Panel promotes car-light lifestyle

“People ask me ‘what’s wrong with my car?’ But really, this is not a conversation about that, it’s a conversation about choice,” explained Council Member Kevin Reich during a conference about alternative options to car dependence that the city of Minneapolis offers.  As a policy maker,
Reich said he wants to use his position to promote these alternatives, but by no means does he condemn car use.  “You don’t have to be a vegetarian to eat more vegetables!”
Reich sat on a panel with representatives from several transportation services, including Metro Transit, Nice Ride, and HOURCAR.  The main presentation was given by Gene Tierney, of the non-profit organization Carfree Life, which is dedicated to education and promotion of car-light lifestyles.
According to Tierney, 85 percent of car owners believe the cost of their car is less than average.  The main cause for this underestimation is that many owners don’t consider repair costs and other indirect factors.  The average annual expenditure for car ownership is $8,698, most of which is fixed and cannot be decreased by using the vehicle less.  Considering that most households in the U.S. own two more more cars, the price multiplies exponentially.
“Cars cost an invasive amount of money in our financial life,” said Tierney.
Indirect costs of cars come in the form of higher taxes through several avenues, including health care (affected by pollution hazards, poor physical health, and traffic accidents), and the cost of parking.  In Minneapolis, $2,400 is spent per person on parking lot costs.
Though she was not officially part of the panel, Rep. Diane Loeffler also spoke briefly about her hopes for improved public transit in Northeast.
According to Loeffler, the census bureau reported that there are 2,500 households with zero vehicles, and 7,200 more using only one vehicle in the Northeast area.  This “car light” lifestyle has been becoming increasingly more viable as transportation networks throughout the city are further developed, and while Loeffler admitted her job makes it hard to stay completely independent from owning a car, her own family has cut their car use significantly since scrapping their second car last year.
“It’s clear this community has stepped up and is living that kind of lifestyle,” she said.
Tierney attributed the advent of car-light living to the increase of technology, citing the “millennial with a smart phone” as an unsung hero.  Parallel to the rise of the smartphone, public transit has seen an increase in ridership, and companies like HOURCAR and other car-sharing programs, and Uber have been increasingly accessible.
“The prospect of going car-free in the city has undergone a revolution in the last ten years,” said Tierney.
HOURCAR’s representative on the panel, Chris Duffrin, spoke briefly on the inner workings of car-sharing.  HOURCAR was the first of this kind of program to come to the Twin Cities back in 2005.  Duffrin himself came to the company in 2008, and has since left to lead the Center for Energy & Environment, but gladly offered insight into the kinds of benefits car-sharing can bring.
The idea of car-sharing is that users only have to pay for a car when they need it.
“On average, cars sit in a driveway for 23 hours a day, and that’s where the real cost of car ownership is,” said Duffrin.
Rather than paying for the hidden costs of ownership while not using a vehicle, car-share drivers only need to pay for the car while they’re driving it. Every company works a little differently, but in the case of HOURCAR, users can reserve blocks of time with a vehicle and pay by the hour.  He said groups like car2go have a different business model, but the basic concept is the same.
According to Duffrin, the problem with car-sharing is that they lose money.  HOURCAR tried to get started in Northeast, but failed to gain traction. Other companies face the same downward slope in profits, but the rising trend in car-light lifestyles gives hope for the future.  Duffrin thought the best way for car-sharing to be sustainable is to be paired with other forms of public transportation, which HOURCAR did recently with Metro Transit.
The Go To cards used to pay bus and train fare can be used to gain access to HOURCARs, a gesture which boosted ridership with the company significantly.  Kyle Burrows, representing Metro Transit, agreed that car-sharing works best in conjunction with the use of Minneapolis’s extensive bus system, saying that anything that makes use more convenient for both parties increases ridership, presumably.
Extensions and improvements are coming to several routes in the Metro Transit system, according to Burrows. Route 10, which runs through Northeast along Central Avenue, is becoming a 24/7 service and will run all night on an hourly basis.  Only a few routes run all night, and previously, none ran through Northeast.
Route 30’s service is being extended to include weekends. The 30 runs down Broadway Street and passes by The Quarry. Previously, the route only ran during weekdays. Burrows stated that he and other Metro Transit planners recognized the 30 was an important route connecting North and Northeast Minneapolis, and given its proximity to major business centers like the Quarry, it was being underutilized as a means of transportation of workers and shoppers alike. Now that the route runs seven days a week, Burrows hopes it will open up easier transport options for both weekend work and recreation.
Additionally, route 11, which connects downtown with South Minneapolis, is
becoming a high-frequency route, meaning it will arrive at a stop every 15 minutes, as opposed to every 20 to 30.
The idea of these route extensions is to better connect Northeast to the rest of the city, even during late-night hours and weekends.  Transportation shouldn’t be a chore during off hours.
“People are using transit for more than just getting to work now,” he said.
Burrows also stated that plans are in the works to provide reduced fare for low-
income riders on benefits like SNAP.
The final panelist was Bill Dossett, who represented Nice Ride, a public
bicycle-sharing program. The green and sturdy-looking Nice Ride bikes are easily recognizable and scattered throughout the downtown zone and outlying areas. Like HOURCAR, they have had limited success in more residential areas, according to Dossett, but that hasn’t stopped the company from looking at methods of expansion.  Currently, there are 60 Nice Ride systems in the U.S., and 900 throughout the rest of the world, giving travelers a more nimble, motorless alternative to their cars (though Dossett said they may be adding electrical-assisted bikes to their fleet soon).
“We are not anti-car,” Tierney was quick to point out at the beginning of the conference. He and Reich wanted to present this panel as a way of informing people that there are other options that can be health-
ier from the points of view of expense, health, and environment. A lot has changed since the 1950’s painted the picture of the future being carried by self-driving hover cars.  For Tierney, the car of tomorrow may very well be no car at all.
“Cars will never go away,” said audience member Mike Melman, a longtime public transit advocate and rider. “People are spoiled rotten with them, but we are going in the right direction.”