#CarFreeFamily 2019: How Much Does it Cost?

It's that time again... time to tot up what we spent on getting around in 2019. I decided to do a Twitter thread on this, so rather than reinventing the wheel, I'll borrow heavily from that & add in a little more context, since I've got a wee bit more space here.

This year's transportation costs include:

• Modo Car Co-op bookings
• Poparide trips for Oliver
• bike maintenance & parts for our fleet
• Mobi bike share memberships
• charging my Tern GSD e-cargobike

What I'm not including is:

• the Modo bookings made & paid for by my employer, HUB Cycling, for work as a cycling instructor
• transit trips made two & from my work, because this is also covered by HUB
• all the taxi rides I took because of my broken ankle, which were covered by Worksafe BC
• the cost of buying my Tern GSD

I suppose I could include depreciation for the bike or something, but honestly, I don't know how long I'm going to use this bike or what I'd get for it if I sold it, etc, so it's really hard to calculate. The Tern GSD S10 cost about $7900 with all the passenger & cargo accessories I got, extra accessories, extra locks, & $818 in taxes.

Carshare, Rideshare, & Bikeshare

Took a Modo car on a dark & rainy night to B's choir concert

We drove about as much as usual, 19 Modo Car Co-op bookings, a bit over 500km, but no rental cars, which is what we often use for out-of-town trips. Our Modo bills totalled $708 for the year. So MUCH less than owning one!

By the way, if you're interested in joining Modo, you can get a $50 driving credit if you sign up with the code SPOKESMAMA.

Oliver took a couple of rideshare trips to the Okanagan via Poparide, one of which straddled New Year's, so I've only included one way. These came out to $136.

Our Mobi memberships are also quite low cost--$20 each--because we qualify for their Community Pass program. More details on the Mobi site here.

Our Biking

Tern GSD on the Seawall 

I estimated that the cost to charge my Tern GSD e-bike was about $0.035 per KM, or $37 a year based on the past 5 months. I originally included $15 for this in the transportation costs. HOWEVER, I grossly overestimated this by multiplying the kWh by the time it takes to charge, which is wrong. So ignore what I tweeted, the total should be about six times less, or a bit over $6 a year.

2019 was a good year for bike maintenance too. We didn't have many flats or major issues with our bikes. Total: $559. Less than half 2018's total. Part of that may have been because the new Tern GSD hardly needed any work & it was my main ride for the last five months of the year.

However, we did buy a few things like studded tires for two more bikes, so that bumps it up by $140.

P.S. If you are looking for a good bike mechanic, take your ride in to Clint at Velo Star Cafe.

Transit 

Transit cost us a measly $102 for the four of us. Other than my work trips, which I mentioned above, we just don't take the bus, Skytrain, or Seabus that much.

Some conclusions

A lot of our savings come from living in an area that has everything we need within walking or biking distance, plus pretty great transit & bike infrastructure. We really don't need to drive for 90-something percent of our trips. I realize it ain't the same in most of the rest of North America, but it doesn't have to stay like this. Also, I recognize that many people can't afford to buy good e-cargo bikes like mine--I couldn't either, to be honest, until I got a settlement from ICBC after I got hit by a car in October of 2018. Here are a few things, let's call them action items, that I push for in my advocacy work:

• We need rebates for e-bikes & to exempt them from tax so more people can can & will buy them. They're expensive, but research shows they do replace car trips, which can only be a good thing for so many reasons!
• We need to expand frequent, fast transit & robust carsharing in other cities so more people have better choices than owning vehicles & driving all the time.
• We need to build a well-connected all ages & abilities cycling network in all our cities to make it safer & more enjoyable for more people including children to cycle for transportation.
• More employers need to incentivize transit & active travel to work like mine does!

The Total

Photo Credit: damiengabrielson.com Flickr via Compfight cc

Transportation-wise, 2019 was a bit of a weird year. Because of Oliver's new job & my broken ankle, we didn't go on any camping trips or travel anywhere as a family. 2018 was a more typical year, & we spent a bit over double this year's total, which you can read all about here if you're interested.

All right, now that I've made you read through my whole TED talk (drum roll please)... here is the total transportation costs for our family of four in 2019:

$1691

Now I know some people might include the cost of buying my Tern GSD e-bike, but even if I had included that, the total would still be less than the average annual car costs in BC!

Now, your turn! What were your transportation costs for 2019? Including travel, all car costs like parking, maintenance, insurance, etc. I'd love to hear about it in the comments below...

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Three Money Saving Tips with Modo

All buckled in & ready to go

Last weekend we got invited to a special event at a movie theatre in Surrey. It was almost 40km from home & nowhere near the Skytrain. I checked out how long it would take to get there by transit or cycling & neither of those options sounded that great, so I decided to book a Modo car. Here are three tips I use to save a little money when driving with Modo:

Photo Credit: wuestenigel Flickr via Compfight cc

Trip Stacking

Rather than doing just one thing with our Modo, I always try to see if there's an errand we can add in along the way to make our trip a little more efficient. This time, we hit up Ikea on our way home, since we needed to pick up something for our kitchen. The detour to Ikea added less than a kilometre to the trip, & only a couple extra hours of booking time, so it cost quite a bit less than booking another separate trip to just go to Ikea.

Photo Credit: Phillip Pessar Flickr via Compfight cc

Think Short, Not Fast

Another trick I use to save money with Modo is taking the most efficient route in terms of distance. I 

Google Mapped the route & looked at each of the three suggested routes, picking the one that is the fewest kilometres. For some of our regular trips, to see family in Coquitlam, for example, taking the highway might be two or three minutes faster, but it costs $3-4 more in kilometre charges for the round trip. So we pick the shorter route, not the faster one. Over a year, those little savings add up.

A Kia Rondo can carry the four of us plus a small Ikea haul

Small is Beautiful

The other thing we do to save a few dollars here & there is to pick the smallest, most efficient vehicle size for trip. The vast majority of the time, all we need is something that will seat the four of us--we don't need much cargo capacity to carry, say a couple of birthday presents to a family party in the suburbs. Even Ikea trips are very doable with the Daily Drives category of cars--we drove a Kia Rondo & bought a kitchen cabinet, as well as a handful of other things at Ikea & there was more than enough cargo space in the back hatch for our flat packs.



The other great thing about these three habits is they are more environmentally friendly too--driving fewer kilometres, making fewer trips, in smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles minimizes your carbon emissions.

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Decisions, decisions: Carsharing, Biking, or Transit?

Our Honda Fit got us to Richmond in about 25 minutes

When you're going out for the day, how do you decide how to get there? We have quite a few options for getting around, including biking with our own bikes, bike share, walking, transit, carshare, & car rental. The vast majority of the time we just hop on the cargo bike--that's how we take the kids to school, to appointments, to playdates. It's how we get groceries & run errands. But when we're going places outside our neighbourhood, I usually think about how to get there a bit more.

Almost showtime!

I thought I'd share with you how I decide which mode to use when I'm planning a day out like we did today.

My decision-making process for a recent outing went something like this:

Getting a kitty painted on her arm

1. Google Map the location: Silver City in Richmond, then the Pacific Autism Family Network.
2. Compare the directions for cycling, driving , & transit: cycling would take about two & a half hours round trip, driving would be about an hour, transit would be almost three hours.
3. Estimate the costs of each method of travel: free, $45, $18.90. 
4. Cycling comes out as the winner for cost, though it takes twice as long as driving. So next I'd look at the route, hilliness, what cycling infrastructure there would be, if any. Richmond is pretty flat, but getting home again up & over Vancouver is a bit of a slog with a cargo bike full of kids. As for bike infra, there wasn't really a great route all the way there. I've biked to the Pacific Autism Family Network before & it's really not great getting on & off Sea Island.
5. What is parking like? Are there bike racks near the building we're going to? In this case, yes for PAFN & not sure for Silver City. Is it a high bike theft area? I wasn't too concerned with this for our outing to Richmond, but a number of places in Vancouver are fairly risky, so I'd be more likely to use bike share or another mode, rather than our own bikes. 
6. Next question is will we need to bring much stuff with us? We didn't need a lot of gear for a movie & lunch, but we did come home with a few prizes from the event. Not something that would preclude cycling or transit though.
7. Last question would be how much do we want to walk? My hip is currently sore & the weather forecast was for fairly warm, so I wasn't keen on walking far. Transit would involve the most walking, Modo would mean walking a couple blocks to & from the car to pick up & drop off. Biking would be the least walking.

Heading home with way too much candy & a short-lived balloon animal

So for this trip, as you've already seen from the photos, I decided to book a Modo for our trip. Since I wasn't sure when exactly we'd be heading home, I just made it an Open Return booking so we didn't have to worry about getting back by a specific time. The kids really enjoyed the movie, the treats & the games at PAFN & we were able to get home quickly in the comfort of an air-conditioned car on a warm, sunny day. 

Disclaimer: As a Modo Blogger Ambassador, I receive driving credits in return for posting about carsharing with Modo Car Cooperative. 

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3 Reasons I Love Modo (speech from the HUB Cycling Bike Awards)

Modo gave me the opportunity to speak again as one of their Blogger Ambassadors at the annual HUB Bike Awards on February 28. It's always funny to go on stage to talk about driving at a cycling event, but stay with me here--cycling is actually relevant to Modo in my experience. Here's the text of my speech at the event, plus the images from my slides, in case you missed it.

I've got just three minutes, so I made a quick listicle for you. 

Three things I love about Modo:

In January, I decided to total up our transportation costs for last year, including travel. Our biggest category, unsurprisingly, was biking: repairs, then Modo car sharing, a few Ferries, some Poparide ride sharing, plus a little Transit. The total came to: $3520. 

(note: if you read my post on the costs of living as a #carfreefamily a while back, I included the cost of a new bike for Linnaeus in the total of $3820, but I decided to remove that, since we'd likely have bought him a bike even if we mainly used two cars to get around)

For comparison sake, if we'd done the majority of that by car, we'd have needed to own two. Based on the average in BC, that would have cost us about $19,000 last year. !! Since we spend well under $4000 on getting around, that's a savings of over $15,000!

I know a lot of Modo's messaging is about how fun it is, how much money we save, how we have access to all different types of vehicles, & how easy it is to book... This is all true. But part of what I love about Modo is the *inconvenience* of carsharing. Because, let's face it, I am a little lazy. I want to get there in the fastest, easiest way possible. Which, if I had a car sitting out front of my home, would often be driving. Because I *don't* own a car, I have to take a few extra steps to book a car, then walk a couple blocks to go get it. Plus, if you have children, installing the car seats. Compared to this, riding my cargo bike out of the garage is more convenient. So my driving is a lot more intentional. Using Modo & not owning a car makes me less likely to drive & much more likely to bike.

The latest new thing for Modo members is here: Open Return! Open Return is a new booking option that allows you to reserve a car for a full 24 hours, & return it whenever you want within that time. Once you park the car & fob out, you go to the Modo app & end your booking manually, paying for just the time that you used, plus a $3 fee.

As I mentioned, we mainly bike to get around, but when we do drive, now we book with Open Return. It's hard to predict in advance how the day is going to go when we're out & about with the kids. Using Open Return means if they get tired we can come home early & save a bit on our booking. Then the car is available for another member to use. Or we can stay out later & not have to worry about rushing home because someone else has the car booked right after us. No need to worry about getting stuck in traffic. & we can squeeze in one more errand on the way home.

IF you haven't joined Modo yet, use the code HUBAWARDS2019 to save $50 on drive time when you join! For more about open return, check out Modo's website. Members, if you haven't already, try Open Return on your next booking! 

If you'd like to see how we live as a #carfreefamily, you can follow me on instagram, my handle is SPOKESMAMA. Thank you.

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Save $50 on Drive Time with Modo Car Sharing

A perk for my Metro Vancouver, Vancouver Island, & Okanagan readers: if you are interested in signing up for Modo to start carsharing, you can save $50! 

Picking up the colourful Modo cargo van at Olympic Village Station

Modo is your only local member-owned carshare service with over 700+ cars, SUVs, trucks & hybrids. Carsharing with Modo starts at $5/hour with vehicles located in North Vancouver, UBC, Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Surrey, Richmond, Coquitlam, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Victoria, Esquimalt, Oak Bay, Saanich, Sidney, Squamish, the Sunshine Coast, Nanaimo & Kelowna. Modo also has vehicles at Tsawwassen, Swartz Bay, Horseshoe Bay & Departure Bay ferry terminals!

In collaboration with Spokesmama, Modo is offering $50 in driving credit for Spokemama’s followers/blog readers. Use code SPOKESMAMA when signing up as a new Modo member. Promo expires two months after redemption. The credit applies to vehicle usage only. Learn more at modo.coop.

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