I always tried to brand myself as a never-car guy; and that is true. Sorry, was true; always messed up the tense since Chinese is a language without Tense. And that was true for a lot of reasons. First, I did not have money to buy (and maintain) a car. Second, I hate hassle to take care of it. And finally, it is just so dangerous. “Yeah you a wuss”. How many people want to risk their lives everyday when they go out to buy food or work? We are essentially doing that in real-time; a single crash can kill you. That’s why there are so many billboards promoting crash laywers in Florida and Alabama.

Nevertheless, I bought a car. It is just not possible to live here in Alabama without a car. I want to talk about my feelings and the change of my life in the first several months as an urbanist and a sustainable transportation researcher. Maybe only the ones that I feel like non-trivial.

Food Security

I ate more since there are more supply of food, but my fridge is actually relatively more empty. I now have a Sam’s Club membership. Another enternal curse that I can never break. But thanks to the new car, I do feel a lot more secure. I still remembered during the pandemic, I primarily relied on Amazon Fresh, which delivered food to doorstep. I constantly feel like I may run out of food, so every time I could go shopping with my roommate, I bought too much, like more than. With car, I do also have the same feeling primarily due to the desire to reduce my carbon footprint and time spent on road due to collision concerns, but not as strong as what I was feeling.

Induced Demand

First, the amount of time I spent on roads is increasing. Induced demand, duh. I do come to the office more often, which can be due to various reasons. But higher mobility is definitely one of them.

Less Acceptance for Alternatives

I actually selected an apartment that is close to one of the bus stops of Tiger Transit, the bus system maintained by the university. Yes, Auburn does not have a public transit system, which saddens me. But even it is theoretically possible to walk from home to bus and wait for a bus of 30-min headway, I would probably very unlikely to do that. My advisor told me that: you can never buy a car and tell yourself that you would never use it. No, you would use it. I want to add to that statement: you can never buy a car and tell yourself that you would still rely on public transit. No, you would not rely on it.

Lower Reliability

My car broke down in the first month after I bought it. I was feeling so worried and stressed, since the neighborhood my apartment was in is totally unwalkable. The nearest food store is a popeye, and there are no sidewalks. But beyond that, my biggest concern is still the hassle and potential large cost coming with the repair. I ended up with using the warranty service to tow my car to a dealership 100 miles away. It’s just a bad battary. I wasn’t charged for the tow or repair, but I would never want to do that again. It is just not worth the time and stress.

But, I think this is the perfect metaphor for the current car-dependent transportation system: the false security and prosperity provided by the convenience of the car is so brittle that a simple error can crash the whole system. For that, I still have faith in what I do.