CarFree.us

Spring is well underway in most places in the US, now.  I am absolutely loving the weather in the Charlotte area in April.  It’s been rather dry here, with almost no rain for quite some time.  Average morning temperatures are now in the 50s and 60s and afternoon temps in the 70s and 80s.  It’s making for fantastic riding, and I am taking every excuse I can get to be on the bike.  Usually, a few nights per week my wife needs me to meet her somewhere in the farther suburbs of south Charlotte, and I am happy to get a few extra miles on the bike.  Unfortunately, the grid neighborhoods and wonderful secondary streets in Charlotte give way to col-du-sac neighborhoods as you travel beyond about 7.5 miles from the center of Charlotte.  In a way it’s almost like examining tree growth.

The Rings of a Tree

You can tell a cities age and when it came to maturity by examining the rings of growth.  The innermost neighborhoods in Charlotte are very healthy , tree-lined, grid streets.  On secondary streets, cyclists and motorists travel at very near the same speed making for a safe and wonderful bicycling, walking, and driving experience.  As you travel out of the center city, beyond about 5-7 miles,  you come to a point where your surroundings change, the rings become less healthy, and the streets less livable.  Col-du-sac neighborhoods and retail malls prevent you from bicycling on secondary streets and all traffic is forced onto main arterials.  There simply is no secondary street connectivity.  Traffic and city planners either knowingly or unconsciously made a decision that secondary street connectivity was simply no longer necessary.  Automobiles on arterials, urban highways, and urban interstate highways were the preferred way to transport most individuals around the city of Charlotte.  In Charlotte this happened gradually over the  last 30 years. I have been bicycling both for recreation and transportation for ten years, and I still am not comfortable traveling on a road where the flow of motorized traffic is going more than 10, or worse, 20 miles an hour faster than I am. Bicycle lanes can seemingly mitigate the risk and raise the comfort level, but in the back of mind I am thinking about how many of these rush-hour traffic driver’s minds are still at the office with their eyes on their blackberries and not on the road.  When you get farther out of the city, the arterials become increasingly more dangerous for bicycle traffic.  In Charlotte, areas that developed after the 1990s or 2000s are extremely in-hospitable to bicyclists.  Living CarFree would be a huge challenge in these neighborhoods.

These traffic conditions are not going away, but at least road planners can make the roads better for non-motorized traffic by installing better bike/pedestrian-centric facilities.  Signs, bike lanes, sharrows, and separate paths can make the ride more bearable on the roadways in the outer rings of the tree.

This article isn’t about how to retrofit a gasoline engine to run on used dishwater.  And it’s not about the lifecycle energy costs of an automobile.  This article is about how your number one weapon against using oil for transportation is personal choice.

Americans are often keen to consume their way out of a problem.  Case in-point would be the cash-for-clunkers program of 2009.  The federal government provided a subsidy to consumers to purchase a new car which would get better gas mileage, and perhaps helped some sleep better at night about their personal impact on the world.  This program had multiple goals, but the primary was to prop up the economy by encouraging consumers to purchase a new car.  However, as an environmental program, this Federal subsidy stinks.

As a component for deciding which automobile to purchase, the fuel economy of an vehicle is usually considered on a linear scale.  As personal transportation, a Hummer is a less sustainable vehicle than a Prius.  However, It’s more important to consider the personal choices one makes in how they will use the vehicle.  I have no problem with someone owning or purchasing a large low-fuel-economy vehicle if it mostly gets used to transport 4 or 5 people.  12 MPG is more realistically 48 MPG, if you are on average carrying 4 people.  Sleep well at night owning a gas guzzler, just don’t use it for personal transportation.

For my family, the choice for us is hold on to our older Toyota highlander instead of buying a new car every 5 years or so like to many Americans.  The Toyota Highlander we use in my household is not particularly fuel efficient at around 20MPG.  However, we almost never drive with less than 2 people in the car or more often, with three people.  At 20 MPG per person our vehicle gets 60MPG.    We don’t use the car for personal transportation.

It’s a simple easy personal choice, but you have to open your eyes to realized it.  Before you get into your car to grab a cup of coffee or drive to work, is there another way to get where you are going?  Would a bicycle, bus, or train get you where you are trying to go?

So my wife was giving me a little grief the other day because not driving a car makes it a little difficult to bring flowers or similar romantic sentiments home.  Sure there are lots of great ways to carry cargo on a bicycle, and I have a grocery pannier which can carry many different  things.  However, I don’t like to ride with the grocery pannier on the bike all the time, and that sort of limits my ability to spontaneously bring flowers home for my sweetheart.

Or so I thought!

I have a mesh bungee that I keep in my trunk bag which I have never used, but turns out to be ideal for just such occasions.

I received some local media attention from our NBC affiliate here in Charlotte. They did a small profile on my year long carfree challenge while also covering the Google Maps bicycling addition. Have a look here:
http://www.wcnc.com/on-tv/Charlotte-man-parks-car-for-a-year-documents-commute-online-88847142.html

It’s been a little over two months of not using an automobile for personal transportation, and in this post I will analyze the financial savings that I have realized in this time.  I did my analysis using Microsoft Excel.  In January and February I commuted by bicycle or bus a total of 36 days or 72 trips, not counting holidays and vacation days.   Of those 72 trips I took the bus 32 times.  February was a really cold, wet, and snowy month in Charlotte so I took the bus a lot in February.

Here are the facts:

• The average cost of premium gasoline, which my car requires, for Charlotte in January and February was  $2.931
• The distance of my commute by car is 8.1 miles.
• The distance of my commute by bike is 7.4 miles.
• The distance to my closest bus stop is 1.1 miles
• The cost per trip for the bus is $1.05.
• I burn about 66 carolies per mile on my bicycle.
• My car emits .932 pounds of CO2 per mile.

The fixed yearly costs for my car are the following (I own my 2002 Volkswagen GTI without a loan payment):

• Vehicle Registration: $32
• Property Tax: $137
• State Vehicle Inspection: $30
• Regular Maintenance: $204 (Performed at Volkswagen dealership)
• Automobile Insurance: $400 (We have two cars on our policy and this is the difference if one were removed)
• Depreciation: $1646 (straight line depreciation from my cars purchase price to it’s current BB market price).

Assuming I commute to work  220 days per year, these fixed costs translate into about $0.78  per mile cost.

In two months I have had the following impact:

• I’ve saved $47 in gasoline expenses and the equivalent of $457 in fixed costs for a total savings of $471.49 when accounting for bus costs.
• Burned 22,356 calories which if I had been eating a normal diet is the equivalent of 6.4 pounds of fat!
• I have kept 543 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere (19.546 lbs per gallon and my car gets an average of 21 MPG).

Simply multiplying these numbers for the year would equal 3260 pounds of CO2 kept out of the atmosphere, $2542 dollars saved, 134,000 calories burned, and 38.3 pounds of fat.  If I had a car loan payment for a $20,000 the savings jumps to $7900!

I knew I was benefiting myself and the environment by commuting without a car, but to see the real impact is very amazing.  These numbers don’t take into account the savings because of improved emotional and physical well being I am getting because of the exercise.  They also don’t take into account the benefit to my community from interacting with my neighbors and fellow commuters.  These numbers don’t measure the impact of  the 40,000 people every year who’s lives are cut short because of car crashes.  These are dry,raw, facts, and figures, but if you consider how these facts scale year over year for an individual, or scale for the United State,  if just 5% of the people  who commute by car switched to walking, bicycling, or public transit, the numbers would be astounding.

Download my spreadsheet to crunch your own numbers.
Carfree

I’ve had an idea in my head that I put it into reality towards the end of last year.  To live car free it’s important to have backup transportation.  That backup can be multi-modal public transportation with a simple city bike.

I’ve been commuting by bicycle for quite some time, but full time bike commuting has proven challenging for me.  For one, when the temperature drops low or weather gets bad, it can be miserable.  There are certainly people who ride in colder places than Charlotte, that’s for sure, but this blog is supposed to show how living care free can be accessible for “normal” people.  Here’s a very important rule for living car free – You will need a back-up form of transportation of  even two.  For me that backup is the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) bus system, and a simple city single speed bike I built last year.

CATS its a less than ideal bus system.  It works on a hub and spoke system meaning if your destination is not in the center-city or along the path of your paticular spoke, your ride will take a LONG time.  It will take a heck of a lot longer than driving, and my personal tolerance for public transit is about 2X the automobile drive time.  For me, there are some destinations which can take 4 or 8 times my drive time.  In some cases to go just a few miles cross town would take over an hour, when a car ride would be 5 minutes.  Second, even my closest bus stop is over a mile walk.  That’s at least 12 or 15 minutes.  In the book Carfree cities by Crawford he lays out some rules for the car free utopia he’s designing.  One of those rules is that all residents need to live within a 5 minute walk of public transit, and that transit needs to have frequent stops.  My nearest transit stop runs every 20 minutes, which is tollerable, but it’s to far for me to walk for my daily commute.

Here’s where my bike comes in.  I built this bike from spare parts (some of which I saved in Myers Park from the garbage dump), some older parts, and a few things I purchased for this bike specifically.  I started with a steel track frame I got from Performance Bike($150).  This single speed worked for me when I coupled it with a sweeping handlebar and some platform pedals.  It only accommodates a 28mm tire, and 32mm would be better, but I don’t carry more than myself and a backpack, so I can survive without the tire float.  I’ve got a 48/16 gearing on the single speed and I’ve added a chain/bash guard I picked up from Velo Orange.  It’s very hard to find a  bash guard for larger chainrings, but what I have keeps my dress pants clean.  It has a flip flop rear hub.  I don’t like riding fixed and rarely do.  I have a frame mounted U-lock.  This bike works great with street clothes, business clothes, and even dress shoes.  The gearing works fine for my generally short trips that are under 5 miles, and Charlotte has mostly rolling hills.

Coupled with the bus system, this is great backup transportation.  In the winter or bad weather this is an ideal form of transportation.  I have full rain wear and a water proof backpack that works like a charm.  The bike probably cost me more to assemble than if I’d just bought a complete bike, but it was fun.  All in, it was probably less than $400.

I was so excited about finding a new online tool related to walkable, sustainable, vibrant places to live that I’ve caused a lot of disagreement with my wife.  Walkscore.com shows the walkability of a particular address or neighborhood, and when I saw my own address had a score of 9 out of 100, I was ready to up and move.  We looked around at a few homes, and generally disagreed about priorities.  Of course, I cared most about moving to a walkable neighborhood close to my work that would allow me to live carfree or carlight.  My wife was most concerned about school districts but also wanted to be in a “cool” location within the city of Charlotte.  Everything went downhill fast when our real estate agent strongly advised us against our top selection we’ve been eyeballing for over a year.  The house was to close to a major roadway and was the last residence before older commercial properties.  That revelation is a topic for another article, but it’s certainly started me thinking about whether walkability matters as much for someone who’s willing and able to use a bicycle for primary means of personal utility transportation.  Sure, my home location scored an abysmal 9/100 on the walkability score, but I’ve proven able to live car light from this location without much difficulty at all.  Undeniably, there is additional added value living in a neighborhood where you aren’t the only one living without a car.

Here are some of the benefits of a walkable neighborhood:

• Better health
  Bicycling is certainly good for your health.
• Reduction in greenhouse gas
  Check.
• More transportation options
  From my home using my bicycle I have the option of several bus routes both cross town and uptown, which are back-ups to my primary bicycle transportation.
• Increased social capital
  Here’s where I miss out, but I certainly happily greet my neighbors as a bicycle by at 10-15 MPH.
• Stronger local businesses
  I have zero businesses within walkable distance from my home, but again I believe you must also consider the businesses I have available that are bicycling distance.

Sure I’d love for my wife and son to have to drive less and I’d love to see my neighbors face-to-face more, but do I need to pick up and move?  I don’t think so.  Transportation bicycling adds a unique aspect to the discussion of sustainable neighborhoods.  Bikes alow you to travel quite easily to destinations less than five miles, and carry a minimal amount of cargo which is quite often adequate.  The best neighborhoods for someone wanting to use a bicycle to lead a carfree lifestyle might be adjacent to a cities most walkable neighborhoods and within 5-or-so miles of the majority of their regular destinations including work, school, shopping, church, etc.  I fortunately also have safe access to most of those destinations via secondary roadways, bicycle paths, or mixed use paths.  Here’s the kicker – my property value is probably half that of the equivalent in a more traditional walkable neighborhood.  Am I saying neighborhood walkability doesn’t matter?  No, but I’ve got 85% of the value at 50% of the cost by using a bicycle that costs half a percent what I would have to pay for an equivalent home in a more walkable neighborhood.   It does not make sense to completely disregarding the bicycle in considering sustainable places to live.

I attended the Charlotte area bicycle alliance meeting this passed weekend.  It was generally an encouraging and productive meeting.  I can’t wait to help and to see how some of the ideas are implemented.

The Mayor of Charlotte, Anthony Foxx attended and had some interesting comments.  He didn’t make any big promises but actually passed on some good information.  Charlotte has recently passed 100 miles of bike ;anes, which I think is an applaudable achievement for this city.  The general strategy for CABA and other bicycle advocacy groups in this city has been to target road resurfacing as a time to lay down more bike lanes.  However, I think one of the meeting attendees said it best when she said, “Just paint them!”  That’s the sort of out side the box thinking we need in Charlotte.

The mayor discussed a conversation he recently had with secretary of transportation Ray LaHood.  The mayor passed on to us a point he made to Mr. LaHood in which he said Charlotte is better positioned to transform itself from a sprawl choked  Southeast city to one which is more livable and less car dependent than any other in the Southeast .  For 25+ years Charlotte has had unchecked urban sprwal which makes this city one of the most car dependent and least pedestrian/bike friendly cities in the nation.  Mr. Foxx seems to think we are well positioned to turn this around, and perhaps quickly.  However, this city faces an uphill battle because of many factors.  As the Mayor pointed out, the city faces a budget gap currently, so increased infrastructure expense will be difficult to promote and justify.  Additionally, Charlotte residents are not very receptive to anything which is going to impeded automobile usage.  Most people in this city do not share the vision of a place which is more pedestrian and bicyclist friendly with healthier air and fewer traffic injuries and deaths.  They don’t care to make the sacrifices to implement such a place if it comes at the cost of their ability to drive quickly from point a to point b.

I had a great ride this morning, and it certainly was a great way to start the week.  I got to the office with a smile on my face which I am certain is better of than 99% of my colleagues on a Monday morning after the Super bowl.

I’ve been making the best of January and now February.  It’s been pretty miserable weather months, but I’ve been able to average 2-3 days per week bicycle commuting.  The other days I ride my bicycle to the bus stop, which is about a mile, and take the bus the rest of the way to my office.  It’s actually a nice change as I can wear my work clothes.  We’ve had a wet few weeks in Charlotte, so I wear rain gear over my work clothes.  Bicycling in the winter months is an interesting way to connect with the outside world at a time when many people don’t bother to do much outside.  I’ve had a few nice surpirses in the last few weeks.  Charlotte often delivers a January surprise this time of year.  Morning temps in the 20-30s are not uncommon and there are some days which don’t get out of the 30’s.  Luckily the norm is for 40-50 degree high temps this time of year, and sometimes even higher.  I recently had a few late night (8-9PM) bicycle commutes in the 40’s well lit by clear moonlit nights.  Getting to spend that time outdoors is rejuvenating, and I feel connected to where I live because of my daily close up view of the trees, streams, and winter nature  in this part of the US.

About 2 years ago I decided to start wearing normal athletic gear for my bicycle commute of about 7.5 miles.  The main reason for this was affordability and comfort.  I wanted to be able to walk in to a coffee shop in the morning without turning to many heads.  Additionally it’s much more affordable to wear general athletic gear I’ve purchased at TJ Maxx and Marshalls.  In the winter this is even more affordable.  Winter cycling specific gear is very expensive.  Mostly I wear nylon and wind proof gear with base wicking layers, and fleece in between.

For the record, I have not driven in my car by myself for 38 days.  I have driven with my family, or on 2 occasions with cargo, but I’m learning how to deal with those situations.