In March, our car died. It was a Volvo estate that we had bought in 2012 when we arrived in the US, already a veteran of nine years and 90,000 miles. After seven more years and 60,000 more miles, it gave up the ghost. Once the abundant smoke became blue rather than white, our friendly car shop quietly advised me to drive the old beast, very slowly and carefully, to collect $350 for the metal from a scrapyard in Brooklyn.
I had no complaints. Indeed, our local car shop, The Tire Place off Cooper Avenue, had been magnificent in managing the steady decline of our Volvo. For several years, works had been deferred with the instruction “just drive it”. They kept the show on the road without major bills, until the day of the blue smoke.
Once we were carless, we decided to embark on an experiment of living without a car for at least three months. In Manhattan, few have cars, because the subway is everywhere and parking is impossible. On Long Island, nobody could even conceive of a life without a car. Our part of Queens lies between the two extremes. The subway reaches us, so do trains and busses, but they are not convenient for every journey. Parking is a pain, but manageable. And nowadays there are Uber and there are ZipCars.
For the duration of the experiment, we decided that we would not change our lifestyle – if we would have gone somewhere before with the Volvo, we would find a way to go there rather than forego the experience.
In practice, we found a routine quite easily. We would typically take a ZipCar for a 24-hour period during the weekend. Midweek trips would either be by public transit or Uber. And for any need longer than 24 hours we hired a car.
This pattern was partly determined by economics, and contains the first thing I learned, or rather re-learned. In the US, nothing costs what it says it costs. This is so infuriating, and must be a disaster for anybody on a tight budget. If I had the power to change three things in the US, one of them would be to impose a law in which a quoted price has to be a true price, not a price before tax and after asterisks. One of the other two would be to fund education per pupil, so that needy kids got more rather than less (today most school funding is local via property taxes, so rich districts get more). I’ll think of my third wish another day.
So we learned that ZipCars were like everything else. They advertise a price of say $9 per hour (or $80 per day). But, lo and behold, upon logging in and choosing a time and place, the cheapest available car has suddenly gone up to say $12 per hour. So, you shrug your shoulders and press the button to book it, whereupon $12 has become $15.
That makes ZipCars quite expensive, only economic for single driving trips or whole days. Hence the hire car option, which, of course, is also not as cheap as advertised. And taking the hire car made me realise how excellent the rest of the ZipCar experience is, at least around Forest Hills. Each time I have hired a car from one of the airports, I have stood in line for over an hour while clerks perform checks that seem to me to be perfectly manageable by machines. By contrast, the ZipCar website is excellent, and I can pick the car up with no hassle from a place usually nearer to my apartment than I used to be able to find a parking space. Uber is equally wonderful operationally, so the combined ZipCar/Uber option would be tempting were it just a bit cheaper.
My other positive surprise from the experiment has been how much I’ve enjoyed travelling car-free. I’ve enjoyed plotting my way around strange parts of the borough and the city, taking busses and trains and subways to places I had never seen before. I’ve been on banker commuter lines and late-night party lines, and been the only white face on a crowded bus. Somehow I have been able to observe more because I’ve not been driving, though I’ve also had plenty of time to read.
I’ve learned that, despite its diversity, the city remains quite segregated. I also reminded myself how important mass transit is to many New Yorkers. Everyone should travel by bus from time to time. Busses have been reliable, but often very slow. Luckily, I am generally time rich so have been able to accept some long journeys, but for poorer citizens with unstable jobs, the time investment required to manage a life in the city must be exhausting.
The other experience that this experiment has given me is a feel for living with variable costs rather than fixed costs. Many of us have variable income too nowadays, including me from singing gigs. With a car, transport cost is heavy but is fixed, so you don’t really consider the marginal cost of any one journey. But if every journey is paid for directly, you really notice its cost. We have tried to live our lives as before, but you can’t help but notice if, for example, a trip to the volunteer home might cost $50 and four hours.
I am not sure if this is healthy or not. Probably it is. People on a budget who have made their costs variable can make choices in the moment and are less likely to be blindsided by large bills. But the risk is a sort of hibernation.
In any case, the experiment has now given us the data we need. We thought that the ZipCar and Uber route might work out well economically but be less convenient operationally, especially if services were unreliable. It has worked out the other way around. We have enjoyed the experience operationally, but found it more expensive than the alternatives.
So now I’ve been doing some more shopping, either for another used car like our old Volvo when we bought it, or for a lease on a new car. That has brought me into contact with another frustrating species of human, the car salesman. The funniest thing has been how many have directed me far, far away, assuming that I have a car. Why do they think that I am buying one? Oh, and they also all seem to think that I should buy a car on impulse the first time I enter their facility. Have they never heard of research?
Of course the lease deals quoted in TV adverts bear no relation to what actually has to be paid, after taxes, bank fees, registration and so on. No surprise there. So I have worked hard to work out the true cost, including insurance, which can be as much as the lease payments and could be a deciding factor – new lease cars cost more to insure than well-equipped older vehicles.
In the end, I think we will go for a lease anyway, because the car companies are so desperate to shift stock that they do make it quite affordable. One other joy from ZipCars has been to experience how cars have become safer over the last few years, with collision warnings and blind spot lights and so on. Even the most basic models feel safer and easier to drive than our old Volvo did, even before the constant need to check for smoke.
Still, I shall miss my long bus and train journeys. And I’ll also miss the fun of experimenting. Trying things out is often a good plan, since not only does it lead to better choices, it offers plenty of surprising lessons and new experiences. I have never felt more of a New Yorker, nor felt more in tune with typical fellow New Yorkers.
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