Not Quite Ready to Live Without 4-Wheels

Getting around Seattle is fairly convenient if you live close to a bus line.  Walking is another option, but really only favorable on days without rain.  Sure, you can bribe friends with coffee and gas money to let you borrow their car or drive you places, but that is a tedious task that often doesn’t pan out.  I tend to fall on the side of walking.  Only on rare occasions do I catch someone who needs to go run errands and lets me tag along…in exchange for coffee, of course.

Now that the grey season is upon us, I am beginning to rely more heavily on a car-share program called Car2Go.  For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a program similar to Zip Car.  You sign up for an account and, once your driving record is verified, they send you a card with an RFID chip built in.  This is linked to a personal account and tracks the amount of time you spend in the car.  Car2go is extremely convenient for those of us without a car as your gas, insurance, and maintenance fees are all wrapped up into the bargain price of $0.35 per minute (more like $0.42 per minute with tax).

I love that you can reserve the car for 30-minutes before hand to give you ample walking time, and that they can be parked in any 2-hour parking spot within their defined city limits.  For Seattle, that goes out past North Seattle and as far south as the Georgetown neighborhood.  The best part - you don’t have to pay for parking! 

Pick a car, any car

When a Car2go isn’t available, I use the Uber of Lyft apps.  Both of these operate using a phone app – you enter your location, request a driver, and they pick you up.  You can see where the car is, a picture of the driver and their name, and the license plate number.  The apps track the trip and charges you at the end.  You can also rate the drivers.  Lyft is interesting in the way that they don’t automatically charge you.  Instead, they give you a suggested donation price at the end of the trip and you have 24-hours to make a payment and rate the driver.  Beware though – lowballing the drivers gives you a lower rating and you may not get picked up.

Lyft cars have cute, pink mustaches on the front to let you know that they are part of the program!

This is what the Uber app looks like. Similar to the Lyft app above!

Jimmy and I choose to get around Seattle very differently.  His way is really much more cost effective (and something I should adopt), but I’m not quite ready to give up the convenience of personal transportation!

A Streetcar Named Seattle

Living in Seattle often lends itself to walking from one place to another for daily life. After all, in the days before widespread use of cars and buses, residents got around just fine through a variety other means. They usually walked to the store, home and work. Additionally they took the street car from the extreme north of the city to its very south. Boat travel was also a must when needing to get from one of the islands to the Seattle Isthmus or navigating across the lakes.


 



These days, you can still navigate a lot of neighborhoods via walking, and Seattle is pursuing a revitalization of the street car in the South Lake Union, Capitol Hill and North Seattle neighborhoods.



 However, most people drive their cars to work and those who cannot tend to ride the bus. As a result, you have a lot of congestion on a few main arteries: Interstate 5, Interstate 90 and WA-99 (Aurora).
Aurora might be one the ugliest stretches of road in the entire city. You can almost feel the automobile's growing pains since its very invention along this stretch of tarmac.










 For those of us without daily access to a car, we usually take the bus to get to work. I ride 20 minutes north and south each day to reach the community college where I teach. Most of the time, it's not so bad. I swipe my ORCA Card, a prepaid plastic card with advanced electronics embedded, to pay my fair. For those without one (a minority for locals) they can purchase them online or at transit centers where they can put funds on the card or purchase a monthly pass. This monthly pass proves a better option for heavy users.












I find this daily habit fairly painless. But recently I have made the trip to work in my girlfriend's car, when she dropped me off. I will certainly and readily admit that a car ride is a more pleasant and comfortable experience. Sometimes on the bus you'll hear crying children, loud teenagers and weird conversations. The waft of weed might even drift your way. Also, I am prone to motion sensitivity. For many the opportunity to work on the bus would be welcomed, but if I read while moving I get nauseous.

I don't really want to ride a car every day to work, and, quite frankly, I would like to see most people either live near enough to their work to walk or use public transit. However, please, OH PLEASE, let's get away from the bus mentality and return to streetcars. The modern models are incredibly smooth. I believe I could actually work on them. We could even make them more comfortable if there were the political will and public financing available. I'm ready to spend my life advocating for such a transition, and I'm glad Mayor McGinn has made streetcars and rail transit a main priority.

I have thought about biking, and I may still purchase a bike one day and give it a go. My main contention, Seattle has hills galore. BUT, they have many bike trails for commuting throughout the city.


Maybe I'll get myself motivated to make the leap towards bikes. They say you never forget how to ride one...

Be on the lookout for a post from Kirsten about how she sometimes gets around Seattle, in a car. But... it's not what you think!

-Jimmy