Carless no more

For the past 3 years, our family has been carless.  For the most part, it has worked for us.  Keeping the household expenses down while commuting on public transit throughout the city.  Sure, there were some inconveniences, like grocery shopping and going on outings outside the city… but even at that, we would either take taxis or bum rides from our friends and family and it was still cheaper than owning and maintaining a car.

But recently, we had been finding ourselves wishing for a car more often than not.  Especially for doing things with the boys.  Carting two autistic children around on public transit is sketchy.  Not eligible for Metro Transit’s Access-a-Bus, it meant at least an hour of preparation, especially if it was happening during rush hour.

Gabe (almost 12) loves taking the bus.  Scratch that, he simply loves buses.  He probably knows more about the fleet than most of the bus drivers… especially what ads are going to on them.  He refuses to get on particular buses because of the ads, or lack of ads on them.  He particularly dislikes single advertiser buses, like the Bell and Pepsi ones.  One day I had to wait an extra 20 minutes because he wanted to wait for the 958 – 60 Eastern Passage bus.  The alternative… him very loudly screaming “you can’t make me come with you” and having a complete and utter meltdown while judgemental eyes would inevitably scorn my inability to “control my child”.  So we waited, and sure enough, the 958 – 60 Eastern Passage came along and he happily trotted onto it where he proceeded to recite every ad on the bus until we arrived at our final stop.

Izaak (almost 9) is unpredictable on the bus.  Sometimes wonderful and easy… sometimes taking off his shoes and biffing them across the bus to hit some poor public transit rider in the back of the head with.  Izaak has very few traditional communication skills.  He talks in one or two word requests and answers, and is incapable of expressing complex descriptions about what he likes and doesn’t like and why.  He also has no idea how to appropriately interact with people.  So if we are on the bus and someone sits next to him that he doesn’t like the smell of (one of his hyper-sensitivities), he is likely to smell them then push them away by saying “no – bye bye” very loudly.  While I think it is kind of cute, the people whose smell he is offended by don’t so much.  And that’s a tame one… Izaak is getting to the age and size where if he doesn’t want to be on a bus, there’s not much we can do about it unless we are willing to subject a whole busload of strangers to one of Izaak’s meltdowns, which we are usually not.

So we’ve been really feeling like a car might make life just slightly easier for us.

We had heard about Car Share Halifax a few months ago.  I can’t recall where I heard about it, but I do remember that I had gone to the website and checked it out.  We flip flopped regularly about whether it would be useful to us and we could justify the expense.  Then about a month ago a friend of ours told us he was Retiring his Ride and he could either get $300 cash or have a $500 coupon to Car Share Halifax.  He had heard us talking about Car Share, and offered us the coupon.

Signing up was extremely painless.  The folks at Car Share Halifax are nice and easy-going.  Within one hour, I had signed up, got my membership number, had an orientation session, and was given the FOB to the Car Share Fleet.  I went from having one car, to having 8 cars, strategically placed across the city.  Even a Prius! For $9 an hour (M-F 6am-6pm), gas and insurance included.

Our neighbourhood lot is convieniently located one block away.  3 minute walk, tops.

We used Car Share a lot this week.  Mostly for transporting Izaak home from summer camp, and running errands.  I found hours last week that I did not know that I had in a day.

Another cool thing about Car Share Halifax is that it makes me feel good about being a part of it.  I am not only a customer, using a service… I am a member participating in a fabulous organization.

But perhaps the best thing of all is driving in a car which has facebook and twitter on the bumper.

So I’m sold, and I’m encouraging everyone who’s been thinking about it for the past few months to dive in and try it.  I can totally see how a service like this would be useful to non-profit and government agencies as well.  Pay-per-use is the smart way to have a car.  I’d also like to add that if it so happens that my blog has been that final convincing point for you to try it, give them my name as the referrer and we will both get a $25 driving credit for doing so!