Raise the Hammer

Great article. The demographic they describe includes me. As a young man in Hamilton I spent upward of 30% of my salary on driving, when you consider being young and new to the workforce, car payments, and insurance for a young male. Gas to Burlington, sitting in traffic on the QEW hating my life and racking up maintenance costs.

After spending some time in Europe I saw how care free car free can be. When I got back I couldn't sell my car fast enough. Gas had just spiked to $1.40. It was a psychologically challenging adjustment at first. But very quickly the quality of life surpassed any (actual or perceived) convenience I had lost. The stress was gone - didn't care about the gas price. Didn't care about insurance rate inflation.

The only crappy and unnecessary aspect, was spending an extra number of years on Hamilton Mountain, suffering the huge distances and poor connectivity and road rage.

The point of my sharing this comment is, after having tried it myself, I can vouch that cars, in some circumstances, especially in the GTA, are more of a burden than they're worth. Not missing it at all. Private vehicles will always exist (thankfully!) but someday the pervasiveness, the conquering of all public space by large heavy fossil fuel burning things, will be looked back on same as smoking inside schools and other public places. The future will be good!

As for me ... I will eventually buy a car, yes of course. Currently the car free life is working so well, I actually don't have a purchase date in mind. Eying the evolution of Tesla/electric, and Toyota/hydrogen. At this point, still young and healthy, might as well wait for these to reach middle class consumer scale.

Add higher order transit, and safe cycling infrastructure, I am absolutely certain this mindset is more prevalent and latent than many folks realize.

Comment edited by mikeonthemountain on 2014-09-24 13:12:13