Some parents rely on a ride in the car to lull their fussy baby to sleep.

Not Toshimune Suzuki and Kimberly Thompson of Burnaby. Their two-year-old daughter, Hana, has only ever had motion sickness in cars.

“She’s not used to it,” said Thompson, 40. “SkyTrain puts her to sleep.”

So do stroller rides. The toddler has put so many clicks on her wheels, the family is now on stroller No. 5.

But they’re not complaining. The family doesn’t own a car and they’re proud of it.

Thompson said they’ve eschewed the world of car ownership partly for environmental reasons, partly because of the cost savings, and largely because they don’t need the related stress.

“I see people in cars and they never look happy,” she said. “They’re always stressed about where to park or just stuck in traffic.”

Car-free life common in other cities

The pair have much experience living without their own vehicle. Before they met, Thompson spent eight years teaching English in South Korea where traffic is “crazy” and everyone takes transit so “there’s no social stigma.” Suzuki grew up in Tokyo, which also has a culture of mass transit use. Together, they lived in Sydney, Australia, where towns are more condensed and the bus system was adequate.

She concedes that their lifestyle requires living close to services and transit, in their case, the Metrotown neighbourhood. But with that tradeoff comes the ability to ride SkyTrain straight to work at BC Institute of Technology’s campus in downtown Vancouver for Thompson and a SkyTrain-and-bus commute to Suzuki’s job as an architect at Granville Island.

Life has become even easier since they moved to their current home about a year ago. They joined the Co-operative Auto Network, a car-sharing service, and have since used the car, parked just outside their building, once every two weeks for the occasional shopping trip to big-box stores, and day trips to Squamish and the like.

“For people who have cars, they think it’s hard [to live without owning one] but in fact, it’s not.”

It does take better planning, doing several errands per trip, and a need to suck it up when it comes to less-than-ideal weather, she said. But in return, along with less stress and lower costs, they get to connect with neighbours and the wider community.

“I think we’re missing out on that interaction. Humans are so social we need that conversation.”

Huge money saver

The car co-op is all part of a multi-modal transportation system, complementing transit, cycling, walking and taxis, said Tanya Paz of the Co-operative Auto Network. While convenient, car-sharing causes people to stop and think before choosing to drive, especially for short trips where walking or cycling is just as feasible.

It’s great for the environment, with a Montreal study estimating every person who car-shares reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 1.2 tons a year.

But the biggest selling feature of the co-op is the money people save. Owning a car costs $8,000 to $10,000 a year. That’s including the purchase, fuel, insurance, repairs, maintenance, cleaning and depreciation, Paz said. In fact, a vehicle is probably second only to buying a laptop computer, which is obsolete within two years, as one of the worst investments a person can make.

In contrast, the average car co-op user spends $150 a month (usage is charged by the hour and the distance driven), or $1,800 annually, which includes everything, even gasoline.

Typically, when people own a vehicle they drive more, simply because they’ve put so much money into it they feel they need to get their money’s worth, Paz said.

Getting connected

New Westminster’s Armida Beasley, 85, is one active senior. She spends so much time volunteering at her church and in the community that when Mayor Wayne Wright saw her waiting at a Quayside bus stop last summer, he recognized her and offered her a lift.

She accepted and during the ride told him that was the first day of an experiment—she was going car-free for a month and keeping a journal of her experience. Beasley had told her grandson she’d give him her 1990 Volvo when he turned 16 and she wanted to make sure she could live without it.

The car-free life turned out to be full of pleasant surprises.

She met all sorts of people while riding the bus and talking about her experiment. It was these strangers who told her about the good routes to take and the fact her bus pass was not only eligible for a tax credit, it could take her all the way to Victoria.

“I also learned we have the friendliest people in New Westminster. And nobody better say unkind things about younger people to me,” she said, noting they were usually the first to give up their seats for seniors.

Not having to keep her eyes on the road, Beasley found there was so much more to see, from beautiful gardens to the numerous Royal City homes with stained-glass windows.

The fit and trim senior used the opportunity to get in her exercise. She thinks nothing of walking home downhill to the Quay from Uptown or Queen’s Park. She just makes sure to take rest stops along the way. “I take my time.”

Before the experiment, she used her car almost every day, if not to volunteer gigs then to simply deliver homemade cookies or soup to her children. She admits not driving has meant a loss of some independence, but she gets around that by simply planning ahead.

She handed over her car keys to her grandson in June, with his promise she could still use it occasionally when she needs to travel to Vancouver at night.

Otherwise, she’s content to go without her own set of wheels, happy to spread the word that it’s easier than many people think.

“Life goes on.”

wchow@burnabynewsleader.com