5 top tips for going car-free
Want to ditch the car? Or one of your cars? Here are five things to think about.
For many people, running a car is one of their major monthly expenses. You have to insure and tax it, plus there are the fuel costs, and servicing, and repairs… it all adds up. According to research by Kwik-Fit the average cost of running a car in the UK is not far short of £2,000 a year. And that doesn’t even include buying one.
You might have considered whether you can live without a car, and there are many reasons to do that. It might be to save money, or it might be for a healthier lifestyle, or because you’re concerned about the environmental impact of all those engines. Those are all valid reasons to consider ditching your car, or cutting down from two vehicles to one, and an e-bike can address all of them, because they’re a brilliant way to get about. E-bikes are cheaper to buy and run than cars, they’re zero-emission and they’re a more active way of getting about. If you’re looking at going car-free, or just moving from two cars to one, here are some things to consider.
Think about the trips you do
Every now and then you might need to take a bootload of rubbish to the tip, or pick up a new widescreen telly, but the chances are that you spend most of your time doing much more mundane things: going to work, or dropping the kids off at school, or picking up shopping, or nipping into town.
Once you sit down and actually look at how you use your car, you’ll probably realise that the way that you travel is in part dictated by the fact that your car is always available, and there are things you could do to make your journeys more bike-friendly. If you’re riding to work, can you pop into the shops on the way home more regularly, so you don’t have to do a bigger grocery trip as often? If you currently drive to work, is it a short enough journey to do by bike? if not, can you combine a bike trip with the train or the bus?
You’ll need to work out how many of your journeys could be made by bike. But be optimistic: research shows that e-bike riders make longer trips than regular bike riders. If you’re planning to go car-free then you’ll need to be able to cover the large majority of car journeys on two wheels. but if you’re only replacing one of your cars you have a lot more flexibility in terms of the journeys you do by bike.
Get a bike that fits your needs
Once you’ve nailed down what it is you actually need to do, you can look for an e-bike that’ll fit the bill. And the good news is that there’s a massive range of different bikes out there: there’s going to be one that’s right for you somewhere.
Firstly, what do you need to carry? If you’ve looked at what you use your car for and realised that nearly all of the time what you’re carrying is just yourself and a bag of some sort, then pretty much any e-bike will be able to cope with that.