One Less Car: One Year Later

Last May (2009) our second car threw a timing belt which sucked into the engine and effectively destroyed the vehicle. Although we are a family of 5, with one student in school 25 miles away due to custody issues, we have never replaced that car.

In that one-less-car year I put about 800 miles on my bike (900 the year before the car loss) but my spouse put an additional 500 miles or so on her bike and the kid trailer.

In that year, we have used some public transit, lots of bikes, carpooled rides and a couple of times calling cabs. But we havn't really missed the car terribly.

Cold Turkey

We were working on driving bikes more anyway. I put 900 miles on my bike two, three and five miles at a time around town the year before we ditched one car. We increased that to about 1200 miles post-car, but and this is key we rode in an auto nearly 10,000 miles fewer. The annual mileage on the missing vehicle mostly went missing.

Oh a couple thousand miles just transferred to the remaining car -- but in the end, by going cold-turkey and losing one car, we saved thousands of car-riding-hours that we would not have saved by just trying to drive bikes more.

Where We Live

Where we live is important. Pasadena is relatively bike friendly; lower speed limits, smaller streets, share the road signs, everything we really need is available locally (within, say, five miles). Last week, for example, I drove my bike (including trailer) to my school site for work 2.5 miles from my home. My son and I rode our bikes to the dentist on Friday; on Saturday my wife and I took the 5 and 12 year olds to do our grocery shopping by bike. (She towed the 5 year-old's trailer, I towed the empty one for the week's groceries.) The type of community we live in has been important in facilitating our one-less-car year.

So, the short report on reducing car miles: (1) Live near your work and a complete community (not a bedroom suburb outside of a "real" city); (2) Insist that your community by bike and pedestrian (transit user) friendly; and (3) Kill a car cold turkey.

Do Nothing, Save the World! "Black Friday" Goes Green on Buy Nothing Day

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Of this triple mantra "reduce" is, in some ways, the hardest for folks to find quick and easy ways to implement in one's daily life.

Reducing consumption often feels too much like some sort of deprivation. For my grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression and WWII privations, the concept of thriftiness and making do with what you have was common sense.

But for that generation, and for many of their children, those days are over and the idea of voluntarily doing without where there is no imminent and identified threat is anathema.

Similarly, their grandchildren (my generation) were born in an era of plenty, grew up into the 1980s boom, and with the exception of gas rationing in the early 70's, have lived comfortably, even lavishly, without great difficulty.

Now, there are many ways to reduce consumption. But the whole thing starts with awareness. As noted in a previous post, The Story of Stuff is great introduction to the problem of over consumption. But it's not very specific, or personal. So here's a personal statement to make to remind yourself -- and our consumer driven culture -- that as people we are more than the sum of our stuff:

Celebrate "Buy Nothing Day," November 28

Stay home. Decline to participate in the consumer madness retailer's call "Black Friday," known as The Day After Thanksgiving to you and me. Stay home and make a present. Read a book (from the library of course).

Sure, plenty of people stay home to avoid the traffic and insanity, so don't celebrate Buy Nothing Day alone. Copy and reproduce the graphic below as your email signature for the next three weeks . . . remind folks -- and oneself -- that "reduce" is the first and most useful of the triple-mantra.

Going to miss a sale? Probably. But frankly, in most cases it will be cheaper later if you decide it is something you really do need. And by explicitly declining to participate in Black Friday we send a reminder to the industry and ourselves that a sustainable future is the, in the long run, the only future.

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NOVEMBER 28, 2007