Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did it until my kid was 10. The pandemic was my breaking point because it was harder to get rides/people didn't want my kid showing up after being on public transit. I think the hard thing about being car free is that your choices are really constrained, so maybe you like one dance studio better but the other is convenient by transit, or your kid wants to do a particular sport but it would take an hour to get there on the bus.

Get. Rides. So you were freeloading off other drivers?

Of course, should I feel deeply ashamed for saying "we are going to the same place, can I meet you at your house and get a ride"? I hate the UMC individualism that tells us we shouldn't help or depend on others, so asking for rides worked great for me as a way of screening out those people. I also use transit and uber/lyft. Now that I have a car, I'm happy to give rides.

Right but all those times when you were taking rides you weren’t returning them.

That's the issue. If you are always depending on someone else you are a taker. How about 50% of the time you spring for the Uber ride?

DH grew up in SF and his family didn’t have a car until the kids could drive. His parents literally never learned to drive themselves but transit got them everywhere independently

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did it until my kid was 10. The pandemic was my breaking point because it was harder to get rides/people didn't want my kid showing up after being on public transit. I think the hard thing about being car free is that your choices are really constrained, so maybe you like one dance studio better but the other is convenient by transit, or your kid wants to do a particular sport but it would take an hour to get there on the bus.

Get. Rides. So you were freeloading off other drivers?

Of course, should I feel deeply ashamed for saying "we are going to the same place, can I meet you at your house and get a ride"? I hate the UMC individualism that tells us we shouldn't help or depend on others, so asking for rides worked great for me as a way of screening out those people. I also use transit and uber/lyft. Now that I have a car, I'm happy to give rides.

Right but all those times when you were taking rides you weren’t returning them.

If the goal is reducing energy usage so our kids don't end up living in a dystopian hellscape, everyone having their own cars (and everything else) so we never take more than we give just doesn't work. There are plenty of ways to repay a ride besides giving a ride.

I think if you live in a very dense city it works, but not just because you can get places easily without a car. It's because dense cities also tend to have good car sharing and rental infrastructure. So when you truly do need a car, you can get one. And there will be times when you need a car with kids, or where it is simply very convenient to have one. Especially once they start making friends and getting invited to random stuff like trampoline birthday parties in the suburbs. Or they join a sports team that has practices in the early morning or meets in places that are not metro accessible. I don't think you have to own a car for this stuff, but you want to be able to rent a car really quickly and easily.

But also, all of that is why we have an old car that we barely use and have no intention of selling it. Our condo has a parking spot, and the car is over 10 years old with low mileage. We don't use it a lot, and it costs us very little to maintain (we put gas in it maybe once very two months, get it serviced annually, and our insurance is dirt cheap because it's an old car). But this way we always have a car when we need one, and it's great. We never have to stress about invites to random locations, we can use it for trips to the beach and other nearby vacation spots. It was invaluable during the pandemic.

Anonymous wrote:We have relatives with an 11 year old and a 7 year old. They've been car free forever, but recently broke down and bought an old beater car that they use because their 11 year old is obsessed with soccer and plays travel now. That's literally all they use it for. If it wasn't for travel soccer, they'd still be car free.

They live in Brooklyn, FWIW. And we plan on a similar path should one of our kids get into an activity like that, but not getting one before. We're in Columbia Heights and loving our car-free lifestyle, but our kids are littler.

I live in Brooklyn, and have raised two kids there + 1 is still at home. We do not have a car. The only limitation I ever felt was with the sports, but since my kids are not super into it anyway, we managed with what we could get via public transportation.

We didn’t have a car until DH got a job in Reston (we livres in the heart of the city) in late 2019…we moved to the burbs in late 2020, but we still only have one car. It’s plenty. Though people do look at us funny. Kid is 7 now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did it until my kid was 10. The pandemic was my breaking point because it was harder to get rides/people didn't want my kid showing up after being on public transit. I think the hard thing about being car free is that your choices are really constrained, so maybe you like one dance studio better but the other is convenient by transit, or your kid wants to do a particular sport but it would take an hour to get there on the bus.

Get. Rides. So you were freeloading off other drivers?

Of course, should I feel deeply ashamed for saying "we are going to the same place, can I meet you at your house and get a ride"? I hate the UMC individualism that tells us we shouldn't help or depend on others, so asking for rides worked great for me as a way of screening out those people. I also use transit and uber/lyft. Now that I have a car, I'm happy to give rides.

Right but all those times when you were taking rides you weren’t returning them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did it until my kid was 10. The pandemic was my breaking point because it was harder to get rides/people didn't want my kid showing up after being on public transit. I think the hard thing about being car free is that your choices are really constrained, so maybe you like one dance studio better but the other is convenient by transit, or your kid wants to do a particular sport but it would take an hour to get there on the bus.

Get. Rides. So you were freeloading off other drivers?

Of course, should I feel deeply ashamed for saying "we are going to the same place, can I meet you at your house and get a ride"? I hate the UMC individualism that tells us we shouldn't help or depend on others, so asking for rides worked great for me as a way of screening out those people. I also use transit and uber/lyft. Now that I have a car, I'm happy to give rides.

Anonymous wrote:I did it until my kid was 10. The pandemic was my breaking point because it was harder to get rides/people didn't want my kid showing up after being on public transit. I think the hard thing about being car free is that your choices are really constrained, so maybe you like one dance studio better but the other is convenient by transit, or your kid wants to do a particular sport but it would take an hour to get there on the bus.

Get. Rides. So you were freeloading off other drivers?

Anonymous wrote:I did it until my kid was 10. The pandemic was my breaking point because it was harder to get rides/people didn't want my kid showing up after being on public transit. I think the hard thing about being car free is that your choices are really constrained, so maybe you like one dance studio better but the other is convenient by transit, or your kid wants to do a particular sport but it would take an hour to get there on the bus.

Also the number of doctors offices your kid can get to is limited.
Preschools too.
Birthday parties.

And if your kid has special needs forget about it. It can take years to make it off of the wait lists for evaluation and therapy for ADHD and Autism. If you were only able to get on lists accessible by public transportation that would make the wait much longer.

I did it until my kid was 10. The pandemic was my breaking point because it was harder to get rides/people didn't want my kid showing up after being on public transit. I think the hard thing about being car free is that your choices are really constrained, so maybe you like one dance studio better but the other is convenient by transit, or your kid wants to do a particular sport but it would take an hour to get there on the bus.

You can certainly make choices so that you don't need a car. Some kid things that might make you want a car include sports, school commute, play dates and birthday parties, etc. We live in Arlington, so I'm not sure how it is in DC, but it would be very difficult for our kids to do rec soccer without a car. You could get to most of the fields on the bus, but it would turn a 10 minute drive into an hour long commute.

Ours is 10, still no car.

We have relatives with an 11 year old and a 7 year old. They've been car free forever, but recently broke down and bought an old beater car that they use because their 11 year old is obsessed with soccer and plays travel now. That's literally all they use it for. If it wasn't for travel soccer, they'd still be car free.

They live in Brooklyn, FWIW. And we plan on a similar path should one of our kids get into an activity like that, but not getting one before. We're in Columbia Heights and loving our car-free lifestyle, but our kids are littler.

When I had my first kid, my family definitely pushed me to buy a car -- "it's necessary when they're babies; all those trips to the doctor; etc." I didn't get one because it seemed (and still seems) like more trouble than it's worth since I love downtown and most things like my ped have excellent metro access but terrible parking. But I'm curious -- does anyone with older kids continue to manage without a car? When did you start feeling a car was necessary? I'm thinking of moving in the next few years and if we end up in a small city/town, I think a car will regretfully become necessary; but if we end up sticking to a big city with solid public transit (e.g. Tokyo) I can definitely see myself avoiding cars for the foreseeable future. My oldest also get violently carsick so I admit that plays into my disinclination to rely on cars for getting her anywhere.