My wife and I tick a lot of “minority” boxes: we’re a same-sex Jewish-Palestinian couple with an ethnically ambiguous child. But you know what really makes us stand out? You know what always seems to cause people to look aghast at our lifestyle? The fact that we don’t own a car.
Being car-free was nothing unusual when we lived in New York, an outlier in the US when it comes to vehicle ownership. But when we moved to Philadelphia (one of the most walkable cities in the US), it set us apart. Whenever our lack of a car comes up, people do a double take. You can almost see the wheels turning in their head. Are they financially destitute? Are they radical environmental activists? Are they just weird?
The US has one of the highest rates of car ownership in the world: only about 8% of households don’t have access to a vehicle (and that’s largely not by choice); 37% of households have two; and one in five owns three or more. (By contrast, in the UK more than 20% of households don’t have access to a car.) And, to be fair, in most of the US a car is a necessity: the country is built around automobiles.
Which is a shame, because there are enormous benefits to living without one. I get tons of incidental exercise because I do my errands by foot. I save money. I don’t have to worry about maintenance or parking. I feel smug about my eco credentials. And I’ve got to know lots of my neighbours because I walk everywhere.
I’m not saying a car-free lifestyle is without its downsides. It would be nice to have the freedom to do impromptu trips away – particularly since getting rental cars is a little tricky after my wife was banned for life from Hertz. (Not her fault! She was innocent!) Still, the positives greatly outweigh the negatives.
Nor am I saying that everyone should ditch their cars. What I am saying is that a world where every family has multiple cars is unsustainable and undesirable. The US should be massively reducing car dependency and heavily investing in public transit. The Biden administration is putting money into high-speed trains. But cars still seem to be the top priority: a recent analysis found the bulk of money from Biden’s sweeping infrastructure bill has been spent on widening highways. All this while we speed towards a climate disaster.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
