Carless in Seattle

Carless in Seattle

My husband Brett and I are countercultural in a lot of ways that are, I think, sometimes frustrating, sometimes endearing, and sometimes just plain incomprehensible to our families and our friends.

A lot of the things we do that may seem a little different to some people in other areas of the country are really relatively normal here in Seattle: we have a compost bucket on our kitchen counter (with the corresponding compost pile out back), we get really geeked out when we can recycle more than we throw away, we try to avoid high fructose corn syrup and other processed foods, we are using cloth diapers and cloth wipes with our two-month-old daughter Elanor, I don’t eat meat, we drink soy milk…this list could go on for quite some time.

In fact, we were commenting to each other how hippie we felt on Sunday as we were making our way to the Ballard Farmer’s Market while wearing our baby and carrying our reusable grocery bag made from 80% recycled material in which we put our local produce, cheese, and meat.

Some of the things we do are not so normal in Seattle: we go to church regularly, we had a baby at the relatively young ages of 26 (me) and 25 (him), and we want to try to get to the point where I can be a stay-at-home-mom, at least a part-time one, at some point in our lives.

And some of the things we do are not so normal in most American cities. The top one on this list is that we don’t own a car.

When either of us mentions that fact to someone, responses range from a calm, “Really! That’s interesting; why?” to a somewhat horrified, “WHAT?! Are you kidding me?! How do you survive?! I could never live without my car!! You mean you actually take the bus?”

The decision to do without a car was first made for us about three weeks before our wedding back in July 2003, when I was in a car accident (yes, my fault, I’m ashamed to admit) and totaled my car. At the time, I was in the process of moving to Brett’s apartment in Belltown. Since we both worked downtown at the time and had a pretty good idea we’d be moving to Maine within six months (we spent almost three years there while Brett was in school), we reasoned we had no need for a car, so we used the money from the insurance for some wedding and moving expenses and never looked back. In fact, we loved not having a car. We walked everywhere, and took the bus when we needed to. It was wonderful. Yes, it required some forethought in terms of getting around, but all in all, our world was pretty confined to Belltown and downtown, so we were content without a car.

Until we got to Maine, that is.

It’s pretty darn near impossible to do without a car in Maine; only the very, very, very poor and the homeless are carless. The way the area around Portland is configured combined with the snow and frigid temperatures, plus the lack of any workable bus system makes it almost impossible to do the simplest of tasks, like go to the grocery store, unless you have a car.

So, despite having severe misgivings, and despite not having the room in our budget, we broke down and got a very cheap hand-me-down car from some friends about six months after arriving. That car lasted less than a year, at which time we found ourselves taking out a loan and buying a more reliable car.

When we decided to move back to Seattle in the spring of 2006, we knew with 100% certainty that we did NOT want a car, so we sold the car we’d bought while we were in Maine and got ourselves re-acclimated to living without a car. Our reasons are many:

• It’s better for the environment — need I elaborate?
• It’s better for us — we walk more, and stay in shape better. I am convinced that a good deal of the weight I gained in Maine was partly because I wasn’t walking. (I was too busy huddled next to the oven in an effort to stay warm, making — and then eating — pies and cakes and cookies and such.)
• It’s cheaper — Um, hello, $3.50 per gallon? No, thank you! I’ll admit that a large part of my love of doing without a car is selfish, and stems directly from the extra money we have in our budget every month to pay down debt, save, or do fun things. Not only that, but without having a car, I am much less inclined to make random trips to places like Target, where I will just spend lots of money on things we don’t really need.
• It’s less hassle — No car = no breakdowns = no unexpected $800 brake jobs = a happier Brett and Kathleen
• It’s less stress — we both HATE driving. It’s so stressful. I’d much rather sit back and let someone else do it while I chill and talk (see the next bullet) or read (see the second bullet).
• We spend more time together — We have had some wonderful conversations while waiting for the bus and riding the bus together.
• It allows us time to unwind — I love being able to read or knit or listen to my iPod during my commute to and from downtown every day.

Since about a month before Elanor was born on January 14 until about six weeks ago, we had the luxury of having a car, which we borrowed from Brett’s family. And, yes, it was really nice to have when I was nine months pregnant and trying to get to and from work every day. It was especially nice to have when I went into labor at 1 a.m. and we had to go to the hospital. It was also nice to have during my recovery from having a c-section.

So I’ll be honest and say that it was tough to give it back to Brett’s family, and I was a little nervous about not having it anymore. That feeling wasn’t helped by his parents’ urging us to just keep the car indefinitely — a very tempting offer, to be sure.

Thus far, taking the bus with Elanor has been relatively easy. I just pop her in the Moby Wrap and, for the most part, she is content. There have been a few moments where she’s started crying, but she calms pretty easily so it hasn’t been too bad. And even though she peed all over herself while we were rushing to get out the door to catch a bus to a doctor’s appointment last week, we still made it without missing the bus.

Once their horror wears off, a lot of the the questions people ask us have to do with practical things, like, “How in the world do you get groceries?” Thankfully, that task is made much easier by the fact that Safeway delivers now. Yes, it does cost money, ranging from $9.95 to $12.95, depending on the delivery window you pick and whether or not it is during peak hours, but we figure that $12.95 is cheaper than owning a car.

What it all boils down to is making choices and planning ahead.

We choose to live where we do in Ballard because it’s within two blocks of one major bus line and seven blocks of three more. Those buses provide us access to most everything we need — church, work, shopping, friends, etc.

We choose to adopt a pace of life that is less frenetic and more deliberate. A trip to a friend’s house in another part of town requires a lot of planning ahead and a lot of patience, since it will probably take twice as long to get there on the bus as it would to drive. This is especially true if we have to go east, because of the way the bus routes run, but that’s a topic for another day.

We have to plan ahead a lot more, in all areas of life. We can’t just stop at the store on the way home from work. Instead, we meal plan for the week and do our shopping together on the weekends at the Farmer’s Market or online.

Sure, it’s a little more work to live this way, but to us, the benefits I listed above more than compensate for the frustrations we encounter as a result of our decision.

I hope that as she grows older, Elanor will appreciate our lack of a car. Oh, who am I kidding, she’ll probably just think that her parents are crazy.