Posted by One of the appeals of city living is that automobile ownership, in many cases, is optional. Can’t afford a car? While not always ideal, most cities allow for relatively practical options for walking, biking and using public transit to access essential goods and services.
Today, let’s have a little fun looking at what it would be like if my wife and I didn’t have a car where we live today on the border of Rochester, New York and the progressive first-ring suburb of Brighton, New York. We will compare this with where I grew up in Victor, New York, a third-ring suburb of Rochester, again assuming that owning a car is not possible. The marker will be the essential task of getting groceries, specifically an abundance of fresh produce, thus ruling out mini-marts, bodegas and Dollar General.
The engine for this comparison will be Google Maps, which calculates requested directions for a car trip, a transit trip, a bike trip and a walking trip (and by airline, which we will ignore for obvious reasons). Most people don’t look past the driving directions, but in this case, we will pay exclusive attention to the other options, as we are assuming that we can’t afford a car, or choose not to own a car for environmental, social and public safety reasons.
Maple Avenue in Victor, New York was in large part where I grew up. The rent was cheap and we didn’t have much money. The two cars my mom owned while living here were a base model Ford Escort and a Plymouth Colt, two of the most stripped-down basic economy cars of the 80s and 90s. But as mentioned before, let’s imagine that we could not, or rather didn’t have to own a car. What would it have taken to get groceries?
The only grocer in reasonable proximity was Wade’s Sure Fine Market (Now Tops). The below image shows that it would take an 18 minute bike ride and a 1 hour and 6 minute walk to access this grocer from where we lived in Victor.
Breaking this down further, the 18-minute bike trip includes a significant portion of bike trail that, while amazingly safe and practical, is not accessible for at least 4 months of the year due to the fact that the Rochester Metro is one of the leaders in snowfall in our country annually.
And the walking trip does not account for the fact that a significant portion of this on-foot experience does not include a sidewalk. Get used to walking in the road with bags of groceries as cars pass at 50mph along Route 96.
And as with most rural and small town suburbs, there is no practical public transit option here.
In contrast, let’s look at where my wife and I live today. From our apartment on Lilac Drive, we have the following options. With just a 6-minute bike ride, a 25-minute walk, and a 21-minute walk/bus ride, we can access a legitimate grocer in Tops Friendly Markets without owning a car in a fraction of the time in comparison to my former residence in Victor.
Furthermore, we can also access the Abundance Co-Op in a similar amount of time.
If you’re counting at home, that’s access to two different grocers in under a 10 minute bike ride, a 34 minute walk and a 23 minute walk/transit experience. That is about half the time for every non-car trip in comparison to my old stomping grounds of Victor, New York.
On top of this, we live on the border of Rochester and nearby Brighton, so we don’t even live in the most dense neighborhood where a walk to a grocery store might be a couple of minutes.
One quarter of Rochester households do not own a car, and most of those are because they are financially incapable of doing so. As a result, these families are left with limited options of under-funded public transit and exorbitantly-priced ride share options. In a community like Victor, with even more limited and difficult options listed above, the choice of moving to a suburban community for a better educational opportunity and a safer community for families is literally impossible.
Car-only development plays king in suburban communities, and nearly eliminates any chance for the upward mobility of our poorest citizens who are historically people of color. If owning and maintaining a car is out of the question financially, suburban living in most of the United States is simply not an option. And this “pay to play” suburban dynamic is not by chance… it’s intentional, strategic, and reinforced. The message is clear. “Wanna live here? You gotta buy and maintain a car.
And if you’re someone like me, using a car as infrequently as possible in favor of more sustainable options is tremendously important. Cities allow people like me to make mobility choices each and every day. Suburbs force us to utilize a single transportation choice for nearly every trip. Ironically, the “freedom” associated with living in a low-density area negates any kind of freedom with regard to how we move about it.
***I am an urbanist influencer and do not have a formal degree in urban planning. While I am deeply passionate about urban design, trends, issues and topics, I believe in this time of undisciplined media to be honest and transparent regarding my lack of any kind of formal journalism or urban planning education. I still believe in my ability to present my viewpoints on interesting topics, but I fully admit that I have not been trained in the higher-educational rigors of expertise on such perspectives. My goal is to challenge people to think differently, not to be the the cited source of unquestionable truth. This footer will now accompany every Urban Phoenix piece, and I am proud to offer this transparency in a time when opinion is often coveted over rigorously-tested fact.***