It's now been nearly three months since I owned a working car. My decision to go car-free was part forced by not having a running car and not having the means at the time to afford even another stopgap (a beater that costs little enough to be paid for with no financing), and part by choice.
Over the past few years, I had begun to notice just how expensive having a car can actually be. Aside from the sticker price, there's the cost of gas (not cheap), maintenance (also not cheap), insurance (not cheap; are you noticing a pattern?), the variety of fees required to keep your car street-legal (registration, inspection, etc.), and frequently here in Houston, tolls. The last one was actually an even worse issue when I lived in the far northern suburbs of Dallas and thanks to Rick Perry's addiction to toll roads, there was almost no feasible alternative.
All that money spent so that you can get yourself to and from work on a daily basis. You know, so that you can make money.
Of course, few people tell you about the alternatives to automobile ownership. Even in a city like Houston, which is essentially run by the oil industry (who of course wants everybody to drive everywhere), going car-free is possible. Or at least it's possible to go without owning a car. I ride the bus to get to and from work every morning. I walk to errands or I manage to work them in during my daily schedule. I do have a ZipCar account available for when I absolutely need to get somewhere that the buses won't go, like my frequent court appearances in other counties (where the local denizens don't want public transit because poor people, presumably.)
And you will not believe the reactions that this lifestyle gets within social circles.
Full disclosure: for those who don't know, I work as an attorney. I have my own practice doing criminal defense work. In those circles, not only is not having a car unheard of, but not having a certain type of car (i.e. Lexus, BMW, Mercedes, fill in any expensive-sounding foreign car) is somewhat frowned upon. You are not only supposed to drive a car, you are supposed to drive an expensive car. Because everybody has to be made aware that you're important, right?
"You ride the bus?" one attorney said to me a few weeks back. "I could never do that."
Now, you might be thinking that the weird aversion to public transportation is a Texas thing, or even a Sun Belt thing, and you might be correct. I have never even been to NYC, so I don't know if people there have the same aversions. But it's pretty widespread in the South.
"You really need to get a car."
The funny thing is that the more I've gotten used to going car-free and realizing that it is possible, the more that friends and family have begun to insist that I need a car. And yes, I probably will get another car at some point because there really are some things that having a car would make a lot easier -- like going to the grocery store a mile away, which would be easier simply because carrying groceries for a mile isn't exactly easy. (On the other hand, I've lost 10-15 pounds in the last three months. All that walking is healthy.)
The cognitive dissonance only begins to make sense once you get into the subtext. Riding the bus is for the poors, and you're not one of the poors, are you? The subtext is that middle-class people, and especially middle-class white people, are expected to have a car. It is a class marker. By taking the bus everywhere and refusing to take on a monthly car payment, never mind all the additional costs associated with owning a car, I am actively rejecting the middle class lifestyle.
Or at least, the one that has been drilled into people's heads. You know what else I've noticed? A lot of people I know want a big house on a large lot -- even acres or more. Ever ask them why they want that big lot? Most of the time, you won't get an actual answer. You may get an answer having something to do with kids, but then owning an acre lot accomplishes exactly nothing that a public park couldn't accomplish (except maybe making sure that your kids are playing with the "right" children.) Never do I hear anyone say that they want all that land so that they can farm.
The chase of the American (middle class) dream is killing our planet -- and the sad part is that I am not even sure that many people who chase it even want it. Long commutes are rationalized, having a yard so large that you need to pay someone to take care of it is rationalized because you might do things that you don't ever actually do.
But the chase, as I have discovered, is rigidly enforced. You are not supposed to voluntarily decide that you do not want that lifestyle. Is it any wonder, then, that a lot of people are making a lot of money by telling these people that their lifestyle is not killing the planet?
