Ask RiotACT: Drawbacks to becoming a one car couple?

Damien Haas said :

When I moved from Campbell to Belco I chose a home right next to a bus stop, so I could use public transport every day to get to work in Russell.
As well as being easier than driving and parking I read books and relaxed for about an hour a day. I was also able to shop quickly in Civic and Belco Mall for groceries while waiting for my connecting local bus. Once you start to factor in public transport to your daily patterns, it becomes second nature, makes your life a lot easier and frees up time for other things.

I look forward to hearing how your family and yourself fare with a one car household. So many families could do a similar thing and free up time for themselves and save money.

Good luck with reading and relaxing while standing on a tram clutching a grab strap then.

And how does one “free up time and save money” by waiting for public transport which very often is late or doesn’t show up?

When I moved from Campbell to Belco I chose a home right next to a bus stop, so I could use public transport every day to get to work in Russell.
As well as being easier than driving and parking I read books and relaxed for about an hour a day. I was also able to shop quickly in Civic and Belco Mall for groceries while waiting for my connecting local bus. Once you start to factor in public transport to your daily patterns, it becomes second nature, makes your life a lot easier and frees up time for other things.

I look forward to hearing how your family and yourself fare with a one car household. So many families could do a similar thing and free up time for themselves and save money.

We are a one car family, but this works for us by our choice of where we live – we live walking distance to both my husband’s work and mine. We have 2 young children that we can drop off at childcare by foot en route. The local shops are a short walk from home. The local primary school is also walking distance away. If we lived further from work, it would be a lot less appealing as I have little faith in Canberra’s public transport system.

We have survived easily with one car. We have three kids in primary school. A combination of cycling, buses and a little bit of planning. Consider a station wagon instead of an SUV. Better handling and lower fuel consumption for the same cargo capacity.

We’ve just done the reverse, moved from one car to two after having a child. Given our experience I’d estimate that your savings will be about half what you expect, but the cost to your lifestyle will be smaller than you expect.

When we had one car it was driven a lot, probably 30-35k per year between the two of us so you’re really just rolling all of the depreciation and fuel costs into a single vehicle. Since getting a second car our total k’s have only increased 5-10k per year, so each car is doing a lot less kms.

You will obviously save quite a lot on rego and insurance though, but not nearly as much as you would think.

We got rid of our second car two years ago and we’ve never had an issue, we have two kids under the age of 6. I cycle to work daily, my wife cycles twice a week. We’ve never had a clash as we do most things together.
We’ve saved just over $4k per year, which has gone straight on the mortgage. I’ve only had to catch a taxi twice in two years because it has been bucketing with rain as I’ve been leaving work and cycling home is not an option.

I’d recommend it, but just make sure you work through and agree on a position for any times that you may both need a car.
We also did have to hire a car for a few days while ours was in for repairs, but still the cost of hiring was lower than owning. In fact it would have been cheaper to have caught a taxi, but not being able to get the kids around in taxi due to a lack of a child seat was why we hired.

Good luck.

We went down to one car when paying off the home loan and saving up for the bride to have 5 years off work to raise the kids. I caught the bus to work. The bus was cheaper back then, even with free parking. We were lucky to drive 18k km a year back then. I did ride a bike to work one or two days a week too. Interest rates were higher then; 12% down to 8% when we finally paid it off. You’d have to do your own budget to see what the actual costs are. If the bus hadn’t been so convenient I probably could have bought an old Hyundai and done it just as cheap.

We have only ever had one car, seems to work fine most of the time. Have never been able to justify getting a second car.
It does help that there is a single (express) bus that goes between work and home for those time we can’t work the same hours.

But the car we have is a large car (not SUV though), mainly for the odd bit of trailer towing that needs to be done. Most of the time a small hatchback would be suitable.

Pitty we don’t have the rule that Switzerland has where you can have one set of plates but two vehicles.

Having the same conversation in our household due to the high standing costs of having two cars that are now relatively under utilised due to changes in work and leisure patterns, as well as the stick approach of the poor driving skills of a large proportion of Canberra’s motorists making driving a chore and survival exercise.

It comes down to personal choices – having one car obviously requires a bit more coordination with other family members who may also want to use the car, particularly as you have noted on weekends.
Unless you need a car regularly during the day (eg. for meetings, etc.), it makes little sense to me to drive a car into the city, park it there all day and drive it home again when the route is adequately serviced by buses from most parts of Canberra, at least during peak times. Then for the times you really need another vehicle, estimate about how many taxi rides you can buy for the $4k per year that you might save by not running a second car.

I also consider it quite ironic that someone drives a car to a gym.

And personally I find it unthinkably boring to go to a gym and uselessly use my energy like a hamster in a hamster wheel when I can be out on a real bike enjoying the variations in scenery, gradients, etc. While it might be enjoyable to go for a leisurely ride early in the morning or in the evening, I really don’t have the time for this so it makes sense for me to combine a bike ride with getting myself to/from work (but then my commute is only a leisurely 12km each way).