living without a car

[shootingstar]

I have several good female cycling friends who do have a driver's license but none of them own a car. I'm pretty certain 1 of them has never owned a car while the other gave up her car probably 2 decades ago.

Each of these women, are single, don't have children but they each own their own home (house, not a condo). Not owning a car over a long time period means saving serious $$$$$

I'm pretty certain I couldn't have bought my own home and paid it off myself, if I owned a car on top of all that too.

Getting around by taxi several times per year (ie. for a huge load of groceries)....is still a saving over a car.

I also know a retired woman, a non-cyclist, who sold her car about 4 years ago. She lives near the subway in the downtown core of a big city, near amenities and services. In her late 60's. It's working out very well for her.

[KnottedYet]

I didn't buy a car until I had the kiddo.

Man, taking a puking hallucinating febrile toddler to the ER by bike would be a toughie! And participating in the school band carpool with 3 adolescents, a bassoon, a french horn, and a clarinet would definitely strain my granny gear!

Someday I'd really like to just do the bike/bus/occaisional car rental thing. Sometimes I look back on my car-less bike-n-bus life and get wistful and melancholy. Cars are expensive, no doubt about it. And stressful.

(and as my nearest and dearest can attest, I'm much calmer on a bike than driving a car!)

[MM_QFC!]

I've been thinking about the part-way commute using bike and car, too.

Been doing it bus-n-bike, but I've been looking at car-n-bike as a safer way to go. (I could drive through the entire hairy-traffic part at one end of my route.) Besides, then my bike would be safely in the back of my station wagon while I drove, rather than a precarious figurehead on the bus rack! (my bus driver almost smooshed my bike into a car once. he was very apologetic. no harm done, but my heartrate went up a little! )

I guess that's kind of car lite, but I do feel a little guilty about trading the bus for the car...

Hey Knot,
Just saw your posts re: riding in to Marymoor area and wanted to share that a few years ago, I had a similar commute. I did the drive and bike bit quite a bit, driving from downtown Edmonds to Kenmore P&R, then rode the trail down to RTC for one job and in the other direction when my main office location was on Eastlake. It was well-lit at the P&R, so I'd park right under a light and have good visibility for seeing all that I needed to as I got ready to ride, and all in reverse at the end of the day.
It worked really well for me to do that, as the bus routes and schedules were not sync'ing up with what I needed.

[KnottedYet]

That's exactly what I was thinking. I didn't end up riding to Redmond this go-round, but I'll be doing stuff in Redmond again in March.

But I was thinking riding to downtown Seattle from a PandR near the trail would be spiffy, too.

Where is the Kenmore P&R? I found the one in Bothell at Kaysten and 522 (or is it 527?) but is there one closer to Lake Forest Park?

[MM_QFC!]

That's exactly what I was thinking. I didn't end up riding to Redmond this go-round, but I'll be doing stuff in Redmond again in March.

But I was thinking riding to downtown Seattle from a PandR near the trail would be spiffy, too.

Where is the Kenmore P&R? I found the one in Bothell at Kaysten and 522 (or is it 527?) but is there one closer to Lake Forest Park?

I don't recognize "Kaysten" but the Kenmore P&R is right on Bothell Way/522 (527 is the North/South one aka Bothell-Everett Hwy) at the intersection of
73rd Av NE.
If you were to drive down Ballinger Way to Lake Forest Park, it'd be a left, past the right turn down to LogBoom park - at 61st (which is where I initially parked, but it's too damn dark at both ends of the day and, besides, the park doesn't open until 9AM or something; it just didn't feel safe and I couldn't see very well!), then there's another large intersection at 68th (the right turn takes you up Juanita Dr) and it'd be a left turn onto 73rd and then the 1st 2 right turns into the P&R lot...it means you'd come back out to that light to get across to the trail, (plus remember to hang on to your bike, so the roots under the trail don't bump you off - as almost happened to me when I was just rolling along early one morning, fiddling with my helmet strap with only my lights illuminating the dark trail...) - but's it's a straight shot in towards Seattle and an easy off to swing up to the U-bridge and across...
Hope that helps...not sure, but isn't commuter parking also allowed at the LFP city offices too? over in the corner of that parking lot? or only on weekends?

[KnottedYet]

thanks! I didn't know about that P&R. That will definitely come in handy!

There are signs up all over in LFP about "no commuter parking", so I haven't tried except on weekends.

[MM_QFC!]

ah, I should've guessed that...good luck in having some fun rides in...can't beat a bike ride to start and end a day, eh?

[KnottedYet]

I'm a much nicer person when I get to ride my bike...

[Melalvai]

[QUOTE=KnottedYet;264173]I didn't buy a car until I had the kiddo.[QUOTE]
I agree, as long as we have a kid at home we will keep the car. We *could* get by without it but it would be at the expense of her swimming practices & swim meets.

But we can bike a lot of places and leave the car in the garage. One school in town has their own "bike brigade", just a bunch of parents who meet up & bike in to school together. I bike with my daughter to school once or twice a week, three miles, and sometimes one of her friends joins us. I wish there were someone to handle the afternoon trip because then we could do that a lot more often, right now we depend on someone with a bike rack to pick the kids up.

[mimitabby]

I have been car free since moving to Washington last November and I have not missed my car one bit. All the extra money is really nice.
I must say that I am lucky. I work within a mile of my home and there are plenty of places to shop close by. Our transit system is wonderful.
I can get to the Seattle airport by bus for under $5.00. Every other weekend I put my bike on the bus to Port Angeles and then take the ferry over to Victoria.

that's awesome Nicole!!!

[shootingstar]

But we can bike a lot of places and leave the car in the garage. One school in town has their own "bike brigade", just a bunch of parents who meet up & bike in to school together. I bike with my daughter to school once or twice a week, three miles, and sometimes one of her friends joins us. I wish there were someone to handle the afternoon trip because then we could do that a lot more often, right now we depend on someone with a bike rack to pick the kids up.

That is impressive that there are several parents cycling with children to school as a bike brigade.

May hats off to any parent-cyclist who cycles with their child(ren) even once or several times per week. At a bike event, I met a mother who transported her 2 children to and from school/daycare. Needless to say she lived in Oregon , then now in Vancouver where in both places climate is milder. Yes, she looked quite fit.

[xeney]

We need our car more for our dogs than for our baby ... the pediatrician's office is a ten-minute bus ride away, and the human ER is right down the street, but the emergency vet's office is across town! And it's easier to buy groceries with the bike than to haul 80 pounds of dog food up the levee. Heh.

The preschool we are looking at is walking distance and there are two elementary schools within easy biking distance. One of the reasons I want to keep working at home is so we can walk or bike to school, because getting in my car every day makes me very unhappy and crabby. (It works out fine because my former employer is about to move to another part of town so I wouldn't have been able to walk to work anyway.)