I’m coming up on about 6 months of car-free life in Seattle. It’s certainly been challenging at times, and it’s only possible at all because I work from home, but I’m making it work. I’m curious if anyone else is trying to do the same thing. There are a ton of anti-car communities online, but very few people seem to actually go car-free as, like, an ideological thing

    • Ah, I’m jealous. Here in the US I’m the only person I know car-free by choice. My area is making some big strides towards reducing car dependence, but we’ve got a long ways to go to catch up with Berlin and other good urbanist cities in Europe

  • Hey I’m Seattle too! Unfortunately I’m not yet, but I’m working towards being. King County Metro has a pickup within the block, but it takes 45 minutes to take that bus to the light rail, so about 1:20 to get to the city one way. When the Lynnwood extension opens then that will be cut down significantly, and with East Link I may be able to go down to a 1-car household

  • I’ve been car free since I moved to NYC around 4 years ago and I love it. I do wish car rentals were easier for those odd cases where you need to move something big but don’t want a U-Haul, but I love just being walking distance from everything I need. My whole world fits within about two long city blocks.

    If I weren’t in the city (and specifically this city - Boston is not as friendly to car free folks) it would be a lot more difficult. I especially don’t know how people with disabilities manage because public transit here is, for me, not super disability friendly.

  • Living in NYC and it’s amazing not having to drive. Going back to my parents place in NJ it feels inconvenient to have to drive everywhere. Much rather a quick walk, even when the weather isn’t great and there’s always the subway.

  • I wish.

    For most of my life I lived car-free in The Netherlands. It was never a problem to bike, walk, take buses or trains thanks to the excellent infrastructure. I never owned a car there.

    Ever since I moved to the US 10 years ago I’ve been driving my car daily. Not because I want to, but because I have to. My kids school is only 2 miles away but I have to drive as there’s just no pedestrian or cycling infrastructure between my house and the school…

  •  RadDevon   ( @RadDevon@lemmy.ml ) 
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    1 year ago

    I lived for 5 years car-free in Seattle. I’m still car-free, but I’m currently doing a bit of traveling so no longer in Seattle (although I may ultimately end up back there).

    It’s definitely challenging. I wish there was more train coverage and greater frequency in general of transit service in Seattle. Back when I first moved, car shares were plentiful which made it really easy to hop in a car if I really needed to — maybe 5 to 10 times a year — but that whole thing mostly fell apart. When I left a few months ago, Gig seemed to be doing pretty well.

    I lived for 35 years in Knoxville, Tennessee, and it would have been near impossible there. Your world gets very small when you go car-free, and that’s a problem in places where everything is spread out assuming everyone will have a car and can quickly traverse the miles between places you might want to be. There’s a downtown in Knoxville, but until the last 10 years, almost no one lived there. There’s a lot more housing now, but basic amenities like a grocery store and drug store are, so far as I’m aware, still missing. Downtown Knoxville is less a place to live and more a theme park.

    I was sad to hear the only full-service grocery store in downtown Seattle closed during the pandemic, but there are still plenty of neighborhoods that are totally livable car-free. Could be better, but it could certainly be worse.

  • I’m in Nanaimo BC and I live more or less car free. I own a car but I just put storage insurance on it and don’t drive it unless I absolutely need to. Otherwise I use my ebike to get around town. This works because we have some good multi-use paths that can take me from one end of town to the other and I don’t have to mix with traffic often.

  • I’ve been car free since my catalytic converter got stolen in 2020. Didn’t feel like replacing it since I didn’t drive much anyway and I donated the rest of the car. I’m not fully free though because my gf has a car and we live together. So on trips to the store and stuff I still benefit from a car

  • I live in Atlanta and going entirely car free would be a challenge for my family of four, but we did manage to go from a 2 car family to a 1 car family which has been a nice shift.

    It’s had a few lifestyle changes for us, mostly me since I try to leave the car for my wife when I go somewhere by myself. The sale of our second car funded the purchase of 2 ebikes, so we like to ride bikes around which has changed the kind of place we like to go around our city. It’s been a lot of fun for us.

    When I occasionally need to go to work I’ve found that bike+transit works fairly well for my needs. Sometimes I’ll also just take only transit on days when the weather is bad but it’s a lot less flexible that way since the bus schedule is so infrequent.

    Overall, I’d say that you don’t necessarily need to go all in on being car free to care about urbanism and reducing car travel. There are so many things out of our control with regard to the state of our city so sometimes taking smaller steps to reduce our car usage is all we can do.

  • Yeah. I am car-free because of a disability. I usually use public transit around the city, but recently I’ve done a lot more trips by bike. Just got my bike fixed after an accident and I’m ready to go again and it feels liberating!

    I also like these public transit-integrated taxi services that are significantly cheaper than a real taxi, and another 50% off for disabled riders.

  • I’m in a weird spot where I personally use a bike or public transport to get everywhere, but my parents still drive me around to wherever. They also think I’m weird for always using a bike, but that’s besides the point.

  •  phazer32   ( @phazer32@beehaw.org ) 
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    1 year ago

    Not anymore, I was for a couple years in Denver but that was over 10 years ago. Live in the burbs now but have a Brompton folding bike that I use for short trips to the grocery store and sometimes commuting to work. It’s so practical it’s amazing to take it into stores, use it as a shopping cart, and never have to leave it locked up. Just got back from the Netherlands and wow what a fairy tale society they have infrastructure-wise. The more I learn, travel, and see how some places in Europe are doing things the angrier I get with most of North America’s mentality/legislation.