Dahon.Steve

Here's a good video from the BBC where they created a fictional city with driverless electric cars that are ordered from your smart phone. I thought it was silly since any system is going to cost as mush as a taxi.

However, they discussed how in southern Germany, cars were removed from city streets and the apartment dwellers couldn't care less after a while. People thought they needed a car but just gave it up since parking cost 20,000 Eur.

I felt the same way thinking a car was necessary. Not anymore.

https://youtu.be/ha7VKDNLHpE

DrIsotope

I live in Southern California. My wife has a relatively short commute to work-- 28 miles each way, 5 days a week. I have two kids, one in elementary school, one in middle school. No, we could not survive without a car. If I was single and 25, I could absolutely live without one. Cars are stupidly expensive, but necessary-- at least here.

ironwood

Yes, and I have survived car free, but as I explained a couple of years ago, there are limits to what you can do when you don't have a car. A lot depends on where you live.

blue192

I live car free. I never even had a driver's license and doubt I will ever get one considering I am 40 now.

B. Carfree

Granted an hour and a half each way is longer than the typical commute, but not by so much as to be considered unthinkable. And, last I checked, children don't need to be chauffeured to and from school. That leaves me wondering why you say you couldn't live without a car.

Is there something significantly different about SoCal relative to NorCal, where I lived for four decades, that precludes living without a car that goes unspoken? Several of my NorCal friends have longer commutes than your wife and manage to do them on bikes. Actually, a few have commutes over double that length and they comfortably do them multi-modal.

Rollfast

It's been nine years, I'm still here, unlike my deceased friends.

Ekdog

I lived car-free for decades in Southern California. I didn't have any children, but I knew other car-free people who did.

Miele Man

If you get a friend to drive you somewhere in their car or if you take a taxi, can you still say that you're living car free?

The problem with trying to live car free in many areas of north America are the vast distances between one place and another. Even in many small cities it's a comparatively long ways to go from one place to another.

Direct bicycle routes to a from work or shopping or school stcetera would make bicycling much more convenient - not neccessarily bike lanes just roads bicycles can go on in reasonable safety. Too many areas have highways that act as a barrier to bicyclists.

Cheers

denis123

Why? I am member of car sharing systems and it is much cheaper than taxis. For $360 a year, I can use it an unlimited number of times up to a maximum of 30 minutes every times. I read that the model of driverless cars that are shared by users combined with mass transit is the future of transportation. The driverless car solves the last mile problem. Car sharing already solves it partially but there is not always a car available where you need one. If you could call a driverless car through your smart phone, that problem would be solved.

wolfchild

Survive without a car ??...Yes
Thrive and prosper without a car ??...No way

wolfchild

This forum has a very loose definition of what car-free is, so yes you can bum rides from other people, use uber and car-share and taxis and enjoy the conveniences of a vehicle and still say that you're living car-free.

auldgeunquers

Yes.

Dahon.Steve

Maybe you're right.

I don't know how cars sharing works but $360.00 dollars a year seems like a bargain. The problem with it is parking and tolls which still have to come out of pocket. Also, I'm sure you can leave it very far from the center of town (ex airport) restricting you to only close distances.

Dahon.Steve

Yes.

Car free simply means you don't own a vehicle. It does not mean you cannot rent, use Urber or call a taxi. At the same time, carfree does not require you to use a bicycle, bus or train. If you don't own a vehicle and can survive with a good pair of sneakers, you're carfree!

Dahon.Steve

+1

I've been carfree over 20 years now and won't go back. Once I stopped watching TV about 15 years ago, the desire to ever own a car never came back.

mrodgers

Nope, I couldn't survive. I'm impressed with you car free folk, but then I think you don't have the freedom to go nearly the places I have to go.

I couldn't haul my kayak if I didn't have a car. It's something I love more than the bike.

I couldn't go pick up the kids for the evening that are 30 miles away and take them back since I'm newly divorced. I wouldn't get to see the kids very much.

I already get up before 5 am to go to work. No way I'm getting up at 3 am because I have to ride the bike.

I like to explore the multitude of rail trails we have here in western PA. I couldn't ride 100 miles out to a trail I want to ride, then ride 30-40 miles of trail and ride 100 miles back.

I couldn't spend a few hours down in Pittsburgh riding in the city if I had to ride 40 miles down and 40 miles back. I love coming down to Pittsburgh and riding around the city.

I couldn't make it to work in the winter because there's no way I'd try riding on unplowed roads with 18 inches of snow on them because school was canceled so the road crews didn't have to get them cleared for the school busses.

Ekdog

It sounds like you've built your life around car travel. You'd need to rearrange things if you were interested in living car-free.

Ekdog

Two ways to greatly improve your life: get rid of your car and your TV.

tandempower

I can't speak for this poster, but people generally prefer not to sacrifice family time unless they have a very good reason. E.g. people would commute 1.5 hours each way by car for a very good job, or they would bike 1.5 hours each way if the congestion was so bad driving would take just as long, but if they can save a half-hour or an hour commuting by car instead of bike, many will do it because, they reason, that's an extra hour or two they can spend with their families.

Nowadays my commute is pretty short but once upon a time I biked 10 miles to work and back when I could have driven and saved 15 minutes or 1/2 hour each way, depending on the time of day. I did this because I felt cultural pressure to drive and I knew it would be a slippery slope if I started giving in at certain times of day or just for work-commuting, so I exercised the will to bike and sacrificed an extra 1/2-1 hour per workday I could have spent with family.

I'm not saying it isn't good to sacrifice more than this, because ultimately modeling a righteous life for your children is one of the greatest things you can give to them. Yes, spending time is important but if they grow up believing more is possible than they might otherwise have, that is a big achievement.

Anyway, I understand why someone would drive if their commute is 30 miles each way, but what I question is why the economy is structured in such a way that it is necessary to commute this far for a job. Surely in this modern day and age with so much technological power, we could empower people more to reduce their commuting distances.

tandempower

I watched a documentary on AT hiking some time ago where people were basically drinking, hitchhiking, and partying their way along the AT route. That isn't my idea of hiking but they also weren't just driving either.

I don't understand why there is this issue of defining what counts as carfree or not. Ultimately some people accept driving as a necessity and don't bother attempting to transcend it while others do question it and try to transcend it in various ways. LCF is about having car-free living as an objective regardless of your current situation. Someone might currently be driving but be sincerely interested in LCF.

What's annoying is the people who insist they're LCF just for the sake of having a platform to criticize it from. You may live car-free more than someone else but if you can only be negative about people having the goal of living car-free, or having a more car-free society, or just driving less or having more freedom to go places without driving, then what's the purpose of using this forum except to discourage and put-down all of us who do hope for more car-freedom in our own lives and in general?

CliffordK

I've been essentially car-free for a year and a half now, but I don't commute every day. I do, however, carry big awkward stuff on my bike at times.

Anyway, commuting by bike, 15 to 20 miles each way, every day would be a bit of a drag. < 10 miles is ok.

What might be handy would be a pickup taxi service. Someone I could just call, and would arrive with a pickkup and an extra set of hands for certain jobs. Maybe $100 an hour? That would still get expensive. Say renting a small piece of equipment would mean 2 loads. Maybe one is better off with a local U-Haul rental.

blue192

Do the cities in USA have a rack and roll system like we have up here in Canada? Our buses have a bike rack on front that flips down to hold two bicycles on most major routes. This way people can bike part way and take bus rest of way. Also handy in a breakdown and need to get bicycle to a repair shop.

Seattle Forrest

This. I could survive without sunlight, too, it would be a pitiable experience but it could be done. Not that that's a great analogy, I hate driving, and pretty much refuse to do it whenever I don't have to.

Seattle Forrest

The guy said he likes to paddle a kayak and hike on trails, and what you got from that is that he built his life around car travel???

Seattle Forrest