Category Archives: Driving

by | December 27, 2013 · 9:00 am

Can Anne Get Along Without A Car? A View From San Diego

Frederick says Anne can get alone even without one of these.

Frederick says Anne can get alone even without one of these.

By Micheline Maynard

Our reader Anne in Ann Arbor has asked for advice on whether to keep her 1998 Honda Civic or go car free. Frederick Ollinger in San Diego says she can pull the plug, and tells her how.

Dear Anne,

You access to a car will impact your life decisions and make you more or less car dependent.

For example, you say that your suburb is car dependent. How did this happen? This could only occur if the developers and residents all decided that they were going to have access to a car.

If, on the other hand, at the beginning of this decision making process, you did not have a car, you would have made different decisions.

For example, when my wife and I moved from pedestrian Philly to “car dependent” San Diego, every one “knew” that we needed a car. Five years later we live not only without a car, but without a Zipcar.

How? Continue reading →

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by | December 23, 2013 · 1:43 pm

Should She Keep Her Car Or Go Car Free? Your Advice For Anne

By Micheline Maynard

Ask, and ye shall receive! Our reader Anne in Ann Arbor, Michigan, asked Curbing Cars last week to help her decide whether she should keep her 1998 Honda Civic, or take the plunge and go car free.

Anne's 1998 Honda Civic

Anne’s 1998 Honda Civic

Your advice has come flooding in. Here’s the first response, from John Lloyd. (We’ll be featuring more Advice for Anne this week.)

Dear Anne,

Great question!  The fact that you’re asking whether to keep your car is a wonderful indication that you have freed your mind from the tyranny of the automobile.  I have been living “car light” for the past 3 years, and driving my car less and less every year.
Like you, I have an older car (a 2000 Toyota Corolla), and I only fill the tank a couple of times a year.  I’d love to go completely car-free, but I live in a car-dependent suburb and like knowing I have the option in an emergency.  If we had a Zipcar available nearby I’d feel better able to let the car go completely, but since we don’t, I’ve hung on to it. Continue reading →

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by | December 20, 2013 · 2:35 pm

Help Anne Decide Whether To Keep Or Give Up Her Car

Anne's 1998 Honda Civic

Anne’s 1998 Honda Civic

By Micheline Maynard

People are cutting back on driving, and many are giving up their cars all together. We’ve told some of those stories here on Curbing Cars, like Andrew Hartford in Austin, Texas, and Lauren Steele, in Columbia, Mo. Now, one of our Curbing Cars readers wants some help in deciding whether she should keep her car, or cut the cord.

Her name is Anne (she asked us not to use her last name) and she lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ann Arbor has an extensive public transportation system, and it’s also a very walkable city. But it gets its share of snow and ice, and some parts of the city aren’t as accessible by transit and foot.

Here is Anne’s story (and that’s her 1998 Honda Civic above). Once you’ve read it, please send Advice For Anne to our email address: curbingcars@gmail.com. We’ll publish your responses and Anne will tell us what she’s decided. Continue reading →

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by | December 15, 2013 · 9:00 am

From Paris, Getting Around With — And Without — A Car

Paris traffic.

Paris traffic.

Bertrand Rakoto is a marketing intelligence manager for R.L. Polk. For the past decade, he’s been focused on the electric car industry and electric car services. In the first of a series of guest posts for Curbing Cars, he writes about the way people get around Paris.

By Bertrand Rakoto

Paris has a very extensive public transportation system. This might look presumptuous to begin with, but honestly, it’s quite realistic. Prior to any explanation, I must describe how the French capital city is trying to change back from cars to mass public transportation. Paris is not huge when compared to other Megacities in the world, but it’s European-big.

It’s distributed into three concentric areas. The smallest one is the inner city of Paris. A little over 2.2 million people live in the 20 administrative subdivisions (or “arrondissements”), which are shaped like a snail. When it comes to France, clichés are never very far off. The city is an expensive place to live in and numerous Parisian workers commute to downtown Paris.

However, living in the inner city is a great choice for urban lovers, with lots of cultural events, bars and clubs. And most of all, you don’t need a car when living downtown.

The second concentric area is called “Petite Couronne”. It represents 4.4 million inhabitants, divided in three departments (Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, and Val-de-Marne). In this area, you can live without a car, but it’s more convenient to have one for weekend activities outside Paris and grocery shopping. You can avoid the daily drive for cost efficient public transportation. But in some case, it can become necessary to commute to work despite the traffic jams.

The last, largest, and third concentric area is the “Grande Couronne”. Over 5 million people live in the four remaining departments of the Ile-de-France region (being Seine-et-Marne, Yvelines, Essonne, and Val-d’Oise). In this area, a car is mandatory, or else freedom of movement is quite reduced.

 Now that you have the big picture, let’s have a look at the public transportation network. Continue reading →

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by | December 13, 2013 · 9:00 am

Driverless Cars And Mass Transit: An Economist’s View

ixBvtoGUnbhcEarlier this week, we wrote about the impact that Uber could have on the future of transportation. That prompted Donald Grimes, a noted economist at the University of Michigan, to reach out to us. In this guest column, Grimes lays out the role that autonomous vehicles might play in the future of transportation.

By Donald Grimes

What are the main problems with mass transit?

1) Cost.  You have to pay the wages and benefits of the person driving the bus or the train or even the taxicab in addition to the operating and capital cost of the vehicle.  When you are driving your own vehicle your labor as a driver is free.

2) Convenience.  People have to get to the location to catch a bus or a train, and the mass transit will probably drop you off some distance from where you want to be.

So what is the big technology coming in motor vehicles?  Driverless cars (what some call autonomous vehicles).  Now, if you are using your own vehicle, who cares if the car can drive itself, other than on those long-trips when you want to take a nap.

But think about the potential for a driverless car as a mass transit vehicle. Continue reading →

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by | December 8, 2013 · 9:00 am

Transforming The Way We Get Around, From Your Phone

By Micheline Maynard

When it comes to the way we get around, we’ve gone from owning to renting to summoning. And the way we think about transportation will never be the same. new_uber_logo

Let me explain what I mean. For the past century, until about 2007, there was a pretty simple way that we used automobiles. We went out and bought them, or some of us leased them. If you wanted a car at your beck and call, you plunked down your money, and parked one on the street or in a garage.

There were rental car companies, but the fee structure was such that it eventually was cheaper just to buy a car than to rent one. You could pay in a week for a rental what a car cost to own for a month.

The door cracked open in 2007, when ZipCar came along. Now, you didn’t have to rent for a week, or a weekend, or even a day. You could use a ZipCar for a few hours, then take it back.

Now, you don’t even have to take some car sharing cars back. Nor do you have to go anywhere to find transportation. You simply summon it, use it as long as you like, and go wherever you like.

The app that is leading the way in this change is Uber, and it promises to transform the way we get around in the way that the automobile did a century ago. There’s a fascinating look at how this is happening by Kevin Roose in New York Magazine. Continue reading →

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by | November 20, 2013 · 9:00 am

Do We Really Have To Get Rid Of All The Cars?

photo(14)By Micheline Maynard

For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about something I spotted on The Atlantic Monthly’s website. It’s called, “The Case Against Cars In 1 Utterly Entrancing GIF.” You can take a look at it here.

Basically, the animation shows a street full of cars, flashing to their drivers seated on the road. Then those people are grouped, and loaded onto a streetcar. The point of the GIF is to show how public transit reduces congestion.

Since Curbing Cars launched this summer, I’ve been struck by the polarization in the discussion over transportation use. At one end are people who think cars are evil and to be avoided at all costs. At the other end are those who love automobiles and think the people who despise them are crazy.

There’s very little discussion about the middle ground, which is where I think many Americans are heading, and will be heading in the next few years. That is, cars as part of a mix of personal transportation, but not the only option. It’s what the Livable Streets Coalition calls “driving light,” and which others call “living car light.”

That seems to make perfect sense, and yet, as with many moderate points of view, that thought seems to be getting overlooked. Continue reading →

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by | November 11, 2013 · 9:00 am

Can’t Bikes And Cars Just Get Along? Apparently, Not Yet

Chicago's bike lanes still result in bike-car conflict.

Chicago’s bike lanes still result in bike-car conflict.

By Micheline Maynard

Motorists and cyclists each have their own stories to tell about each other. Drivers complain that cyclists don’t obey traffic laws and dart out of nowhere without any warning. Cyclists feel like they have targets painted on their backs every time they’re out on the road.

Writing in Sunday’s New York Times, Daniel Duane tackled the situation in his op-ed piece, “Is It O.K. To Kill Cyclists?” Of course, the headline stretched things a bit. But for many of us, Duane nailed the issue in his lede paragraph.

“Everybody who knows me knows I love cycling and that I’m also completely freaked out by it,” he wrote.

After listing a bushel basket full of bike-car accidents, Duane made a salient point.

“The social and legal culture of the American road, not to mention the road itself, hasn’t caught up,” he wrote. “Laws in most states do give bicycles full access to the road, but very few roads are designed to accommodate bicycles, and the speed and mass differentials — bikes sometimes slow traffic, only cyclists have much to fear from a crash — make sharing the road difficult to absorb at an emotional level.” Continue reading →

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by | November 7, 2013 · 9:00 am

Driving Less, But More Are Driving Alone

traffic-jamBy Micheline Maynard

It’s well established that Americans are driving less, and taking shorter trips when they get behind the wheel. Some people have given up driving completely.

But the vast majority of people who are still driving appear to be driving alone.

The Wall Street Journal reports that in 2012, about 76 percent of workers 16 years and older drove to work alone—just shy of the all-time peak of 77 percent in 2005, according to data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Here’s some more data. According to the Census Bureau, carpooling has fallen from about 20 percent of commutes in 1980 to under 10 percent in 2012. Public transportation accounted for just over six percent of daily commutes in 1980 and is now five percent. A category the Census Bureau calls “other means”—which includes biking—stands at two percent, largely unchanged over the past decade.

Those commuting trends seem a little puzzling, since there’s plenty of evidence that public transportation is seeing record demand. However, one development might help explain some of these shifts. Continue reading →

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by | October 8, 2013 · 11:31 am

Lessons Learned Getting Around Without A Car

By Micheline Maynard

Last week, I set off for Canada to do research for the upcoming Curbing Cars book. I decided before I left that I’d try to get around without a car.

You might think that’s a reasonable idea, since Toronto and Montreal have extensive public transit systems. I’ve lived in big cities, after all, such as Tokyo and New York, where I didn’t have a car.

But I usually drive to Toronto, or get a rental car while I’m there. And, because I wanted to see different parts of Montreal, I originally planned to rent a ZipCar for a few hours, only to find the service isn’t offered there.

Instead, I wound up using every kind of non-personal car transportation available to me. It was an experience that taught me how difficult it can be to adjust to living car free, once you’re used to jumping behind the wheel. But many people get along that way. In fact, the number of car free families rose in the U.S. last year for the first time in a half century.

Here’s how my trip went. Continue reading →

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