Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Alternative transportation

Confessions From the Car-Free Life

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“Maybe we should get the car fixed,” I mutter to my husband as icy rain pelts my face

It’s a pitch-black, moonless evening. It feels more like midnight than 5:30. We’re on our way to a birthday dinner for my husband’s colleague, pedaling onto a bike bridge that crosses a busy street. Below us cars zooms past, a snake of yellow headlights.

“You’re telling me,” my husband says. One of his bike spokes broke earlier in the day, and his back wheel lets out a shrill whine every time he pedals.

Our two-year-old son seems oblivious to our harrowing adventure. “We’re going to the pizza shop,” he sings in his trailer. “The pizza shop, the pizza shop.”

My family is in the midst of an experiment in car-free living. Our Isuzu Rodeo is still parked in front of our house, but we haven’t driven it for three months. It needs major repairs, and we can’t decide whether to invest money in it. Even our mechanic, who stands to gain mightily from us continuing to drive this car, looked hesitant when he told us about the repairs. “When things start going on these…” he said, trailing off and shaking his head. But we also don’t want to take out a loan to buy a newer car right now.

So we’re weighing the pros and cons of car ownership, and it occurred to us that we needed more information to aid our decision-making. After all, we didn’t really know what it was like to live without a car. So we decided to try something I’ve long been fascinated by – car-free living.

I’m not fond of driving. I love to walk and ride my bike. I’d usually prefer to be in tune with the weather, the seasons, my neighbors, and my city, rather than experiencing them from behind a windshield.

Moreover, I don’t like what car-dependence has done to our culture. I don’t like gulping down smog. I hate the constant roar of traffic in our backyard. I hate sitting in gridlock. I don’t care for behemoth box stores with sprawling parking lots. I’m saddened when I think about oil wars, spiraling obesity rates, growing social isolation, and thousands of people dying in unnecessary accidents every year.

But this night, as we lock our bikes to a rack and trudge toward the pizza shop, I want a car.

At the restaurant, our party is sitting at a long table in the corner. We cross the room. My husband’s rubber rain pants squeak with every step.

Everyone stands up to say hello. Most of them are accountants. They’re dressed up. I sit down across from a financial planner, who’s wearing a white button-down shirt and ironed slacks, and stow my helmet under the table. I smile and try to pretend like riding a bike to a dinner date on a freezing cold, drizzly night is a perfectly normal thing to do. But, at the moment, I’m sure I look like my grumpy tabby cat when he comes in from the rain.

Our car-free experiment has actually been much easier than I imagined it would be. My husband is having a great time riding to work with a coworker. We figured out how to pick up chicken feed with our bike trailer. Most of the time we don’t even think about the car. And that’s the thing about car-free living, it’s not that hard once you get used to it – if you don’t let yourself think about how effortless it used to be to zip to the store or restaurant in a V6.

We munch on slices of pizza, and I make small talk with the financial planner. During lulls in the conversation, I dream about cars. Leather interiors. Seat warmers. Air conditioning. Cruise control.

After dinner, we bundle up and brace ourselves to head back out into the freezing rain. But it’s not raining anymore. And after only a few minutes on my bike, the heaviness of my pizza dinner lifts. We glide down the bike path, our lights glittering in the darkness, and talk about the night.

As we pedal onto the bike bridge and soar down the other side, I realize that if we had a car, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be flying through the night. I wouldn’t feel so light, so healthy, so free.

“Do you really want to fix our car?” I ask my husband.

“Well, it can’t get much harder than tonight, right?”

I wonder if someday soon, we’ll laugh at that question. But for now, our experiment continues.

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If you liked this post, read more of my popular posts about car-free living:

Do you live, or have you ever lived, car-free or car-lite? I’d love to hear about it.

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Lessons in Car-Free Living

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My family is doing an experiment in car-free living. We’re considering going car-free for the winter, mostly because our only car needs major repairs, and it’s too old and unreliable to sink much money into. We want to save money to buy a better, more efficient vehicle next year, and the best way we can think to do this is by living sans automobile for awhile.

We tried the car-free life last month to see how difficult it would be. My husband rode his bike to and from work. My son and I walked and rode everywhere. Honestly, it’s been great. My husband has been enjoying getting exercise outdoors each day, since he has to be inside all day. Our son is getting older and can walk further distances, making it much easier than the last time we tried this a year ago. And we’re having a great time riding bikes together to the store, park, library, and farmer’s market on the weekends.

This feels like a normal, sensible way to live. But what we’re contemplating is downright radical. Just look at these statistics:

It’s no secret that driving is not good for us, the environment, or our society. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Driving a private car is probably a typical citizen’s most “polluting” daily activity.” Cars spew hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide into the air, and air pollution is linked to asthma, heart disease, cancer, and even diabetes. According to a 2004 study, each hour we spend in a car each day is also associated with six percent greater likelihood of being obese. And driving isolates us from each other, and too often, leads to rage and aggression

It takes about 30 minutes to walk two miles, and about ten minutes to ride a bike that far. Most of us can use more exercise. So why are we driving so much? City planning – suburbs, strip malls, cul-de-sacs, drive-through restaurants, and box stores with gigantic parking lots – undoubtedly plays a huge role. But even in places where it’s easy to walk, ride, and take transit, like where I live in Eugene, Oregon, the vast majority of people still drive alone nearly everywhere they go.

My family is learning many lessons from our experiment in car-free living. Maybe they can help others who want to drive less or ditch the car altogether.

  • Plan trips wisely

During a downpour a few weeks ago, my husband made four (yes, four) trips to the hardware store to get materials to fix our faucet. If he’d been driving, it would have been annoying. Because he was riding his bike, it was also exhausting. I don’t think we’ll make that mistake again. We are learning to plan all of our trips much more carefully.

  • Break old habits

The hardest time to be car-free is in the evenings. We want to zip out for take-out or run to the store to get a dessert. Like quitting any habit, we’re just having to change our ways – as painful as it feels sometimes. The good news is we’re saving a lot of money (and keeping packaging out of the landfills) along the way.

  • Make the journey part of the adventure

I interviewed a car-free family with four kids for an article awhile ago. Monica Adkins told me that riding bikes often sounds difficult before her family sets out, but once they are on the bikes, “It feels good on my face and on my hair. My kids are giggling and talking and closer to reality. And we’re getting exercise. Everything about it feels really good.” I think about her quote all the time. We often lose a lot in convenience and ease when we leave the car at home, but we gain lots of fun and fresh air on our journeys.

  • Learn to barter and ask for help

“The hardest part is asking people for rides,” my husband lamented recently. He’s right. But it’s also the best part. Our neighbor offered to drive us to the airport, and we got to know her a lot better during the drive. A friend helped us pick up chicken food in exchange for some fresh eggs, and we were both excited about the trade. We’ve also started car-pooling with some friends to a weekly get-together, and we always have a great time on the way over. So even if it’s hard for us to ask for help, we’re building a tighter community and closer friendships.

  • Set a goal and celebrate

We’re not planning to be car-free forever, but for now we’re sort of reveling in it – in how healthy it is, in how much money we’re saving, and in the little bit we’re doing to make the air cleaner for everyone. It’s also freeing not to worry about maintaining an old and ailing vehicle – at least for now. We  know the idea of living without a car may sound crazy to a lot of people, but it’s starting to seem a lot less crazy to us.

Looking for more on car-free living? Check out these posts:

Are you trying to drive less? Do you have any tips to share?

6 Tips for Raising Cooperative Kids

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I’ve been stirring things up on Shareable.net for the last few days talking about Alfie Kohn’s book No Contest: The Case Against Competition and some of his ideas for raising more cooperative, less competitive kids. My post begins:

In 2008, an interviewer admitted to Alfie Kohn that she considers herself a competitive person. “As long as you acknowledge that’s a problem to be solved; it’s not a good thing about us,” he responded. “People say to me, ‘Oh I’m really a competitive person,’ not realizing that it’s as if they’re saying, ‘I have a drinking problem.”

Competition, which Kohn defines as any situation where one person can succeed only when others fail, seems to be something of a state religion in the United States. But Kohn is convinced that we’ve all bought into dangerous myths about the value of competition in our personal lives, workplaces, society, and economic system. He laid out his arguments in his 1986 book No Contest: The Case Against Competition, and he’s been spreading the word ever since.

He insists that competition is not human nature; it’s something we learn. “The message that competition is appropriate, desirable, required, and even unavoidable is drummed into us from nursery school to graduate school; it is the subtext of every lesson,” he writes.

And according to Kohn, competition undermines self-esteem, destroys relationships, thwarts productivity, and discourages excellence, and he cites more than a hundred studies to back up his assertions.

I was surprised that most people who commented didn’t seem to have heard of Kohn or his theories and weren’t familiar with his research on the subject. So what ensued was a lively, mostly thoughtful conversation about the role of competition in our lives and society. You can check it out here. And feel free to add your thoughts to the discussion.

Shareable.net also published my story about Kidical Mass today. Kidical Mass rides are fun family-friendly bicycle rides where kids can learn the rules of the road.

The article begins:

“Where are all of the cars?” asks Paul Adkins as we pedal down a quiet tree-lined street in Eugene, Oregon on a sunny May afternoon.

Adkins is leading a three-mile Kidical Mass bicycle ride. I’m one of 19 participants; more than half are kids. Adkins is navigating for the group and helping his four-year-old son Dare, who’s new on two wheels, learn the rules of the road.

“There’s a stop sign. We’ll come to a stop, then look, signal, and turn left,” Adkins says.

“Good job, everyone,” he calls as the group glides around the corner behind him.

Occasionally we pass people working in their yards, and a chorus of bike bells dings. We’re usually greeted by enthusiastic waves and smiles.

“Look, there’s a turkey vulture,” a mom near the back of the ride says, pointing out a bird to her daughter.

Later a cat runs past with a garter snake hanging from its mouth, and we see a couple of horses grazing in a field. Both are big hits with the kids.

You can read the rest of the article here.

How Walkable is Your Neighborhood?

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I’m a huge fan of walking. I wrote about why I love it here. I take a walk at least once a day, rain or shine. And every time I wheel my son’s stroller out to the sidewalk in front of our house, I am grateful that we live in a walkable neighborhood.

So what makes a neighborhood walkable? This is how the folks at Walkscore.com define it:

  • A center: Walkable neighborhoods have a center, whether it’s a main street or a public space.
  • People: Enough people for businesses to flourish and for public transit to run frequently.
  • Mixed income, mixed use: Affordable housing located near businesses.
  • Parks and public space: Plenty of public places to gather and play.
  • Pedestrian design: Buildings are close to the street, parking lots are relegated to the back.
  • Schools and workplaces: Close enough that most residents can walk from their homes.
  • Complete streets: Streets designed for bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit.

My neighborhood only scores 63 out of 100 according to Walkscore’s criteria and earns their rank of “Somewhat Walkable”. I checked some of the other addresses I’ve lived at in the last six years. Most of them earn a higher score, because they were closer to downtown, which means they were closer to bookstores, restaurants, and other amenities.

But I think my neighborhood has something going for it that can’t be easily quantified – a culture of walking. Many of my neighbors are home during the day, many of them have young children, and they are often outside and out walking themselves. So my son and I invariably run into people we know when we’re on a walk. Occasionally we even go on walks with our neighbors. So we’re getting to know each other in a way that I’ve never experienced in a neighborhood, even those closer to more amenities.

My neighborhood is also safe, which I think makes a big difference to walkability. Sadly in a few of the other neighborhoods I’ve lived in, including a few that Walkscore deems more walkable, I didn’t feel comfortable walking alone at night. Especially when I lived alone, that meant the neighborhood was only walkable during daylight hours. And there just aren’t many of those in the winter.

So while I love Walkscore’s ranking system and would like to see urban planners put walkability first when designing or retrofitting cities, I’ve discovered that some of what makes a neighborhood walkable just can’t be easily measured.

If you’re curious, here are Walkscore.com’s most walkable cities:

  1. San Francisco, Walk Score 86
  2. New York, Walk Score 83
  3. Boston, Walk Score 79

And here are the ones they rank as least walkable:

  1. Charlotte, Walk Score 39
  2. Nashville, Walk Score 39
  3. Jacksonville, Walk Score 36

You can find out how your neighborhood scores here.

How walkable is your neighborhood? Do you agree with Walkscore’s rating?

Bamboo Bicycles

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(Originally published March 1, 2010, reprinted in celebration of National Bike Month.)

A couple of years ago, my husband and I were going to plant running bamboo along our back fence. Then we casually mentioned the idea to our next-door neighbor. She looked, well, terrified.

Bamboo is an amazing plant. It’s used to make musical instruments, toys, tools, weapons, flooring, paper, food, cooking oil, vinegar, and alcohol. But it’s also a bit noxious, at least in these parts.

When we were thinking of growing it, we visited a peaceful bamboo garden on the outskirts of town. The gardener showed us around and explained the difference between the many varieties of bamboo that rustled overhead in the slight breeze.

Then the conversation turned to warfare.

“You’ll need to dig a two-foot-deep trench all the way around your bamboo and bury this in it.” He held up a roll of thick, black plastic. “This needs to stick up at least three inches above the soil. The bamboo’s rhizomes will try to jump it. So leave a foot or so of bare ground all the way around the trench. That way you can see them coming over. When they do, mow them down immediately.”

It sounded more like prison-tower watch duty than gardening.

But there’s an upside to bamboo’s invasive nature. It is not only a useful plant; it’s an incredibly renewable resource.

And now you can get a bike made out of it.

Although riding a bike is considerably more environmentally-sound than driving a car, most bike frames are constructed out of materials that are decidedly not renewable. Think: steel, carbon fiber, aluminum, molybdenum, and titanium. Extracting these elements is labor-intensive, environmentally destructive, and can threaten public health.

For instance, I grew up 60 miles down-river of Leadville, Colorado, where the mining industry allowed heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, and zinc to leach into the soil and water. The Environmental Protection Agency declared Leadville and the 20 square-miles around the town a Superfund site.

So imagine if we could make strong, light-weight, functional bicycles without mining, not to mention out of plants that grow like weeds. Well, we’re getting closer to that reality, although most bamboo bicycles contain some metal components.

You can purchase your own custom-made bamboo bicycle from Calfree Design. They claim that their bikes are tough, and they offer a ten-year warranty on them. They’re expensive though. All of the frames that are “on special” on Calfree’s website cost well over $1,000. But “if there were an award for ‘Bicycle with lowest carbon footprint’ (least amount of carbon dioxide emissions in the production of the frame), this frame would win, hands down,” Calfree’s site boasts.

You can also learn how to build a bamboo bicycle yourself.

Bamboo Bike Studio in Brooklyn offers workshops where you can learn to build one in a weekend. They’re also not cheap. The full bike workshop costs $932 and the frame-only workshop costs $632.

But some of the proceeds go to a great cause. The Bamboo Bike Studio is working with partners, including the Bamboo Bike Project, to establish bamboo bicycle factories in “Millennium Cities, starting with Kumasi, Ghana, Kisumu, Kenya, and Quito, Ecuador.” They hope the factories will, “provide a lower-cost, more durable, locally manufactured form of transport specifically designed for local terrain.” Unfortunately you’ll have to wait awhile to attend one of their workshops. They’re full through September.

But if you’re seriously into do-it-yourself, you could check out this how-to on Instructables. (However, as the disclaimer says, “Death or serious injury can result from a bicycle frame failure. … Be smart.)

Hopefully as more companies start to manufacture bamboo bicycles, the prices will come down, making bamboo bicycles a more accessible option for more people.

Would you ride a bamboo bicycle?

A Snapshot of Car-Usage in America

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(Originally published September 14, 2009, reprinted in celebration of National Bike Month)

The 5 U.S. cities (1,000+ population) with the least car ownership* (2000 census):

  1. Hooper Bay, Alaska (Pop. 1022) – 95.65% of households car-free.
  2. New Square Village, NY (Pop. 4707) – 73.77% of households car-free.
  3. Kaser Village, NY (Pop. 3299) – 68.57% of households car-free.
  4. Kiryas Joel Village, NY – (Pop. 13,214) – 57.78% of households car-free.
  5. Kotzebue, Alaska – (Pop. 3082) – 51.29% of households car-free.

Number of U.S. cities (1000+ Population) in which 100% of households own a car (2000 census):

155

Average cost per year of owning and operating a vehicle (2008):

$8,095

Average percentage of household income Americans spend on transportation costs each year (2007):

17.65%

Number of minutes per day the average American reports spending behind the wheel (2007):

87

Amount of time the average 16 year-old American will spend driving a car in his or her lifetime (Figure based on 87 minutes per day average driving-time and a 77.8 year life-expectancy):

3.73 years

Percentage of workers who commute to work in a car alone every day:

85%

Average cost of a new car:

$28,400

Number of motor vehicles scrapped in the U.S. every year (2007):

12,737,000

Federal Highway Administration budget for 2010:

50 billion

Federal Transit Administration budget for 2010:

10 billion

Federal Railway Administration budget for 2010:

1.5 billion

*Click on hyperlinks to see sources for statistics.