Anyone gone car free?

[middleagecyclist]

The bus probably won't be viable (not door-to-door, may not be able to get on/off it*), taxis yes, assuming they can afford it. I'm not familiar with Dial a Ride, so can't comment on that.

*which was an issue with my grandmother.

Buses are an aoption. Of course they will not always appropriate.

Occasional, local taxi use would be cheaper than having a private car used for those journeys alone surely?

Dial a ride or Demand Responsive Transport. It is door to door transport, cheaper than a taxi but it has to be shared, pre booked to a degree and the journey may not be the most direct. It is a great option for those too old/infirm/unwilling to cycle/walk/drive/get a bus/ take a taxi and who have no family/friend to ferry them around.

 

[al78]

Buses are an aoption.

Not if you can't walk to the bus stop.

Occasional, local taxi use would be cheaper than having a private car used for those journeys alone surely?

Probably.

 

[The Brewer]

I would love to go car free, I'm all but there. I cycle back and to for work and have a bus stop smack bang outside the house for the other family members.
The old Zafira is such a financial drain in every way, but then it did come in handy with the double puncture/limited co2 escaped last week.
Biggest worry for me is not being able to get to my mums quick enough when a crisis happens, she suffers with dementia and lives 10miles away. She needs help with her shopping and to attend appointments over 15miles away due to her condition.

 

[Boris Bajic]

Hmm. That would be true if I could drive, but I can't.

Understood, but whether you drive or not is not the point.

It's quite convenient to live in a bubble of righteous behaviour if those aspects of life made easier by car use are handled by a driving spouse. It may be that you derive no benefit from your wife's ownership of a car and her use of it.

If that is so, I congratulate you for sticking to your strongly-voiced principles. I'm not sure how you might manage it, but well done if you have.

If you do derive any benefit from the car in your household, then your posts about corruption and evil earlier in the thread lose some of their lustre.

They would begin to sound like US Televangelists pouring fire and brimstone from the pulpit and then relaxing by snorting coke off the bellies of hookers.

But I'm sure that you do stick to your principles and you ensure that you derive no benefit from your wife's ownership and use of a car.

I'm not sure quite how one would manage to live with a car owner and derive no benefit from same. It's certainly not because you don't drive.

I don't bake bread, but I derive benefit from my wife's ability to do so.

I don't give birth, but I've derived some benefit from my wife's ability to do so.

 

[martint235]

I do agree with Boris here ( a rarity!). You can't really start criticising cars and car ownership, if your wife has a car and ferries you around whether you can drive or not.

I don't have a car and can't drive anyway. My other half has a license but hasn't driven for over 10 years and doesn't currently own a car.

If I want to go somewhere I walk, cycle or use public transport. I don't feel my lifestyle has suffered at all.

I feel the above does allow me the space to criticise cars and car ownership if I choose to.

 

[theclaud]

Would the western world be where it is today without them?

 

[theclaud]

We would have to change our lives considerably.

Perish the thort!

All the verbose rationalization aside, I do think the point you perhaps inadvertently make about car-use being gendered is an interesting one. If you look at the different contexts and meanings of car-use, you'll see that where the car is perceived as an instrument of freedom or advantage it is pictured as being driven by men, whereas insofar as it is used for chores, family obligations, or the service of others, it is suddenly a woman in the driving seat. Germaine Greer wrote somewhere that the man who drives to work while his wife takes the bus is the Western equivalent of the man who rides a donkey while his wife walks alongside. I think she's right, but of course the car is only able to operate as an index or instrument of privilege insofar as we have shaped social spaces according to its demands. Take space away from cars and give it to buses, and the man whose self-identification has depended on the symbolic power of his car starts to look a bit of a tit as he's stuck in a traffic jam with the bus whizzing past. And of course he's angry about it. But we're on a cycling forum, where the otherwise subversive notion that bicycles are empowering and cars constraining is commonplace, and now we find that men (I generalize) would like to be cut loose from its ties if only their wives didn't insist that they need it for all those irritating chores they do for everybody else. Is it possible that these women are reluctant to give up the car not because they don't believe that the shopping can be done with a trailer or that the kids can be got to school by other means, but because they know that is they who will be pulling the trailer or hefting the carrier bags and getting the kids up early to the bus stop?

Anyway, I'm putting off saying that *cough* I agree with Boris about considering household car use as a whole. Access to cars is, generally, a pretty reliable indicator of access to privilege. This is not because we need cars - it's a self-fulfilling thing brought about by the status of the car and the negative impact it has on social space. Car use cannot really be sensibly discussed outside of the contexts of inequality within which it operates. Some interesting statistics: http://www.poverty.org.uk/75/index.shtml

 

[DiddlyDodds]

.

Has any cyclist here actually gone car (ownership) free?

Not a chance in hell
I love my car , i love my bike

 

[fimm]

Interesting post, theClaud.
As I understood the OP, it was a question about ceasing to own a car, and a request for experiences of this. I have added mine, with the note that we still use cars that we hire, rather than owning one.

 

[Crankarm]

Fat comes from eating and a lack of exercise. Car use removes a lot of the need for exercise. Some nutters even drive up to 5 miles to a gym, exercise there for an hour, then drive home, when cycling for an hour could accomplish the same in less time. Laziness may be inherent to certain people, but cycling mitigates it whereas car ownership feeds it. Again, my point was that car ownership feeds our worst habits and turns them deadly - that is the definition of evil.

What an idiotic post.There is something called freedom of choice. I would hate to live in your fascistic world where there is no freedom. Get real cars are NOT evil. They or more correctly the combustion engine have brought tremendous benefits to society allowing us all to lead the lives we do today having zillions more opportunities and a much much improved quality of life compared to previous generations. Even if you don't use or own a car your life depends on the car or motor vehicles to provide the goods and services you now take for granted.

Yes there are fat people, there are lazy and ignorant people, but cars are not evil.

 

[Crankarm]

Not a chance in hell
I love my car , i love my bike

+1.

 

[theclaud]

Interesting post, theClaud.
As I understood the OP, it was a question about ceasing to own a car, and a request for experiences of this. I have added mine, with the note that we still use cars that we hire, rather than owning one.

Sure. I was just running with BB's point. The OP talks about persuading his wife to give up the car, as if he's already done the giving up and she hasn't made the leap, when in fact it sounds like a case of the more onerous functions of a car being outsourced to women, so to speak. This isn't a criticism of the OP's lifestyle, which might well be a simple case of a particular consensual division of labour, but it does follow a familiar pattern. Imagine if we weren't talking about cars but about some other ubitiquous convenience of modern life. As in "I never use the washing machine, but I can't persuade my wife to give it up." The chances are she's not using the car for this:

but for this:

Except that she's unlikely to be smiling. Note that I couldn't find an image of a woman loading shopping into the boot who didn't appear to be inanely delighted about the task...

 

[Crankarm]

They pollute, they make us fat and lazy, they kill hundreds of thousands of people per year worldwide, they make all of our bad but harmless habits (anger, drinking, need for speed, tendency to break inconvenient laws) into deadly habits. I'd say that makes cars about the biggest vector for evil that we have available to us - and they are regarded by most people as essential. If the Devil existed, I reckon he couldn't invent a better way of corrupting people than giving them cars.

What an irrational rant of crap.

 

[Crankarm]

Sure. I was just running with BB's point. The OP talks about persuading his wife to give up the car, as if he's already done the giving up and she hasn't made the leap, when in fact it sounds like a case of the more onerous functions of a car being outsourced to women, so to speak. This isn't a criticism of the OP's lifestyle, which might well be a simple case of a particular consensual division of labour, but it does follow a familiar pattern. Imagine if we weren't talking about cars but about some other ubitiquous convenience of modern life. As in "I never use the washing machine, but I can't persuade my wife to give it up." The chances are she's not using the car for this:

but for this:

Except that she's unlikely to be smiling. Note that I couldn't find an image of a woman loading shopping into the boot who didn't appear to be inanely delighted about the task...

Claud - there must be one of some B or C - list celeb.

 

[theclaud]

. They or more correctly the combustion engine have brought tremendous benefits to society allowing us all to lead the lives we do today having zillions more opportunities and a much much improved quality of life compared to previous generations.

Yeah, yeah. They've also f**ked up our urban environment and stunned our imaginations. And made people very, very boring.