Ep. 11 – Going car free

Filed under: Podcast

In this conversation, Ruth Cumming shares her journey of living a car-light life with her family in Birmingham. We explore the financial, environmental, and social benefits of reducing car dependency, along with practical tips for managing daily tasks without a car.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/going-car-free/id1867451510?i=1000760996619
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7I3FSWn4iusrhAzdzEDkHb

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Transcript

Ruth Cumming (00:00)
had twins and that made us buy a seven seater because you know when you have two children kind of get away with a hatch like an average hatchback you know and even three you can fit three across the back seat that’s fine as soon as you have four you have to go into that whole boot seat thing so we’ve got we bought one but it was a real old banger it had loads of miles on the clock we think it had been a taxi before and

Yeah, and it was never brilliant, but it sat on the dry for about nine months in Covid lockdown because I couldn’t go anywhere outside of Birmingham, so we really weren’t using it at all. And there was one day I was going to meet my parents when you could meet like two other people or something out in the countryside. So I thought, I don’t know if it will start, but I tried it. It started. I was like, great. Go out and see my parents. We got to a mile down the road from where we were going to a National Trust place and it just died.

Kevin Carmody (00:32)
Yeah, of course.

Ruth Cumming (00:52)
So my parents had to rescue us and the RAC or whatever it was that we had. And yeah, we took it to a local garage and they said, well, maybe one and a half to £2k repair on the engine, which wasn’t really surprising because it had always been a bit dodgy. And, you know, it just had all come to a head at this point. So we said, well, you know, we’re about to enter another lockdown at this point. It’s like December 2020. Let’s just sell

Kevin Carmody (01:22)
Hello and welcome to the Better Streets for Birmingham podcast. I’m chatting with Ruth about the choice of not using a car for day to day life. So thank you very much Ruth for joining me today.

Ruth Cumming (01:34)
problem.

Kevin Carmody (01:35)
⁓ So ⁓ I’ll start with the admission that I also don’t use the car for day to day life. And that was that was a choice my family made while ago. So ⁓ what journeys do we make day to day?

Ruth Cumming (01:49)
Okay for us, so I’m a mum with four kids so a lot of my journeys revolve around family life and them as well as myself and my husband. ⁓ it’s things like school run, ⁓ work when I go into the office although I do sometimes work from home, ⁓ activities after school so things like swim club and scouts there are two main ones but with four children that’s you know you need two things an evening and you’ve got plenty of trips in there. ⁓

Shopping, although I have to admit my husband who works part-time tends to do more of that. He’s out of the shops right now. ⁓ On his lunch break he goes into the office more so he’s got those work trips. ⁓ What else? ⁓ Thinking about weekends, more clubs, ⁓ church, ⁓ seeing friends, ⁓ seeing family. ⁓ So my family live relatively close in Coventry, my in-laws live in Devon so that’s more of a holiday thing. ⁓

things like that really.

Kevin Carmody (02:49)
Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s really a summary I think of all our family lives, isn’t it? You know, with that or kind of going out and seeing friends in the evening I also have the additional journeys I have to make like going to the vets.

Ruth Cumming (03:01)
that reminds me, are actually GPs for the kids. We don’t often have to take children to the GP, but I am very grateful we live close to us because recently one of my teenagers has been having ear trouble, so we’ve had a few GP appointments. So that’s another one to add into the mix.

Kevin Carmody (03:15)
Yeah, and I mean, you’re in Birmingham, aren’t you? So, I mean, I take it most of these things are within a reasonable distance from where you live?

Ruth Cumming (03:26)
Absolutely and I think that was one of the main reasons to choose where we live. So before we lived in Birmingham we lived in Cambridge ⁓ which was ⁓ sort of a different experience, smaller city but everywhere very compact, very walkable, very cyclable. When we moved to Birmingham, ⁓ mainly because it was cheaper and being back near a family for childcare, you know that was the

The main factor in where we decided to settle was how close it was to my husband’s work. I was freelance at the time, so I wasn’t committed to a workplace. Schools, how close it was to primary schools, because our eldest was about to go to primary school. Yeah, things like GPs, shops. So absolutely, we chose a location of house based on, you know, walking, cycling, public transport. Absolutely was part of that.

Kevin Carmody (04:14)
Yeah,

So, mean, you were saying you didn’t use your car so much for day-to-day usage, so you were already mindful of that as you were.

Ruth Cumming (04:20)
No

We’ve neither of us have ever really wanted to be dependent on a car. We never really had the budget for it. So all the cars we’ve ever had have been secondhand old bangers ⁓ and, you know, living family life, particularly as we started to have more children, twins, no one plans twins to go from two to four, you know, that’s budgeting there, right there. ⁓ We’ve just never had that in our budget to spend lots of money on a car and certainly didn’t want the uncertainty of

you know, if it breaks, like, you know, there’s a massive bill. yeah, we when we didn’t live in Birmingham, it was mainly for getting out of town. So ⁓ not in daily life for those longer trips to go from Cambridge back to the Midlands and Devon to see family. When we moved to Birmingham, same thing. I mean,

I occasionally used it in the middle of the day for like the younger children. So if we were, I don’t know, going to a soft play or something those days whilst the older ones were at school, then I probably did use it a little bit more with the twins, but not for those real like never things like school run work, you know, like the stuff you have to do every day. So yeah, I’ve never been into cars and it’s something we’ve never wanted to go down the route in terms of like finance and

Kevin Carmody (05:27)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ruth Cumming (05:38)
committing that money to a car.

Kevin Carmody (05:41)
Sure. So I think the average cost for families across the UK is about three and a half thousand pounds a year, but that easily gets up to seven to 12 in some cases if you’re using a leased SUV. These are very expensive. Yeah. Yeah. That over a year is, these are huge, huge amounts of money. I think on there was a IPPR report a little while back that put it as

Ruth Cumming (05:50)
sons.

yeah not in our budget not at all.

Kevin Carmody (06:11)
For about 108 pounds a week is your average for running a car. Whereas if you’re not a car owner It’s down to about 13 pounds a week on transport, you know, and when when you know you think about People who are you know, depending on where they live They may well be forced to use a car depending on the types of jobs they have to do For some of the poor households. I mean, this is an easy sort of 25 % plus Proportion of their monthly income is to spend on transport Yeah

Ruth Cumming (06:29)
Absolutely.

Yeah, transport

poverty is real thing. People forced into car ownership and I appreciate I have the privilege of being able to make these choices, but also it has been part of our choice of budgeting for a family, deciding what to spend the money we have on and cars have just never been something we’ve wanted to prioritise. We could have done, but then we’d have had to have dropped something out. Like, if wanted a car now, great kids, we can have a car, but you can’t go to those clubs. Yeah, exactly.

Kevin Carmody (07:02)
Because even a car that you don’t use it costs to see it cost to sit there

and do nothing doesn’t it?

Ruth Cumming (07:09)
Yeah.

it’s the sunk cost thing, I think, when you’ve got a car sat on your drive or outside your house, every car journey, every journey looks like a car journey. Whereas if you don’t have that, you know, it makes you think about the alternatives. And sometimes we do use a car. We’re very lucky to have a car club down the road. But I know that I can use that when I need to. the cost factor, it’s pay as you go. It’s that mobility pay as you go. You know, like this is what we need now.

and not having all that cost in one thing, and then I can make choices based on what is most appropriate at the time.

Kevin Carmody (07:43)
Yeah, when we did our tally, we realised we could do taxi several times a week. ⁓

Ruth Cumming (07:47)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No,

I have no issue taking the odd Uber because I’m like, well, it’s fine Yeah Yeah, know I hate driving so that’s also right. Yeah, it’s just something I’ve never been into

Kevin Carmody (07:52)
no. Yeah, yeah, this is so much cheaper and someone’s driving you. That’s a lovely thing. Yeah. I

I mean, there’s a thing of, you know, the journey time as well. And something which is like so infrequently factored in when you like look at a route planner is the time to finding parking.

Ruth Cumming (08:14)
Absolutely, yeah, it’s not in there, no.

Kevin Carmody (08:16)
No,

no, no again. This is this is something they reckon. It’s an average sort of Six or ten minutes every journey you should add on for parking for just finding parking at the other end. Yeah Yeah, there’s a study about 44 hours a year spent people spend searching for parking which is which is days that’s days circling Yeah No, no I think um

Ruth Cumming (08:24)
Sounds about right. Yeah.

Oof.

Yeah, I don’t want to spend that time doing that. Yeah.

Kevin Carmody (08:43)
as well. of the things we have noticed in using the car less is the feeling of like any kind of connection with the environment.

Ruth Cumming (08:54)
I mean, I wouldn’t say I’ve historically been an environmentalist or an activist or anything like that, but I think actually whilst getting into the space of trying to live a car free or a car light life, like it’s made me more aware of those things and something that I hadn’t really thought of, you know, my teens and early twenties before I had children suddenly started to become much more obvious when I was slowing down and, you know, think becoming a mum made a huge difference to me in terms of thinking about.

the world I’m leaving for my children and bringing them up. Not everyone has the same experience, but that’s certainly something I felt going into my 30s and now

Kevin Carmody (09:32)
Yeah, yeah.

what was what was the point then when you said, Okay, this is this is probably a time to let it go.

Ruth Cumming (09:40)
to give up the car?

Well we’ve been thinking for a while so

yeah so we sold it and we kind of said okay it’s a trial ⁓ we’ll try without see how it goes we can’t go anywhere at the moment and we’re now 26 so like five years later ⁓ and we’ve at some points we’ve kind of considered it thought well maybe we do need a car now but we’ve always done the maths we’ve always like done a recce and it’s never got to a point yet where we thought

it would be useful and actually probably the biggest factor is if we needed a car to own we would need one that would say take us all on to go and see the in-laws in Devon. That’s probably the biggest journey that we would make and to fit two teenagers and two eight-year-olds in a car we’re talking like a big seven-seater maybe even one of those like nine-seater things. We don’t have the budget for that and I don’t want to be driving that massive thing around Birmingham. It’s totally impractical.

So we’ve always kind of said, you know, even if we were to get a car now, actually, maybe we should just get a little one as a run around if we do need the occasional thing. But no, that’s not useful either because, you know, we then won’t be able to use it going down to Devon. yeah, it’s sort of it’s not like we ever. Yeah. Well, yes. Stick a kid on the roof rack or something like that. You know, it’s just. Yeah. Or one not to come or whatever to come with you. But no, I think it’s.

Kevin Carmody (10:57)
have to choose one to leave behind. there’s always one who’d be happy with that.

Ruth Cumming (11:11)
I suppose what I’m trying to say is there wasn’t really a particular point where we were like, right, no, we’re to live without a car. It’s been, it’s always been the kind of those longer journeys, not the daily life. And then even when we think about those longer journeys, even now, it’s not really practical and within our budget to own a car to do those things. What I would love actually is if there were more car clubs or more sort of peer to peer sharing that I could occasionally hire a massive seven seater for a week. Brilliant.

Kevin Carmody (11:39)
Yeah.

Ruth Cumming (11:41)
I that and we do have a car club but we can’t all fit in it so ⁓ you know it’s not great from that point of view but it is helpful for you know when we’re just taking the eight-year-olds or a teenager somewhere so yeah it wasn’t a specific point in time it’s been it’s been a kind of journey huh no pun intended

Kevin Carmody (11:52)
Yeah.

I guess for some other people, it’s less of a choice, isn’t it? They might have had a serious incident where they can’t drive anymore. Or, you know, for I suppose, as you get to certain age, the optician might say, you know, you need to ⁓

go without car. And for that point, it’s important that there are other options available for people who aren’t using cars. So we do live in a city which is very much oriented around ⁓ motor transport as the primary means. So yeah, I do think it’s important that options are given, not just for those who are choosing, but for those who don’t necessarily have the choice.

Ruth Cumming (12:22)
Absolutely.

Absolutely, and I think if we all had more choice then more people could see the benefits in a way we’ve locked in that catch-22 of people don’t feel they have the choice but to own a car and then there’s more cars. So it’s sort of how to change the system so that it enables people to have that choice. And I’ve always been very open about that. I’m not expecting other people to do what we’ve done, but I like to just share that…

there is a way and actually if we have better system and we would improve that system then more people could see that.

Kevin Carmody (13:15)
Yeah. And I think there’s also that thing of even if you are someone who will never give up their car and they just love the car and they always want to drive it, that’s fine. But the best case scenario for them is that everyone else stops so they can still get around.

Ruth Cumming (13:29)
Exactly, yeah.

Kevin Carmody (13:30)
So how do you get around on your daily tasks now then? Now you’re not taking the car to school, to clubs, to… How do you, with four kids, four different clubs? Surely. How do you thread all that together?

Ruth Cumming (13:31)
Yep, we win.

Yeah, so…

Yeah, well I think there’s something to be said at the moment that we’re just sort of learning more about as we go along is teenage independence and actually I think it’s fantastic for our teenagers to be able to get the bus places on their own and you know something I didn’t really experience so much of as a teenager I was very much driven a lot of places and ⁓ I think that’s great for them I think they have a really good sense of where they live and… ⁓

obviously walking and cycling as well but ⁓ yeah just having that independence so that’s a start I don’t go everywhere with them and they’re really they’re really getting that ⁓ but I guess it’s

sort of a lot of it is the logistics and you get into a mindset of planning which seems like a lot when you first do it but I think once you’re so into the habit of doing it it’s so normal and whereas you know for some people it’s very normal to jump in a car and go well it’s very normal for me to just get a journey planner and think about the logistics of where I need to be when on which mode and like you were saying about car parking actually I did use the car the car club

the other day to go and I was doing a lift share for a Scouts activity and I’d never been to this Scout hut before but I went in a car because I was picking up other Scouts as well so that they could drop off mine, we were sharing it and I thought gosh I’m so out of the habit of thinking where am going to park? I had no idea so I had to then do that process which I’m sure a lot of people just don’t think of because they do it all the time so for me I think it’s like it’s not very harder to do what we do it’s just shifting a mindset to

this is what we do and it’s okay. Like we just saying to have the backup of, okay, maybe I need to occasionally take an Uber, but that’s fine. It’s on my phone. I can do it. But I guess if you’re not in the process, the normal habit of doing that, then you don’t think about that. But also a lot of walking, you know, think walking is so underrated and I have no time to go to a gym or anything like that, but the amount of walking I do, it fits in that daily activity, exercise into my daily routine.

⁓ And I think a lot of people could really benefit from that. We always say, we don’t have time to exercise or we kind of spend lots on gym memberships that you never go to, or you sort of have a real spurt at the beginning and then life takes over. ⁓ for me, I think being able to fit in that exercise in daily routine, just from like school runs and going to activities is really great. Another thing about teenagers is having that time to chat. And I really appreciate that with them. So when I do walk with them places, obviously they’ve

Kevin Carmody (15:49)
Yeah.

Ruth Cumming (16:17)
perfectly capable of walking on their own places and they do a lot of the time but last night I was like I’m gonna go and pick up my explorer from Scouts because I want to chat with him I haven’t seen him properly for a couple of days walking side by side with that he opens up stuff that he would never do at home if I just walk into his room and go hi how’s it going because he’s a teenager you know and that’s that’s really great so there are totally benefits to to doing things another way and I personally

Kevin Carmody (16:19)
Yeah.

Ruth Cumming (16:46)
I wouldn’t be able to have that same chat in a car with him. I know some people say they can drive and chat at the same time. I’m not that person. I need to concentrate on the road.

Kevin Carmody (16:52)
Yeah,

I often felt like my my son when he was sitting in the back of the car and he was younger, he just kind of switched off for that time period. You know, whereas now when we’re, yeah, as you say, walking about and that sort of thing. And it’s it’s it’s an engagement in the world around you.

Ruth Cumming (17:02)
Yeah?

Kevin Carmody (17:11)
And as well, ⁓ I find I chat to my neighbors so much more because I’m not just getting out the house straight into a car and driving away. I’m walking past them and, you know, inevitably kind of bumping into them. you know, you do the same journeys each day. You get into a routine rhythm and a lot of other people are doing the same. know, you’ll see the same people around and you just start building relationships in a way that you wouldn’t necessarily otherwise.

Ruth Cumming (17:38)
Yep, very important.

Yep, definitely.

Kevin Carmody (17:41)
I think of it ⁓ really as as an exchange of conveniences in some way. So whereas before I would be able to out front door into the cargo and I could get there quickly and then and then searching around for a parking space and trying to trying to find where I’m going or the things I have to do in order to complete that journey, whether it’s make sure I’ve stopped for fuel and built in the time to do that. Whereas now I don’t.

Ruth Cumming (17:47)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kevin Carmody (18:11)
have that, there may be something where I have to do a bit more at the start to walk to a bus stop or to order a taxi or something. But then I find I’m just at the front door. You know, I don’t, there’s, there’s a whole level of, you know, stress and problems that are actually removed by, you know, kind of removing what is you think is a thing that’s making your life easier.

Ruth Cumming (18:36)
Yeah, they totally agree and also the public transport thing being able to do things whilst you’re on that. So on the bus I can do admin, on the train to work I can work. If I drove that to work I wouldn’t be working in that time so I’ve lost another half an hour of my commute if I can work on the train.

Kevin Carmody (18:45)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And we, I mean, for our family holidays now, we put the train as part of the holiday, you know, and we, we, and we get to spend that time, you know, kind of playing games with, with my kid or doing drawing and things like that. And it’s, it’s, it’s quite a charming way of moving around really.

Ruth Cumming (18:56)
Yep, same here, yep.

I love it. Yeah.

Yeah, we are definitely big train fans for holidays.

Kevin Carmody (19:15)
OK. All right. Well, Ruth, thank you very much for your time. And yeah. OK.

Ruth Cumming (19:15)
Yes.

No worries, thank you.