Happy Fourth of July from Seattlest
Seattlest Day Trips to Mount Rainier (in Photos)
Can't Miss It: Weekend Edition July 3-5
Weekend Theatre: July 3-5
Seattlest spent a couple years in Seattle without a car and it wasn't really that bad. Buying liquids at the store was the #1 problem. When you go to QFC and buy OJ and a half rack plus a few other odds and ends it doesn't sound like much, but it's a bitch to get home. We were the sole member of our household at that point, though, so not having a car shouldn't have been much of a problem. Alan Durning of Northwest Environment Watch is a family man with three kids so when he says he's going car-free it actually means something.
Above is the Durning family Volvo, obviously wrecked. Instead of replacing it he's decided they're going to go car-less in Seattle and rely on Nike, Trek and Flexcar for the time being. We're interested to learn how this turns out. It's been six weeks or so since the Volvo died and apparently the Durning family has yet to suffer a major transportation breakdown.
We're only six weeks into this new lifestyle, so I don't want to make too many conclusions. But so far, what's surprised me haven't been the moments of inconvenience (I expected those). It's been two unexpected pleasures: more little adventures every week and fewer backseat arguments to referee.
Seattlest has backslid a little since our heady car-less days. Currently we're part of a two-car household, but it's not inconcievable that it could go down to one. None might be a stretch. We're rooting for the Durnings, though, and we're very interested to hear how things go so we'll be watching the Cascadia Scorecard site. With that in mind, we did see this week's South Park where everyone bought hybrids and a giant cloud of "Smug" wiped San Francisco off the face of the earth and thought it was hilarious. So far Durning's Smug emissions seem to be at acceptable levels... Any wagers on how long they last without a car?
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
The family part makes it much trickier. I notice his 18-year-old son is getting hosed because FlexCar (like most car rental places) won't rent to an 18-year-old. For reasons the photo may illustrate. But as a previous car-totaler, I say "Bygones"!
"Any wagers on how long they last without a car?"
Quite a long time actually. There is a pretty good public buss system in Seattle and when linked lite rail goes online it is going to be awesome to live in Seattle without a car. I did not need a car when I lived in Seattle and my freind has gone over a decade with no car. It would be good practice for the coming peak oil crash.
Here's something else that anyone looking into going car free should consider. http://xtracycle.com/
My biggest complain with being car free & focusing on using a bicycle to get around is the difficulty in hauling the basics (beer, OJ, packages, et al) around without dieing. The Xtracycle addresses this by extending the back of the bike into a cargo bike!
Big ups, Alan.
The bus system is good only if you are commuting short distances within the city, e.g., capitol hill to the u district, capitol hill to downtown, but for commuting elsewhere, it can be very undependable and time consumming, particularly in the evening.
Go carless in seattle! With a massive right of way mass transit system that can get you all over the city as well as the eastside and snohomish county, sure why not. But otherwise, forget it. What if your job is in bothell? What will you do? Wait 2 hours for a community transit bus?
With the issues of peak oil and increased population coming to a head, we will regret scrapping the monorail instead of creating a more sensible economic plan to get it off the ground, particularly when they tear the viaduct down to build a new one or build the "Nickel Dig". Like we did shortly after the earthquake in 2001, we'll have massive traffic backups on I-5 and the west seattle bridge.