Life without a car

Now this is where I definitely see the difference between the US and Serbia. First of all, let's see why did I need the car there? For one, to get the groceries. That's most of the driving. Then, occasionally driving daughter to school (long story, actually, the whole last year I had to drive, because her school was 8 miles away, and due to budget cuts the school bus would take a hour and a half - that would be about a hundred hours of her life for the whole year). Going to the beach, a few times a year.

Scratch all that.

Groceries - don't need a car, the next supermarket isn't two miles away, it's two blocks away. And we're at the edge of town. If we were closer to a major street, we'd have three or more within a few blocks, plus a butcher's shop, an exchange office, couple of kiosks, a bakery and a Chinese discount store (yep, they're everywhere). So for the daily shopping, we walk; for more than that, ride a bicycle few blocks more (no more than 1,5 miles altogether) and enjoy the wider choices.

I walked to school all the time. The school is at the same place. For elementary schools there's a school bus now, in cases when the school covers a larger area (yes, we have fewer kids but city isn't shrinking), but for high schools it's walk or take a bus.

What if it's night, or raining, or we buy something that can't be carried? Most shops will deliver it to your door, if it's anything larger than a TV. For everything else there's the taxi. Cabs are very cheap - you can get across town for less than $3. Going out of town, you cut a deal with the driver, and there it depends, but you generally pay between 2 and 3 bus fares. If you share a ride, it's exactly the bus price for each passenger (minus the concourse ticket that the bus station would charge, which is about 65 cents), in the region of about $10 for 50 miles. The bus itself isn't bad, except the service in some areas has gone sparse - some routes I remember as regular are canceled, so to places where you once had 4 or 5 of them in a day, you now have two. Or they don't run weekends.

And having a car has its serious downsides. The new traffic safety law is severe, and in some aspects, ridiculous. The amount (and cost) of equipment you must have in the car is running up a considerable cost, plus the risk of a cop catching you miss one of those and writing you a hefty fine, plus taking off points off your license. Then, the gas(oline!) is expensive, it's 1,20€ per liter, which comes close to $6/gallon. Yes, the distances are shorter, but not that much. People manage by installing propane/butane tanks in their cars (which is completely legal in Europe - and completely impossible in the US, I wonder who lobbied for that), which is much cheaper, or drive diesels (and European diesel is much cleaner than the one in US). Diesel costs about the same as gas, at least the even cleaner Eurodiesel, but then European diesel cars consume far less - to the tune of 40mpg or better.

The sum total of this is that I don't feel like buying a car. I'm a happy walker/pedalist/cab rider.