We have WeCar, and it’s brand new to us. I just sat with representatives from Enterprise to talk about the program and consider it for our office. They charge $10 / hour or $30 to take it between 6 pm and 8 am. Since I just switched over the public transportation to the office, I’m looking into signing up for those late nights in the office. The fee to join is only $15 / year here.

Thanks for making me really think about my addiction to my vehicle and what it’s costing me!

I have always wished to get rid of my car, and I’m so glad I finally did. In high school, I rode my bike most of the time in decent weather, and carpooled the rest of the time. In college I lived 8 miles from campus, but drove a shuttle van which brought an average of 13 people (throughout the day - this was a 7 person van) who would have otherwise driven to class. Now that I’m in the “real world” I was able to move to a place I knew I didn’t need a car for. Although there’s a great bus system AND I get free bus passes, I’ve been walking and biking everywhere because I like the exercise, and it means less time spent inside. There’s 2 numbers that stick with me, which is the only motivation I need to get outside of buildings or cars: The average American spends 95% of their time indoors and watches 4 hours of TV in a day. I have been listening to people say how they need a car because it just takes too long any other way, but if they are spending that saved time watching TV, than was there really a convenience to driving?

The other thing about convenience I like to talk about is the car-free move from the Green As A Thistle blog. She could have sided with convenience and rented a truck to move from one place to across town, but instead she posted for people to come by and help out on bike. From the video there it looked like everyone had fun, completely random people showed up to help, friends were made, and someone said they would do the same type of move if they have the opportunity in the future. Now which is better: convenience of moving by car/truck quickly or meeting a bunch of cool new people while moving everything by bikes on awesome trailers, and making a fun day out of it?!
-Andy

I loved not having a car, parking can be a real pain in Seattle, but there are enough times when I need to get to a showroom in Tacoma in an hour, or transport a delicate model to class, that it’s become an unfortunate necessity. It also means that I can buy more groceries in bulk, because I have a way to carry it home.

Andy: I think that Maggie purposefully rounded the way she did to show that even in the worst-case scenario, it can make a lot of sense to go car-free. $15 is the cost that Maggie’s friend in DC pays, but it would probably be cheaper here. IU almost brought in Zipcar at one point, so I’ll use their cost in Columbus as a comparison. Their charge is $9 an hour plus $50/year (and a one-time $25 fee that I’ll ignore). So for $75 in a month, you could drive a little less than 8 hours a month instead of 5.

Hmm… except that the rest of the numbers don’t quite work. Maggie’ll go back through and fix them in a bit, but basically, her total cost of ownership is more like $235 a month.

I’ve talked to some people who’ve lived in bigger cities (Seattle and Pittsburgh) and the lack of parking has a similar effect on them. Once they’ve got a parking spot, they won’t move their car unless they have a bunch of errands to go on at once. One guy I talked to at the wedding even kept a bike in the back of his truck so that he could just park in the right general area and then bike the rest of the way!

Emily: Yeah, one of the reasons I’ve been able to use my car so little is that we’ve borrowed Maggie’s parents’ car for vacations. Driving to NC is about 670 miles each way and I tend to make 1-2 trips a year. Without access to another car, that’d add over 2500 miles a year to my driving!

I think Maggie’s most recent plan is to buy a house close to the city and then save up to get some land in the country. That way, we could still drive infrequently but could get some of those country benefits when we need to.

We drive to work together each day, and we take a fair few car vacations that are a vital part of making our lives meaningful (retreats, seeing family and friends). There is no bus service within 7miles of us, so doing without a car would mean we’d have to move.

I’ve been kicking around the car-having vs. country-land-having equation for a while now. When we moved here from the deep forest, living in the city was absolutely unthinkable. I do love where we live, and I love my ever-expanding garden - though I could feasibly garden in the right city lot, too. Of course, given the current housing market, we probably couldn’t sell if we wanted to… *sigh* For the moment, I’m building my biking chops and trying not to feel too guilty about still having a car.

My 2 cents:
People always round down expenses, and round up the costs of alternatives. I see it as comfort in thinking that what we do now is “not so bad” or “good enough.” You shouldn’t disregard the fact that you spent $1,800 on repairs one year, because it was the reality of owning the car, even though it may not be that expensive each year.
On the flip side, carsharing is pretty wacky at $15 dollars and hour. Here’s a few other places that I had searched randomly (mostly):
Ithaca Carshare (ok so this is the one I work for): $5-8/hr + 20c/mi
Philly CarShare: $6-8/hr + 9c/mi
CityCarShare (San Fran): $5/hr + 40c/mi
AutoShare (Toronto): $5-10/hr
Community Car (Madison, WI): $8/hr
Now of course these also carry other costs like monthly fees which make i incredibly difficult to compare prices, but they are a bit cheaper than the $15 you mention.

I think the most important point is that when you own a car, you also own the convenience it carries. I can’t count how many times I drove somewhere because I wanted something which could have not been done, or could have been combined with another trip, or could have been done by bike. Now that I don’t own a car, I don’t make those random trips, so I not only buy less, but the times when I would use carshare I want to be extremely efficient with my time since I’m paying for it directly. You should make an estimate of how many times you drove when you could have gotten around by other means, and add that to your expenses and I think it will make not owning a car look even better. Of course it all depends on where you live, where you work, how you live, and what conveniences you are willing to lose… but that’s exactly the reason why I chose to live and work in an area I knew I could bike/walk to and not need to own cars.
-Andy