You know him as “alley guy”. I know him as, uh, me.

How do we, a family of two adults and two children, 5 and 7, live without a vehicle in Edmonton, Alberta?

Location

I discussed my family’s choice of neighbourhoods in this post about our house in Mill Creek. It is virtually impossible to live in the new suburbs without a car. The ‘burbs were created with the “certainty” that cheap gasoline would last forever. They were designed around the car, which means that they were explicitly built without humans in mind.

We chose to live somewhere north of 51st Ave., south of roughly 118th Ave., east of 149th Street and west of 60th Street or so. There may some gem of a neighbourhood outside of those boundaries that I don’t know about. Please let me know about this unicorn breeding ground if it exists.

So location is a deal breaker, and of course it’s where the denial kicks in hard. Edmontonians look at the cheap houses in Rutherford Heights and start making their list of reasons to live in empty, soulless neighbourhoods. They choose to ignore the basic reality that oil is finite, and that some day they will be priced out of the drive-everywhere-you-go market.

If you manage to keep a clear head about you, a car-free-possible house/apartment has the following features:

• A bus stop within two blocks that has at least two route numbers on the sign. Our bus stop has seven bus routes. We get annoyed if we wait two minutes for a bus during peak hours.
• A grocery store within a few blocks. We have two small stores within four blocks, and a Save-On foods within eight blocks.
• A farmer’s market within walking distance. Yes, we are modern-day hippies.
• Restaurants, a community garden, a library, medical offices, and a bank, all within walking distance.
• A job or two, that someone in your household works at, within 35 minutes bike ride and 40 minutes on the bus.

Renting

Not owning a car isn’t the same as never driving a car. A half-dozen times a year, we rent a car for one or two weekend days. It’s incredibly cheap to rent cars on the weekend, presumably because the rental companies make most of their money on corporate clients, and therefore have a surplus of cars sitting around on non-business days.

We rent for $10-$30 per day. $10/day gets you 50 km of mileage, $20-$30 is usually unlimited km.

We got a free gold credit card from Scotiabank exclusively to rent vehicles with. When you rent with a gold card, collision insurance is covered for you. That makes a big difference, since the insurance offered by the rental companies runs $12-$20 per day.

Renting is much cheaper than most people think, and you get to try out all sorts of different cars. We have rented for our last two camping holidays with great success (http://greenedmonton.ca/greener-holiday).

Love your bike

Life without a car wouldn’t be half as fun without our bicycles. Biking is much more fun and usually more convenient than transit; bikes are the closest thing to cars, but without the negatives.

Our kids have been biking since they were five years-old, and they are very comfortable staying safe on Edmonton’s streets. Nothing promotes family togetherness and fitness like bombing around on your bikes together every day.

Share

Last but not least, I should mention that we share a car with my mother-in-law. We borrow her car twice a month (mostly in winter), and every third or fourth time we return it with a freshly-filled tank of gas. She gets free gas, we get a car that’s more convenient and cheaper than a rental.

We have friends who share a car with their neighbours with a similar type of arrangement.

“Do you still go to movies?”

I’ve actually been asked that question. We are so dependent on cars that we simply cannot imagine life without them. I’m here to tell you that it’s possible, and that many people are happier without one. My wife and I both work part-time, something that we both cherish, and that wouldn’t be financially possible if we had vehicles.

Everyone’s situation is different. For instance, we are lucky to have our parents and siblings living nearby. If my parents still lived in Spruce Grove, we would drive a lot more to go visit them than we have to now (they’re 10 blocks away!). However, I would bet that a large percentage of people could go car-free if they wanted to. I think that they would be surprised by what they discovered on the other side.

P.S. If you are considering going car-free, remember that if you put fire and theft insurance on a car, your record of continuous insurance remains intact. A friend of ours "sold" us his broken-down Tempo, and we now insure it for $35/year. That way, we won't be punished insurance-wise if we ever choose to buy a car again.