Will I be car-free forever?

‘Are you still car free?’ A former colleague emailed me asking if I would speak to a BBC reporter.? On a whim, I agreed to be interviewed.? One of many case studies, the reporter only selected a few elements of my story.? I have been toying with writing this article, because it is a very personal story and linked to an element of personal sadness.

Growing up I had a mother who was a quiet radical; a vegan in the 1970s and vehemently anti-car.? She was a cyclist and hated the fact that cars were increasingly dominated the road.? Once my stepfather’s car ground to a halt, she was glad that we couldn’t afford to replace it.?

In contrast, I felt that my teenage years in rural Somerset were curtailed by lack of easy access to friends, after school activities, or anywhere other than by the very limited bus service.? I vowed that I would always live in a city if I didn’t have a car.?

And that is what happened.? I lived in a city – several cities from London to Lancaster, and now Bristol.? I have never owned a car.? I didn’t need one.?

I didn’t have any strong reasons about my position early on. Then in January 1997 my life turned upside down and my views sharpened.? My eldest brother was killed cycling from his home in a rural Gloucestershire village.? Like my mother, he also actively shunned car ownership, and cycled everywhere.? But unlike most men of his age, he had not even learnt to drive.?

My brother and his wife’s car-free lifestyle appeared as one of several case studies in a little book called ‘Life Beyond Cars’, edited by Tony Smale and published by the Railway Development Society in 1993.? ?This booklet piqued my curiosity.? Why were people choosing to live without a car?? The sixteen stories were varied.?

Life without a car was a concept I decided to research for my MSc Society and Space (that’s Geography) dissertation in 1998, in grief and as a homage to my brother.? Let’s say it was deemed a bit of an odd topic amongst the cultural geographers at the University of Bristol Geography department, with a slightly derogatory reference made to ‘transport geography’.? The ‘new mobilities paradigm’ had not yet been coined, and climate change was a low priority in most people’s lives.?

Through my research my knowledge of why cars were ‘a bad thing’ was heavily influenced by John Whitelegg, John Adams, and other ‘transport geographers’ of the era.? My research made me question my own travel choices much more.? Did I really want to contribute to climate change, low level air pollution, and risk the lives of other road users? ?(Yes, all those things were established before the late 1990s.) ?

As I continued with my research degree at Lancaster university, car ownership was out of the question in terms of affordability, but I had already decided to live without one.? It was still easy then.?

Having children is often a turning point in car ownership.? Either getting a car or getting a bigger car.? The arrival of baby number one was our first car free challenge.? Lancaster as a small city was easy to navigate on foot, and my partner got a child’s bike seat.? Buses and trains held different challenges.?

How do you fold a pushchair with a squirming 9-month-old in one hand, lift it up onto the bus, along with two bags?? On that first solo but trip I gave my child to a friendly looking old lady and vowed never to travel on a bus again without help.? But of course, I did; I had to.? Back in the early 2000s buses didn’t have level access to the pavement; they didn’t have wheelchair or buggy spaces; they didn’t have storage space for a folded buggy.? They were not family friendly.?

A few years later in Bristol, the twins arrived.? Travelling by public transport didn’t get any easier.? Buses were still to be upgraded for easy access.? For a year my life centred around a 5km walking radius of the house.? A colleague had asked if we were going to get a car now that we had twins.? With a year off work and being the main wage earner, it wasn’t going to be a financially viable option.? And weren’t we going to manage anyway???

I did try a bike trailer for the twins but did not have the strength to get up the Bristol hills, even the minor ones.? Plus, there was the complexity of getting them loaded into it outside the house.? You can’t do two at once, so one must stay outside alone in the trailer on the street while you get the other from indoors.? ?The resale value was good.

For years we have lived in this transport ‘hair-shirt’ madness.? I mostly cycled or walked the 5km to work or caught the bus.? We bought a secondhand ‘Uplus2’ tag along attachment for the twins to cycle.? The older one was by then cycling independently.? We used the buses for day trips to the zoo, city centre museums, and kids’ parties in obscurely located soft play centres.?? We cycled up to three violin/viola combos 5km to the kids music group every Saturday morning.

Sometimes we handed our children to other parents with cars for scout activities, who suddenly made our lives so much easier.?

In fact, without out the help of other parents, my eldest would not have been able to train with his scout group for the Ten Tors events, as most of the arduous training took place in places a bus didn’t reach on a Sunday morning.? He wouldn’t have had the energy to jump on a bike after 20 miles hiking with a heavy rucksack.? This is where access to an occasional car would have come in handy.? We were probably the only family out of 2000 who left Dartmoor on foot for the bus from Oakhampton to Exeter and then onwards home by train.?

It was ok to ask for lifts for one child, but for three there was less willingness.? COVID removed that problem as the Ten Tors event was cancelled for two years and the younger two chose not to do it in the end.? Parents who give lifts need someone who can reciprocate.?

I won’t say much about train travel other than it is exceptionally unfriendly for anyone travelling with children in pushchairs.? I once spent three hours on a long-distance cross-country train sitting on the floor of a very hot guard’s van with the twins asleep in their double pushchair.? ?Many of our train trips were enjoyable once the children were out of the pushchair stage.? We visited Somerset and London, and took our annual holidays in Weymouth all by train with our family rail card to cut costs.? And then suddenly the boys were old enough to cycle further and I decided we should take bikes to France for a holiday.?

Bristol to Portsmouth is a three-carriage train once an hour.? You can book two bikes per train, although there is space for three, and even then, it is all up to the train manager on the day.? I had to book the five of us across three trains, planning for the 15-year-old travelling solo in the middle.? In the event, the first train was cancelled.? We ended up an hour later squeezing three of us, with another cyclist, onto an over crowed service.? Thankfully, the train manager on the return journey was amazing and enabled us all to travel home on one train.?

Now my boys are all young adults, and I look around at how the options have changed.? In some respects, there are more choices.? There are amazing e-cargo bikes with seats for more than one child.? Buses are mostly easy access with space to have a child still in a pushchair during the journey, if the space is not already occupied by a wheelchair.? Trains are the one thing that hasn’t changed much at all, and increasingly cost prohibitive to use.? And car sharing has not taken off to any useful extent for family activities, unless a private arrangement.?

I doubt if life without a car would be attractive to most people.? There is too much to lose in terms of perceived freedom and flexibility, even if the options are changing and the climate crisis is looming over us.? And let’s face it, family life without a car is logistically hard work.?

And what about my boys’ transport futures?? We haven’t produced overly keen cyclists, but the three of them are adept at using the buses and they will walk a fair few miles if necessary.? They are less confident train travellers, and the eldest like many young people uses coaches for longer distances due to cost.? They all noted, just like me, others at school had thought it strange they did not have a family car.? Two are ambivalent about learning to drive but see it as something they will probably do one day.?

However, there is a driving test looming for son number three.? He decided he needed to drive because (until last month) he was an apprentice in the construction industry.? For the last year he had reached jobs and college using public transport with the occasional Tier scooter.? It meant early starts, but it had worked well with rarely a time that he was late for work.? However, there was pressure to learn to drive from his boss and peers.? If he passes and acquires a car, then it will be the first one to be a resident on our drive.?

I am sure, once my son becomes a driver and can afford to own a car, our household members will quickly adapt to asking for a lift or sharing the vehicle for the odd journey here and there.? Yet I hope for all of my boys’ sakes that car ownership does not remain the standard fallback position.? Public transport needs to be more family friendly, car sharing needs to be more flexible and available, mobility needs to be a service to all, not only the single traveller taking simple A to B journeys.???

Looking towards a future where I may no longer work in a fixed location, like my learner driver son, I wonder how feasible it will be to continue a lifestyle without a car.? But this morning I got on my bike and pedaled the same old journey.? Actually, I rather like it!