Choosing No Car - What We're Thinking

We're a family of four living in the Boston area (Brookline actually, just a few feet over the Boston line) and we're planning to get rid of our car. Lots of people in Brookline and Boston live just fine without cars, but it's taken us a while to get serious about getting rid of ours.

For a while, the main excuse was the the kids were too little. But now they're 14 and 9 and perfectly able to get around by bicycle, and we live close enough to school and their friends for them to walk to where they need to go.

Gas prices rising to $4 a gallon gave us a good excuse to run the numbers again on what it would mean to get rid of our car. It turns out that getting rid of it will probably save us quite a bit of money (even with gas at $2/gallon). And it'll be good for the environment for us to be driving less, and we'll get in better shape.

Since Christmas, we've been telling people (it was even in our Christmas letter) that we're going to get rid of our car. Well, now it's time to actually make it happen. This blog will probably just run for a little while, long enough to detail actually unloading the car itself and talking about the subsequent changes to our lives. Our hope is that it might provide some insight for other people who decide to give up their cars and start using alternative forms of transportation.

For this blog, we'll both (and maybe the kids, too) be posting about our experiences around the transition, and we'll also be sharing all kinds of information about articles and organizations that focus on life in America (or at least Boston) without a car.