Car-Lite in 2010
Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.
With the start of the new year and my return to university for my Nursing degree, I have decided to make a radical change in my life as it has been for the last (give or take) 9 years: I want to be car-lite, and eventually car-free, in 2010.
Over the past year, I really got into riding my bicycle as a regular form of transportation, increasing little by little the amount and distance of riding I’d do. Along with that, my interest in bicycle advocacy was also ignited, due greatly to the lack of functional bicycle infrastructure in the Greater Miami area, and especially in my home of Miami Beach, a place that by all means should be a paradise for bicyclists. As I stand a couple of days away from starting a new phase in my life, I figured it was the perfect time to put into practice what I have been preaching to the four winds: a bicycle, especially when coupled with other alternative forms of transportation, can be pretty much all you need.
The truth is that for a few months now I have been chewing on the idea of getting rid of my car, a 1996 Toyota Camry. I like my car just fine, but I have fallen out of love with it and with the car-centric lifestyle. As I have used it less and less I have noticed that it hasn’t been that big of a deal, and in fact, it has saved us a nice amount of money. That was all well and good while I was unemployed and thus my car trips were few and far in between, but why not take the plunge?
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