I officially began my quest to reduce our use of our cars at the beginning of August, although I just began tracking the mileage on our cars this week. As a point of reference, here are the stats on our historical car usage. We bought our Jeep in August 1999 with 22,369 miles and, at the beginning of this week, it had 95,155 miles. We bought our Honda in April 2001 new and it had 39,147 miles at the beginning of the week. As a family, we have averaged around 18,000 miles per year in our cars, or roughly 350 miles per week. By my estimate, 125 miles a week were due to my travels to and from work, so 225 miles per week is really the starting point for our efforts. I have begun tracking our weekly mileage, and will report the results here. Obviously our goal is to reduce that amount significantly.

While I don’t have any official mileage totals to report yet, I have completely eliminated my use of the car for local trips since the beginning of the month. Considering I don’t have a job and live in a neighborhood close to a number of commercial streets, this has not been difficult. This is the proverbial low-hanging fruit. But we have had to change our habits and think strategically about every errand. There’s no more “Oops, I forgot the butter, I’ll just run to the store.” I plan to take possession of my neighbor’s Burley bike trailer this week and begin tackling large grocery trips and other large purchases on bike. And I have my wife on board – for the most part. I had a triumphant moment this week when we were discussing how to pick up a few pizzas for an impromptu gathering at a friend’s house, and we exchanged this brief but meaningful look in which I communicated “you’re not driving, are you?” without saying a word. Without complaint, she walked the 20 blocks round trip to the pizza place with our 3 year old in the stroller.

It goes without saying that spending more time on a bike or on foot in the summer in the Northwest is not a sacrifice. We are all enjoying the extra exercise and time outside and look forward to our next new car-less adventure. However, this endeavor has some real looming challenges in the near future: 1) our regular weekend excursions to the mountains or elsewhere in our scenic corner of the country and 2) the beginning of the school year and the impending return of inclement weather. I’m not sure yet how to tackle the first challenge (other than giving them up, which is not an option), and the second challenge is really about our intestinal fortitude at 8 a.m. in the face of a downpour or potentially delivering tardy kids to class. We shall see.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with an amusing story from our local paper, The Oregonian, about a compromise between city officials and the major car dealers on one of our “auto rows.” Every city has a street like SE 122nd in Portland; the street is lined with new and used auto dealers for miles, with dated strip shopping centers sprinkled in. The point of contention is the city’s effort to encourage more pedestrian friendly development on the street, in part by placing limits on new outside lots for cars. The auto dealers claim these regulations restrict their ability to expand their businesses and threatened to move outside Portland. The article mentions Northern California as a possible alternative (Yeah right). My favorite quote is from the planning consultant for one of the auto dealers, who says “They see car dealers as evil, but people love their cars.”

They sure do.