November 1, 2000
Divorcing the Dodge, breaking up with the Buick
Author Katie Alvord promotes car-free or car-light lifestyle
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Walking the walk isn't hard for Katie Alvord. It's just a matter of changing attitudes and habits.
The author of "Divorce Your Car" visited Traverse City last week to promote her book and share ways to live a car-free or car-light lifestyle. Alvord came to town from Lansing via bus, with her bike ingeniously stowed in a custom suitcase, and left for her Upper Peninsula home Friday on another bus. During her four-day stay in town, she never entered a private car; instead she walked, biked or rode on a BATA bus to get around.
Just another slice of life, car-free style.
"I have been car-free on and off for eight years," said Alvord, who has not driven an internal combustion engine in two years. "I have really had a lot of fun using all sorts of different ways of getting around."
Alvord and David Engwicht of Australia, the founder of traffic calming, spoke to nearly 40 people Thursday evening at the Traverse Area District Library on ways to reduce car use and calm traffic. CarSharing Traverse and the Neahtawanta Center sponsored Alvord's visit while Engwicht returned to Traverse City at the invitation of city officials.
While each speaker had a different emphasis - Alvord to reduce car use and Engwicht to empower cities and neighborhoods to reclaim their streets - both agree that cars have too large a part in every day life.
"I think the main thing is not to treat your car as if you were married to it," Alvord said. "Don't think of it as your partner in life."
City resident Stephen Nance has already incorporated many of Alvord's car-light suggestions into his daily life. He bikes to work and uses his car mainly for kayaking ventures out of the city. He or his wife, Robin, tows their two-year-old daughter in their bike trailer for short ventures.
"When we moved back to Traverse City three years ago one of the reasons we chose to live in town was to reduce transportation use," Nance noted. "This talk re-instilled that it is the neighborhoods that need to be interested in what is going on in their streets."
While such changes may seem easy for an urban dweller who works just a few miles from home, Alvord said that even people living in rural locations could significantly reduce their car use. Biking, walking, buses and car sharing all become part of what she terms a transportation menu.
Despite living three miles from a small town in the Upper Peninsula, Alvord and her husband live a car-light life. They walk, bike, kayak and take the bus to get around, only occasionally driving her husband's car or their solar-powered car. This lifestyle has many benefits, including easy exercise and weight loss, a greater sense of well being, not contributing to air and noise pollution and fun.
Changing your mindset about travel is the bottom line, Alvord said, noting that more than a quarter of all car trips are for distances less than a mile and 14 percent of trips are for less than a half mile. Deciding to walk or bike, instead of drive, for these shorter trips is one way to move toward a car-light life.
Medium distance trips require more creativity, with car-free travelers using a combination of modes or even borrowing or renting a car. Long-distance ventures may incorporate public transportation such as a bus, train or airplane. For daily life, cargo carriers for bikes can help haul everything from groceries to kids to canoes.
"According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, driving is the number one most environmentally harmful activity," said Alvord, noting that the world's car population was growing at a faster rate than the human population. "Divorcing your car can really help you live happily ever after."
For Engwicht, minimizing car use is more a matter of cities and neighborhoods reclaiming their streets and making drivers adapt to their needs, not the other way around. He conceived of the idea of traffic calming to do just that: slow down drivers and bring people out into their streets, both as residents, workers and shoppers.
"The goal in slowing traffic is to really build quality of life in the neighborhood," Engwicht noted. "This is about co-existence, a better balance for the ways we use our streets."