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) Learning To Live Without The Family Car 5th NovemberFlexicar member, Mike Shuttleworth's account is featured on page 11 of "The Big Issue". About a year ago, just before Christmas, I developed an aching lump just above my pubes. Before you could say ‘jingle bells’ I was waking up from a general anaesthetic, having undergone a hernia operation. What I didn’t expect was that the little lump would soon lead to life without a car. One of several things you can’t do while recovering from invasive stomach surgery is drive. Sudden stamping on the brake pedal could undo the surgeon’s work. Okay. No car. I was told six weeks away from driving. As I regained the ability to move my legs at all, and then, eventually, walk, my family and I started to catch the tram to places we might have driven: the library, to visit friends and family, Victoria Markets—if we took a trolley or shopping jeep. My wife, daughter and teenage stepson seemed okay with this. But as I’m the only driver in the house, what choice did they have? My daughter was going into grade one and school was regularly holding ride and walk to school days. Believe me, she was rapidly (and rabidly) becoming seriously anti-car. One Saturday we caught a train to the country. This was a revelation. She could get up, walk about, see the suburbs and farms slide past the window. I could read to her as we went along. “You can’t do that when you’re driving, daddy,” she chided. Pressure was building from below. But we held onto the car. It was registered, serviced, had two new tyres and occasionally taken to a car wash. So there’s a twelve hundred dollars spent without really going anywhere. The penny started to drop for me when for the fourth Saturday in a row I ground my way up Lygon Street traffic towards home. I hit the traffic as others headed to or from the cafes, or picked up kids from sport, did the shopping or headed north out of the city. I had all of a kilometre and a half to drive. Wedged between the trams and the traffic, I began to think there must be an easier way. The next week I went by bike. How much easier was this? I flashed past stranded cars on my rattling Repco while drivers thumbed away at their mobile phones or doofed themselves to a standstill. I work in the city and earlier in the year my wife, who had worked from home, got an office job. Times when I might drive my wife here or there for work ceased. No more dashing to the other side of town to check out this or that venue or meet people for work. She could do that in work time, and get a cab or tram if she needed to. So now we were both commuting. I have a yearly travel card, which is one of the biggest bargains ever. Why are there tax breaks like salary packaging for cars and not for public transport tickets? So there it sat, the reliable Camry wagon, day after day in the shade of our neighbour’s tree. “It’s a security thing,” I told myself. “People will see the car and think someone is home.” Parking is free but all the time I felt the meter ticking. Rego, repairs, petrol, parking, insurance. And we were paying for transport anyway with tram fares. Could we join one of those short-term car rental deals if we needed one? With Christmas coming round again and the $550 rego looming, my wife cracked. “Sell the car.” So a roadworthy certificate and a website listing later and suddenly there was a buyer on the doorstep. She had three large dogs that needed to be driven to a park for their walks. Hey, I knew the car wasn’t perfect, but a dog-wagon? Sellers can’t be choosers and it was done. What do we miss? Not much to be perfectly honest. It’s true that in our suburb we have good access to transport. We shop locally and probably spend less at the supermarket as we have to carry it home. We walk a lot more, and spend time as a family together this way. It’s good. We use the country train, and short-term car hire, but much less than we thought. I ride my bike sometimes. Now and again we need a cab or two. We are lucky that our travel needs match the public transport grid. If we lived further from work, or regularly needed to travel across town things might be tougher. We never said never again. But right now, life without a car is proving a far less painful than the reason we started doing without in the first place. |
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