Do you lose anything besides your carbon footprint on public transit?
by Roger Coppock (submitted by Bonnie)
Our family used to be a two-car family, one newer car and an older car. We’d buy a new car and trade in the old one every 7 or 8 years. With our automobiles easily available, we used them a lot. We thought nothing of a 3-mile round trip just to purchase a single trivial item, and probably did something like that every other day.
Automobiles cost a lot more than their purchase price. A large fraction of our income went for fuel and auto maintenance. At least one day a month was spent taking one or the other of our mechanical family members to the car doctor, and that “health-car(e)” program wasn’t cheap. Often, car maintenance was the major monthly bill.
The Buddha teaches that nothing is permanent: Our two-car family had to change. One day I discovered that as far as the local San Diego Metropolitan Transit System was concerned, I’m over 60 years old and an Official Old Person now! For $18 dollars a month, just 60 cents a day, I can activate my magic Compass Card and ride any trolley or bus in the San Diego area.
Now, we don’t need that second car. So, we save the cost of a second car, the cost of maintaining a second car, and the fuel for a second car. Not bad for 60 cents a day!
2 Responses
I think/hope more and more people consider dumping their second car and maybe even dumping their only car. I know I would like to be able to live car free. My sense is that things are improving slowly, transit-wise, in San Diego and that they are also improving for active transportation (biking/walking). So maybe my car-free dream will one day become a reality.
We decided to become a one-car family, and make that one car battery electric. Our strategy for the occasional longer trip was to rent a car for those occasions. That has worked out really well. The other change in habits has been more use of public transportation than back in the two-car days.
One frustrating expense was increased insurance cost. Whereas our insurance company offers a multi-car discount, when we became a single-car family, we lost that discount.