#Modo Love Story

I joined Modo in spring 2003. At the time, my main transportation was transit. I biked sometimes & walked a lot too. I thought it might be handy to have a car sometimes, but had no desire to drop tens of thousands of dollars to buy a good one, or deal with a cheap but unreliable beater. Modo was a great solution!

Suddenly having access to a whole fleet of cars was pretty exciting, as I'd never owned one. I'd never  had my own vehicle waiting for me in my driveway 24/7, so the concept of making a booking online, then walking a few blocks to pick up a car wasn't a big deal for me. 17 years ago I wasn't thinking about reducing my carbon footprint as much as I do now, so I probably drove a bit more than I really needed to because it was such a novelty. Still, I rarely used the cars more than once a week.

Getting Hitched With Modo

In the fall of 2003, Oliver & I got married. We used a Modo car (our favourite one at the time: a little blue Volkswagen Beetle) to travel up to Squamish, where we hiked up to the Third Peak of the Stawamus Chief.

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To read the rest of the love story, head over here to Modo's website. 

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#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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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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#CarFreeFamily: How Much Does it Cost?

I love riding my bike & there are so many reasons why. I'm happier & healthier when I ride regularly. I feel more connected to my community & I've gotten to know my city so much better because of biking. But living in such an expensive city, the money we save from using our bikes as our main form of transportation is a big factor.

On Twitter recently, I came across this, which inspired me to open up a spreadsheet & tot up our transportation costs for the year too.

Transportation costs for #carfree family of 4 (all old enough to pay bus fare) in 2018- Bus fare, carshare, bike repair for 6 bikes (I don't do much maintenance or repair myself), parking and one new bike. In Ottawa, Canada where it is winter 18 months a year. $3375.

— bikeyknit (@BikeyKnit) January 8, 2019

After about an hour of logging into online banking, sifting through my email for Square receipts, checking each of our Compass card usage records, browsing Modo invoices, & calculating ferry fares, I came up with a good picture of our transportation costs for 2018.

Photo Credit: damiengabrielson.com Flickr via Compfight cc

Here's the summary for you:

Bike repairs, parts, & accessories: $1357
Modo car sharing: $1213
Car rental, insurance, gas: $400
New (used) bike for Linnaeus: $300
Ferries: $238
Poparide ride sharing: $207
Transit: $105

Total: $3820

This transportation includes the daily commutes to work & school (when I take transit or use carsharing to work it's paid for by my employer, so that isn't included in the above), all the errands & socializing, appointments, recreation, & whatever else we do around the city. It also includes three camping trips, three trips to the Okanagan to visit family, plus a road trip to Seattle & Portland during Spring break.

*Womp womp* flat tire #2 on the bakfiets

The bike repairs & parts total was higher than I expected, but this is for four different bikes, including paying to get flats fixed four times. I will sometimes fix my own flats, but it just isn't practical a lot of the time. When I'm on the road with the kids, I can't really keep them safe while concentrating on changing a flat. Our cargo bikes are a bit more complicated than a regular bike when it comes to flat fixes. With the bakfiets, we have a dynamo hub & disc brakes on the front, roller brakes & an internal gear hub on the back. If I can just pull the tube out & patch it, it wouldn't be too bad, but we usually need to replace the tube, which means half disassembling the bike.

We spent less than I thought we had on transit--this total represents an average of one round trip each per month. Our Modo bills are a little higher than previous years because used car sharing for two of the road trips, but we spent less on car rentals because of this. Overall, I think we spent less on car travel than previous years, & less than half what we spent per year than we did when we owned a car from 2006-2008.

It's hard to say exactly what our costs would be if we owned a vehicle. The average vehicle in BC costs $9,500 per year, according to CAA, but we tend to drive less than the average family. I used the CAA car cost calculator, assumed we owned something like the Honda Fit that we often drive from the Modo fleet. Looks like we'd be spending around $5000 annually in payments, gas, maintenance, insurance, parking, etc. However, owning one car wouldn't cover all our transportation needs. I assume we'd still make at least some trips by bike & transit, plus the occasional Modo booking to use larger vehicles or when we need a second car. My guess is we're saving $3000-4000 per year by not owning a car.

Have you ever sat down & calculated every cent of your transportation costs for the year? I highly recommend it--you may be surprised at what you find!

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Be Green & Save Some Green on Electric Vehicle Modo Bookings

With a folding bike, there are literally DOZENS of Modo vehicles within 10 minutes of home

Confession time: I've been a Modo member for over 15 years now, but I've never actually tried one of the plug-in electric vehicles in the fleet. I've driven hybrids over the years & a vast array of the gas-powered vehicles in the Modo fleet, but never an actual, proper EV. So when I heard that I can save 10% on booking Modo electric vehicles (EVs) until end of this year (December 31), I figured it was as good a time as any!

The kids are excited to try out an EV for the first time

I popped over to the Modo website & searched for EVs using the 'required features' filter. The City Hall Nissan Leaf was available--perfect--it's an 8-minute bike ride from home. We booked the car to go to our family's Thanksgiving gathering at a restaurant in Burnaby. Not impossible to bus or bike to, but a lot faster & more comfortable in a car, plus we could run a (heavy) errand on our way home.

In a flurry of getting all four of us dressed & presentable, I forgot to do any research on the car. After a decade & a half of driving literally dozens of different types of cars, I'm pretty comfortable with the quirks of each vehicle, like which side the gas flap is on, where the emergency brake is, how to get the trunk/back hatch open or if it needs to be manually unlocked, etc.

Family selfie time! 

When I arrived at the Leaf on my Brompton, I quickly fobbed into the car, folded up my bike & stashed it in the back. Next, to unplug the car. I pushed the button on the beefy EV plug & stuck it back into the charging station. The charging hatch latches closed automatically... but I wasn't sure how I'd get it open again. Decided to deal with that later.

I hopped into the car & yep, it still throws me off that there's no key, but a button to turn the car on. After poking that a few times & fiddling with what I realized was the e-brake in the console, I double checked the display on the dash to make sure the e-brake was off (it was) & the little nub of a "gear shifter" had me in drive mode (it did). I headed back to the house to load up the booster seats & children.

Lots of space for toting large, festive vegetables around!

Driving a hybrid is an experience the first time--the vehicle seems so quiet as you're leaving the parking space, but it still feels more like a regular fossil-fuel-burning car than an EV. With the Leaf, it took me most of the drive home to get used to the silent gliding feeling. Driving this EV reminded me of one of the things I love most about biking at night or in quiet trails. The silence, that feeling of slipping unnoticed through your environment. Driving the Leaf was the closest I've come to that feeling in a car.

When I got home & the kids came out of the house to see which Modo we were driving that day, they were impressed that it was all electric. After setting up their booster seats, we realized the back of the car is actually roomier than you'd expect for a family of four.

One thing of note about this Leaf, which is a 2011, is that it has a relatively small range. When I started the car, it showed a 99km, which was more than enough, as we were only going about 30km.  However, the range started dropping fairly fast as we were driving through the city & read 55km at one point. It does go back up a little from regenerative braking, but we seemed to be using battery capacity at faster than the distance we were actually driving.

Plugging in an EV is easier than getting gas!

After our dinner we headed to pick up some pumpkins for Halloween, then home. The little Leaf is super easy to park. Once we unloaded the children, pumpkins, & booster seats at home, I headed off with my Brompton to return the car. When I arrived at the parking spot, I pulled open the car details on the Modo app & took a look at this blog post for details on getting the charger flap open, using the charging account card (logically, this is stored where the gas card usually is). It took me maybe three minutes to sort it all out.

If you want to be more organized than I was & read up on some tips to using a Modo EV before you arrive at the vehicle, check out this video, or the aforementioned blog post.

Overall, I liked driving the Leaf & I'd be interested to try out one of the other EVs in the Modo fleet too, like the Prius at the Vancouver School Board location. By the way, Victoria & Kelowna also have EVs, a Kia Soul & another Leaf. All of them are 10% off until December 31. Check them out & save some green!

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