I’m coming up on about 6 months of car-free life in Seattle. It’s certainly been challenging at times, and it’s only possible at all because I work from home, but I’m making it work. I’m curious if anyone else is trying to do the same thing. There are a ton of anti-car communities online, but very few people seem to actually go car-free as, like, an ideological thing
Only Car lite here. I only own an ebike, but my partner owns a car, that we use for trips out of the city, mostly. Props for going car free in Seattle! The infrastructure there, depending on where you’re at, is pretty good from what I’ve seen. I’ve considered trying to take my bike up via amtrak next time I visit instead of driving. maybe someday.
Living in NYC and it’s amazing not having to drive. Going back to my parents place in NJ it feels inconvenient to have to drive everywhere. Much rather a quick walk, even when the weather isn’t great and there’s always the subway.
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Uhm yes, me. And almost everyone I know. I think only every 3rd household in Berlin owns a car. Still waaaaay too many cars.
Ah, I’m jealous. Here in the US I’m the only person I know car-free by choice. My area is making some big strides towards reducing car dependence, but we’ve got a long ways to go to catch up with Berlin and other good urbanist cities in Europe
Getting on a bike in Berlin is fairly dangerous unfortunately. But public transport is good here at least.
Also, cars are really really expensive and I’d rather work a little bit less.
Hey I’m Seattle too! Unfortunately I’m not yet, but I’m working towards being. King County Metro has a pickup within the block, but it takes 45 minutes to take that bus to the light rail, so about 1:20 to get to the city one way. When the Lynnwood extension opens then that will be cut down significantly, and with East Link I may be able to go down to a 1-car household
Cheers! Yeah, I’m really looking forward to the light rail expansions
Currently car minimal. I’d be free if my real estate agent wasn’t so good and got me a parking space for free 😔
There are times where I still use the car and if it wasn’t there I’d probably figure out an alternative but since it is there, I just default to it when doing things like larger scale grocery shopping or going to places that public transit would take a long time to get to 😩
One day, perhaps!
I’m also car free in Seattle. I sold the car in 2019, so the pandemic years were tough at times with limited public transport and the fear of COVID.
I’m in Nanaimo BC and I live more or less car free. I own a car but I just put storage insurance on it and don’t drive it unless I absolutely need to. Otherwise I use my ebike to get around town. This works because we have some good multi-use paths that can take me from one end of town to the other and I don’t have to mix with traffic often.
I lived for 5 years car-free in Seattle. I’m still car-free, but I’m currently doing a bit of traveling so no longer in Seattle (although I may ultimately end up back there).
It’s definitely challenging. I wish there was more train coverage and greater frequency in general of transit service in Seattle. Back when I first moved, car shares were plentiful which made it really easy to hop in a car if I really needed to — maybe 5 to 10 times a year — but that whole thing mostly fell apart. When I left a few months ago, Gig seemed to be doing pretty well.
I lived for 35 years in Knoxville, Tennessee, and it would have been near impossible there. Your world gets very small when you go car-free, and that’s a problem in places where everything is spread out assuming everyone will have a car and can quickly traverse the miles between places you might want to be. There’s a downtown in Knoxville, but until the last 10 years, almost no one lived there. There’s a lot more housing now, but basic amenities like a grocery store and drug store are, so far as I’m aware, still missing. Downtown Knoxville is less a place to live and more a theme park.
I was sad to hear the only full-service grocery store in downtown Seattle closed during the pandemic, but there are still plenty of neighborhoods that are totally livable car-free. Could be better, but it could certainly be worse.
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I’m in Chicago and just take buses and trains everywhere if I have to go beyond walking distance. As someone with a young child it can be a bit difficult sometimes but it’s mostly manageable. if I have to go somewhere weird in the city that that would take multiple lines to get to I just use an Uber, this is so rare.
This isn’t an ideological thing for me or anything I just don’t have car money
I’m car free for financial reasons too haha! There’s also a decent car sharing app where I live which I can use when I really need a car, like for going out to the countryside or moving something bulky. Between the upkeep of my bike, public transport tickets and occasionally renting a shared car, the cost of getting around is really low!
I was largely car free in Chicago (still used ours sometimes when we were going somewhere where we had to bring lots of supplies, like the beach or a big grocery trip). But since moving back to Florida there’s just no way. Everything is miles apart, and bus routes can only cover so much and and even those double back on themselves in inconvenient ways.
I lived car free in the DC area for a long time. The only true challenge I faced was taking my dog to the vet. I had a lot of friends tell me they didn’t realize it was possible to live car free until they watched me make it work. The biggest advice I have is to figure out the bus system near you. Usually your goal is to connect yourself to higher and higher quality mass transit
I had a lot of friends tell me they didn’t realize it was possible to live car free until they watched me make it work.
This is part of my motivation! And thanks - I am lucky to have good bus service in my area
I wish I could. It is impossible to live car free in my state though. I’d have to move somewhere that would better support it like Philly or Chicago.
Car-free since a year. Couldn’t be happier. Had once to carry a computer case in a bus, but that was a direct line for 15 minutes.
I live in Atlanta and going entirely car free would be a challenge for my family of four, but we did manage to go from a 2 car family to a 1 car family which has been a nice shift.
It’s had a few lifestyle changes for us, mostly me since I try to leave the car for my wife when I go somewhere by myself. The sale of our second car funded the purchase of 2 ebikes, so we like to ride bikes around which has changed the kind of place we like to go around our city. It’s been a lot of fun for us.
When I occasionally need to go to work I’ve found that bike+transit works fairly well for my needs. Sometimes I’ll also just take only transit on days when the weather is bad but it’s a lot less flexible that way since the bus schedule is so infrequent.
Overall, I’d say that you don’t necessarily need to go all in on being car free to care about urbanism and reducing car travel. There are so many things out of our control with regard to the state of our city so sometimes taking smaller steps to reduce our car usage is all we can do.
