Three months without a car

When I had to sell my car earlier this year I said it would be an interesting experiment to see how I manage without a car. The first two months were difficult, but time and moving house has made things a lot easier. But I have now found a way of having all the benefits of owning a car without actually owning one.

Life has gone pretty much the same as usual. I use a bus to get to work – which is fine – but it hasn’t all been plain sailing. The main drawbacks have largely been down to the shortcomings of public transport. The biggest, and the one that affected me the most for the first two months is that bus routes go in and out of the city centre and not around the city connecting the suburbs. My job is based in the suburbs and so I have to travel between them – something that is impossible to do on public transport without going in to the city centre and back out again which takes far too long out of a working day. When I was still living with my parents I was only a 20 minute walk from home to work, but if it snowing, wet or late at night and you have to climb a steep hill to get home you miss your car a lot. The other problem with buses is that they become a lot less frequent at the weekend or after 7pm, which means you spend a lot of time hanging around at bus stops – not good if it is bad weather or you just want to get home. Another drawback is that I sometimes need to drop things off at people’s house such as leaflets and that is difficult to do without a car, indeed during the local elections I noticed that even the Green Party use a car for those sorts of jobs.

Everyone assumes that when you live in a city centre then you no longer need a car as everything is on your doorstep and you are close to public transport. It is true that I now find it a lot easier to access public transport as I am just five minutes from Sheffield Station and I can catch a bus or tram to any part of the city within a ten minute walk of my flat. But driving isn’t just about commuting which is all people think about when they wonder why city centre dwellers need a car. Driving is also about having fun and enjoying yourself.

I was very much a reluctant driver when I first learnt at 18, but the thing that made me love driving was just being able to go off where you want, when you want. I get a lot of enjoyment from just exploring the country, going from place to place seeing what they are like and stopping when you find somewhere interesting. You can’t do that so easily when you are relying on public transport. Fortunately I have at least found one solution to that issue – the car club.

I moved in to the Sheffield city centre at the same time that WhizzGo started their car club in the city. Once you have joined and paid your deposit, you can book a car online or on the phone for a just an hour or two or for a whole day or weekend. You pay so much per hour, and then so much per mile after the first 30 miles. If you fill up with fuel you use a fuel card and so the price of petrol is included in the price. I used it for the first time last week and I realised how much I had missed the freedom that you get with a car. If I had done the same trip last week on public transport I wouldn’t have done half the things that I did do, and I also wouldn’t have had the opportunity to go somewhere else when I found that where I had first gone was packed. It is easy to book, it is unusual for there not to be a car available somewhere nearby even at short notice (according to a friend of mine who uses WhizzGo in Leeds), the slight inconvenience means that you do look for a public transport option first and it means that you are aware of how much driving you are doing and the cost, whilst still not having to pay for car repairs, car tax, insurance and everything else that comes with it.

So what would I say to someone thinking about getting a rid of their car? Well, if you live in the suburbs then you will probably regret it unless you have good public transport such as in London, (yes, I know that you Londoners always complain about your public transport, but it is a lot better than the rest of the country), but if you live in a city centre and you have a car club in your area then do it. It is difficult to completely do without a car, particularly if you enjoy going out and visiting places. Maybe I could do without some of that travel, but actually I tend to think that quality of life and fun is important. They say a change is as good as a rest, and a change of scenery is very important for me from time to time and the places I like to visit are very difficult to reach without a car.

WHIZZGO