no car, no problem

Wow, it sure has been a while since I've updated this blog. A lot has happened since the last post: I spent a week with my best friends on an island in South Carolina, graduated from college, traveled to Turkey for a couple weeks, spent some much needed time with family in Pittsburgh, and decided to pursue a masters degree in City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech. A lot of writing possibilities for a blog that hardly ever gets updated anymore! But for now I want to talk about some observations from my ongoing experiment: two years without a car in Atlanta.

Y'all might remember my original post from last year about my first 12 months going carless in Atlanta, and how I was all excited about signing up for Zipcar and getting a scooter. Well, here's how Year 2 has been.

• Owning a scooter and having friends with cars almost completely negates the need for a car sharing service like Zipcar. I'd say that I can run about 95% of my errands either by bike, foot, or scooter, and for that extra 5%, my excellent friends are more than willing to let me borrow their car.
• I ride my bicycle a LOT. Atlanta has bicycle friendly weather about 10 months a year, depending on how hard core you are about riding in really hot/humid conditions. For a student who lives close to an urban campus, the bicycle is a great way to get around.
• I have saved thousands of dollars in transportation costs. That's right, thousands.
• I would do the math and give you an exact number, but maybe I'm saving that for another post...
• Not having a car makes you a lot more conscious about the weather. You better believe I'm looking at that weather.com radar map on my phone right before I go somewhere on my scooter or bike.
• Rain sucks, and being caught in a torrential downpour/thunderstorm of epic proportions really sucks. I learned my lesson from that time (or three).
• You pay a lot more attention to topography and traffic patterns when you don't have a car. So drivers just think about the quickest route to their destination, but cyclists have to think about how hilly that route is, and generally how 'bike friendly' it is. No one wants to ride up a huge hill on a busy road in the dead of summer.
• Planning is everything when you want to go somewhere using transit. Google Transit has been a godsend to me, especially when connecting walking to bus rides to train rides.
• MARTA buses are really punctual and clean. In the past 12 months, I have been using buses a lot more often and I can say that they have never been more than 5 minutes late, and I have met some interesting people on MARTA buses.
• Also, buses are not just for poor people. I have seen plenty middle class people on the MARTA bus.
• My wardrobe has changed! I hardly ever buy gray or black clothing anymore, especially when it comes to shirts. Whether you are riding a bike, scooter, or pedestrian-ing (yeah, I made that word up), it's all about being as visible as possible to motorists. After all, the person enclosed in a multi-thousand-pound metal box on wheels isn't really going to feel a collision as much as someone on a thirty pound bicycle. With that being said, it's all about wearing bright-ish colors for me nowadays; I'd rather not be on the receiving end of that collision, thank you very much.
• Whether I am in better shape or not as a result of being carless is arguable--I still would have gone on plenty of recreational bike rides and runs if I still owned a car. BUT: what does make a huge difference for people in terms of weight control is the walkability of their neighborhood. Can you walk to your grocery store, favorite bar, or to the park? If you can, there's a good chance that you are not overweight.

If I think of some more observations on carlessness in Atlanta, I'll be sure to post them. Thanks for reading.