Sell your Tesla (or any other car) and take the 30 Car-Free Days Challenge

Seattle is a Tesla town. Or, rather, it was a Tesla town (more Tesla showroom protests are planned March 29). There are a lot of Tesla owners out there regretting their purchases and looking to get out. But what model of car should they replace them with?

None!

Take this frustrating experience and turn it into a potentially life-changing personal or family challenge. I know how nervous it feels to get rid of a car, but I also know the immense relief of no longer being responsible for such a big liability. I was terrified of selling my car because I was worried I was giving up some of my personal freedom, but since watching my car's new owner drive away I have never regretted it for even a moment. Instead, I found so much more of the world opened up to me as soon as I stopped defaulting to the car and the same old boring traffic jams. Even after having a kid (now in 1st grade), we have never once wished we owned a car. Committing to walking, biking and taking transit is far more empowering than my ball-and-chain of a car ever was.

The question you need to answer for yourself is: Do you actually, truly need a car? Perhaps it's time to find out if you should join the growing trend of car-free households in Seattle. Issue yourself a 30-day car-free challenge and stick with it. 30 days is roughly the amount of time it takes to develop and change long-term habits, such as unlearning the instinct to reach for the car keys any time you have an errand to run. That's why you see a lot of 30-day fitness or stop-smoking challenges. Ending a driving habit and quitting smoking have a lot in common, though as someone who has done both I can say that quitting cigarettes was much more difficult and much less fun. 30 days is also enough time to work out the kinks in your new car-free transportation patterns. Having a larger goal helps people work through those tough moments when you just want to give up and go back to what you're used to.

The benefits on the other side of those 30 days are huge. Life without a car is so much more interesting. Every time I end up in a car in Seattle, I am shocked by how ugly the city looks from the city's busy car-centric streets and highways. Do people who drive everywhere think this is what our city looks like? The Seattle you see if you walk or bike is flourishing with color and animated with interesting people and wildlife. I am still stumbling across stunning places in Seattle I've never been before just by biking a slightly different route than usual. You could bike every day for the rest of your life and never see all the wonder that exists just within the city limits let alone across the region.

But biking is not always practical for every trip, at least on its own. That's where the region's excellent transit service comes in. Yes, light rail is great and all, but King County Metro does the real heavy lifting to keep the city and region moving. By the end of the 30-day challenge, you are going to love the bus (and have 100 opinions on how it could be better).

In this post, I'll suggest some rules for your 30-day challenge and include some resources to make it easier. If you have dependents who rely on you for transportation, then you'll have some additional work to do (including talking this over with them and seeing if they want to commit to it with you). For the sake of simplicity, I have written this assuming you are the primary driver, and you mostly drive yourself. However, this is your challenge, so talk to the people you drive with and modify the details to fit into your lives. If you have any questions, post them in the comments below.

The 30 Car-Free Days Challenge

Inspired by Disability Rights Washington's A Week Without Driving challenge, we're taking things to the next level. Rather than leaving your car at home and choosing not to drive, you're gonna sell your car on day 1. You're doing this for real. Here are some suggested rules:

Sell your Tesla for cash, not trade-in

Turn that money pit made by the Nazi-saluting, government-destroying, protester-threatening fascist's car company into a nice chunk of cash in your bank account. Due to so many other people selling their Teslas right now, you might get less than you'd want. But if you stick with this challenge and turn it into a car-free lifestyle, you will more than make up for any losses. Don't forget to cancel your car insurance! That's like $230 a month right there. Go have a nice dinner.

Invest a fraction of that cash into an everyday bicycle

If you don't already have a bicycle that is ready to carry stuff rain or shine, then it's time to head to a local bike shop. I highly recommend going to a brick-and-mortar shop since they will warranty both the bike and their service, and those warranties will likely cover the entire 30-day challenge. Their knowledgeable staff will also be able to tell you which models are up to your everyday tasks, including all-weather grocery shopping, and can make sure it is outfitted with the correct accessories like lights, fenders, a rack and bags. Also get a good lock since you'll want to feel comfortable locking your bike just about anywhere in town (I do). If you are planning on biking for most trips, an e-bike could be a good option. But if you want to combine biking and transit (especially useful if you regularly travel longer distances throughout the region), then you'll want a bike that can travel on the front of a bus. Again, your local bike shop employee should be able to help make sure your bike meets the bus requirements.

As an added bonus, a bike outfitted to haul groceries in the rain is also outfitted to go bike camping. So start daydreaming about your summer adventures.

Cycling Sojourner Washington by Ellee Thalheimer is out of print, but you can probably still track down a copy. I am also working on getting copies to sell in the Seattle Bike Blog shop, so stay tuned.

Invest in quality rain gear

You do not need to be uncomfortable in the rain. Investing in a quality rain jacket, rain pants and waterproof gloves will make rainy weather biking much more comfortable, and you will make your money back through the savings you earn by biking. You may even learn to enjoy it. For specific rainy weather biking suggestions, see our previous posts on the topic.

Get an ORCA card

If your workplace has a free or discount ORCA pass program, you definitely want to use it. If not, I recommend getting an ORCA card, then setting up autopay to reload your card's e-purse." Once you have your card, you can set that all up on the MyOrca.com website or the MyOrca mobile app. Then just use the card as though you have an unlimited pass. You will likely save money versus buying a pass, especially if you're biking and and walking for a lot of trips. If you use transit every day, then a pass is probably a better deal. People who make up to 200% of the federal poverty level, are 65+, are on Medicare, or receive certain other state benefits also quality for steeply discounted passes or fares.

Get the Transit App

This is a story that's been on my to-write list for a while now: The Transit App is not just the best real-time transit-routing app, but it's also now the best bike routing app for general use in my opinion. And no, this post is not sponsored. Google Maps has officially blown their once-insurmountable lead as the go-to bike directions app by letting the feature fall into a slow downward spiral in which it has been getting worse as time goes on. Meanwhile, a recent Transit App update totally overhauled their system for calculating and displaying bike directions, and it is pretty good. Not only does it often do a better job of suggesting routes (though like all of the bike routing apps it is far from perfect), it also does a better job of displaying the comfort levels of different route segments so you can make a more informed decision. I was impressed that the default route it suggests from Suzzalo Library on UW campus to Lumen Field is to bike the longer but much more comfortable route to the Fremont Bridge even though it will add 6 minutes on top of the faster route options that require more climbing and more mixed-traffic riding. If I were to give a new bike rider directions, this is the route I would suggest. Neither Google nor Apple Maps even suggest the Fremont Bridge as an option, let alone make it the default. Especially for someone who is new to biking, its cautious approach is more likely to lead to good experiences. Sure, you can save time by white-knuckling down Eastlake Ave (or Rainier Ave, as Google loves to suggest), but you don't need an app to tell you that.

The primary downside to the Transit App bike directions versus Google or Apple Maps is that you can't pull up the satellite or street view images to investigate tricky-looking spots. Never fully trust any routing app. If something seems off, pull over and reassess.

However, the real magic of the Transit App for this 30-day challenge is their Transit+ functionality. Make sure both personal bike" and the bike share options are selected in the two wheels" section of the settings page (also make sure all the transit agencies are selected under public transit and that Uber is turned off). Then when it calculates route options to your destination, it will also calculate bike + transit options. These multimodal options are nearly always the fastest. The app doesn't (yet) have a setting for taking your bike with you on transit (it assumes you lock it up at the station/bus stop), but even still you can see the power of combining biking and transit. These travel times often rival or even beat driving, especially when you add in the time it takes to park and the extra distance you have to walk from the parking spot to your destination.

Experiment, explore and have fun

Living without a car is all about finding and mixing together solutions that work for you. Give yourself plenty of time at first in case some part of your journey doesn't go as you planned. Once you've done it a couple times, you'll learn exactly how long things take. The nice thing about biking especially is that trip times are far more reliable than driving. Bike routes bypass most traffic jams, so you don't need to constantly worry about whether it is rush hour or whether you need to give yourself a 20-minute buffer in case there's a jam on I-5. Even getting stuck at a draw bridge doesn't take that long, and it's actually kind of whimsical on a bike because you can hop off and watch the boats go by.

It's also important to let go of trip time comparisons, especially for regional trips you are used to doing by car. Within Seattle, biking and transit can often be time competitive with driving. But the more of a trip that can be done via freeway, the wider the gap will grow between drive times and biking or transit. That's just the reality of living in a region with car-centric infrastructure and development patterns. However, time on transit is not wasted the same way time spent driving is. You can read, message friends, play video games, knit, watch TV shows, or any number of other things while on a bus or train. You're also still among community, which makes travel by transit more interesting, engaging and, sure, sometimes challenging. But it's real. Time on a bike also is not wasted. You get to see and experience so much more of your city than you ever could otherwise, and you're getting a lot of what I like to call accidental exercise." I have never been a gym person who can set aside time dedicated solely to exercising for the sake of exercising. When I'm biking for transportation, I'm getting daily exercise as a byproduct. Your doctor will love to hear you've taken up cycling.

Every time I write something suggesting that more people can give up their cars, some people respond with knee-jerk defensive reactions and a laundry list of use cases for why they (or some other hypothetical person) need a car. We live in a region where a lot of the spaces were built without walking, biking or transit in mind, and it's true that some trips are genuinely impractical without a car. This post is not me saying all of you can and should sell your cars. Instead, I am challenging you to challenge yourself. Ask yourself whether you need or even want a car. Are you really getting enough value from your car to justify how much you are putting into it? Is it holding you back? Only you can answer these questions.

Enjoy your adventure.