Living without a car

WildRose · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jun 21, 2006 Posts: 1092

I've been reducing my driving as well. I'm using about 1/2 tank of gas in my Honda Accord per week, which includes driving to work and back, taking the kids places and running errands. I do as many errands on foot as possible, which is great because I love walking and my dog is always happy to accompany me. Something else that helps is coordinating errands that are all in one direction or one area and making these trips just once a week.

My husband has a long drive and is always keeping an eye out for work closer to home. He drives an ancient van. I work midnights, so I drive because I don't want to stand at bus stops and walk from the bus stop to my work in the dark by myself. At least my work is just a 10-minute drive.

I've found it difficult to cut back on driving my teens to events, though. We have quite a gang problem in our city and a couple of incidents where people have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I worry about my kids' safety. So I always pick them up from friends' places, games, etc. at night. I tend to ferry other kids home besides my own, so that cuts back on having several other vehicles also driving kids home.

Generally, though, we've just been doing more things closer to home, utilizing our neighborhood parks and swimming pools, library, malls that are within walking distance, and it's all been good.

Vortex · Coal Joined: Dec 24, 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Sweden

[align=justify] It is possible to live without a car, even if one live in middle of Sweden, in a city that belong to the more rural kind of classes. I have never owned a car, but do have a drivers license, it is almost a must have if you want to take a job here, one does not have to own a car, but be able and allowed to drive one.

My reasons for not owning a car right now is partly due to finance - I can save a lot of money not having a car - and partly due to the fact that I will not contribute or be a part of the "status cult of owning a fancy car".

I have opted to localize my living. Everything can be reached by bike or by foot. From where i live there are no more than 150 meters to the store, about 1 kilometer to the town and the river where one can fish and 150-200 meters to the forests. It took me less than five minutes to bike to my former work!

The lack of a car can also be problematic, however. There are few buses here, many rural parts of Sweden do have commuting, buses, but they are seldom departing/arriving and not at the time my shift begin at my current work.

I commute with a fellow employee who has a car (I pay him about $90 per month for this) but if he is on vacation or is abscent, I will have to commute and then I will be late. Fortunately, my boss understands my reasons for not having a car and he accepts my delay. Of course, I will have to compensate for this by working "over time", but it fits well with the bus which takes me home.

Later, somewhere in the future, when (hopefully) I have my house and garden created and perhaps a bit of a forest, I probably must have a heavy duty car. But it will most certainly be reserved to the most needful errands and not to some sort of entertainment cruising.

Gas, insurance and taxes are pretty steep in Sweden, as in most of the European countries I presume. So if one can do without a car, one can save a lot of money, allocate funding to other, perhaps more needful, projects. Gas (regular) is $5.86 per gallon in my city, by the way. [align=justify]

gwmss15 · Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 5:52 am Post subject: Re: Living without a car

I dont own a car and never will. I noticed a big problem for people with young kids and having no car. well my mum did it with no problem she carried me on her back and got on the bus just like everyone else she did this untill i could walk my self. When i was 4 yo she showed me how to use the very complex issan metro and bus system. which is nothing like what you have in the USA.

I started school when i was 5 yo and had to travel 40 KM from my family home on a "truck bus" by my self when i was this age just getting on to this truck was difficult as its a 2 foot gap from the back to the ground but all my friends at school did the same. but i can see why some parents have a concern about this as one of my friends fell out of the truck bus when it was traveling and broke his leg and arm and missed 3 months of school. but i and my school mates kept on travelling on this system.

The key to travelling with young kids is to make them aware of this risks of the metro and bus system.

The rules i was taught by my mum and at school when young were:

1. allways board the bus or train quickly and grab hold of something as soon as possiabe "buses do not wait for you to even get to the top step before flooring it"

2. never travel on the steps "its easy to slip and fall out of the bus or train at speed.

3. never lean out of the metro windows again easy to fall or get hit by the overhead supports

4. allways exit a bus via the back door incase you fall you will not get run over by the bus. "the buses allways crawl along instead of fully stopping to let you off."

5. never talk to people you dont know except for monks

6. dont play around or run in the train or bus as its easy to fall.

7. allways read the sign on the front of the bus or side of train to see if it correct one before boarding.

8. allways hold on to a pole or take a seat if free.

teach your kids these 8 simple rules and they will be fine to use the transit system on there own. But travel with them the 1st few times so they know which is the correct route to take as the central bus terminals are very very busy as there are about 900 bus routes runing from the bus terminal some of these where even international and intercity express buses hence rule 7.

my trip was take bus 895 to city bus terminal and change for route 1E (express) and get off at the school this is what i did every day when i was at primary school

frankthetank · Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 2:46 pm Post subject: Re: Living without a car

What are car insurance costs in Europe? Is full coverage mandatory on all vehicles? or can one just have liability on it?

Here in the states i insure a halfway new small 4 cyl car for a little over $100 bucks for six months of coverage (just liability), so really its really reasonable. Add another car and its even cheaper on the second one.

What about registration? Here car registration is $55/year for my little car. I believe trucks are a little more. This varies a lot by the state you are in.

Gas currently is $2.35/gallon.
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Vortex · Coal Joined: Dec 24, 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Sweden

My work fellow, 20 years old, would pay about 25 000 SEK ($3700) per year for his Volvo S40 T-5, full coverage. There are three levels of insurances in Sweden. The mandatory "traffic insurance". Then you can add "half coverage" and "full coverage". Almost everyone I know has full coverage which covers, well almost everything. The most important aspects regarding the insurance fee in Sweden are: age, location and type of car/vehicle. Younger (male) people tend to drive fast and are considered somewhat prone to causing an accident, especially in combination with fast cars or motorcycles. Hence the expensive fee. It is not unknown to pay 30 000 SEK (>$4400) per year if you have recently got the drivers license and bought a motorcycle or a sport car. Yes, if you own one sport car and one hell of a motorcycle, it will probably be more than $8000 to pay for insurances. Add gas about $5.8 per gallon (it reached almost 7 bucks during the Katrina/Rita event) and one realizes that there are serious savings to be had if one can cope without a car or at least a lesser one.

snax · Tar Sands Joined: Jan 20, 2007 Posts: 75

I had spent four years ignoring the obvious on this issue. Living 100 yards from a mainline bus stop, and working 200 yards from the stop 2.5 miles away, it was only four months ago that I did the math on what driving every day was really costing me. Even trying to be "green" by driving a $30k hybrid vehicle, the cost was simply unacceptable.

Taking this further and asking what my extra 20 minutes of daily commute time (by either bicycle or bus) is worth by ditching the car:

20m x 5 days = 100 min/wk
100 min/wk x 4 wks/mo = 400 min/mo or 6 hrs 40 min (6.67hrs)
$568/mo / 6.67hrs = $85 / hr

I don't know about you, but for myself and probably most of the rest of the world, making or saving $85/hr to ride the bus or, dare I say it, to exercise a little, is difficult to pass up!

Granted, I REALLY like nice cars, and having a $500/month payment could easily be removed from the equation by settling for more modest means that once paid for are reduced to maintenance, fuel, and insurance costs. Even so, for most people that is a MINIMUM of $100/month just for the privledge of owning the car - whether they drive it or not. And even that is still a cost of $15/hr with a mere 20 minutes extra commute time per day.

If all of this had dawned on me 4 years ago, I could have saved $24,000 in that time.

We do have another vehicle and $600/mo payment that we kept since selling the Escape Hybrid, but with kids and other demands, selling it too simply would not be practical. The bottom line is that for our area, some kind of vehicle really is necessary for our family without significant inconvenience and time cost, but the cost to inconvenience factor of not having a second vehicle is far less of an issue. In fact, until I somehow manage to start getting paid $85/hr, it just flat doesn't make financial sense to have a second nice vehicle, and even a paid for clunker still challenges my sensibilities when I think of it in terms of getting paid $15/hr to exercise up to 20 minutes a day.

At the end of the day on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being the most convenient, I'd rate my current situation at 3 or less. I simply don't miss driving to work, I can read a little when I ride the bus, and I have fun exercising when I ride the bike. (BTW, studded mountain bike tires work excellent and are worth the 50 bucks!)