A Car-less Year

While we were out saving the earth the other day (read: going shopping in the city) we saw this add and thought it was a great starting point for a public transit post. We have been here one year and learned a great deal about what life and travel look like for those who can’t (or choose not to) own a car. When moving here, we were excited about the prospect of living in a European city and living “the simple life” car-free. We soon learned that England is much closer to America than Europe in its car ownership culture and basically everyone that can own a car, does. Central London seems like the exception, but for the most part, travel in England without a car is challenging.

Worried about the cost and difficulty of getting a UK licence (the test is ridiculous, with most people spending hundreds of pounds in lessons to pass) and owning a car, we have been happy to see this as what could likely be the one time in our lives where we don’t own a vehicle and try to experience it for what it is, taking in the good and the bad.

On the good side, we have really come to love train journeys, both for long trips and work commutes. The difference between fighting your way through rush hour traffic and sitting on a train reading to and from work is huge, and living on a train line that lets us both ride and walk to work has been a great experience. Over mid-length trips to cities, the train is hard to beat as well. We’ve visited Liverpool, Manchester, London, and even Paris by train, and would say they are far superior to cars both in the relaxing journey as well as the arrival. Pulling into the main train station in the heart of these cities and getting off on the busy central streets is a great first way to experience a place, contrasted with fighting traffic looking for a parking garage somewhere on the city outskirts.

While trains are great for regular commutes and intercity trips, they just don’t work for trips to the country, and can be very difficult if you want a stop on a different line. We have managed to fill in with busses, but these are painfully slow and still can require several transfers to get where you’re going. In short, public transit makes spontaneity difficult, and many areas are essentially off-limits without a car.

As our circle of friends here grows and we learn more about the places that we are missing just off our bus and train routes, we have realized that getting a cheap little car actually makes a lot of sense and will be working on that this fall. We’re glad that we did this year though, and learned a lot about life on the trains and busses from the experience. Our weekly hour-bus-rides to a friend’s house are real studies of British sociology, and the people who you meet on buses are incredibly varied and quite different to those we encounter in our professional lives. As transport solutions other than the personal auto become more of a hot topic, I feel like our car-less life has yielded some insight into the realities of public transit “on the ground.” Hopefully, like all of our experiences here, we’ll be able to file this away for whatever the future holds.

Until then, man is it going to be great to drive again. Do you think a bald eagle graphic on the hood would be too subtle? Maybe we need a flag too…