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.

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