I’ve got wrid of my car 3 years ago. The benefits I’ve encountered.

1. I save about 500 euros a month (this is a conservative calculation)
2. Commuting has become something I can’t control so I’ve let go.
3. I ride my bicycle a lot more. It has made me healthier and I’ve lost about 15 kgs
4. No more searching for parking spots, paying for parking fines,…
5. The mental load of owning a car is gone. No maintenance, no insurance, no low emission zones.
6. I’ve become more aware about the room cars take up in our streets and our society.

On the occasions we need a car I rent one or use a car sharing service.

For me, the biggest benefit is the mental load I no longer have. I used to have to think about maintenance, MOT schedule, road tax scheduling, insurance scheduling, renewing my parking certificate, how much I drink, where I’m going to park, did I run out of time on the parking meter, is there traffic on my route, where are the road works…

The mental energy I’d waste just to deal with a car was massive. There’s still mental energy with public transit, like what is the schedule and which bus do I need to be on to make it in time, and what do I do if a stop isn’t near my destination, but it’s a lot less mental load than having a car.

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Being able to look at your children in the eyes and knowing that you aren’t contributing to the pollution they are breathing, to the traffic noise they hear while they are trying to rest, or to the traffic that puts them in danger every time they go out.

Future generations will judge us for the shitty legacy we have left them.

• you save a lot of money. People easily forget how it all adds up.
• you save a lot of space. Cars take up a huge amount of space and are just sitting around 90+% of the time. Imagine what you could do with a garage if you didn’t own a car.
• you save a lot of time. A car needs maintenance, it needs to get cleaned, etc. All of that takes up time.
• less worries. About money, about it getting stolen or damaged, etc.
• you don’t need a driver’s license per se if you don’t own a car.
• you don’t have the sunk cost forcing you to use it. Say you buy a car and then you end up barely using it. You might feel obliged to use the car to go shopping or to go on vacation, because it would be ‘wasted’ otherwise.

I know I’m not answering this question persay, but I do certainly touch on some benefits of not owning a car, and why this isn’t true for everyone.

I don’t want anyone dismissing this as some “pro-car” post. It’s not.

I live in the northern most city in North America with over 1 million people (Edmonton, I technically live in an outlying community, but still). Edmonton is unique in a few ways.

• The temperature ranges are huge, regularly on a yearly basis we range from 32 C (90 F) each summer to -36 (-33 F) each winter. I have seen it in my life reach 36 C (97 F) and -46 C (-51 F). There’s not many places in the world whose extremes of temperature cover such a wide range, and not many in general that get that cold, In the winter, snow starts in late October, and is usually around until until early April, and it is typical to see a week straight or two of -30 C (-22) and basically from December through February it’s often below -20 C (-4 F) for months straight at the warmest.
• Edmonton is also one of the least population dense major cities around, even for Canada which is already spread out. Addis Ababa, Baghdad, and Brussels are all close in size (actually all slightly smaller) than Edmonton, and have 5, 6, and 2 million people respectively. Edmonton has 1 million people.
• I work with people with autism, and visit over 30 different locations, and 20 different families across this big city, and our public transit systems are known for being bad.

So simply what are the advantages? I would die in the winter first of all. That’s not an exaggeration, if you don’t live in a climate like this in the winter, you just don’t understand. Being outside for upwards of 15 minutes is dangerous.

Moreover, families in my line of work would suffer. Even with amazing public transit, the weather here is bad enough, and the city is spread out enough, that it would not be doable to safely visit everyone in a day or make it on time since they’re often across the city. Notably since Edmonton is so spread out (unlike say, a Toronto), traffic and getting around quickly on roads is pretty good and we don’t see the same level of slow moving traffic as most major cities.

Now with that said, for the naysayers out there, who think I’m biased: first of all, we all are in one direction or another. Secondly, if you suggested reducing how spread out my city is, and massively increasing public transit and train funding (which again, remember is tricky here, because just hanging out in a train or bus shelter, if not heated here is genuinely dangerous to your life), I would be all for it! I think the biggest thing is city planning, zoning rules that make living places so far away from your purchasing needs like grocery stores is the real bane here and in many areas in North America. But the fact is that, again in my (admittedly unique) situation, even if the city suddenly didn’t become dangerously cold in the winter, magically more dense, and amazingly more transit friendly, I need a car for my daily employment, and many do (you can’t haul construction equipment, bring large medical devices, etc.) on a bike or bring it onto a train or bus with you.

I think the “fuckcars” argument is simplistic and WILDLY privileged. This attitude towards places in difficult climates, with limited funding for public transit in poorer countries, where taking any job, even one that needs a vehicle to drive around is a necessity, when coming from a European metropolitan perspective if wildly biased. Should all cities be as bikeable and transit centric as it is in Europe, again, YES, I agree with this wholeheartedly. But such an aggressive stance as being angry at car owners, making arguments that it indicates some political leaning (I’ve literally seen in the subreddit that cars are inherently right wing, like get over yourself and politicizing EVERYTHING), and literally naming a subreddit “fuckcars” is not exactly solution focused, and doesn’t take the complexity of the living situation many are born in, into account. While I am priveleged in my own country and city, my whole life is here and I would challenge anyone saying “just bike” to make the 50km bike ride across sheet ice in -40 (-40 F) here and not also argue for necessity of a car here.

For the record for anyone who might otherwise dismiss my view on some erronious basis, I am a left wing environmentalist, vegetarian for environmental reasons, have owned a Smart Car and other “eco” vehicles, detest the giant truck and SUV culture that is awful to basically everything here (while understanding that a fairly small minority actually do need a truck), I own an E-bike and love in my small outlying town (population 4000) that I can bike to everything I need here, and would also use this when I lived in Edmonton at times.

Money - a lot of people are not aware of the money a car costs over a period of time.

Dependency - you are only able to drive a car in a special time of your life. If you are too young or too old you are not allowed - or it is very dangerous - to be the driver of a car. There are places you are just able to go by car. This is a problem: they are just made for car people. For instance: malls outside a city. Nobody is shopping in the inner citys, while everybody have to take the car to the mall. This system needs a lot of good working roads, parking spaces and other infrastructure.

Health - in regards of physical activity or is a lot healthier to live in an area where you are able to take public transport. Due to the last mile, which you are probably going by bike or by feet, you get your daily “workout”. Also you are emitting much less emissions into the air. It seems that particulate matter of the reason for a lot of illnesses of our time.

Public Space - you are consuming much less public space than people who are owning a car. Parking lots are in habitats of humans all around. They cost a lot of money, are sealing good soil and the precious space in city is wasted to it. There are such nice projects all around the world, where former parking spaces or streets where changed to spaces for everyone.

To brag about it…