You Don’t Drive? Huh?
I went into a vitriolic rant a few minutes ago which my girlfriend was the unfortunate recipient of (sorry, hon!) and it occurred to me that this was something of a sore point for me lately.
Nearly everyone I meet gives me this dumb pie-eyed look when I explain that I don’t own a car, don’t have a drivers license and frankly have no interest in obtaining either. I’ve spent the majority of the past nine years living in Ottawa, Canada’s fourth largest metropolitan city.
The bus service is adequate for my needs, despite fare increases over the past years is still vastly cheaper than an automobile, besides which it’s healthier to walk or ride a bicycle.
According to this page by the US EPA, the average passenger car emits approximately 5,400 kilograms of pollutants per year. Since most of my travels would consist of my being the sole passenger this would be squarely on my shoulders. I’ve been hard pressed to find exact data regarding how much city bus emissions per passenger are, but the estimates I did find place it at 66% less. This means that I personally am contributing at most 1,600 kilograms of pollutants from transit. I’d like to think it’s less since I walk or cycle whenever I can do so.
Let’s factor in that gasoline sells for over a dollar a liter here in Ottawa, and automobile insurance (which is mandatory) is also a few hundred dollars a month. Cars, like any mechanical device have parts which wear out and break. They need maintenance and replacement parts. Eventually the entire vehicle may require replacement. Heck, they’re at least a few thousand dollars to obtain one in working condition, and most people I know have owned several in their lifetimes. How is this device saving me time? Most of my paycheck would go to operating and maintaining it! I can ride the bus for about a day’s pay per month. Now that’s saving me time, since at the absolute minimum I’d be losing over a week’s pay per month for the ‘convenience’ of a darned car.
I don’t need to go through several levels of testing to ride the bus, and the initial investment for a bus pass is about $10 for a photo ID. Drivers licenses take years, at least three tests, and several hundred dollars to obtain.
When I travel around on the bus, I glance out the window now and again to make sure I’ve not passed my stop. If I was driving a car, I’d have to be paying constant attention to not only my vehicle and it’s speed and heading, but all others around me including pedestrians. I’d have to watch the traffic lights, street signs, random debris on the roadway and various weather conditions which change quite often here in the capital.
I’ve actually dozed off on the bus. That’s death in a car! I can sit down, let someone else worry about these annoyances, listen to music on headphones, read a book, text message on my phone, daydream, whatever.
So, in reality I’m saving time, money, effort, stress and the environment all at once. Understandably if I lived in a less urban area it would be a different situation.
But I don’t – So why ruin my life for what would amount to merely caving to peer pressure spawned by industrial marketing?
Themocracy
Take heart, you’re not alone. I don’t drive either, and I don’t have a licence.
Do you also get the freak treatment? As in, people think you’re from some other planet for not having a car?
Geez, I could have written that post. When I tell people that at 36 I don’t have a driver’s license, they react as though I’ve told them I’m not toilet-trained. Nice to hear I’m not alone.
Good to hear that I’m not the only one. It’s part of the North American attitude that everyone must have a car, and sadly it’s worked it’s way into urban planning giving us open air big-box malls and housing built miles from any form of store where you might purchase basic necessities. It’s one thing to have that in the country, but it’s crazy to see hundreds of houses packed together where everyone needs a car just to go buy milk.