Welcome to the No Car Challenge, please look around, we will be adding more content soon so check back often.

We started this site to challeng people to be more conscience of the amount of driving they were doing, we changed our lifestyle and found it remarkably easy, we think many people would find the same thing if they tried it. 

First off, let me say we do not advocate selling all your cars (we still own two).  We do not advocate strapping a guitar to your back and hitch hiking wherever you go.  What we do advocate is seeing how long you can go with out driving, seeing how little you can use your cars.

Below is a 2005 XC90, that was one of our cars until the end of February, we loved it.  It was in February where the topic of driving and the costs associated with it really started to permeate our conversations.  We had always known of the costs but the price of fuel kept bringing it to the forefront of what we talked about.

Nice, comfortable car, but was it practical, did we need something this big?  Sure, we have three little kids in tow most everywhere we go but do we really need this?  No, not really...

So we sold it.

We bought a 1984 Volvo 240 Diesel Station Wagon to replace it .  Cheap to own, cheap to drive (unofficial tests have put around town mileage as high as 44mpg).  Wow, it's like getting a raise.

That's not all we bought, we also bought one of these:

And one of these:

With two kids in the back and kid one on the side we can now take all the kids with us and not have to drive.  At first it seemed a little extreme but the more we did it the more we wanted to do it.  The more we didn't drive the less we wanted to drive.  We started going farther and farther.  We also had a startling discovery, we found that to a point, riding the bikes takes about as much time as driving.  There is a point where that is no longer true but we found most everywhere we go it is just as easy to take the bikes as it is to drive the car.

When there are two of us one takes the trailer the other takes the side car, when there is only one, they take both (you might want to work up to that, taking both is quite the work out).  The trailers ride smoothly and the kids are quite happy and content in them.  Pulling one or the other is fairly easy, both is a little bit of a chore the first couple of weeks.  We were pleasantly surprised how easy it was.  The first trip for me (after not having been on a bike for years) was eight miles round trip to the library.  It was a little tough but I felt great at the end, much better than I had expected.  I will admit I was apprehensive about riding a bike, pulling a trailer all the way to the library but it was much easier than I thought and made me realize it was going to be much easier than I expected. 

Here is a map showing our house and where we frequently take the bikes:

While we understand there are times you have to drive, like when we go downtown to a doctors appointment or something, we have found there are many times where you don't have to drive.  However, last time we did that we took the bus, the kids loved it.  The "quick trips" usually are not necessary and if your focus is not driving you tend to combine trips to make more efficient use of time spent in the car.  Your health benefits, your pocketbook benefits, and the environment benefits.

So here is our challenge to you: see how long you can go without driving, dust off the old bike, buy a bus pass, do whatever it takes to see if you can go 2 days, 5 days or a week without driving.  You may find it is easier than you think.