Since I was a little kid, I've rebelled against any situation where I've been told "You have to..." Instead of learning to drive in high school, I learned to sew. I took art history and art classes. Every day after school I walked 3 miles to the place where I worked and took dance classes. And it was fine. I figured cars were really expensive and I was moving to nyc anyway, so why bother?
In nyc, a car would have been a burden, something that needed to be moved for alternate side of the street parking or stored for a not-small fortune at a garage. I would be stuck in traffic, broken into or worse, hurt in an accident.
Then, 15 years later, I moved to Texas. After a while when I'd finally gotten my career back on track, I started thinking seriously about getting a car. I had this sort of itinerant freelancer thing going on and it seemed like the only way to make it really work is if I had a car to commute between Austin and Dallas. While the bus system in Austin was fine (and so, so cheap!), I wasn't sure about that in Dallas. So I actually started taking driving lessons. I was a nervous wreck the entire time and completely amazed that I passed the test and got my license. I began looking at possible finding a car. Still very expensive compared to my $10 monthly bus pass. Used cars scared the hell out of me. Gas prices scared the hell out of me. I continued to take the bus and put aside cash while I imagined the routes I could take that would keep me off of MoPac. Then my company (I was full time at that point) moved downtown. My 2 hour commute turned into 15 minutes on the express bus. Parking in the building was something like $150 per month. I decided I'd rather pay off my credit cards and other debts. I could just keep taking the bus.
And now here I am back on the east coast, still carless and happily so. Sure a car can get you from one place to another, but in the face of alternatives, this is a better solution for me. And I understand that some people need a car to get to places that aren't served by public transportation or whatever, but I think most people have fallen for the dream where you just *have* to have a car. They don't even try to not have one. But I figure if you have to have one, then you have to accept the burdens as well. You have to pay the variable price of gas, pay outrageous prices to store it, move it when it snows, be stuck in traffic here in cities that were never designed for or adapted for car traffic.
Sure I can't just randomly head out to Ikea and it takes forever to get to the mall and the MBTA is pretty much the worst transportation system I've ever had to deal with, but I get to where I need to go (eventually) and I'm happy with my choice.
So I ask people why they drive and get varying answers, but I wonder how many of them have considered just not doing it? I'm going to be carless for as long as I can be. We'll see what happens the next time I move to another part of the country.
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