I would love nothing more than to be able to use public transit to get where I (and my spouse/children) need to go. I'm stuck at home every day that I WFH and my spouse goes in to the office.
A second car would be a form of freedom and the only reason we don't have one is affordability.
Hey! Only suggestion is to consider a cargo bike as your second car. I'm in a similar situation where the wife uses our only car to commute but I use the Urban Arrow bike to get around during the day to run errands, school pickup and drop off.
My main problem there is the distance to kid's extracurriculars means the bike solves only a subset of the problems.
What I'm likely to end up doing is importing a Japanese kei car; I do appreciate the bike suggestion, it's just most spots in Birmingham and the surrounding metro are bike-hostile
Bearing in mind we live in Birmingham, AL, and we have two kids + one car. We can't get them to everything and I can't do what I would consider basic things (like groceries) during the day
That sucks I'm sorry. Would a family cargo ebike possibly fill this gap in a more affordable and sustainable way? I hate that they aren't massively federally subsidized, but they are still way less expensive than a second car
The problem there is our road system, which doesn't have bike availability -- we have high car traffic (southside Birmingham, AL). Recently a child was hit and killed by a car a few blocks from our house; there is an e-scooter system but you can't get to groceries with that range (not counting cost)
I'm sorry to harp on this. Just as an example, if I had a cargo ebike (I don't, and if I had the money to spare I would buy a car) and its range could make it to [older child]'s karate class on the roads (it can't), I can't carry the equipment or handle a two hour round trip commute on a bike.
No, that's totally fair. I'm sorry the infrastructure is so awful and the places you need to get are so far. I'm privileged to live in an area with a relatively functional transit and bike network, and there are still some circumstances where driving is the only feasible choice. So much work to do!!
Even if I had all of those things and the time were compressed, I would worry every day that there are no safe roads on which to drive a bike. We just get hit by cars!
I absolutely loved the times I went to Chicago (used to work for a company based out of there). I could walk everywhere and if I didn't feel like walking the rail was high quality
Right! Like, if I could ride a _bus_ with my older child to his extracurriculars we would do it every day, no question!
We are within walking distance of a bus stop, but it doesn't help. The bus round trip is >4 hours to go to his karate class (for example) and it starts 30 minutes after school
This is kind of my point. Building around cars means building places with tons of empty space that take ages to traverse. Human scale places are much more compact. The kids in my neighborhood walk themselves to extracurriculars because they’re not far away enough to even need to ride a bus to them!
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A second car would be a form of freedom and the only reason we don't have one is affordability.
What I'm likely to end up doing is importing a Japanese kei car; I do appreciate the bike suggestion, it's just most spots in Birmingham and the surrounding metro are bike-hostile
Maybe it would be better if more places were built like this so multiple cars weren’t a necessity?
We are within walking distance of a bus stop, but it doesn't help. The bus round trip is >4 hours to go to his karate class (for example) and it starts 30 minutes after school