Mostly Car-Free Transportation Costs for 2025

Car Free Day on Main Street

It's January 2026, time to tot up how much our family of four spent on getting around last year. We didn't drive a lot, so I'm going with "Mostly Car-Free" for 2025. We are still driving a bit more than if we only used Modo, but only about once a week. Our main forms of transportation are biking & walking. The vast majority of our trips--school, shopping, socializing, my work--are under 5km. Oli's work commute is about 8km, but he doesn't go in to the office even once a week on average.

A quick note on what I count or don't count towards our total costs for the year: I don't include bike purchases or new helmets because we would likely own them anyway, whether we were using them for transportation or not. I'm not including things like umbrellas, rain coats, or shoes, because though they are definitely part of what makes walking & biking doable for transportation, we would need to own those even if we drove everywhere. Things like extra food to fuel all the active travel is also not included, since I doubt we'd eat any less if we were exercising less. I also don't include things that my employer pays for, like my Mobi membership, or use of Modo vans to transport gear for work.

Driving

Our driving costs were less this year than 2024. We ended up getting a discount on insurance because we drove less than 5000km. Our gas costs were fairly low because we only did one road trip, some weekly appointments across town for most of the year, quite a few grocery pickups (which are totally bikeable, honestly). However, we needed to replace the battery in the fall, which was over $200! For insurance, that new battery, gas, parking (no free meter parking or permit for any street parking like with Modo!), it came to $2,129.36.

We only used Modo a few times this year, when the car battery was dead. Total cost: $78.87.

By the way, this Modo cost includes gas, insurance, maintenance, parking, membership fees, usage costs--everything. It's really so much cheaper than owning a car if you don't need to drive it daily. It's also much nicer to know how much access to a vehicle will cost you: since maintenance, gas, insurance, & most of the time even parking are included, there are no surprise bills for repairs or maintenance. If you're wondering what Modo costs, you can use their trip calculator here on their website to see what a trip would cost. Simply choose the type of vehicle, the time you want to use it, & how far you're planning to go.

Total cost to drive: $2,208.23

Cycling

This year I did buy a few odds & ends of bike stuff, like new grips, & a new bottle cage but most of the cost was just maintenance of our workhorse, the Tern GSD. I had work done on my drive train, I borked my derailleur & derailleur hanger due to an attack by a feral flying garbage bag & then needed maintenance on my rear hub. All of it came to $776.61.

Electricity costs are a bit harder to calculate, because it's only a few cents each time we charge our bikes. I'd say we spent about $8 on electricity charging my Tern GSD & the Radrunner. I'm not sure how many times I charged the GSD, & I haven't noticed a significant drop in battery life, but I rode it about 3500km this year. Oliver rides even less than me, as he mainly works from home, so I doubt he needed a full charge more than once a month.

Total cost to run our bikes: $784.61.

En route to Porpoise Bay with coworkers

Ferries

We didn't end up doing any family trips by ferry this year, sadly. I went on a bike camping trip to Porpoise Bay with coworkers in July, which included one ferry to & from Langdale. This fare is round trip--you don't pay on the way back. 

Total fares: $15.50.

Transit

This year was pretty minimal for transit use. I took three trips via transit all year, $17.20. Linny took one trip. Oliver didn't take transit at all. Bronte takes the bus home from school occasionally, but she is still free. That means our transit costs were only $19.35.

And, that's it for all the categories of transportation we've used, so... 

*drum roll please*

The total transportation costs for our family of four in 2025 was $3,027.69. 

This is less than we spent last year, & it still comes in at well under 20% of what the average Canadian spends for owning & operating a car. Part of this is that we don't have car payments, since we inherited this car & we just don't use it that much. We mainly get around by bike & walking because 95% of our trips are within 8km. It's usually more of a hassle to drive since we'd have to find & maybe pay for parking, & maybe get stuck in traffic (I know, we're not stuck in traffic, we ARE traffic), since the times we need to go places are often rush hour, when everyone else is on the road.  

So, how about you? What did you spend on transportation last year? Do you total it up annually? What are the upsides & downsides of how you get around? What do you do to save costs on transportation?

If you're curious about our past transportation costs, you can check out my posts on the breakdown for 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, & 2024 here.

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