Machka 

+1

I understand completely. We're in the same situation. We've both been "car-free" in the past (Rowan and I), but right now ... as you say ... it would be a luxury. One day, perhaps, we will be able to be be "car-free" again ... or at least really, really car-light.

tandempower

I don't see how this comment contributes anything constructive to this thread.

I-Like-To-Bike

Or ever had to get somewhere not close by in a timely manner, or transport passengers, numerous packages or cargo any distance at all.

Now is the time for all good dreamers to troll the Internet and find some pictures of some cyclists in Asia carrying their family and entire household on their bike; or someone crossing the U.S. in just a few days by bike during a race and demonstrate just how easy and desirable cycling is for that task.

Machka 

On the Canadian prairies, the big problem with both public transit and biking is NOT rain. If you have ever spent any time there in January, you'd know that.

The person you're responding to is from Ontario ... not precisely the prairies, but close to it, and sometimes with worse conditions than the prairies.

Dave Cutter

The worst weather condition I ever experienced in my two years of walking was.... hail. At one point I really wondered if I was going to make it.

Roody

Once again, our two favorite contributors have transformed the Living Carfree Forum into the I Can't Possibly Live Without a Car Forum. Now why don't you visit the Bike Mechanics Forum and explain to them that it's impossible to change your own flats? That would be as inappropriate as what you do here almost every day.

Dave Cutter

Apparently you had several years of car-use/access... which makes car-free much easier. I have known some who had access to cars without the burden of ownership. Some people have cars that are provided by a employer (even when self-employed).

Of all the things that cost money and have become the cultural "norm"... cars would be at or near the top of the cost list.

Often only one car is "needed" by an entire family. But everyone chooses to own their own car. Back in the 50's and even 60's it was normal for a family of three or even four drivers to share just one car. But at some point in the 60's... the 2 car family became an aspiration.

I think the biggest problem/struggle with living care free is that family no longer tends to be tightly located. Our daughter is in easy cycling distance from home. But our sons (and grandchildren) are about two hundred miles away (in different directions). So we feel pretty stuck as "car-lite".

Robert C

This is a classic example of one of the failures of Cost/Benefit analysis. A person will typically look only at the side of the balance that supports their pre-determined position.

As it is, I am living car free; but it took me about ten years to get to the point I could afford it and I pay a lot for being able to live car free. I see it as costing about $2000 per year (extra flights) and time away from my wife (not being able to get home to see her more than a few times a year).

Before there was no way I could afford to be carefree because I had to get to work and it is just plain absurd to try to keep moving ones family each time a job, and job location, changes. Further, many jobs do require a car. No, they do not pay better to justify the car; in fact, jobs that typically require a car normally pay less.

I remember when I worked about ten years as a copier technician. The job currently pays between 10-17 USD/hr; I have friends that are still there so I am aware of the current conditions. The job not only required that our personal car be less than 10 years old, it also required that we dress quite smartly. To make it worse, because of the physical nature of the job we damaged our clothes quite often.

Employers like to see low paid employees having cars. To them it means that the employee will suffer more if they leave the job. Thus they are more manageable. It is not until I got into higher paying, entry management, positions that I was "allowed" to be car-free. Again, it was not until I got to positions that required me to have my MBA that I was actually encouraged to be car-free.

Frankly, as backward as it is, being car free is not tolerated among lower level employees. It takes a long time before one reaches a point where they are allowed to be car-free. Further, it is a very expensive lifestyle that requires a lot of sacrifice. To pretend it isn't is to ignore half of the cost/benefit analysis.

tandempower

Maybe rain is not the big problem for the OP then. I would guess the big problem is cold. Cars have that 'free heat as hot as you want' because the heat is a byproduct of the combustion motor. I find it more difficult to suggest adapting to colder temperatures for the sake of energy-saving and winter comfort because of this fact. There are so many comfort-aspects to driving modern cars that they may ultimately be more addictive than some controlled substances. I would guess it's easier for many people to quit smoking or drinking alcohol than to give up driving.

Roody

You make some good points with logical support for your position.

I agree with you up to the last two sentences. To make a blanket statement that being carfree is "a very expensive lifestyle" is only true for some people. For others, it is a very cheap lifestyle. Everybody needs to do their own individual cost-benefit analysis to determine what they will be gaining and losing if they ditch their car.

Zedoo

Not carfree anymore. Free truck. I expect I will be the guy that carlighter people call for rides and help with moving furniture. When this one needs expensive repairs I may be carfree again. There's another truck that could be free later, but it's huge and awkward.

tandempower

I can see how it would look that way, but I'm just basing the analysis purely on issues of the costs of inputs to drive vs. biking or transit use. In a situation where driving is rewarded with higher wages and car-free living punished with lower wages or unemployment, rationality goes out the window. How can you overweigh different options in a controlled market where more expensive costs are rewarded with higher income and lowering costs is punished by cutting income? In such a situation it becomes rational to behave irrationality, in conformity to irrational demands of a sovereign employer. Such situational rationality is not just another form of rationality; it's an assault on rationality.

Again, here you're dealing with the irrationality of a corporate culture that separates families and fragments economic networks over large distances. Faced with two irrational options, pragmatism can be applied to deem one more rational than the other; but don't be fooled that the result is rationality. The two bad options are just a ploy to make one seem less than worst. Less than worst is still bad. It's even worse when better options would be available given a bit of restructuring.

Why do these jobs require a car? Because they require house calls at multiple distant locations within a constrained time schedule? Yes, this is a problem with predicating economic activity on automotive standards of speed and distance. If people continue to submit to such standards, they will persist until motor-congestion and rising prices start killing off businesses and jobs. Recession fulfills this function, but it would be better if we could adapt institutions and scheduling to allow transportation choice before the point where recession forces it on some once again.

Bureaucracy is an industry of torture-by-irrationality. Why do people need to make so many copies? It is a manufactured need to create revenues and jobs. In this model of rational business dealings in irrationalities, Xerox could merge with an automaker and intentionally profit off the <10year old car rule you mention. For some reason, when an employer makes such a rule independently of the business whose revenues get boosted by it, it's not considered corruption. Meanwhile, it is common for the business world to use democracy as a platform for promoting job-creation through such measures. If you require workers to buy new cars at your car dealership, it's illegal, but if you require them to do so because you take pride in boosting the economy and creating jobs generally, it's not. It's like we're not allowed to arbitrarily exploit people for personal benefit, but it's selfless to do so for the benefit of the economy generally.

Well, there are competing ideologies. One recognizes that car-free living is good and the other that sees it as an obstacle to short-term earnings and human resources management.

Lower-level employees get bullied culturally a lot, unfortunately. Employers and colleagues misuse their authority over employees and use peer pressure to exploit them by getting them to voluntarily spend their money in ways that benefit business and make employees more dependent. Then they tell you that people need jobs and so you should spend your money, even unnecessarily, to create more jobs and business. What they don't mention is that it's all a pyramid scheme. People who are better at generating revenues get promoted to higher income positions.

This is why it's so important to spread the word of how something like living car free produces less GDP, revenues, and income for the economy overall but is nevertheless better for everyone. It reduces traffic for those who do drive, frees up disposable income for those who live car-free that they can spend elsewhere, and generally puts the world on track for a better future. Still, we have to deal with massive lobbying against car-free reforms by all those business interests swayed by numbers that say people spend more per capita when driving is a less a choice than a requirement. It's sacrificing freedom for the sake of profit, but that may not become clear until the next war in the name of freedom, and maybe even not then.

I-Like-To-Bike

Put this thread out of its misery. Please!

wolfchild

I've been to prairies in Saskatchewan out in the middle of nowhere and I wouldn't want to be stuck there without a reliable vehicle.

Machka 

Sorry ... you have guessed wrong.

Many Canadian cyclists know how to deal with the cold quite well.

There are bigger problems than cold.

tandempower

Since you know so much about it, why don't you just explain your point of view?

I don't doubt that people living in cold climates know how to deal with cold, but I'm guessing driving is part of how they deal with it for a good many people. It's certainly how many people in rainy climates deal with rain, if they even leave the house at all when it's raining.

Machka 

The biggest problem is actually a combination of things that basically boil down to getting through.

-- when it snows heavily, or snows with a wind, you've got deep snow and/or drifts to negotiate. Larger motor vehicles might be able to get through but it is not easy on a bicycle.

-- when it snows like that, the town/city may send out plows to clear the roads. The job they do will vary from place to place and even day to day. They might clear a narrow track through which will put you right in the midst of slipping and sliding vehicles if you try to ride it. Or they might only clear down to a certain point leaving a rutty, bumpy layer of ice and now which is near impossible to ride.

-- then there's ice. Yes, you can use studded tires if you've got a decent layer of relatively smooth ice, but some places will plow the roads right down to the road, but the plowing action plus the sun on the black road will cause the snow around the edges to melt just slightly and then re-freeze in a layer too thin for studded tires, but just thick enough for a cyclist to wipe out. Or they might plow so that there's about 4 inches of ice and snow left on the road, and then the sun comes out and melts things a bit, and then various traffic goes over it and turns it into a horrible rutty mess.


And then of course, you are dealing with cold like you've never imagined, wind, white-out blizzard conditions all while trying to negotiate your way through the mess.

Of course, not every day in winter is like that. I commuted year round in Winnipeg and was able to ride most days in winter because Winnipeg's plowing team is pretty good. They plow right down to the pavement. But I've also wiped out on that very thin ice I described above and injured myself which brought my cycling to a halt for a little while.

In Alberta, I would have liked to commute more often by bicycle, but Alberta plowing teams leave that 4 inches of ice and snow on road when they plow, and the roads I needed were impassable by bicycle. They weren't easy to negotiate by car either, but the car could get through. I did keep cycling through the winter, but I usually had to wait for a chinook to come along and melt it all for a few days, or I had to drive to better roads.

And when you think that these sorts of conditions can go on for 6+ months of the year, they can be a fairly significant consideration. It is a small and hardy bunch that will take it on ... and it is certainly not a matter of just simply throwing on a rain jacket.


Spend a winter working in North Dakota sometime ... you'll see.

Machka 

Incidentally, expanding on this ...

We have done the cost analysis in our current situation.

1) Rowan and I both have jobs. When you've got a job, it's a good idea to stick with that job for a little while at least, especially in an economy where jobs are not particularly plentiful.

2) But the jobs are roughly 40 km apart. That's reality these days. You and your partner might not be able to get jobs in the exact same location. We're actually fortunate that our jobs are only a mere 40 km apart, where we lived before, some people travelled much further distances.

3) There is no public transportation to Rowan's job. This means that if we chose to live close to Rowan's job, I would not be able to get to my job. It also means that if we were to live close to my job, Rowan would not be able to get to work.

4) The terrain here is very challenging. As is the weather, especially this year for some reason (cold and wet), so cycling to work on a daily basis is out.

5) So, we've opted to live mid-way between our jobs. Public transportation comes out this far (and not much further), so I can get to work, and we've shortened Rowan's drive to work. It's also an area reasonably close to other stuff we want, and it is reasonably priced.

It has all been a carefully calculated choice.


But a luxurious situation would be one where we both worked quite close together, and we could live near that place, and we could walk or cycle to work on a daily basis.


I've been in this situation before, where the most expensive option would be the car-free option. And while I would prefer to walk or cycle to work or school or whatever, and have done that at times, it is not always the realistic option.

rockmom

It is expensive to change from one mode of living to another. In my case, I started out car free. At all points along the rode of life, a car would have required me to not only add the expense of the car itself, but also the expense of changing other aspects of my life to accommodate a car. After more than 20 years without a car, it would be an expensive imposition to try adding one now.

The same thing is likely true for those who start out with car ownership. They will have made decisions that were dependent on having a car. Down the road, they will have to make changes to other aspects of their lives that will have costs in order to live car free.

Machka 

For me, it wasn't particularly expensive to switch from one mode of transportation to another. After all, when you're packing up and moving to another part of the country or world every few years anyway ...

The thing with me/us is that in our experience, life situations change almost as frequently as the changing seasons. One minute we're doing this, next minute we're doing that. And we make our transportation choices based on what is best for us at that minute.

Walter S

I don't have a car because mass transit can be so satisfying.

Roody

Very wise. A philosophy professor explained his opposition th the concept of free will: "Maybe we have the freedom at some point to choose which road we will travel. But once we get on that road, it's damn near impossible to get off it!"

wolfchild

It's not just about the weather. The problem is the distance between destinations may be to great to make bicycle commuting and utility riding practical on daily basis and when the extreme weather kicks in, it makes riding a huge hardship. Extreme winter weather can make your bike commute 2-3 times longer and harder. Most people wouldn't want to subject themselves to such misery, hardship and such an extreme physical effort.. Only very few hardy souls who are very adventurous and enjoy pushing themselves would do that or people who have no responsibilities in life. My daily limit I spend on my bicycle is 90min - 2 hours max and more.... You should visit the northern climates during winter sometime and find out for yourself. You need a reality check.

tandempower

I'm sure there are as many reasons to drive as there are cars. My interest is in the economics of rationality and whether and how people will be pushed (rewarded and punished economically) to shift from driving to car-free living. Unless some form of socialism is created where everyone has total freedom to choose between being able to afford to drive and being able to afford transit and/or cycling, there should be some 'invisible hand' pushing of people toward car free living, either in the area where they live - or if the area where they live poses too much resistance to living car free, then pushing to move to a more affordable area.

Currently the way social redistribution seems to be working, in the US at least, is this: local representatives lobby others in government to create spending projects in their jurisdictions. In this way, they funnel money into their area, which makes them popular and wins them votes. In this way, jobs and spending are generated that keep businesses paying their employees at levels that keep them affording automotive expenses. Take those public spending projects away, or reduce them to levels that won't sustain local income expectations, and people come under pressure to modify their household budgets to make ends meet. At that point, going car free becomes a pretty lucrative option for saving money. Many won't take this option, however, preferring to insist that driving is a necessity and thus pushing to boost the local economy back to levels that will pay everyone enough to drive.

Assuming a point is reached, maybe during a future administration, where budget cuts once again result in recessions that stimulate consumption sacrifices like giving up driving, then it may happen that people living in cold, sprawling areas where getting around car-free is practically impossible will be pushed to move to other areas that are more affordable because more people can and do live car free there. Of course, if money is printed and fiscal stimulus injected into those areas where car-free living is more difficult, then progress will once again be deferred. Obviously this is the hope of many people who don't want to either move to another area or give up driving. Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you look at it) though, I think this evolution toward more car free living is what will make the economy sustainable for a longer future.

The alternative (in the most extreme case) would be for the opposite to happen: i.e. the most car-dependent areas will be fiscally stimulated by redistributing money away from high GDP urban areas that are more car free. Then, when recession hits, the more expensive, growth-dependent urban economies will collapse faster because their prices, rents, and cost of living are generally higher. In this way, areas with lower costs of living due to lower property prices and lower wages and product prices will be able to maintain their driving habits and whatever income they lose due to recession will just result in a certain number of people turning to crime or moving to more urban areas, where they will also turn to crime if they can't afford to live otherwise.

In any case, there will be no pressure to reform in the very driving-friendly areas if the government favors them in government spending, so whenever recession hits, it will not result in reforms, only unemployment. There is a reversal potential inherent in government spending, though, which is that the more a certain economy becomes dependent on spending projects, the more vulnerable it becomes to cuts in spending. So, for example, areas that experience a lot of growth during stimulus-driven economic periods may also experience the most recession and unemployment. The bigger the boom, the bigger the bust, so to speak - or otherwise said, the bigger they grow, the harder they fall.

On a more positive note, the more car-free options are available, the less misery for people when the economy cuts their budgets to car-free levels. Where driving is optional, budget-cuts are more manageable.

Juha

Why don't I own a car?
- I don't have the need for it frequently enough to justify the cost of ownership.
- When I do need one, I can use public transportation, or take a taxi, car share or a rental car. This also allows me to use the most suitable vehicle for the occasion. During the last calendar year I've rented all kinds of cars from an Opel Corsa to a Ford Galaxy, for example.
- I couldn't use it for commuting. This is a deal-breaker that makes all the other options a lot more rational. I'd be mixed mode commuting in any case, which would really mean combining the negative aspects and costs of both public transportation and car ownership.

We're a family of three, and our kid is small so our needs will change in the future. We may well end up buying a car, and if that happens, it will in all likelihood run on CNG. That's one of the very few renewable domestically produced fuels available to us.

We know a lot of people who don't own a car. And they're not bike fanatics either. What anyone chooses as their mode of transportation is not a huge social issue around here.

--J