I thought that I would not have run out of steam so early, but it has been a while since I last came up with a post! Of course nobody reads this but it is at the very least therapeutic to type up a post about being car-free in all its opportunities and challenges.

If you do a bit of web searching like I have about car-free typically the posture of the communication is that everything about being car-free is great and so we all need to do it tomorrow (e.g.)! For sure we should, it would be wonderful, but it is not without its personal challenges.

Beyond being immersed in places designed for cars and the hefty promotion of them in many of the ads that we encounter day-to-day, and questionning how much control we have over our lives, being car-free does probably require more planning.

Planning is required in all forms of living to at least some degree but sustaining car-free-dom probably comes with more demands than some other ‘lifestyle choices’ driven by convenience. In many ways the car is the ultimate response to the situation of ‘oh damn I forgot something at the shops and I really need it now’. Queue ‘brum brum’ noises and off we pop for one of those 61% of car trips that are under 5 miles to ‘fix the glitch’ (i.e. get what we forgot ASAP).

So for example, taking public transport as your alternative will require coinciding with it, likely the bus. If you have good frequent and reliable bus services, lucky you, but if you don’t you need to get organised ahead of time to plan your schedule as well as a back-up plan. Possibly you might need multiple stages and different means of transport for the different parts of your journey.

Although, of course walking, to the shop as with the ‘oh damn it’ scenario, generally doesn’t require any planning – although it helps to check the weather. Just as with cycling as long as you have somewhere to safely store your bike that is accessible and the bike is in good health to jump on at a moments notice.

So it varies. But when we are, for example, heading out on the bus on a weekend morning to get out of the city for a days rural wandering the bus is at best once an hour and we need to get organised to meet it, fed and with all our kit and food for the day. Sounds simple but does require a bit of planning although we have honed preparations over time.

Anyway, my general point here is that even with all the route planning guidance on Earth (Traveline, Bus tracking, Google directions etc.) in your car-free-dom using a public-means of transport requires thinking ahead. I mean my goodness to get the best train ticket prices in the UK you’re generally looking about 12 weeks ahead! So all in all you can’t Zen out too much in all your car-free-dom as you’ll probably miss the bus!

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash