Adventures in transit

Modern apps make transit SO much easier than I remember it being back in the old days of paper schedules and memorized bus routes. 

It's amazing to me that I've ridden buses and trains in lots of cities in the US and Europe, but I've rarely ridden a bus in my home city since I got my first car in late 1997. When I lived in Boston, I was all transit all the time. In the Bay Area, I'd often ride BART and would occasionally ride a bus in San Francisco, since driving there is SO not fun, and parking is the worst! If I was staying in the East Bay I'd either drive, walk, or opt to stay home and avoid traffic completely. In Portland the city traffic is usually reasonable, and parking can always be found if you're patient, so my default (lazy) choice is to drive. Honestly, I remain proud of the fact that the city is driveable - but let's face it, using transit or biking is a big factor in keeping it liveable here!

Thanks to iPhone apps, I've started expanding my horizons beyond borrowing cars and using Car2Go. The most useful is PDX Bus:

As in any good mapping app, I can put in start and end places and times, and it'll tell me what my trip options are. It also checks on the status of the bus and updates the actual vs anticipated arrival time, AND will let me set an alert to make sure I get to the stop on time, or get off at the right place. Finally, it integrates with our transit agency's app, so I can buy tickets and store them there, then access them right from this planner. Genius!

Another terrific app is called RideScout. I tell it where I am and where I want to go, and it calculates how long it will take and what it will cost, depending on how I choose to get there.

So if I want to go from Point A to Point B, it will cost me $2.92 and 12 minutes in my own car, vs $7.61 and 13 minutes if I walk to and use the closest Car2Go, OR I can ride a bike and burn 144 calories in just under a half-hour. (The second Car2Go entry assumes I walk farther, so drive a shorter amount, making it a bit cheaper but requires a longer travel time.) The app also calculates bus routes and costs, and provides great directions for transfers. I can tell it not to include my own car in the calculations, but I think it's instructive to see what it would have cost to do a given route.

For example, looking at the above options, at first it seems like a no-brainer to just drive. BUT when you factor in that it's a round trip, so I'd  have to find and pay for parking, suddenly the car really costs more like 40-50 minutes and almost $6 in gas, and $2-3 in parking. The bus remains about an hour, 1:10, and $5. If it were lighter and warmer out, I would totally hop on my bike to burn some calories before (and after!) I hit happy hour.

I've been without a car for three months now, but I'm clearly still getting in the groove of using alternate transportation options. I'm really glad I didn't rush out and get a new-to-me vehicle, though I'm still certain that will come with the new year!

More car thoughts

This weekend I borrowed a car (a Mini!) from friends so I could go to the suburbs and get re-certified in scuba. Then I dropped their car at their apartment and wandered through NW Portland and the Pearl District before I hopped in a Car2Go and went home.

I noted a few things:
 - I do like being the person who shows up in a cute car
 - The Mini had great highway handling and good lines of sight
 - The clutch on the Mini was a bit stiffer than the one on my Hyundai; I didn't love that
 - It was great to be able to wander around downtown without caring about where I was heading, as I could see from my app that there were lots of Cars2Go so I was confident I could meander to my heart's content and then easily find a way home.

I'm narrowing down my car wish/want/must have list. It's been helping to think about where I've been, since I've only had three cars in my life.

1. My first car was my dad's old car that I shipped cross-country for about $1,500, then learned it couldn't pass emissions, so I only had it for a few months before giving it to friends (who lived south of me in a less-emission-strict area). So really, I've only had two cars for any period of time... 
2. In 1998 I bought a 1985 Honda Accord two-door hatchback for $1,800. That car was totaled twice while I had it - the first time was body damage only, but the second time I was T-boned by a Caddy and the axle snapped, so that was the end of that, in 2005... months before my car was going to turn 21!
3. Since I was commuting 20 miles each way to a suburb (i.e. had no remotely reasonable transit options), I had to replace my car right away. I got a one-year-old Hyundai Accent two-door hatchback with 15,000 miles on it for $6,300. I kept it for nine years until my little incident a couple of months ago. Fortunately, this time I can take my time shopping.

 I've always been proud that in my entire life I've spent less than $10,000 on car purchases, and I never minded very much when my car wasn't fancy. I DID wish that my last car had air conditioning, so that is pretty high on my list for Next Car. Here's what I've come up with, in descending order of importance:

1. Low price
2. Clean title
3. Manual transmission (I figure there is less to break, and they are usually cheaper)
4. Low mileage
5. Reasonably newish vehicle
6. Air conditioning
7. Cute factor
8. Hatchback
9. Four doors

I'm leaning further and further away from going with a four-door. In my 16 years of cars, it's never been a huge problem that I only have a two-door. I really appreciate all the room that the hatchback model gives me, and I can rent a bigger car if I foresee the need for more passenger space. Yes, ideally I'd have a four-door.. but we'll see how it plays out.

Anyway, I'm not buying just yet. I still want to make this purchase with cash, though I'm not fully clear on the specifics - if I go to a dealer can I just charge it and then pay the bill later? If I buy from a private seller will they wait around for two-three days while I get a check from my out-of-town bank?  I want to leave the vast majority of my six-months-of-living-expenses in the bank untouched, and I don't want to tap my early house payoff fund, and I don't want to tap my fence replacement/new deck money, so I need a bit of time still to save up.

Of course right now it's sunny and dry: It's easy to contemplate forgoing the convenience of a car when the sun is shining!

Car browsing

This weekend I have a friend's Chevy Aveo on loan. She and her husband are openly scornful of it, but there are lots of them for sale on Craigslist, so I'm glad to borrow it and see what I think for myself. So far I don't know why they don't like it - the radio speakers are kinda crappy, and the engine is a little sluggish, but visibility is good and it's got a billion times more features than my car had!

In a way, I was proud of the minimalism of my car - no clock, no power windows, no power or remote locks, no a/c (okay, that was a bummer). It got great mileage and I could fit my bike in the trunk (when I put the back seat down and popped off the bike's front wheel), and I never worried about it being stolen!

I did always swear that my next car would be a 4-door, so I'm trying to limit myself to those as I browse the internet. I also don't want to have a car payment, and I don't want to spend every cent I have, so I'd like to buy something for under $8,000. BUT I also don't want a ton of miles on my next car. It's unlikely I'll get everything I want (low price, few miles, good quality car, four doors, air conditioning, recent model year) so I have to figure out what's most important and go from there!

At the same time I keep thinking about buying a winter/commuter bike. I visited a bike shop and tried out a couple, but they didn't seem like what I wanted. I think I want a hybrid with disc brakes and a rack... probably I should hit a bike shop this weekend and see what I can buy used.

I'd really rather have some serious couch time, so I may well make it into November without having added to my garage at all!

Car2Go: first thoughts

I've finally used my Car2Go membership - twice! First thoughts: man those cars are TINY. And: I wouldn't want to own one of them, as the transmission is pretty rough when shifting. And: the minutes add up pretty quickly! And: it sure is fun to drive and sing along to the radio.

The way it works is pretty slick - you consult an app to see where the closest car is to your location:

You can even choose your car and reserve it for the next 30 minutes, so it doesn't vanish before you get there. Then you walk up and lay your membership card against a reader in the front window - it must be an rfid chip. The reader indicates it's gotten the information it needs, and you wait while it checks your account. You know you're good when the car unlocks for you!

Then you interact with a touch screen to confirm the car is clean and undamaged; then you remove the key from its slot and insert it in the ignition, and you're ready to go! When you're done with the car you have to wait for some data to upload, confirm you didn't damage the car while you had it, and then exit the car and let the reader in the front window read your card again to conclude the transaction.

It takes a little time for each of the steps, but is reasonably slick and intuitive. Yesterday I used a car to drive a mile to a friend's house - mostly I just wanted to finally try this thing. Today I used a car during my lunch break to drive about 3 miles away from home, and then I ran home (exercise!). That little jaunt cost me $4.51, because traffic was a little slow, so I don't know that I'll make a habit of it. But it was nice to have a different route home than the usual places I've been running, so I like it as a concept.

Finally! wheels!

I finally got my Car2Go membership card in the mail. The mailer was very cute:

(cat not included, of course)

I haven't gotten to use it yet, though. Yesterday the closest car was almost a mile away, and today during lunch I used my bike to run an errand to my local bike shop - I'm starting to test-drive bikes for winter weather. After I tried a couple, I realized..I don't really know what I'm looking for. I've been on the same bike for a decade, it was built for me, and I love it. Riding other bikes felt weird, and not very comfortable - my knees were in the wrong place over the pedals, I couldn't reach the handlebars the same way, I felt crowded in the handlebar-to-seat area... I've been offered the chance to borrow a couple of rainy-weather bikes, and perhaps I should do that before I go any further down this shopping path.

Tonight I'm going to walk a couple miles to go to a brewer's dinner with friends, and though there may be a car I can take home, I sincerely doubt I'll feel I should be driving!

Maybe tomorrow.

Saturday I have an early flight, so maybe then.

It'll happen!

Carless continues

I had a friend in town last weekend, so borrowed another friend's car for the weekend. I reallllly appreciated having wheels at my beck and call!

I'm still waiting for my Car2Go card to show up. I'm frustrated that it's been over a week since they said I'd have my card in "a couple of days" - I'm headed to the airport this afternoon and had a carefully crafted Car2Go/transit route worked out, and now I'm reduced to asking for a ride.

What's funny is when I had a car I would likely have asked for a ride too! But now it's coming from a place of neediness, and I really hate that feeling. 

I keep looking at cars on Craigslist, and I've found a few I would definitely consider, but I'm not ready to cough up the money yet. Plus, I'm out of town a lot this month so it feels silly to hurry up and buy something, just to leave it in my garage!

I think this experiment will start to feel more real in November, if I last that long...

In other news, I've resumed running but not regularly enough that I'm in the groove. I went for a run last Saturday, and Tuesday. I walked 6 miles on Sunday and 3 yesterday, so it's not like I'm not using my legs, but it's very different. And, as mentioned I'm headed to the airport and expect to walk a lot but NOT run over the next few days. So, we'll see how next week shapes up! 

Car-less living: Car2Go

Not a lot of car excitement going on at the moment. I did run into a wrinkle earlier this week when I visited the auto body shop where my poor car is temporarily residing. Turns out the guy thinks they can fix it for juuuust about what the car is worth - between $2,000-3,500, though this is just a guess so far. He can also provide pictures of my car to a couple of scrapyards, and see what they will pay me for it. He asked what I'd want to get out of the car and I said $1,000 (a figure pulled almost wholly from the air), and he said that was probably reasonable.

I was really torn on the way home (in a little rain, on my bike). $3,500 to get my car back! My low-mileage rockstar car! For which I only paid 6k to begin with!

But I've slowly come around to the idea that the car is gone. It's not really worth that much money, and I'd be better off holding onto the cash until I'm ready to put it toward a different/newer car.

So, I'm moving forward with my car-less living venture. This week I joined Car2Go but I haven't received my card yet. What's Car2Go? It's an awesome one-way pay-by-the-minute short-term car rental service. You use an app or a web browser to see what cars are near you:

And then you proceed to the most-convenient car (you can reserve it so it doesn't poof away in the time it takes to get to it). These cars are sprinkled all over town:

You scan your membership card to gain access to the car, and then your credit card is billed either 41 cents/minute or $14.99/hour to use the car. You can leave it wherever you want when you're done with it (within a very good-sized boundary) - even at parking meters, without paying the meter, so long as the space allows the car to be there 30 minutes or longer. There's a joining fee, but I found a coupon code so I think I won't be charged that fee.

Since I signed up I've been obsessed with watching the availability of cars in my neighborhood. So far there's always been one around within a ten-minute walk. I will fully grant that isn't perfect, but it's not bad. I can see using a Car2Go in a few scenarios:
 - if I want to go to a movie and have cut it too close (or it's too rainy) to bike or get a ride
 - I might use the service to get to the grocery store, and hope there's another one around when I get out (and I'll shop lightly/make sure I have time to walk the 2 miles home if I have to!).
 - I can definitely see taking a bus or walking TO the theater, and then grabbing a Car2Go to get home.

Lots of things around Portland are about a 15-minute drive, which works out to a little over $6 - not an amount to splash out carelessly, but definitely a good option to have on hand.

I think my paid-for car cost me about $90/month when you factor in insurance, one tank of gas every five weeks, and the extremely occasional oil change, so I'll see if I can come in  under that for my ongoing transportation costs. I'm excited to get to use a Car2Go for the first time!

Car-less living, days 1-4

It's early days in my car-less living experiment - I'm not calling it car-free since a) I'll borrow/rent/ride in cars as needed, and b) it's not exactly something I set out to do on purpose!

The first few days were normal - on Saturday I was doing a hike with a friend, and she was going to drive anyway; that night I met up with some friends and got a ride with my sister, but I also could've biked it.

Sunday, I had plans to meet friends in SE Portland so I biked the 7 miles each way. Last night, I made plans to hang out with my sister and biked that, 2.5 miles each way. In both cases I would have driven, even knowing full well I could totally bike it.

Today I am going to ride my bike 10ish miles round-trip to the auto shop to sign some papers regarding my car - apparently they won't really look at it or anything until I've done that, but I bet I'll be able to get their gut on whether it's totaled. I might also swing by the DMV on my way home  A friend pointed out that it does still have some value in its air bags, undented doors, etc. so I'll see if I can get anything for it from the body shop or a junkyard.

So, that's about 25 miles in three days that I would not ordinarily have ridden, but that don't cause me undue hardship (unless it rains today... stay tuned). I'm going to have a car this weekend and am going to make a list of errands that will be easier with a car (namely: a fedex and a goodwill run, maybe groceries as well).

I also signed up for Car2Go today, but can't use it until I get my card in the mail.

I'm scoping out how best to get to the airport, which in the old days was a 15-minute drive - turns out it's a half-hour bike ride from my house, and there is a bike path that brings you directly to the long-term bike locking area. I think it'll depend how lightly I pack, whether that will work. I may also try using Car2Go + transit to get there in about the same amount of time, but for a bit more money. In the past I might well have gotten a ride, but assuming I go with alternate transportation options, I'll take notes and share!

Totally totaled!

WELL. I am pretty sure I totaled my car on Friday night. I'm fine, but my car is not at all.... I rear-ended a pickup truck going something around 10-15mph (I had the brakes on hard but couldn't stop in time; the airbags didn't deploy though). I'm happy to say there was no phone distraction involved in the accident, but it was totally my inattention that caused it. Sigh.

My car didn't have a high value (probably $1500-2000 or so), and I didn't have collision insurance because of that, so I won't be getting a payout at all. It was ten years old and only had 65k miles and would have gone another decade though.. boo!

Right now it's at a randomly-selected garage, and I guess I'll have to call them to get an update. Then I have to dig out my title and notify the DMV of this unhappy turn of affairs.

Then, I have to figure out: what now?

I'm definitely not willing to take on a car payment. That means that whatever I buy has to be paid for out of my savings. I also don't want to deplete my savings account! Lastly, I don't really want to give up much of my current lifestyle. I looked at my savings balances and I'm up $5000 from this time last year - but none of that was earmarked for a car purchase! The extra money in the bank is all for house prepayment and for a deck. I don't want to give up either of those plans.

So, I'm thinking about not replacing the car at all for a while - I'll be out of town a fair amount the rest of this year, and I don't have to have a car to maintain my day-to-day life. A couple of friends have offered to lend me their cars as needed, and I can bike to lots of destinations.

I've been crunching the numbers: additional bicycle (more suited for winter riding) vs. getting a new-to-me car... they're pretty compelling!

I know I'll get another car, more likely sooner than later, but ... I might try doing without for a while too.