One car families

[~Megan~]

Let's come up with reasons why its great to have one car.

First of all money savings: payment, insurance, gas, maintenance

Not having to move carseats or buy two sets of carseats

Parking is easier

Going more places together

[naupakamama]

cost cost cost! We are a one car family, although we have lived in cities where mass transit is easy. I can imagine paying upkeep/insurance/etc on a second car.

[Sharlla]

DH doesn't need a car. I work, I do all the shopping and errands, and I take the kids to their apt. We live in a tiny town (although I work 35 miles away) and anywhere DH needs to go he can put the baby on the back of the bike and go.

[Piglet68]

DH can commute to work by transit and it only takes about 30 minutes. I need the car for getting around our suburb. It's true that there are times when having another car would be handy, but it just seems so incredibly wasteful to us.

[jlutgendorf]

We walk more with one car.

We have to consolidate trips, so we use less gas.

Our family emits a little less exhaust than multiple car families.

We use public transportation a little more (though some may see that as a negative).

I like the look on people's faces when we tell them we only have one vehicle!

~Julia

[AmyB]

Riding the bus with kids is fun! Back when I was child-free I never would have guessed that riding the bus would be a fun thing to do with kids, but its such a nice part of our day I often use the bus even when the car is available.

Bus stops offer all kinds of pleasures like pinecones and dandilions and puddles to throw pebbles in. Waiting for the bus opens up little blocks of time to spend with the kids watching birds or looking at all the fascinating machines at a construction site.

If you ride the same bus a lot the other passengers get chatty and many of them are especially nice to little kids.

When I drive the kids in a car they are constantly trying to get my attention and I have to brush them off because it's too dangerous to take my attention off the road. On the bus I can give them my full attention. I can bring toys and books on the bus so I get to spend a little cuddle-time.

The bus gives kids a sense of independence. Sometimes my kids like to sit in a different seat from me, and they love to show our bus pass, try to remember where our stop is, and ring the bell.

Bus routes are a good way to discover "special places" For example, one bus stop near our home has a schoolyard playground near it, and if we get off at a different stop we can walk home past the ice cream store. In a car we could decide to stop at these places, but we probably wouldn't do it often enough for the places to become favorites.

Some other parents have been amazed at how far my kids will walk. Their own kids whine and cry and want to be carried. Well, actually, my kids whine and cry too sometimes, but for the most part they seem to get a lot of pleasure from walking and I hope that is something that will last the rest of their lives.

[naupakamama]

Originally Posted by AmyB

Riding the bus with kids is fun! Back when I was child-free I never would have guessed that riding the bus would be a fun thing to do with kids, but its such a nice part of our day I often use the bus even when the car is available.

Bus stops offer all kinds of pleasures like pinecones and dandilions and puddles to throw pebbles in. Waiting for the bus opens up little blocks of time to spend with the kids watching birds or looking at all the fascinating machines at a construction site.

If you ride the same bus a lot the other passengers get chatty and many of them are especially nice to little kids.

When I drive the kids in a car they are constantly trying to get my attention and I have to brush them off because it's too dangerous to take my attention off the road. On the bus I can give them my full attention. I can bring toys and books on the bus so I get to spend a little cuddle-time.

The bus gives kids a sense of independence. Sometimes my kids like to sit in a different seat from me, and they love to show our bus pass, try to remember where our stop is, and ring the bell.

Bus routes are a good way to discover "special places" For example, one bus stop near our home has a schoolyard playground near it, and if we get off at a different stop we can walk home past the ice cream store. In a car we could decide to stop at these places, but we probably wouldn't do it often enough for the places to become favorites.

Some other parents have been amazed at how far my kids will walk. Their own kids whine and cry and want to be carried. Well, actually, my kids whine and cry too sometimes, but for the most part they seem to get a lot of pleasure from walking and I hope that is something that will last the rest of their lives.

That is so sweet! I could take the bus with my DD on occasion but thought it would be hard. I never thought to look at it this way. Of course we have only lived here during this past winter (and I really don't like waiting in the cold). But you have inspired me to try this in the spring

[mamabutterfly]

I've really enjoyed both the bus and the train with my dd! We also sit and talk, we look out the window and she talks to other people who think she's cute. It's nice. In the car I just listen to NPR too much.

Another one car advantage - only one car to clean!!

[mamaofprincesses]

We have one car, and it saves us sooo much money! I know if we had two DH would eventually get into the habit of driving to work instead of using the transit system. It's $65 a month for PARKING where he works! Plus the gas (which is going higher and higher all the time), insurance, the cost of the car, yearly registration with inspection and emissions, plus maintenance.

I love this thread. . .every so often I get so tempted to figure out how to buy a second car, just out of sheer laziness. This will keep me motivated!

[kanga1622]

No parking fees for me (my job requires a parking permit so we avoid paying it by DH having the car in his free parking lot)

Less gas $$$

Only one car to wash, clean, maintain, repair

Lots of empty room in our garage for tools, bikes, lawnmower, etc.

More incentive to combine shopping trips or to walk or bike (I plan to walk to the grocery store/Wal-Mart once it quits snowing here - we have no public transportation in my town)

Fewer parking tickets/speeding ticket opportunities

More excuses for both of us to take the same days off work to spend time together if we need to leave town for an appointment or shopping

Great excuse to get out of going to parties, visits, etc. that we didn't want to attend anyway. No one whines when I tell them I can't come because DH has the car at work. They seem to forget that I could walk if I REALLY wanted to go to their event.

Since I have no vehicle to leave for lunch and am too lazy to walk to lunch (there just isn't enough time to walk to anyplace I really want to eat), I have no reason not to eat my already prepared lunch brought from home.

[treespeak]

I walk everywhere with my DS, so my legs have gotten STRONG. Just imagine how much money (not to mention time) that I'm saving off a gym membership!

And since I'm not whirring past in a car most of the time, I'm noticing all the beautiful details of spring--the pink veins on the apple blossoms, the unfurling maple leaves, the light filtering through pine boughs.

I meet more people when I'm on a bus or on foot. DS would add that he digs being in my arms (or on my back) rather than strapped into a car seat.

Less driving=less neck tension!

[savithny]

Money savings are the big thing for us.

Reducing our carbon footprint - we combine trips because we *have* to.

Negotiating schedules means DH and I must work together like partners on more things than many couples I know. Neither of us can just take off without consulting the other as to transportation.

But yeah, mostly the money. Insurance and registration alone would add up to a bunch, let alone the increased maintenance and fuel costs.

Oh, and as for taking the bus -- on icy winter days, I can just walk out past all the neighbors shovelling out their cars and climb onto the warm bus, which takes me safely and without slipping and sliding to my work, and drops me off right at the corner where my office is. A colleague in my building slipped on the icy steps coming out of the parking structure (which is 3 blocks from work) and badly broke her leg and tailbone. going home, I don't have to scrape ice off my car and warm it up - I just go out a few minutes before that big warm bus is coming and go the other way

[insahmniak]

Just think what the roads would be like if we cut our car population by half!

Traffic issues would decrease significantly.
Fewer cars = fewer serious accidents.
Dramatically less air pollution.
Less noise pollution.
Less demand for fossil fuel.

And IMO they for the most part pretty ugly beasts - especially those hulking SUVs and typically-empty pick up trucks. They are hard to fix (compare mechanisms and sheer number of critical components to that of a bicycle!) and are technical dinosaurs. (I mean it's an Internal Combustion Engine for Pete's sake.)

They spew and drip and dirty our roads, block our views, hog our driveways and clutter our public spaces and residential neighborhoods, which makes things much less friendly for non-polluting bicycles and pedestrians, particularly small children. All that would be reduced by half.

And perhaps it would encourage more of us to walk more and shed some of our corporeal excess. We would begin to value walkable communities and we would learn what it is to be neighbors again.

So, by reducing the number of cars you have by half, well, if enough folks did that, think how revolutionary that could be! And that power all starts and ends within each and every one of us. :

A girl can dream!
(Great thread! )

[Ironica]

Hear, hear on what so many of you have said already!

Our car insurance dropped by $100 a MONTH when I sold my car.

Parking is easier... we have only a driveway, so we'd either be tandem there or have one car on the street. The two-car tango is no darned fun when you're trying to get out of the house for the day, and I love not even *knowing* when our street cleaning days are. ;-)

Lately, we've fallen into a pattern where I usually drop DH off at work (it's about 3 miles away, and a pretty easy bus ride). On days when our son goes to school, we drop him off together first, then DH and I have a nice little 10 minutes where we can get into philosophical or profane discussions without interruption. ;-) What a neat little bit of time that's turned out to be! In general, I do think we see each other more because we share a car, not just a house.

Other cost savings: only need one carseat (per child)!

I like that it makes us *think* more about transportation and scheduling. I build more time in between commitments, and keep our absolute time commitments to a minimum, because the more flexible our day is, the less we have to worry about handing off the car.

In our old apartment, we had two parking spaces, and actually rented out the second space to a neighbor for a couple of months. ;-) My mom also would store her car there when she went on long trips (she has only street parking where she lives, and our place was closer to the airport anyway).

[llamalluv]

1. Cost. We cut $600/month out of our budget by selling DH's truck.

2. Health. When we had the truck, DH was much more likely to fiddle faddle around until he HAD to drive the 1/2 mile to work. Now, he leaves in plenty of time to bike and only drives if it is rainy or snowy.

3. More money. I shop less.

4. Fewer car washings. We only have one garage, so DH's truck was always out in the muck of his work parking lot (lots of muddy potholes in the Public Works parking lot! ) and he would spend four hours a month washing the darn thing. Now we wash the car just once every 6 weeks (since it is driven less often to his muddy workplace)

As an aside - I really like trying to deliberatly drive less and reduce our gasoline expenses even as the price of a gallon rises. We've gone from spending over $150/month on gas to spending $40 a month. Now, I'm not working right now and that was a LOT of the gas I was spending, but we've also cut back unneccessary driving (like him driving to work when the weather is nice) and all those quick trips to the grocery store for stuff we can really do without.

[gurumama]

We own two cars, but MIL has had the second car for the past 2 weeks and we've had zero schedule problems, so we're pretty close to just getting rid of the second car. Thanks for this thread!

[Rhiannon Feimorgan]

We've only ever had one car. Dh had a car when we got together but I never did have one. I always walked or road the bus where I needed to go.

The comunity we live in now is very walkable although there is no public transport here. There are days when the car doesn't leave the garage. Dh walks to work and I still walk ds to school and walk to the store, post office, library or whatever.

Most people walk around here at lest some of the time. I've noticed that the avarage health and body mass is better around here than many other places where walking is more dificult and driving is the norm.

[janasmama]

We're a one car family. DH works at home and doesn't commute. We just recently got rid of our second car in December (although it was out of commission for months before that).

I totally love that people think it's weird to have only one car. We live in a small, spread out town though without public transit so I couldnt' imagine only having one car if DH did commute.

We love the money savings though since that is so immediate to us. But we definitely reduce carbons because if I go to get a pedicure or something, DH drops me off on the way to do his errands.

[chirp]

cost
lower carbon footprint
more outings together
more walks
scapegoat from functions we'd rather not be at (especially since our 1 car is a junker...so we can't drive all that far!)
everyone has pretty much said it all.

and one a little more personalized...dh's work is 4 miles away, and although he drives there, there are two nice parks and library on the way to his job so if we leave when he's almost out of work, and stop at the parks and the library...then we get a ride home! with daddy/husband. who's more than happy to see us at the end of the day!

[Vancouver Mommy]

Up until two weeks ago we were a zero car family. We only have a car now because dp's job benefits include a lease vehicle. We only use it a couple of times a week. I have been without a car for 12 years, dp for about six. For me the main reason was environmental responsibilty. We have belonged to a car co-op for the past five years and that's been good, although I don't really enjoy installing two toddler car seats every time we go out. We do most of our errands by foot and dp takes transit or cycles for work.