Roody

And this illustrates what we so often learn from each other on this forum: With a little knowledge and ingenuity, things that seem to be sacrifices turn out to be nothing. In fact, for those who worry about spending too much time on their bike, delivery is probably a better sollution than driving to the store.

carfreephilly

I really can't compare the costs. Driving was something I absolutely dreaded; cycling is not only my mode of transportation, but now my primary hobby. I enjoy getting new gadgets and accessories and clothes to make my car-free lifestyle more comfortable and enjoyable.

When it comes down to it, I hated owning and driving a car. The financial benefits (insurance, gas, maintenance, etc) don't matter much.

zeppinger

Having spent some time living in Japan, South Korea, and the US I can say with a fair degree of certainty that I can see and do anything by public transportation in Seoul and Tokyo that any other resident with a car can. There is absolutely nothing in Korea and Japan that can not be done by mass transit so there is no geographic advantage given to the automobile. Even ski resorts and national parks have their own bus lines to get to a from.

I have no idea what you mean by, "my life really opened up when I moved to the US and bought a car." Alternatively, when I was living in the US my life really did open up when I made the decision to move closer to school and work, got rid of my car, and had twice the amount of free time to spend socializing rather than paying car related expenses. Oh ya, my girl friend also like my six-pack too.

pacificaslim

I was in no way complaining about the transportation system in Japan. What you say is true, at least for metropolitan areas and well known resorts. It is a little hard to be a surfer without a car in Japan and I relied on rides from friends to get to some of the more remote surfing spots, but otherwise, what you say matches my experience as well.

But there is no such system here in usa. If you want to go surfing wherever it happens to be good that morning, you must drive. If you want to go to the mountains for a day, you must drive. And so on. And with a car, one can go wherever he wants, whenever he wants. No planning is necessary (while one can get places by transportation in Japan, it does take a lot of planning and matching of one's schedule to the travel schedule instead of the other way around). Furthermore, the amount of distance I am able to cover in a car is so much more than I could do by train in Japan so I was able to pack a lot more activity into the same amount of time.

Don't get me wrong, I like riding a bicycle. I tend to think they are better for recreation, fitness, competition than they are for transportation in the current USA. I think bikes are perfect transportation for urban life without kids or for college students. I just think that there is some over extrapolation going on here and people need to realize that what works for them (and worked for me previously) does not always work for others and we need to make some changes in the usa to make it more possible for people to live full lives while being car free. (some of you will pipe up that you do live full lives car free, but that's because the thing you like to do is cycling! what if your real passion was surfing or playing the drums or serious mountain climbing or something like that? We need to change this country so that all people like that can still not own a car, by being able to use their bikes around home and then hop on the public transportation to go far away like we do in Japan).

gerv 

All I can say is ... bring it on!!!

B. Carfree

I agree with Pacifica that we definitely need to spend a much higher percentage of our transportation dollars on putting back in and improving on our public transportation system. However, it is entirely possible to have the same passions and priorities as Pacific and live a full life while being car-free. When I was younger and was raising a family I chose to live in Davis, just a bit up the road from Pacifica. I chose to live there because it had the best schools in the area and provided a nice community where my spouse and offspring could also be car-free without making any compromises. My commute was 25 miles one-way, just a bit longer than Pacifica's, but easily doable by bike. One key difference was that I only had three sites that I would have to show up at on short notice (two in Sac., one in Davis), so I didn't need to drive to meet work-day obligations. The only other places I needed to meet with people were Berkeley and S.F., and those meetings were generally scheduled days in advance. While surfing was never my passion, I spent many a weekend at the Sonoma Coast with my wife, just because I enjoyed it. I'm not sure which I enjoyed more, the 250 mile round-trip or the ocean, but it was only a six hour ride one-way. I believe it takes that long to reach the ski resorts from the Bay Area by car, but hundreds of thousands of people do that trip every weekend during ski season. If I recall correctly, I spent more time on the beach than on the ride, so maybe I did enjoy the ocean more than the saddle. Had my passion been rock climbing, I could have lived on the east side of Sac instead of the west side and still ridden to good climbing sites every weekend. I know of car-free people who live in Bend, OR in order to be able to cycle to Smith Rock. I'm not saying all hobbies are easily accommodated without a car, but a great many can be.

I just don't think it is as difficult to forgo the car as those who drive would like to believe. It does take a commitment, but so do most worthwhile aspects of life. I think you will look up in 2020 and be surprised at how many of those urban hipsters and college kids who are car-free now are still car-free even though they are working full-time and have abundant interests other than riding their bike. If the U.S. military's predictions of astronomical increases in energy costs are correct, the only people who will be able to live in the suburbs are the physically fit people who are able to ride their bikes those distances on a daily basis. That would be an interesting change.

Fizzaly

I think you guys are just overthinking it too much. Im not single, im an adult with a full time and a part time job, i have children, and i have plenty of hobbies other than bicycling, and i dont live in a huge metro. I live in the mountains, with a pretty crappy mass transit system, and yet i have no problems and havent for the last 5 years. I don't think we should try and get more people into being carfree or into bicycling itself all thats likely to do is raise prices of bike further, i just started this thread simply to tell you guys just how much money i save being car free and now that ive realized how much i personally save im staying car free.

Roody

I think if you spend some more time on this subforum, your attitudes about everyday cycling will change a lot. I really hope you give it a try!

At the very least, utility and transportation cycling do not have to take away from recreational, sports and fitness cycling. You can do them all!

Ekdog

Please explain your thinking here. It seems to me if more people became car-free we would all be better off. In the long run, the prices of bicycles would probably come down, not to mention the better quality of life we would enjoy: cleaner environment, fewer children with asthma and other diseases caused by air pollution, fewer highway deaths, less dependence on imported oil, a fitter populace...

Fizzaly

I kinda just jumped the gun on that statement, im just not a promoter. But i also dont buy into the more people get into it the cheaper it gets, not everything follows the supply and demand scheme, its just my opinion and it probably is wrong, just what ive noticed locally.

travelmama

Question to the topic: Is money being save or not being spent by not having or using a car? There is a big difference between the two which makes me wonder what is really trying to be pointed out.

crazybikerchick

You still have to consider the cost of the car, unless you are getting free cars from a generous benefactor. Sure you may not be paying for it every month, but you've sunk money into the car, money that could be used for other opportunities, or invested.

LesterOfPuppets

I spend about as much on bikes as cars.
Most expensive car = $1500
Most expensive bike = $1300

Fizzaly

My point basically was by not having a car i save 480$ amonth, now mind you i do spend a lot monthly on bikes, but i did the same even years ago when i did drive. I collect bikes so i dont consider it an expense of being carfree as most the bikes i have are pretty worthless to commute on. And i understand that not everybody will save that much, and apparently anytime you become happy about something you shouldn't post it anywhere on BF, other wise a bunch of naysayers will pick apart your post. So sorry i was "patting myself on the back" from now on ill just be negative about everything and just randomly start posting in random forums. thats mostly a joke

Fizzaly

Damn im in a bad mood today sorry

contango 

How do you get the train for free in London? More importantly, how do you find a seat on the train to be able to do anything except squash in and sweat?

LesterOfPuppets

My ex's work gave her free train/bus passes. I'm guessing something like that is going on.

contango 

The main thing that stops me going completely car free is the convenience of a car for longer trips out of town, and to do things like grocery shopping. For getting around locally I usually cycle or walk; the second biggest obstacle to going car free for me is the issue of bike security. I don't really have space to keep a nice bike and an old beat-up bike, and don't want to chain a nice mountain bike next to a line of old beat-up bikes, especially in an area where I'm constantly told bike thefts are on the rise.

That said in terms of what going car free would save me (converted to US money approximately) about $300 in tax, $450 in insurance, $1200 in fuel and about $200 in servicing etc. Depreciation is nothing - the car is worth more as a collection of spare parts than it is as a car. That $2150 or so annually would rapidly be soaked up in costs if I did get rid of the car, on the basis I'd need to either rent a car or buy overpriced train tickets to get out of town - renting a car for the weekend would cost me around $200 a time.

gerv 

Hang on... I work with some guys who don't have cars. They regularly rent cars for the weekend at a rate of $9 a day. I'm sure they keep checking for cheaper rates, but they seem to be pretty smart about getting good deals on rental cars.

I've also had to rent cars from time to time and managed to get away with much less than $200. (Not counting , of course, the ridiculous insurance...)

LesterOfPuppets

I was curious about car rental fees, so fake booked a Nissan Versa Jan 7-10 at Enterprise. Dunno how much the ripoff insurance is. Rental came to $ 48.82 USD

Hard to justify ZipCar with rates like that.

graybeard

well I don't want to pi-- on anybodies parade, but we love our bicycles (9 of them), but we also luv our motorbikes(5 of them),we really love our cars (2 of them and one is a 2011 Mustang Convert) and of course we like our trucks too ( two of them one is a mini truck for our market garden farm and one is for our camper)...thank goodness we do too... look how much we have spent to keep the economy going (Especially the USA economy, which is lagging, just in case you did not notice)....we don't have tons of money, and we live in Canada ,,,but we are comfortable and fit and healthy,, We each ride our bicycles over 5000 km's per year(3000 miles) Our motorized vehicles are great, and quess what.. we can only drive one at a time... so no greenhouse gases etc etc...only the insurance companies and the dealers luv us...Have fun with this post, I'll be watchin' and commenting y'all

Newspaperguy

Unless you are earning money in your spare time, the time has no financial value. Your time may have a personal value to you, but that value is not one that can be measured in monetary terms.

For myself, I like living close to where I work because even if I were to drive in each day, I'd spend far less time behind the wheel than friends who have to commute 60 kilometres each way, five days a week. I just don't care to drive all that much, so I've built myself a lifestyle where driving is kept to a minimum.

As for the costs you mention, please check again. I won't argue on your depreciation and I have no idea on car insurance in California, but if you're driving 500 hours a year or more for commuting purposes, chances are your fuel bill is a lot higher than $1,000 unless your fuel is dirt cheap. Do you keep some sort of fuel purchase record? Also, for that amount of driving, $400 in maintenance costs sounds remarkably low. Are you driving a late-model car with few issues or are you doing most of your own servicing? I'm just wondering how you arrived at those figures and I'm wondering if your costs might not be a little higher than your estimates.

cooker

He didn't say he drives 500 hours, he said biking instead would add 500 hours.

pacificaslim

That's right. Biking take me over 1 hour each way, while car is 15min each way. It's mostly highway at 6am, so 75mph or so, while on the bike I'd be lucky to average 15mph because of the 2000' climb (mountain range between beach where I live and Sf bay side where I work). I use an application on my iphone to track gas purchases so my numbers regarding that are accurate. I can do all my own maintenance and repairs on my cars and since buying this used car (2003 ford focus, now has 100,000 miles on it), I've driven it 20,000 miles and only maintenance has been oil changes, the alternator went out ($100 for part, self installed) and I just replaced the tires ($350 but figure that's only once every three years or so). Unlike the OP, I don't have a terrible driving record so my insurance is $600/year insurance.

As for time not being monetary, it is in the sense that if I had not had a car and been able to respond within our 30 min callout time, I'd have lost out on over $300 in overtime over the last two days alone. But regardless of that, I make plenty of money. What I want/need in my life is more time! Time saved getting to and from work is priceless to me. I just wouldn't enjoy riding to work over that route every day. I'd rather ride here on the beautiful coast!

Newspaperguy

Thanks for that explanation. Now it makes sense to me. If my commute was on a fast highway in the early morning, I wouldn't want to bike that route either. A road with a slower traffic speed would be another matter entirely.

I also understand the value of your time. I don't see it as a monetary value but it has a personal value. The value you're putting on your time is such that you're willing to drive the commute to free up time at other hours. Others may choose to spend the time biking in order to not need to drive.