Not a Car in the World

MAYBE IT WAS WHEN THE GUY across the aisle from me on the #11 paused in his animated cell-phone conversation to launch a tubercular cough in my direction. Or perhaps it was when the 300-pound man next to me on the #908 rested some of his girth on my hand, trapping it against the 40 pounds of groceries resting on my lap. More likely it was on the Blue Line trolley, when my 4-month-old daughter wailed inconsolably while my 3-year-old son acted out a loud, violent battle with his plastic velociraptors.

I’m not sure exactly at what point during the two weeks in which I recently tried to live without a car that I realized: This whole Southern California auto-worship thing isn’t going to be easy to topple. My little experiment with carlessness was conceived over dinner with my parents. At the mention of high gas prices, my dad launched into a familiar diatribe that goes something like this: “The automobile is the ruin of civilization, and San Diego’s bus and trolley systems work just fine.”

I’ve been listening to this for decades. It started when I declared, in the throes of compulsive teenage self-consciousness, that I could not be seen getting from point A to point B in any other fashion than by car— not on foot, not on a bike and certainly not on “the Loser Cruiser.” So my dad started interrupting every discussion of plans with a bus route to get me there. To this day, if anyone mentions, say, a strategy for finding parking at the beach during the summer, he’ll scoff: “Parking? Why do you need to park? The number 35 goes straight there!”

For 20 years, my standard response has been to roll my eyes. For all I knew, he was just making up the busroute numbers.

But that night at dinner, my dad didn’t sound like such a nutty contrarian. The post-Katrina gas-price surge had fueled my paranoia that oil companies were bent on driving prices so high that Americans will beg the government to drill in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge and invade oil-bearing nations. Gas will reach $4 a gallon, and suddenly we’ll notice Canada giving us the stinkeye.

So I decided to live without a car for a few weeks. It wasn’t a boycott, per se—more like a reality check. If the auto-petroleum complex could orchestrate a surge in gasoline prices, maybe they also were stoking the Southern California notion that life without a car is unbearable. Because the fact is there are thousands of San Diegans who live without a car—they can’t afford one, or they never learned to drive, or they’re doing their small part to help the environment. How bad could it be?

Still, I don’t actually know any of these people. If living without a car were desirable, wouldn’t someone I know already be doing it? There was only one solution. I had to see for myself.

I‘LL ADMIT IT: I secretly hoped I’d discover surprising ease in life without a car. My triumphant revelation would cause San Diegans to give public transportation a try, and the ensuing cascade of events would alter life as we know it in the region. I’d be a hero. They’d name a trolley station after me, letting me cut the ribbon with those giant scissors.

Alas, about two days into my experiment, I realized I would have to attain hero status in some other way. Because here’s the executive summary on living without a car in San Diego: It can be done. But man, does it suck! I started off fairly optimistic. First, I crunched the numbers. Factoring in insurance, maintenance, gas, registration and amortizing a new mid-priced sedan every decade, it costs me $5,000 per year to own and operate a car. Pitted against the $720 annual cost of a transit pass, that’s quite a savings. Think of how far that could go in retirement, or in my kids’ college funds, or at DSW Shoe Warehouse.

Technology also makes things easier. I work from home and can do my job mostly electronically. Also, the San Diego Metropolitan Transit Association has a tripplanning Web site, similar to Internet mapping sites, in which riders can chart the best routes to their destinations. Unfortunately, this software doesn’t change the number of buses running or extend their routes, so essentially it serves to tell you, within a few clicks, just how screwed you are.

My first adventure on public transportation came when I had a meeting in University Heights, a 15-minute drive from my house. The fastest (other) way to get there was by bus, riding from my Point Loma neighborhood to the Old Town transit station, then a second bus to my destination. The 45-minute journey there was simple enough. Both buses were on time; in fact, the second bus was there waiting when the first bus pulled into the Old Town station.

As an added bonus, I got a fascinating demonstration of the many tasks you can accomplish when you needn’t focus on the road. Specifically, you can put on mascara for a full 15 minutes, coating every lash again and again and again. Then you can put on your powder, blush, lipstick and zit cream—and dial your cell phone to discuss said zit with a friend. How did it get there when you’ve been so diligent with your skin-care routine?

Having squandered my non-commute time on personal grooming in my home bathroom, I decided to read instead. This is another of the great pluses of public transportation. For people whose lives are so busy their to-read pile has become a tower, this is a godsend. During my carless days, I slayed a stack of New Yorkers that for months had been taunting me, calling me a lazy, illiterate slob. I showed them: I’m not illiterate.

My ride home from the meeting was somewhat less impressive. After I waited 20 minutes for a bus, the trip took two hours, weaving through Mission Valley. The second time we passed Hazard Center, I started to panic. Had I fallen asleep? Was the bus driver lost? When I finally got home, I chalked up the trip. I’d spent $3.50 and nearly three hours going 6 miles for a one-hour meeting. Still, I’d read a lot and learned something valuable about mascara application.

LATER THAT WEEKEND, my family and I were scheduled to attend brunch at a friend’s home in Kensington. I managed to convince my husband, Greg, to support my experiment of living carless in San Diego by ditching his auto when we did stuff together. It wasn’t easy. Not only was I asking him to forego his Sunday ritual of sitting in his own filth and watching football, I was asking him to do it on four buses and two trolleys. With two small children.

On the other hand, my son, Ben, was thrilled about the adventure. The bus! The train! Yippee! We went to Old Town on the bus, then boarded the trolley to the San Diego State station, then hopped another bus to Kensington. A mere one hour, 45 minutes later, we arrived a few blocks from our destination. If my husband was grimacing through this earlymorning excursion to begin with, imagine his dismay when I discovered I’d gotten turned around, and we had walked four blocks in the wrong direction. Taking a wrong turn when you’re driving is no big deal, but when you’re walking and lugging a toddler and an infant and their essential cargo, it is a capital crime. On top of that, it was chilly when we left the house at 8:30 a.m. But by 10:30, it had warmed significantly.

When we finally arrived at our destination, we were sweating profusely and wearing our frustration on our faces. And our hosts weren’t serving mimosas.

When it was time to go home, I pulled out the #11 bus schedule I’d had the foresight to grab on my way off the bus. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the foresight to learn how to read a bus schedule properly, so we waited more than half an hour for the bus to arrive.

Luckily Ben had his plastic dinosaurs to keep him entertained on the long trip home. Between his loud dino-battle and my daughter’s exhausted howls, passengers on the trolley that day were treated to a free dose of psychological birth control. We appreciated all the sympathetic glances from other parents, whose eyes said, “We know enough not to bring our kids on the train, but we feel sort of sorry for you.”

By the final bus, Ben turned to my husband and said wearily, “No more, Daddy. No more bus.” Then he implored, “Where’s our car? Where’s Mama’s car?”

Greg smirked at me. “Yeah, Mama,” he said, cocking his head. “Where’s your car?”

PROBABLY THE HARDEST PART of life without a car was putting food on the table. I’m one of those people who buys no more than two days of fresh food at a time, so I’m at the grocery store every other day. I tried to maintain this routine, but it takes at least an hour to get to the closest grocer, shop and walk home. Add to this the 40-minute walking trip to get my son to preschool and the 40 minutes to pick him up, and I barely had time to spend the requisite three hours on the bus for any of my other tasks. Of course, I threw two dinner parties during my two carless weeks. The first weekend, I walked to the grocery store and lugged the groceries home in a backpack. Not to sound like an old codger, but it was 2 miles uphill. Seriously.

The next week’s dinner party featured a more elaborate menu, so I decided that I would try out the Vons.com shopping and delivery service. I spent an hour early Saturday morning strolling the virtual aisles, disappointed that some of the items I needed, like rosemary and arugula, were unavailable. Finally, I had my order all ready to go. The site had promised that orders placed before 9 a.m. could be delivered the same day, but when at 8:30 I tried to set up delivery, I found the earliest possible delivery was approximately 16 hours after my dinner party.

I did find, however, that not having a car kept me lean and mean with my grocery store purchases. Knowing everything I bought had to be carried, I didn’t give in to impulses. I also plumbed the shadowy depths of my pantry and came up with some creative dishes that probably had my greatgrandmother, who saw her family of 10 through the Great Depression, smiling from the grave.

A few days after my aborted on-line shopping trip, I gave Vons.com another try. I was given a four-hour window for delivery, and when they finally showed up 3 hours, 59 minutes into that window, they had substituted several items with brands I don’t like. This had the added drawback of giving credence to Greg’s claims that he can’t do the grocery shopping because I’m too particular about what I want. Definitely would have been better off just taking a cab.

AFTER THE SOJOURN TO KENSINGTON, which could fairly be called an exhausting ordeal, I probably should have skipped the family outings. But nooooo. The next week we were to attend a birthday party for a 2-year-old girl, a friend’s daughter, in Pacific Beach. The route wasn’t so onerous—just two buses and a half-hour to get there, instead of a 10-minute drive. After returning from my hour-long walk to get a birthday present, we rushed to get the kids ready. Then Ben had a charming toddler moment in which he refused to allow us to put on his shoes. Precious minutes were being lost, and the bus came only every 30 minutes on Sundays. We were courting disaster.

We finally got everyone out the door and were one block from the bus stop when we saw our bus go by. Parenting tip: If you ever want to torment a 3-year-old boy, tell him he’s going to a really fun birthday party, leave the house, then turn around and return home immediately. It really works.

A half-hour later, we were on our merry way again—diaper bag, kids and gift in hand. When the bus approached, 10 minutes late, Greg waved at the bus, then turned around to make sure Ben was away from the street. And the bus drove right on by.

I jumped up and down and waved at the bus, hoping the bus driver would see us in the rear-view mirror, deluding myself that he would give a damn if he did.

I know it was the bus driver’s fault. Why would a man with a tiny infant be standing under the bus stop sign, waving at the only bus that services that stop, if he didn’t want to ride that bus? Yet, in my fury, I turned on the innocent. “Don’t you know how to hail a bus?” I hissed at Greg as we returned home, once again.

A few weeks later, I learned that our next-door neighbors, who knew about my experiment, had watched from the window as we returned home after the second miss. They giggled as they watched our family drama play out on our faces, then fell into peals of laughter as they watched me get into Greg’s car.

It was day 12, and I was admitting defeat.

Do you like what you read? Subscribe to San Diego Magazine »