commentary on carlessness

Responding to the article on Vauban, the German suburb that's gone carless, the Times asked some experts to weigh in on whether carlessness is feasible in the US. Read Car-Free in America?. Check out the reader comments (hundreds of 'em!).

a car-free suburb

The most e-mailed article in today's New York Times profiles Vauban, a car-free suburb outside of Freiburg, Germany. As one resident stated in the article, In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars, "When I had a car, I was always tense. I'm much happier this way." Others say that what they like best about their community is that it is a better place to raise their kids. "With no cars on the streets, many residents call Vauban a children's paradise, where youngsters wander from a young age in safety."

mayor gives up car

First he was homeless (Mayor's night out), now Berkeley mayor Tom Bates is carless. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Berkeley mayor gives up his car for the bus. But does it count if his wife (State Senator Loni Hancock) still owns a car? (Note that Oakland mayor Ron Dellums is chaffeured to work in a Lincoln Town car.)

walking

Needless to say we do a lot of walking. During the week, there's school and work. On the weekend, there's grocery shopping. But recently I had to fill out a survey about travel habits and realized just how much we really walk.

On a recent Saturday, these were the trips I took. They were all pretty short but, as you can see, they add up:

• Grocery store (15 minutes each way)
• Walk Anna to a friend's house for birthday party (also 15 minutes each way)
• Return to friend's house because Anna forgot to bring present (add another 30 minutes)
• Drop off Leah at Emerson for playdate (does 3 minutes each way even qualify as a trip?)
• Since both kids are at playdates, Keith and decide to take a neighborhood walk. We walk up College Avenue and through Rockridge, then back by way of the Uplands and Claremont Avenue (45 minutes total)
• After dinner, walk to video store, stopping off at bookstore (5 minutes each way)

Total minutes walked: 2 hours and 31 minutes.

it's not the destination, it's the journey

On Sunday, we visited the newly renovated California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Here's how we got there:

• Leave house at nine. Walk to the Rockridge BART station. (About 25 minutes, at a kid-friendly pace.)
• 9:34 train to downtown San Francisco, Powell Street Station. (About 25 minutes travel time.)
• Before leaving BART station, we get transfer for 25 cents off Muni fare.
• On Market Street wait for 5 Fulton. (See photo.) Bus stops now feature a ticker tape-like feed from nextmuni.com announcing when next bus will arrive. (It has been a long time since I was a regular Muni rider so, for all I know, nextmuni.com could be old news. When we were in Sweden two years ago, bus stops there also indicated when the next bus would arrive and we cited that as yet another reason -- along with fantastic urban parks and liberal maternity leave policies -- why Scandinavia is superior to the US.)
• #5 bus winds its way up through the Tenderloin, past Civic Center, through Hayes Valley, past the USF campus and eventually up Fulton Street which borders Golden Gate Park. We get off at 8th Street. (About 20 minutes)
• 10 minute walk through the park. Arrive at Cal Academy at around 10:45, a mere one hour, forty-five minutes after departure.
• Bonus: visitors to the Cal Academy who travel there by public transport get a $3 discount on the price of admission.
  

Oh, and did I mention it was raining the whole time?

grocery shopping

When people learn that we no longer have a car, the first thing they usually ask is: "how do you go grocery shopping?" Originally, we had thought we would do a more European thing and go shopping on an as-needed basis getting that evening's dinner at the market on the way home from work. Turns out, we still do the shopping weekly. The walk to Whole Foods is an eight easy blocks. I walk there with an empty jog stroller (much to the kids' mortification). The way home is slightly uphill and with the fully-loaded stroller -- having just devoted some 90 minutes of my precious time to a chore that I don't totally love -- I can sometimes be a tad crabby by the time I get back.


So far, we haven't had to do any rainy day shopping.

City CarShare

When we do need a car, there's always City CarShare. The nearest "pod" is about six blocks from our house. I've used it to go to my monthly book group meeting and the odd soccer game. The Prius is kind of fun to drive.

What wasn't fun was the time we showed up for our reservation and the car was nowhere to be seen. Eventually, we were able to get a taxi (which City CarShare will pay for if we ever get around to submitting the receipt). We arrived at our dinner party about 45 minutes late.