Photo courtesy of BdR76
In yesterday’s post, I talked about some reasons why you might want to consider going car-free or car-light. Today, I will discuss some alternatives to the automobile.
ALTERNATIVES TO THE CAR
Walking
Walking has innumerable health benefits such as toning, keeping off or losing extra weight, as well as strengthening bones, thus slowing down osteoporosis. But there are other benefits as well. Walking also helps put you in touch with your natural environment and your community. Walking allows you to slow down and enjoy your journey. You have more of a tendency to notice things around you when you’re not distracted by traffic congestion, the car stereo or other traffic noises. It makes you an active participant in life, rather than being separated from the world by glass and metal. Walking can restore a sense a community, a community where people actually talk to each other on sidewalks and in the street. So if your destination is 1-2 miles away, why not walk? You may find it to be much more pleasant than you think.
Biking
For destinations 3-10 miles away, I like to use my bicycle. Many of the benefits of walking also apply to the bicycle. Additionally, biking provides aerobic exercise, which strengthens your heart and lungs, alleviates stress, and increases muscle tone. Like walking, you won’t waste time looking for a parking spot and you won’t waste money for parking, gasoline and the numerous other expenses that go with car ownership. Bicycles require much less space on our streets and in our neighborhoods as well. You can fit at least 8 bicycles in the same space required for one car. A bike rack costs $250-$300 – whereas I have see the cost of a parking lot quoted as high as $20,000 per space. Bicycling is also good for the environment and animals. It’s much more difficult to kill an animal on a bicycle than it is while driving a car (although a friend of mine did accidentally run over a squirrel once). I also find that with a couple of panniers, I can do a good majority of my errands using a bicycle for transportation.
Mass Transit
If you are lucky enough to live in a area with a decent mass transit system, it can be beneficial to use it for longer trips that you can’t make on a bicycle or by walking. As a whole, transit options such as city busses reduces pollution and cuts down on traffic congestion. One full 40-foot bus would take 58 cars off the road and the pollution and congestion would be much less than for those 58 cars. Additionally, the need for parking lots would be reduced, thus saving precious land. And like bicycling and walking, mass transit brings people out of their metal and glass isolation chambers and into more human contact with each other. It provides those who can’t drive for whatever reason more mobility and integrates them into the community. Taking mass transit cuts down on aggravation – there is no traffic to deal with, no parking spots to hunt for, and no parking ticket concerns. It may take a little longer to get to your destination, but you can spend this extra time (and for many of us, extra time is truly a commodity) reading, writing, working, or simply reflecting. If you are lucky enough to live in a area with a decent mass transit system, it can be beneficial to use it for longer trips that you can’t make on a bicycle or by walking. As a whole, transit options such as city busses reduces pollution and cuts down on traffic congestion. One full 40-foot bus would take 58 cars off the road and the pollution and congestion would be much less than for those 58 cars. Additionally, the need for parking lots would be reduced, thus saving precious land. And like bicycling and walking, mass transit brings people out of their metal and glass isolation chambers and into more human contact with each other. It provides those who can’t drive for whatever reason more mobility and integrates them into the community. Taking mass transit cuts down on aggravation – there is no traffic to deal with, no parking spots to hunt for, and no parking ticket concerns. It may take a little longer to get to your destination, but you can spend this extra time (and for many of us, extra time is truly a commodity) reading, writing, working, or simply reflecting.
Unconventional Transportation
Many people prefer to use transit such as long distance rail, shuttles, ferries, taxis, intercity busses and carpooling as an alternative to car ownership. I’ve heard of some people coming up with even more creative methods of transportation such as canoeing or kayaking to work. An acquaintance of mine rather than owning a car prefers to rent one a couple times a year to go on vacation. He finds it much cheaper than car ownership – not to mention the elimination of the other hassles that car ownership car-free can cause. Before deciding that it is impossible to go car-free, it may be worth exploring some of these other alternatives.
Living where you work
For those of us who have chosen to rent rather than own, living where we work allows us to take advantage of alternate methods of transportation such as walking, bicycling or mass transit. I used to live two blocks away from my job and every morning I got to listen to the birds and truly enjoy my surroundings during stress-free, aggravation-free walk (these days, I work from home and have eliminated my commute completely). Just living where I work saves me hundreds, if not thousands of dollars every year by not relying on a car for my commute.
THE FUTURE
What can we do in the future to reduce our dependence on cars, thus preserving and protecting our natural environment, our health and our sense of community? We can begin by working for legislation to make our cities more pedestrian friendly and bicycle friendly, by adding and widening sidewalks and creating more bicycle lanes and bicycle paths. We could work for moratoriums on construction of new roads and parking lots, thus encouraging people to use alternate means of transportation. Rather than investing our tax money for new road construction, we could invest for the improvement of mass transit. As a community, we could work together to “take back our streets” and with an eventual aim of perhaps even making our cities “car-free”. What a treat it would be to walk down the sidewalk without hearing the eternal racket of automobiles and being able to cross the street without worrying about being struck down by a careless automobile driver. We would actually be able to sit on our porches and converse with the neighbors or passersby without have to shout over the roar of traffic.
In the search for simplicity, living car-free or car-light can help us abandon a fast-paced, high-consumption lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed. Just not having to deal with daily traffic and road rage can lead to a simpler, more relaxed state. By stepping away from your car, you tend to get more exercise, have more human contact, and feel a sense of community and belonging. Rather than madly rushing here and there, we would begin to contemplate each trip we make and determine if it is a trip we truly need to make, a trip of actual importance. Being car-free would help us to reduce our material possessions as well – after all, it isn’t easy to carry a couch on a bicycle. A community liberation from car addiction will not happen overnight. But if individuals begin rejecting the car culture and organizing for a better, healthier car-free lifestyle, eventually those of us we prefer to go car-free or car-light will no longer be thought of as weird. It will be the auto-addicted who will be thought of as out of the ordinary.
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