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It seems incomprehensible to me, but the end of my carfree year has arrived.  I originally set out to put together a metric and a plan to drive less. I’ve accomplished my goal to not use an automobile for the entire year for personal transportation.  It was a lot less difficult than I thought it would be, and I wish I’d been able to try harder earlier in my life to ditch the car.

We live with the ruse that more driving brings more  independence and a better life in the United States.  Everywhere you look, it seems we are being told one’s opportunities are boundless when you own a car.  Live a better life in a better place, simply by driving on the interstate each day.  Watch an hour of television with advertisements, and you will often see a a majority of the ads are peddling something car related.  If it’s not Mercedes defining for us the definition of life’s success in the United States, it’s someone yelling at me to buy an automobile from their used car lot.  I recently heard an advertisement on the radio for an independent extended automobile warranty, saying without a warrantied car, we are all one break down from a repair bill that can cause financial ruin.  The fear this message was intended to deliver is real for many people.  And yet we have let our communities, cities, states, and country come to this.  Henry Ford ushered in the era of an automobile in every household.  The inflation adjusted cost of the model T in 1930 was equal to that of an 1890’s bicycle.  An auto in every driveway became 2 or 3 as we approached the 21st century.  And now here we are, early in the 21st century, and a loose nit group of American’s like myself are saying, “wait a minute, this simply just doesn’t make sense.”  A conglomeration of urban planners, politicians, fitness enthusiests, health professionals, and bicycle nuts are working together to move our communities in another direction.  It may be in the early stages but bicycling, walking, and livable streets are coming to America’s cities.

What have I learned by driving less and only sharing a car with my wife?  The sacrifice required of me was minimal, and the benefits are numerous.  I’m often asked if I will continue to not drive after my car free year concludes.  Of course I will, my eyes have been opened by a small change in my life.  I have no intention of ever going back to a daily car based lifestyle if I don’t have to.

Using a bicycle for personal transportation is a wonderful, moderately easy, and beneficial thing to do to improve your life.  However, when you are responsible for someone else’s life it can make car free or care light living very challenging.  I have a toddler age son, Graham.  My wife is Graham’s primary caregiver, and I work the 9-5 gig.  It may seem like a very 1950’s subsistence, but perhaps in another way it’s a very 21st century way of life.  That’s a topic for another article.  I am occasionally responsible for taking care of Graham when my wife is otherwise away with our family’s single car.

Using a bicycle to transport oneself and a child can be a very fun experience.  After all, most kids will love the feeling of riding along on a bicycle with a breeze in their face.  For over a year my son and I have been using a child seat which attaches to the rear rack of a bicycle.  It allows us to communicate relatively well, and he will call out things that we pass by like wildlife, streams, trees or what have you.  This works quite well for trips of under 5 miles, and on occasion we have gone as far as 10.  It’s a hearty workout for the bicyclist at that distance, and my very tolerant son begins  to complain about pain in his legs after 30 minutes.  We very often bicycle out of our home to the near by retail center which has a grocery store, many food options, a book store with toys, and a toy store.  There is something for the both of us if we are looking for something to do, to pick up a few groceries, or grab a bite to eat.  From our home, it’s also feasible to bicycle to a nearby park which has walking trails, streams, play ground equipment, and sports fields.  There is also a public library about 2 miles away that we occasionally bicycle to.  For the occasional caregiver like me, which means probably once or twice a month for up to half of a day, it works really well.

Graham really enjoyed his first trip in the trailer.

The problem with bicycle seats is that they do not work well when the weather is cooler than about 65 degrees, and in the Carolinas that generally makes this type of bicycling feasible from  May through late October, during the day time high temperatures.  The windchill when rolling along at 15 miles an hour is to much for the little guy to tolerate when it’s much cooler than that.  Luckily, my wife purchased for me a bicycle trailer, the Burly D’light, which is suitable for rain or colder weather.  We used it today for the first time, in weather about 40 degrees, and it worked very well.  The D’light is suitable for car replacement because it provides complete wind and water protection, but also has some degree of suspension.  Within a 5 miles bicycle ride we have the following destinations: book store, grocery store, 10+ dining options, public library, public parks, our church, our doctor’s office, and Graham’s preschool.  I feel that even if I had to care for Graham for an extended period of time, like a week, I could do it rather easily using just a bicycle.  If I were primary caregiver, adding the bus would make many more destinations well within reach, and make car free primary caregiver reasonable.

The difficult thing about riding a bicycle with a young child is the sense of guilt that you may be, even ever so slightly, putting them at increased risk by riding with them on the roadway.  I only ride on neighborhood streets with 25MPH speed limits, and occasionally, for brief periods on sidewalks.  Even still, I feel a little bit like sharing the road with my son and a 2-ton vehicle is not extremely safe.  On the other hand, nothing in life is completely safe, and riding with a child in a car at high-way speeds is equally, if not more, unsafe than this type of bicycling.  If I am lucky, I may be imparting a love of cycling or human scale living on my son that might bring him future independence, health, and joy of life.

After many years of using a bicycle for transportation, I had a new experience today. I am often asked by co-workers and friends if I would like a ride when they realize I bicycle most places. Often, there is this strange sense of sympathy.  I think these folks feel for me, as if my self imposed carlessness is tragic. My usual response is, an abrupt and assured, “no thank you.” However, the message I am trying to convey is, “absolutely not.” I don’t like that people feel this emotion towards me. I am in no way at a disadvantage to them, or put through more suffering in my daily life. I am accustomed to exercising and enduring the elements to get places, and I enjoy it.

Today, for the first time, I actually had a complete stranger pull their pickup truck off of the roadway to ask me if I would like a ride. It is extremely cold this week on the east coast, and it was about 20 degrees at the time. I almost thought the person would be asking for directions. In my imagination, I believe people must realize that transportation cyclists know their home city’s streets better than any motorist ever could. However, this gentleman asked me, “are you headed uptown? Would you like a ride?” Of course, that kindness is what makes Charlotte a great place to live, but I was still shocked. I replied, “No thanks. I am good.”, continuing my mile long pedal to the bus stop.

This is me returning from a grocery run on Katie's dutch bike

It was a very lazy December afternoon in my household. My wife informed me this morning that she needed to make a grocery run for a small family get-together we are hosting this evening. I immediately perked up at the prospect of a bicycle grocery run. I was able to coax a grocery list from her by mid-afternoon and I hit the road.   It was great to get some cool air in the afternoon as I peddled the 2.5 miles to the grocery store.  I always get some moderately strange looks as I roll through the enormous parking lot at the Cotswold Village Shops shoping center.  I don’t mind a bit however. Continue reading Carfree Grocery Run

My wife an I both had dentists appointments today in the Eastover neighborhood of Charlotte this morning.  After the appointment I walked the 2 miles from the dentists office to my Uptown Charlotte office.  The dentists appointment was less painful the the walk.

I ride my bike through this area of Charlotte everyday but rarely on these particular streets.  My original intention was to take any of the several buses which stop in this vicinity to a stop near my office.  Hear in-lies the first problem.  None of the four or so bus routes would have gotten me the 1.5 miles to my office in less time than it would be for me to walk.  This seems like a problem for a reasonable person such as myself looking to public transportation as an alternative to driving a personal car.

The walk was an equally unpleasant surprise in an area so close to uptown Charlotte that I would have expected better pedestrian facilities.  Most of the  sidewalk were slightly narrow and positioned immediately next to the roadway.  I love the feeling that my head may be clobbered by a passing truck mirror while going about my everyday.  Most of the intersections did have cross-walks each way, but the pedestrian signals required a button push and if you didn’t time it right you didn’t get a walk signal despite a green light.  Things got worse as I approached the overpass for I-277.  There is no pedestrian signal at E. 3rd street and N. Kings Drive and the majority of the right turning traffic yields to 25MPH on red.  The problem is acerbated by overgrowth of trees and fallen signs.  This area is no-mans land for pedestrians, and it was a fearful experience.  The Google streetview picture below highlights the typical driver behavior at this intersection.

What’s my take-away from this walk, which I’ve done a few other times this year?  Pedestrians in Charlotte have it bad.  As a transportation cyclist, I thought things were rough, but they are comparatively peachy compared to the life of your average pedestrian in Charlotte.  In discussing this article with my wife, she pointed out, “You had a sidewalk?  Ha! South of highway-51 (Pineville-Mathews road) you are lucky to even get that.”  I plan to reach out to Vince Coleman, the CDOT Pedestrian Program Manager to see what I can do.

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