I live in one of the "any other states" (Washington) without a car quite comfortably. A lot of us can't or don't drive. It's nice to not have to put up with car insurance companies.
I'm impressed--no sarcasm. Would you mind giving us a glimpse of your day-to-day?Except in Seattle near downtown it seems like there would be tons of challenges.
I'm in a suburbia (not rural), but we have more of a trail system than a lot of other places in the United States. There really isn't much I can't do on a bicycle, and when I absolutely need to transport something myself, which happens maybe once every couple of years, I've rented a truck for a few hours. My e-bike does most of the heavy lifting when my total travel distance is over 15 miles and I need to transport stuff.
I get up, check the weather, throw on clothes for whatever's happening, jump on the e-bike, buzz half a mile down to a gravel trail that runs north-south through my city, and go do what I need to do. I use panniers mounted on a rear rack to hold stuff. For groceries I tend to go to Trader Joe's which is in a shopping area off the trail about a mile and a half from my house. Hardware stuff I get from a family-owned place that's 7 miles away, 5 miles of which is on trails. Electronics is from a store that's sort of like Radio Shack on steroids that's about a mile from the trail system, but that's more like 10 miles each way. I don't need to go there often. Work is 10 miles away, 9 miles of which is on a trail. I park in a bike cage, and there is a locker room with showers.
E-bikes certainly make it more accessible and I would highly recommend one if you are trying to drive less. Myself and many of my friends commute primarily by bicycle and get around fine on regular bikes, but our city is small and commutes are less than 5 miles.
I just bought a perfectly usable Class 2 e-bike with a rack for $1,100. I have several regular meat-powered bicycles too. Which one I take depends on how I feel. Sometimes I'm just not up for pedaling my way through a 20 mile round-trip errand and will put on my lithium legs.
It is pretty straightforward. My wife and I live in a condominium unit just east of the University District. We take the bus or walk everywhere. I'm sad the Safeway has closed, but we have easy bus access to groceries at QFC, the massive Magnuson Park, the smaller Matthews Beach park, and a short hop to the train.
I am fortunate to be able to work from home most days. I work for a medical group and we have doctor's offices across the city and King County. I can reach all but one by a one or two bus trip when I need to go, which is rare. We have friends who have moved up to Everett and it's a two bus trip to go all of the way from Magnuson Park to downtown Everett.
The only "hard" trip is to go see one of our kids who has since moved to Tacoma. We try to time it when the Sounder is running (a few mid-day trips would be great) or take Cascades if we feel like splurging.
As a car lite person, this comment is condescending. As much as I'd love if it were the case, efficient public transit is not a thing in most parts of the country. A car is a necessity. California needs to greatly expand transit or figure something out quick.
Usually telling someone to 'just move' is pretty rude. People have reasons to stay in the places they're at. Public transit is not viable in California at all. It's impossible. As someone who did 'just move' (and to the PNW, where transit is shockingly better), I recognize that this is certainly not a viable option for most people.
What a weird take. If you do live in WA, you’re well aware of just how rural WA is. You full well know public transportation isn’t a viable option. You should also know that Seattle’s public transportation isn’t something to write home about. And you’re fully aware that commutes of >30 minutes are not uncommon, in part die to how unaffordable the greater Puget Sound if.
A car is a basic necessity of life for the vast majority of Washingtonians. Congratulations on being the vast, vast minority.
> You full well know public transportation isn’t a viable option.
I do not know this. I have over a thousand taps of my ORCA card in 2023. My wife has more. We have been as far north as Bellingham and as far south as Portland on transit. We attended the wedding of a friend's kid in Yakima by riding transit to Issaquah and taking Greyhound from there.
I don't appreciate being told that my actual, lived experience "isn't viable", especially when I know several other people who do it just the same as me. Not all of us can or want to drive. This is even more true as people get older.
> And you’re fully aware that commutes of >30 minutes are not uncommon, in part die to how unaffordable the greater Puget Sound
According to AAA, the annual cost of owning a car is $12,000. We don't spend that money, so we can afford to live closer-in where transit is better. I am not here to judge people who choose to move far away but I haven't done it and I won't. But even if I did, I could just move to where I already have acquaintances in Lynnwood or Redmond or Renton or Burien and take the bus just the same as I do today.
> I do not know this. I have over a thousand taps of my ORCA card in 2023.
You're in the vast minority who can take the Sounder, etc. Your scenario does not reflect the reality for the vast majority of Washingtonians.
> I don't appreciate being told that my actual, lived experience "isn't viable"
Yet, it isn't viable for the vast majority of Washingtonians.
> We don't spend that money, so we can afford to live closer-in where transit is better.
Congrats on being wealthy enough to live in a place where ORCA has any value. Most Washingtonians do not.
You do, in fact, live in a transportation bubble. You need to acknowledge that your transportation bubble is not viable for the vast majority of Washingtonians, so your premise that being car-free is do-able in Washington simply is not a reality for millions of Washingtonians.
This is exactly the same blinders we see on r/seattle. Those who call for elimination of cars are privileged enough to live in Seattle and don't seem to recognize other's do not live in Seattle (or commute to Seattle from where most public transportation is not effective, viable, or possible).
Building your life around transit means making choices. Building your life around a car means making choices too. If the quoted TCO of owning a car at $12,000/year is accurate, moving some of that spending to housing could make transit friendly housing more viable.
I don't think this poster was calling for removal of cars or whatever, just pointing out that it's possible to build your life without them. For at least some people.
There's certainly tradeoffs. Where I live, I could do many things with transit, but hours of operation are very limited, and direct routes are very limited. Sometimes, I can take transit to the airport and it makes sense, but on my most recent trip, getting to the airport would have been very stressful as the ferry canceled most of the morning runs on short notice and AFAIK, there's no reasonable alternative route without a private car. On the way home, there's no transit on my side of the ferry on a Sunday, and even if there was, it ends hours before I get there. If I needed to build my life around transit, I'd need to fly only during limited hours and not have any scheduling mishaps, spend nights in hotels a ferry away from my home, or move to a more transit accessible home.
At the same time, I don't complain that NYC doesn't accomadate my life built around cars. I choose a life built around cars, and so I avoid built up urban areas whenever possible. I hate paying for parking, so going into the city needs a good reason, and I would never want to live there.
Some people, when you say “you know it’s possible to get by without a car”, take it as a personal affront. No amount of evidence is sufficient. Any evidence provided is disregarded as “sure maybe for you but real people can’t possibly live in such a weird way”.
The person you’re responding to is one of those people. Don’t waste your time.
But WA has 7.7M people of whom 3.9M live in Snohomish, King, or Pierce counties.
I agree a majority needs cars, but it’s hardly overwhelming — and worth remembering that half of people live in a narrow, urban bubble. A lot of WA’s political strife is caused by this.
What an incredibly weird take that makes a lot of assumptions. For reference, I live in Seattle now, no car.
Prior to Seattle, I also lived in Texas and Virginia. Also no car. I moved to VA being unable to afford a car or insurance.
In many situations it is doable. But it requires restructuring how you life and where you live. I spend more on rent, but make up for that by not paying for gas, insurance or the many other small fees that add up. People get trapped into this idea that they need a car that they never consider the costs it has.
Most WA residents live along the I-5 corridor in cities or surrounding suburbs, not in the rural parts. GP specifically lives in Seattle city limits, like about 10% of WA residents.
> Those who call for elimination of cars are privileged enough to live in Seattle and don't seem to recognize other's do not live in Seattle (or commute to Seattle from where most public transportation is not effective, viable, or possible).
I believe you fail to recognize that a lot of people who don't drive don't live in Seattle. Whether or not someone drives is not always by their choice. I have friends who are physically incapable of driving, yet because drivers tend to outvote and outweigh non-drivers politically, those friends are denied the transit service they would really like to have. And even when it is by choice, nothing says that Yakima or Spokane or Port Angeles can't have transit; most of them do!
I live in Seattle. My wife and I were born here and we will hopefully die and be buried here. It is our home. I have lived through decades of transit that would make a New Yorker howl in peril. It was not so long ago that our idea of a frequent bus route was every half hour, and the light rail (that began running after both of my children were born) stopped in downtown and at 11pm.
Seattle residents aren't a monolithic bloc but, generally, our push for fewer cars is because cars, and especially those cars driven in from places that do have quality transit to reach the city, cause a lot of problems for people outside of those cars. I really, really want to make it to retirement without being run over by someone driving into town who's late for a sporting event.
> Yet, it isn't viable for the vast majority of Washingtonians.
Not driving can be viable! It is viable, if not as convenient, in places you wouldn't think and might even consider are "too rural" or "too spread out." The fact remains, there are a lot of us in Washington who don't drive and, bluntly, I don't appreciate us being insulted or accused of having an excess of privilege or living in a bubble.
There may well come a day when you are not physically able to drive and I wish very much for you to have a robust transit and sidewalk and low-speed city setup that enables you to have independence and access throughout all of your days.
Yes. So it feels. In particular the 1989 earthquake and the years that followed were put to good use removing freeways in the SF Bay Area (and not replacing them - nobody complains that the Embarcadero shorefront freeway should be removed but it's fair to object to the lack of substitution) - And abandoning the idea of elevated and double-decker freeways instead of doubling-up wherever else it could be. Highway 85 completed shortly after that (but was in the works long before that). By contrast, it feels Los Angeles continued on an optimistic path, when the Bay Area turned back (and for example fought new housing as much as possible). This is also the time San Francisco turned against visitors and businesses - working to discourage people from visiting as much as possible. And then turned on its own inhabitants.
I'd say maybe a third of people I know don't have cars. In America. That's not a "basic necessity of life", especially when we're talking about well-developed regions like the west coast.
Even in large cities in California, it really depends on how much time you want to or can afford to waste on public transit.
Specific cases do work - or at least work better than the car-owning alternatives, for example major transit directions for short-ish distances in San Francisco. If your life revolves around a few of these, you are doing pretty well without a car ... and you still can't escape from that area without one. A significant additional "sweet spot" zone is where car usage has been made - deliberately and assiduously - unbearable. The choice is then about a lesser aggravation, rather then desirable service. And so we get the quality of life we deserve, and that's not great.
Nobody is arguing that YOU should own a car. If you are happy without one that's great and carry on. But that's rather specific situation.
fwiw Californian cities have some of the worst public transit of major metros that I have seen
like the Muni is cute and all but it’s a joke compared to the east coast systems i grew up with (wmata, mbta, nyc mta) many of which are in smaller cities.
