One Person’s Perspective on Living Car Free
By Steve on May 25, 2008 in Your CarFree Success Stories
Robert (The Slow Lane Guy) provides some insight on living Car Free!
How have I been able to live without a car? Living in town.
Also my material expectations are probably lower than most people. Living in the central part of metropolitan areas can be expensive, but not as bad here in a smaller college town.
I just rent a small room and have a nice landlord. Also I am fairly limited in jobs I can have to jobs that are with-in 3 miles.
I am a janitor or some say custodian.
I know quite a few people who commute by car to the Everett area for work. Everett is the north part of Seattle Metropolitan area (closest to Bellingham) where there are a lot more professional level jobs. Bellingham is more of a retirement, retailing and education economy. I have a quality of life, but haven’t made lots of money. I have stayed with jobs that were accessible rahter than climbed the career ladder. My limited commute probably limits my job prospects. Bellingham’s job market is over saturated with highly educated people. Quite a few folks who live here commute for more professional level work. That kind of work isn’t as easy to find in this area.
I have no family to support and cart around.
People might say I’ve never grown up and joined the rat race of mainstream living. I still live in a similar way to the way I lived in college. Like living in a dorm room. I’m not a big partier either, it’s more of a monastic way of life. It was that way in college also, for me.
My advise for others who want to become carfree?
Support denser zoning in your town or city.
It helps to not have a family, but a friend of mine says his kids prefer riding the bus to riding in the car with him since he must ignore his kids to pay attention to the road while driving. On the bus, he can give his kids full attention and they have more things, like other passengers to entertain them. Thinking that way can help people with families.
Still the main excuse I hear from folks for having to own a car is family obligations.
Families can cope OK, with car free life, like the friend I described, but it might take some doing and new thinking. On the other hand, most folks seem to feel that cars and families have to go together. Encouraging people to refrain from having families just for obligatory reasons can help. I am sure there is a percentage of the population that has families for obligatory reasons. At least these people would have an easier time staying car free if they thought about what they really wanted to do, before starting a family.
The people in families can learn from people like my friend who rides the bus with his kids when ever he can. Sometimes he says he still must drive his car due to time constraints.
In a denser, diversified urban setting, where the percentage of single people tend to be higher, the percentage of car free people tend to be higher also. Density tends to makes car use harder and bus use more available. Planners should try and make these accessible neighborhoods more affordable.
I think that’s a big problem we face. What’s affordable is often different from what’s sustainable.
Remember the phrase used in real estate “drive till you qualify.”
One way to make these denser areas more affordable is to create more neighborhoods like them. Denser zoning in the outlying areas. Denser zoning in the mid sized towns.
My solutions wouldn’t work for everyone, of course, but they are worth thinking about at least. That’s how it works for me.
Robert
The Slow Lane Guy
