At first, I loved living in Chicago without a car. My only obligations
were rent and utilities. For the first time in my life, I was able
to save some money.
I remember thinking about the trade offs of living in the city
versus living in the suburbs. A lot of people move to the suburbs
for lower-cost housing, however, I was looking at the whole picture.
I could have lived in the suburbs for about $800 in rent versus
the $1000 I was going to have to pay to live in the city. Living
in the suburbs would have required me to keep my car withthe $200
a monthpayment. Add in $100 a monthin gas (It was cheap in 2001)
and $75 a month in insurance and the total monthly expense for living
in the suburbs was $1375 plus utilities. Living in the city without
a car would run m $1000 in rent plus $60 for a transit pass (at
the time) for a total monthly expense of $1060 plus utilities. Even
if my car was paid off, living in the city was cheaper…..not
to mention the hours of my life that I could spend doing things
other than commuting.
In the summer of 2002, GE moved me back to Louisville, KY, so I
guess I had to buy another car. But now that I had a good job and
a steady paycheck, I wanted a NEW car. A used car just wouldn’t
do. Purchased a new Mitsubishi with no money down and a payment
of $500 a month (how American of me). I rationalized this because
my rent in Louisville would be about half of what it was in Chicago
and I was getting a raise to take the new job.
Aftr a year there, GE moved me again. This time to Chattanooga,
TN. How the hell do people at GE ever have families???? Beats the
hell out of me. I’d never work there again. In a nutshell….Chattanooga…same
story…needed to keep the car to get to work…spent a
ton of money on gas and a lot of time commuting to NorthGeorgia.
Finally, I got fed up withliving in the country and fed up with
GE. On a vacation to Arizona in the summer of 2004, I interviewed
for a job in Phoenix and 6 weeks later, I was living in the desert.
Now Phoenix is a huge city, the 5th largest in the US after Houston.
For a city that size I was more than dissappointed with the mass
transit network. The city is so spread out, mass transit just doesn’t
work. As the suburbs stretch further and further from the city center,
people drive furthur and furthur to work. Hour-long commutes are
not uncommon. I know because I had one.
It was living in Phoenix where I first began to think about the
environmental impact of all my driving. Where the rest of Arizona
is blessed with endless blue sky, Phoenix sits choking on its own
brown cloud. There were days I would commute into the city and couldn’t
see tall buildings a quarter mile in front of me. This is what happens
when 5 million people drive individually to work.
While in Phoenix I married and for the majority of our time together
there, we each commuted separately. After my wifes car finally broke
down, we decided to donate it to charity and carpool. It was a small
step in the right direction for the air quality in Arizona and a
big plus financially as gas was climbing toward $3 a gallon. By
this time, I had an SUV (the American dream right). Phoenix was
full of people just like me driving big, gas-guzzling SUVs 50 mile
each way to work. Was it any wonder why the air quality was so poor?
Earlier this year, when we decided to move back east to be closer
to our families, we were considering several midwestern and northeastern
cities. Mass transit and proximity to work were our two biggest
issues because we were so burnt out from our commutes in Phoenix.
We settled on Pittsburgh because of is location (midway between
Chicago and New York), geographic size (much smaller land are than
Phoenix = shorter commutes), and public transit. Within 2 weeks
of living in Pittsburgh, we cut the cord and ditched the SUV. Back
to having no more car payment, no more insuance premiums, no more
$70/tank fill-ups. We were free again, but not without issues. This
is a small city and we are definitlyin the car-less minority. However
with the right intentions, knowledge, and tools, almost anyone can
live in this city and without ever owning an automoblie.
