Imagine a utopian future free of congested highways and rush hour sig-alerts, where people in the Bay Area find they can get anywhere they need to go via public transportation. What would that take? Shining monorails? Hovercraft? Giant pneumatic tubes? Actually, none of that would really be necessary, and some people even say we already live in that future. In June the Oakland-based group TransForm challenged people to stay out of their cars for a week – and participants in this Car-Free Challenge were surprised to find how feasible it was. KALW’s Transportation reporter Nathanael Johnson has the story.
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NATHANAEL JOHNSON: A couple years ago, David Colburn was driving with a friend when out of nowhere, another car plowed into him, tearing off his front end.
DAVID COLBURN: I was fine, my friend was fine, but the car was a goner.
It was a hit-and-run. And Colburn—who was unemployed at the time—couldn’t afford a new car. So he started riding his bike. To his surprise, it didn’t slow him down much. He got a job and found that he arrived refreshed and alert. And...
COLBURN: I got to know my neighborhood better because I wasn’t speeding by at 30 miles an hour, I felt more engaged with the city around me, and got to know my neighbors more because now I walk 10 minutes to Trader Joe’s instead of driving 5 minutes…
Most of all, Colburn says, he was happier. Now, he wishes he knew how to get in touch with that hit-and-run driver… so he could thank him.
COLBURN: Of course I was angry that he hit me, ruined my car, but in retrospect – I feel like he did me a service. I really feel like my life has overall improved without a car. You know, this summer a friend of mine is going out of town for a few weeks and I said, "Oh, do you want to borrow my car?" And I said, "You know, I’d rather not."
Of course there are trade offs. Colburn misses driving his dog up into the parks, and he still occasionally rents a car for weekend trips. But he doesn’t miss paying up at gas stations, dealing with mechanics and trying to remember when to move the car for street cleaning.
COLBURN: I just feel free of this burden it’s … there’s some burden that’s been removed and you’ve been liberated from car ownership. That’s really how I feel about it.
To replicate Colburn’s experience—minus all the twisted metal—TransForm has been conducting aCar-Free Challenge for the last two years, asking people to try life without a car, just to see how it works. Andrea Osgood gave it a shot. She’s one of those people who, at least on paper, really needs a car. She works for Eden Housing, which does affordable development, and she has to make site visits all over the Bay Area. At 11:30, one morning, Osgood is packing her rolling bag with papers, a computer…
ANDREA OSGOOD: ...and then of course my work shoes versus my transit shoes. (Andrea zips up her bag.) I get to about here and I have to make sure I have my cell phone.
She’s headed for the Altenheim, a retirement home in East Oakland where Eden is building a new wing. To get there, Osgood first walks to the Hayward BART station which, as it turns out, is within shouting distance of her office. Earlier, when Osgood had to go to Sacramento, she discovered that the Amtrak station was three blocks in the other direction.
OSGOOD: I think that’s really the beauty of this challenge – it sort of makes you be a tourist in your own town. Because you know, we go to Paris or London and everyone is really excited to ride the tube, and it’s this fun thing to figure out, how are we going to get to where we want to go? Well, how do I do that in my own home town? Let’s pretend I don’t have a car.
To plan her trips, Osgood just plugs the start and end addresses into an online mapping site. The first leg of this trip ends when the train arrives at the Fruitvale station.
There’s a farmer’s market going on and Osgood says she’d have bought some groceries, but the 62 bus is already there, waiting.
From Fruitvale the 62 rattles East. Osgood pulls out her phone to read and send off a few emails. Then she arrives at MacArthur and it’s a short walk to the job site.
JOHNSON: So how long has this taken us? That seemed pretty quick.
OSGOOD: I think we left at 11:30 – it’s an hour.
JOHNSON: An hour? Not as quick as I thought.
OSGOOD: I’m just such engaging company! It does take twice as long, but once I get in the process and I’m engaged in something I’ve brought along to read, in the end it doesn’t feel too long.
And because she is able to do work in transit, she’s productive. Not to mention that it’s less expensive for the business. Still, if Osgood had to do two of these trips a day, she says it just wouldn’t work: she’d be spending her whole day on the road. Perhaps someday we’ll have those pneumatic tubes that can whisk us effortlessly to any location. But the people who have tried relying on our current system have often been pleasantly surprised. And as more people like Osgood and David Colburn begin demanding better transit, there’s a good chance it will increasingly serve their purposes.
For Crosscurrents, I’m Nathanael Johnson.
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