I read that differently.

Yeah for real. If gas gets that high, I think you would have bigger concerns than feeling sorry for OTHER people, iatee.

(earlier):
ya I go between being gleeful at how seriously this is gonna fuck people in every GOP-voting county in the country and being 'oh shit' about the serious prospect of the american economy imploding when we are incapable of moving things or people

I don't have a car now, how long will it last?
Try not to die and revisit the past.
Happy birthday, bus stop where I wait for an hour –
take a bow! –
For you will be dead soon now?

Em and I are contemplating selling ours and living without one for 12 months. We can wak or cycle to work, cycle to the shops, and train / hire car if we want to go away. Any other thoughts and ideas?

if it's feasible, why not?

as someone living in a rural area of a country with zero transport infrastructure, i love having a car guilt free, but could really do without the expense involved.

I'd say go for it. I guess there might be some things that will to have to change in your routine, and that would probably be the hardest part.

How's the public transport?

Yep, living in the country is definitely a different situation.

loooooool -- still hoping to do this myself tbh

as long as it won't hinder you getting to where you want to go, i say do it good sir

the only thing i miss, i think, would be listening to music whilst driving & some of the freedom . . . which, admittedly, is kinda enough to make me think about this a bit more before getting rid of my car. still, it's something i feel like i'm probably gonna do eventually, perhaps

so, so classic

i am gonna get a car someday because of job requirements & stuff but i think you'll only miss the car for the first 2 months or so. walking to work is the best.

imo this is a DUD but "city" here is currently defined as "population 90,000 sprawl zone where the buses run only until 6 p.m."

yeah it's a dud in baltimore too i guess i just never go anywhere

I'm in my 30s and have never owned a car. I'm lucky enough to live in a city with a fairly extensive transit network. On the rare occasions I do need a car to do something in the city, I use AutoShare, and I'll rent if I ever need to go out-of-town for a weekend or something. It's a huge expense that I thankfully, don't have to worry about for the time being.

Em and I are contemplating selling ours and living without one for 12 months. We can wak or cycle to work, cycle to the shops, and train / hire car if we want to go away. Any other thoughts and ideas?

do it!

Aren't you in Devon? It takes ages to get anywhere from Exeter by train and it costs eyewatering sums of money. I'm sure you know this already though! I lived in Devon without a car and had to get lifts everywhere because there was no public transport to where I wanted to go (bus to my bf's was twice a week, and still would have meant an hour's walk at the end, lol Devon). Visiting family at Christmas was a major undertaking. Mind you I don't have a licence so renting a car wasn't an option.

That said, I've never own a car even now so relying on public transport is second nature to me - I just remember it being easier in pretty much every other place. Sainsburys online is your friend, btw.

Advantage of never driving: you can have a beer pretty much whenever you want.

This thread is batshit.

what r ur thoughts sir

So did you ever do this, Scik Mouthy? Would be interesting to hear how you fared if so. I've still never owned a car (but when I move back to the Westcountry it'll be among my priorities, I think).

so classic

i started this thread, still have the same car i've always had, still don't live in the city

how far from boston do you live markers? just out of curiousity

google maps says my town to boston is, like, 15 minutes

practically speaking, it'd be longer if i want to actually get somewhere in boston -- maybe a half hour or more if i drove in, which i don't

if i take the T it's probably a little over an hour including the time it takes me to drive from my house to the T

30 minutes, w@kefield

iatee otm itt as usual

xp

misread this as "living in a city in a car, classic or dud"

that one's a no-contest dud

I disagree, the city in a car would be very dense and would have good transportation options

you'd probably wake up nightly to a bum pissing on you after he had broken your window and stolen all your parking quarters

I would just toss him into another car-city

No car and not getting one anytime soon. Sort of sucked tonight, I had to do an easy route with two trains, but had to wait 8 minutes for each train to go to the Apple store, in which the transaction itself took approximately 4 minutes. But I was in no hurry.

dan I'm in new haven for the weekend and we've already noticed how shitty the traffic lights are here - totally timed for cars and not people. sometimes we're waiting like 4 minutes.

haha are there little buttons you can hit? I think I just jaywalked all the time there, the streets are narrow

yeah most people jaywalk but the cars are actually going pretty fast because they've got green lights and not stop signs. it's the worst of both worlds.

also traffic lights but no pedestrian crossing lights lots of busy places = we have to basically judge from traffic lights when you 'could' cross the street. really annoying.

but mamoun's is open til 3 am and is a block away = not the worst city in the world

nicely designed pedestrian light signs are so nice. can't remember where, prolly everywhere in america, but some cars feel it's okay to turn on red/into a lane w/ a pedestrian crossing light in america. fuck them in the goat ass

haha yeah I guess 'college town' approximates 'dense city' in terms of how late businesses will stay open to accomodate people

we just need to open up a college in every town in the country

good idea, people could get rid of their cars then

we still don't quite know what she's going to do about groceries

most college towns still do have...one grocery store

even when NH had one it was still really inconvenient to get to... remember biking to it for cheap beer

I figure that yale owns most of the property around the campus and can afford to be choosy about who to lease to, and a supermarket or even a normal grocery would probably 'attract too many undesirables' in the corporation's eyes

i had a car for 3 years when i lived off campus & drove pretty much everywhere -- i could've walked, but everything was a 5 min drive so i never really used gas

gave it up to my brother for my final semester & never missed it, except for when i wanted to get groceries. i would move into a city & give my car up in a second. oh & i was lucky that the gas station w/in a 5 min walk from my house had a good beer selection.

also i had two roommates w/ cars, so it wasn't a huge deal to borrow one in a pinch

i left my car home freshman year because i had to, and i had it with me for all three other years -- didn't use it much sophomore year though iirc

could've used it freshman year but i guess not having it helped to make it the year it was in a way

is a dayo a yale alum?

skull and bones iirc

no no you misheard me, I went to jail, jail

but mamoun's is open til 3 am

oh man I ate so much mamoun's when I was in college

Dayo!! I got a package full of lovely stationary all the way from Hong Kong today. THANK YOU! :D

:D