Guest Post: Jon (The Boyfriend!)

Around the time my month of voluntary carlessness was coming to a close, I asked Jon to write a guest post on what his experience was like dating someone who had recently given up their car.

When Chad came to me a few months ago and told me about this crazy endeavor he wanted to embark on, my first reaction was … “are you crazy?”  I moved to the DC area a little over a year ago, and having a car was never an option.  I moved without a job, without any interviews, and living 100% on whatever savings I had mustered up (which fortunately did not dry up until I landed a new job).  Due to cost constraints (between the cost of parking, the cost of insurance, and the cost of gas) along with the logistical elements, having a car was never an option for me.  Going from having a car in high school and college, to being totally dependent on public transportation took some getting used to, but I quickly adapted.  However, living in the suburbs of DC is not as convenient for public transportation (especially for those of us not lucky enough to be able to enjoy the RideOn buses for free, ahem Chad!).  When I was completing my internship in the city my subway ride would take an hour each way (White Flint on the Red Line to Capitol South on Blue/Orange) and cost approximately $12 a day.  When I landed my first job the cost dropped to $8 a day and with my new job and new apartment it has now dropped to $5 a day or about $100 a month and takes 10 minutes each way.  While expensive, this still beats the cost of a car as $100 wouldn’t even cover my parking costs.  I pay my metro completely out of pocket though I take part in a program that takes money from my paycheck pre-tax that I can use for transportation, which saves approximately $20 a month!  While I do agree with Chad that the metro is expensive, and can be notoriously late and delayed (often so it seems for no reason) I think it is incredibly convenient if you both live and work in the city and still ends up being less expensive (depending on the distance you travel) than having a car.

Chad’s carless adventure was an adjustment.  I had gotten used to the ease he had in getting to my apartment or picking me up, and now it would take longer for each of us to travel to each other and would be another consideration in the various plans we made.  Given that I had not had the option of having a car, I couldn’t believe Chad was going to willingly give up the luxury of his.  But, when he told me his reasons, I really began to see why he was choosing this.  And his reasons, articulately described on his blog, are remarkable.  When Chad and I started dating, I was the one with no car.  I won’t deny that it was incredibly nice to be so close to someone with a car (I used to joke that I only kept dating Chad for his car, grocery shopping is so much easier when you don’t have to walk!).  Chad was great at adapting to my needs, going places within walking or metro distance, spending weekends locally instead of going anywhere far, etc.  But it was also a great experience for me to watch Chad undertake this adventure knowing full well from my own experience the logistical and practical considerations involved.  I am lucky enough to live just a 5 short stops from my office making my commute significantly easier than Chad’s trek from Silver Spring to Rockville daily.  I take one mode of transportation whereas Chad often took two or three.  I am a runner as well, but I am not nor have I ever been a morning runner, and it took a lot of heart and dedication (and grumbling from me when the alarm went off early) for Chad to wake up early each morning to bike or run part of the way to work.  I think what Chad ultimately proved with this undertaking, is that despite the logistical and practical challenges, despite the early mornings, the brutal weather (which he miraculously mostly escaped), and the added time, going carless is not an impossible task.  It takes adjustments, and patience, and some problem solving, but nothing that cannot be overcome.

Jon, since he works for a member of the DC City Council, requires a disclaimer similar to mine, so here it is.  Any views or experiences expressed here are his and not of the member he works for, the Council, or anyone else in DC City government.

Guest Post: Kristen, Pittsburgh

The following post was written by my friend Kristen, a friend from high school who attended the University of Pittsburgh for both her Bachelors and Masters degrees.  She lives and works in Pittsburgh today.

Let me start by saying that I love my car. She's a 1998 Volvo XC70 station wagon, silver with black trim, busted-up leather interior, 250,000 miles, all wheel drive, runs like a tank. Her name is Angelina. If you're going to battle the Snowpocalypse in Pittsburgh, this is the car you want to be doing it in. Unfortunately, Angelina did not enter my life until February, after the majority of the snow had disappeared. Until that point I had been living in Pittsburgh for four years completely carless.

Carlessness is not such a big deal when you're a student at one of the several universities in the Oakland area.  There is plenty of cheap (albeit terrible) housing within walking distance of campus, and perhaps most importantly, one's student ID doubles as a magical pass to free public transportation anywhere in the county -- that includes buses, light rail, and even our signature funicular.  For the average student living in Oakland, a car is an unnecessary hassle and expense -- parking is extrememly limited and always pricey, and bus lines run to pretty much anywhere one might wish to get.  Not always frequently and rarely on time, but destinations like the North Shore, the Southside, the East End, and suburbs up to 20 miles out are theoretically only a bus ride away.

My own beloved roach-infested basement apartment was just under a mile from campus, a trip I made on foot once or twice a day.  The 71A, 54C, and EBO would also get me there but hardly seemed worth waiting for except in exceptionally bad weather.  A half mile's walk would get me to a dozen downtown-bound bus lines (three miles away), and a block past that I could catch them all running outbound toward my then-boyfriend's apartment in Squirrel Hill, about two and a half miles away.  Those three destinations were the only places I needed to get to on a consistent basis, and were all readily accessible without so much as consulting a bus schedule.  The biggest day-to-day logistical challenge of carlessness was the grocery problem.  The nearest grocery store was exactly a mile away -- not a big deal to walk to, but less manageable on the return trip with a week's worth of groceries in tow.  (It is astounding how shopping bags seem to double in weight from the checkout line to one's front door.)  Luckily both the 71A and the 81B covered the entire route; the only downside was the frequency, or lack thereof.  Major shopping trips were usually a weekend occurrence, and on a Sunday a bus that normally runs every fifteen minutes might run once an hour.  I became well-acquainted with the frustration of waiting for a half hour or more in single-digit temperatures at a stop with no bus shelter.  Carrying a schedule was an option, but a bus could easily be twenty minutes late, especially in snow.  It was a great relief when my roommate acquired her sister's hand-me-down Saturn SC1 coupe, Sylvia, a tiny two-door affair that was perfect for grocery runs and didn't get used for much else.

Circumstances changed when my roommate and I moved to a lovely house on a hill just outside the city limits, now six miles distant from Oakland and almost eight from downtown.  Transportation suddenly required planning.  Bus schedules became a permanent fixture on the coffee table.  Luckily our new location was within walking distance of the East Busway, a secret nine-mile buses-only express highway that cuts through the east of the city from downtown to Swissvale.  (There is a West Busway but nothing west of the Point is Pittsburgh anymore in my admittedly biased opinion.)  My daily commute went something like this:  a three-quarters mile walk down to the busway station (10-15 minutes), then catch the EBO to Oakland or the EBA downtown (20-25 minutes).  Coming home from class after 9:00, the EBO had ceased running, so it was the long way around on the 61A, a forty-five minute ride that dropped me off at the base of my hill.

If you've never been to Pittsburgh, you need to understand about the hills.  The whole city is made of hills.  Big ones.  Everywhere.  The northern suburbs are called the North Hills, the southern suburbs are called the South Hills.  The first time you see the Southside Slopes you will wonder how on earth those houses are not just sliding right off the hillside into the Monongahela River below.  What this means is that maps of the area are deceptive.  Two roads may be parallel on paper but getting from one to the other may involve scaling a sheer cliff face (or taking an incline before the city tore them all down).  It also means that a half mile walk from a bus stop to one's house may mean hiking at a forty-five degree angle the whole way up.  After a thirteen-hour day of work and class, that hill starts to look like a mountain.

That brings me to Angelina.  After I finished my grad program, it seemed like it was time to get a grown-up job.  Since there was no guarantee that employment would be located somwhere accessible (read: less than an hour, no more than one transfer), the job search more or less necessitated a vehicle.  My carlessness had always been a financial issue, never a voluntary choice, but I appreciated a lot of aspects of it -- fewer expenses, more exercise, greener lifestyle.  I survived without a car long enough to know that I could if I had to.  But I didn't want to.  I was tired of having to plan every outing, of waiting for buses, of every trip taking twice as long as it would in a car.  I was tired of climbing the hill.

These days I drive a few minutes to my closest Park-N-Ride, where the lot is usually full by the time I get there and I have to chance street parking.  I then take the EBA in (still milking that free bus pass!), and walk a half mile across town to my building.  Total trip time 40-50 minutes.  In the evenings I often stop at the grocery store on the way home, since I can pick up a few things without planning a whole trip in advance.  I can even spontaneously hop on the turnpike to visit my family 200 miles east, without being tied to an Amtrak or Greyhound schedule.  I am profoundly grateful to have my car and all the convenience that comes with it.  I would love to see more cities (and the whole country, really) move toward a less automobile-dependent model, but in the meantime I'm afraid they're pretty much necessary.  Viva the Volvo.

Guest Post: Gracie, New Orleans

The following post was written by my friend Gracie, a fellow Summer of 2007 Democratic National Committee canvasser who graduated from Tulane University in 2009.

New Orleans was built by French people in the 18^th century. If you’re familiar with DC, you know what that means. Roads don’t always lead where you would expect, streets are too narrow for two cars to pass each other, and if you don’t already know how to get where you’re going, you’re lost. It’s a city built for walking and horses, not for SUVs. Biking, though, is ideal.

I reveled in New Orleans for four years on my baby blue Trek and loved every minute of it. It’s really a bike-friendly city: the ground is pancake-flat, it’s always warm, and so many people are on bicycles that drivers know how to be considerate. Once you learn how to dodge the potholes and ride through floods, you’re better off on a bike than anything else.

My bike was particularly useful when I first moved down about a year after Katrina. The streetcar wasn’t running yet (it’s still running on its own charmingly unpredictable schedule), and anyone with a car had to plan well in advance where they were going to find an open gas station. New to the city, I went exploring in different neighborhoods around Uptown, New Orleans East, and Mid-City. I got to know my new home and feel the chilly silence of empty neighborhoods. I biked up and down abandoned streets with my pals, all of us singing Yellow Submarine as loud as we could.

As the city came back, bikes became more and more popular. People in New Orleans are fully aware that they’re at risk total annihilation from global warming, so New Orleans is coming back green. Everybody bikes now. Families take weekend rides in matching helmets, hipsters ride vintage road bikes at the bottom of Magazine Street, and teenage boys in the Hollygrove (where Lil’ Wayne’s from) ride down the middle of the street with no hands. There’s always a party going on somewhere in New Orleans, and the tiny streets make parking iffy at best. For Mardi Gras, when the streets are crammed before and after every parade and you can’t find a spot within five miles of the French Quarter, a bike is the only way around. I once watched a parade, and then cut through streets around it so I could watch it again and still made it home two hours before my friends who took their car.

New Orleans is and always will be a town that doesn’t know how to hurry; it’s not called the Big Easy for nothing. Biking’s not fast, but it’s just the right speed for Nola. Pedaling slowly and feeling the breeze coming off the river, it’s hard to imagine wanting to be anywhere else in the world.

Guest Post: John, Budapest

The following post is written by my friend John, a friend from high school who since graduating from the University of Pittsburgh has lived without a car in Budapest, Hungary.

The Setup

I’m an American living abroad. I’ve spent the last two years in Budapest, which is the capital of Hungary and one of the great cities of Central Europe. It has an urban population of about 2 million people (roughly the size of Philadelphia). Certainly, legend or conventional thinking has it that living without a car in Europe is much easier than in the US. To a large extent, that is true. I’ve managed to have a great life here for the last 2 years and have never owned a car.

One of the prime reasons that living without a car is so easy in Budapest is that the city is very compact by American standards. Since the city and the public transit do not have to service endless sprawling suburbs like in the U.S., the lines are not overstretched. There are suburban trains that connect to villages outside of the city limits, but most people live within the city where the wealth, jobs and culture are concentrated.

Budapest has 3 metro lines. Trains run every 3-5 minutes from around 5 am until midnight. It also has a very extensive tram and bus service that gives the city nearly 100% coverage for public transportation. Night buses service the whole city until the metro lines start back up in the morning. The city can do this for a moderately cheap amount because of its dense and centrally located population, different than metropolitan areas in the US.

Further, owning a car in Hungary is a very big expense. There is a very high tax on car purchases and gas prices are stratospheric (currently over $1.50 a liter or roughly $6.00 a gallon). This persuades more people to consider alternative transportation. As it’s a middle class transport system here, the quality of the trains is generally pretty good. It is easy to walk around the city and since your job may be only a few blocks from your house, it is possible to bike there without working up too much of a sweat. If you do need to get across town, just jump on a tram or a metro and you’ll be there in minutes.

Walk for your lives!!

Living without a car here has given me a “new normal” in getting from place to place. My parents just visited from the US. They both live and work in suburban America. They both work over half an hour by car away from our house. They don’t cycle, they don’t walk. They found it difficult to walk from place to place here, even when the distance was not very great. We also walked more slowly, so our short trips took longer to reach than if I was walking alone. Since I don't have a car, I do take advantage of walking. It’s healthier, it’s eco-friendly, I enjoy it. I’m in much better shape because I do walk and therefore walking is quick and easy. It’s a great virtuous cycle.

Once you start walking here, you realize just how close the things are that you need. Since there are small grocery stores all over, you don’t need a car to bring all of your groceries back in one trip. Need butter? Need milk? There’s a cheap store on the corner that sells 99% of the things you need. Need a chair or desk or bed? There is an Ikea at either end of the red line metro. You can get there and back in half an hour.

Reaching a Critical Mass

Bikes are still the Achilles’ heel in Budapest’s eco-grid. Bike lanes, “Bringa Ut” in Hungarian, do not service the entire city. Crossing the Danube by bridge can be treacherous on a bike. Those places that do have bike lanes, such as Andrassy Ut, Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Ut, and Heroes’ Square, are not places that are generally of interest to the biking community. Andrassy Ut is the upper class shopping street where you can buy Dolce & Gabana, Burberry, or Calvin Klein. Most tight jeaned and tanktopped hipsters don’t go anywhere near these places and the bike lanes there go unused. The hipster havens on Kiraly utca have no such bike service.

The two most efficient bike lanes are the two bikes lanes which face each other on either side of the Danube River. In the mornings and the evenings, these are real bike-commuter transit lanes that make getting to work easier. Otherwise, bike traffic is directed onto roadways or sidewalks. This makes bike riding much more dangerous as neither cars nor pedestrians in Budapest have much experience in negotiating around town with large numbers of bikes traveling with them.

Save a Life, Drink and… Take the Bus

Finally, Budapest is a drinker’s city. From wine to beer to Hungarian Palinka (similar to schnopps), Hungarians like to have a few before going home. However, Hungary has a very strict drunk driving regulation. A person can only have 0.000000000% alcohol in their system. That’s right… none at all. I’m not sure you can even look at alcohol and drive legally.

The public transportation system can ferry you anywhere, all night, and it is exceedingly cheap. Most young people when they go out leave the cars at home and bus into or around the city. Since the city is practically overflowing with bars, you can generally find a good one right around the corner from metro or bus stop down town.

Since the Hungarians take their drinking very seriously and don’t like to see someone missing out on the fun, it’s hard not to accept a drink from them in the bar. However, between the metro and the night buses, no one has to volunteer to be the designated driver and no one has to worry about drunk drivers. It helps make the city safer, cleaner, and helps everyone to have a good time.

All around, the city’s integrated transportation system has made it very easy to cast off the car and get around the city by other means. It definitely makes day to day life more enjoyable and I think that going back would be hard. I still remember traffic jams, car insurance, and trying to find a parking spot. For me it's been great to live somewhere that I can easily have a life without a car. Now, if only I could find some way to make air travel more eco-friendly...

Thanks for reading!

Guest Post: Jeff, New York City

The following post is written by my friend Jeff, a friend from high school who graduated from The Pennsylvania State University and moved to New York City in August 2009.  All opinions are his.

Chad and I have been friends since high school. We have many things in common, one of which being our love of public transport. When Chad first informed me about his quest to live without a car for a month (and write a blog about it), I was all about it.  When he asked me to write a guest post, I was honored.

By way of background, I'm currently in my second year living in New York City. Unlike Chad, I didn't have a choice in the matter of getting rid of my car.  I live in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan where it is difficult to rent a parking spot for less than $300 a month.  The truth is, I work 1.2 miles from where I live and I eat/drink within 2 miles of where I live. In short, I simply don't need a car.

It was tough to think of what I wanted to discuss in my guest post, but having spent time living in DC without a car, I thought I'd make sense to compare the two transit systems. I am an accountant by trade, so I thought taking a look at the two systems from an economic perspective would make sense. The topic of my post is the following: WMATA is not set up to encourage people to get rid of their cars.

Considering its insolvency and soon to be third fare hike in three years, I clearly don't believe the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is the best run system in the country.  That doesn't mean that WMATA couldn't learn a few things from the MTA.  So if anybody from WMATA is reading, I'd encourage you to Bolt to NYC, take a ride on the 6 train to 28th Street, and walk to my apartment. I'd love to discuss a few items with you.

1.  Charging per use discourages ridership.

My guess is the majority of the readers here are from the DC metro area, so let me take a few moments to explain how things work here in the Big Apple. I currently pay $89 a month for a 30 day unlimited Metrocard. That allows me to use any of the subways or local buses as many times as I'd like at any time of the day (none of that peak or off-peak garbage). I can't conclude on the entire population of NYC, but I'm comfortable saying that the majority of my friends have the same type of card.

Once I pay for my monthly card, the marginal cost per ride is zero. For me, that means I have to really need to get somewhere in a hurry to drop $15 or $20 on a cab. Its no lie that waiting for a train or bus is less convenient than taking cabs, but because the difference in price between a cab and the subway is so extreme, I'm willing to deal.

Compare this to DC where you pay for every trip.  If you're going somewhere by yourself, you're probably willing to pay $3 and wait for the Metro for a few minutes rather than pay for the cab.  What happens if you check your iPhone and see the next train will be 30 minutes?  What if there are 4 of you?  In that case, the Metro just doesn't make sense (spend $12 for the metro or $15 for a cab).

In NYC, running a few errands isn't a big deal. If I want to do some shopping in SoHo, then get some Shake Shack on the Upper East Side, then take the cross town bus to the Upper West Side to visit my friends, and then head down to the West Village for dinner, it costs me nothing more.

Compare this to DC where you may want to take the Metro to Foggy Bottom to shop in Georgetown, then get some Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street, then take the bus to Adams Morgan to visit a friend, then take the Metro to DuPont for dinner. You may have just spent $12 on transportation. At that point, it probably would have been easier just hop in the car and pay for the gas and parking meters.  Worse, it may discourage you from going to these places and enjoying the city in which you live because its just so expensive to get around!

2.  Zone pricing discourages ridership. 

When you think about it initially, charging more to go further may make sense.  On the flip side, it doesn't encourage those who have alternative forms of transportation to chose to ride the train or it almost certainly squeezes additional cash out of those who don't have alternate means of transport (by choice or otherwise).

The further you live from Midtown Manhattan, the less the rents usually are.  The average income in these further areas are likely less (i.e., Harlem, the Bronx, Bed-Stuy). In NYC, whether you live out in East New York (45 minutes to Midtown) or the Upper East Side (10 minutes to Midtown, you pay the same (unlimited monthly or $2.25 pay per ride).

Let's think about DC.  While living in the District certainly isn't cheap, living in Clarendon or Bethesda isn't either.  That may indicate the people in these areas are wealthier and have other options to get around.  It costs more for transport from these areas, so the Metro simply isn't competitive from a cost perspective considering the large fixed cost of vehicle ownership.

Regardless of the economics, living without a car is simply a healthier, less expensive, and greener lifestyle.  Those of us who have been living without personal vehicles recognize the challenges that it entails (e.g., carrying home groceries or getting caught in the rain walking from the subway).  Some people say that waiting for the bus is inconvenient, but I say that waiting on an oil change or changing a flat tire is much more inconvenient.

Really, who wouldn't rather be chauffeured everywhere for $89 a month?

Guest Post: Jordan, Philadelphia

The following post was written by my friend Jordan, a friend from high school who is currently completing his Masters in Computer Science at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

So, transportation in Philly. Living in Center City and working in University City, the need for a car isn't really necessary, nor would it even be faster for my usual commute. Although I'm in a pretty fortunate position in terms of how close to Market Street my home, work, friends and oft frequented locales are, SEPTA generally covers most of the areas within the city with maybe one, possibly two transfers.
Some images of SEPTA's "perk" campaign, which I found very clever and true, scattered about. The two subways, the EL (goes all the way down Market and up Frankfurt) and the Broad Street Line (which will take you to the lovely areas of North Philly, all the way to the Phillies' doorstep) are the vital arteries of SEPTA, transporting residents through the heart of the city, which are pretty abundant (every 5 minutes during rush hours, 20 or so minutes during off-peak times) and always are an interesting experience, from the strange foot smell and the odd assortment of individuals on the subway. Also, the peripheral flirting, which I'm never not doing.

It's not the cleanest transportation I've taken, but it works, and it's $83 bucks a month to cover all subways, busses and trolleys within the city. Ideally, I'd like them to switch over to a more permanent pass, but still: it works. There's also the Regional Rail which will take you to one of the many Philly suburbs if you need to escape the handful of skyscrapers at the city's core, although I don't have too much experience with those in terms of convienence. Usually, they run once an hour (more often during rush hour) and it's generally a pleasant experience. You get to see some blue sky, and the conditions are much cleaner and relaxing than your standard ride on one of the subways. Peripheral flirting rules also apply.

Most places within the city are accessible through SEPTA with a relaxing 10 minute walk and the city has a giant biking population (I'm looking at you, Fishtown hipsters), with most major roads having bike lanes and pedestrians and motorists accepting.

Maybe if I lived outside of the city, or an area that was less than questionable or SEPTA-devoid, it'd be an issue. But hey, I like dreaming big while walking and peripheral flirting.

Just always be prepared for the Septa Strike.