The Ultimate Pro/Con List of Car Ownership

Pro:

• You can go wherever you want.
• You can go whenever you want.
• You can be cool.
• You can transport a higher quantity of goods.
• You have privacy.
• You don't have to ride a bus with weirdos.

Cons:

• You have to pay a car payment.
• You have to pay for insurance.
• You have to pay for repairs.
• You have to pay for $4/gallon gas.
• You may get stranded it the middle of nowhere and have to replace a flat in the rain.
• You have to share the road with 16-year old girls, drunks and grandmas.
• You have to scrape snow/ice off your car or be rich enough to have a garage.
• You have to sit for hours on clogged highways and streets because everyone else is riding alone in a car or live so far away in the country that you have to drive for an hour into the city except once you get closer to the city all those people living out in the country are still using the same highways and streets.
• You have to pay attention to a million things around you when you drive instead of sitting back and relaxing.
• You support and contribute to a method of transportation which is relatively not as good for the environment as other means.
• You support and contribute to a culture which encourages sprawl and suburbs and drive-thrus and strip malls and parking lots and asphalt and concrete and exhaust and highways that divide neighborhoods and cause the decay of inner cities.
• You don't get to meet with people on public transportation.

and as always, my favorite con--

• You are too empowered for your own good.

Here's a link I don't expect anyone to read because it's kinda TLDRish but it makes some good points about one of the things I discussed above, sprawl.

I dig revolting against cars, phase one in which Doris gets her oats

Here are some of the early ways we are going to get around w/o a car:

• I procured a carpool to my internship in Indy.  This was the most crucial aspect of the revolt that needed to be in place, otherwise I would have needed to get another vehicle.
• We have a bus that connects us to a lot of the things that we need to do in town, like going to campus or going to the store.
• If we ever do need a car, we are setting up an account with Zipcar, a sweet car-sharing service.

Since we don’t have a car and I got a little compensation by selling my shell of a car, there is the opportunity to spend pennies for every dollar I would have spent on a car for other means of transportation.  I still have to pay for gas for my carpool, but it is theoretically half of what I was spending before, plus less because we used to use our car for getting around town everyday.

The bus also has a $1 fare.  That is only annoying because I need to be thinking about having coins or one dollar bills.  I think it would be about $30 to get a monthly transit pass, but right now I don’t think I would ride the bus at least 30 times a month.  My wife rides for free because she is a student. 

Zipcar for us will be roughly $35 a year, plus $9 an hour we use the car. Gas is paid for, as is insurance.  This is a lot cheaper than renting a car or of course owning a car. 

I also want to link to a car revolt-friendly article each time I post.  Streetfilms is putting up a series of videos called “Moving Beyond the Automobile.”  Here is a video from the series.