I lived without a car in this city for 5 years. I would not do it again. The public transportation system here is not very good and even relatively simple trips can take hours. At the time, it was also difficult to ride a bicycle around the city, so I ended up walking nearly everywhere I wanted to go- which generally limited my trips to a max of about a 10 mile radius around my dormitory. There are some nice things about being without a car, however, the disadvantages greatly out weigh the advantages in this city.

In New York you can get car service vans for all those shopping needs. We've practically moved our entire apartments in car service.

What I miss about having a car, or better, friends with cars, is being able to take driving tours. I've been able to see a lot of neighborhoods in New York that I wouldn't have otherwise by snaring out of town guests and their cars.

I don't have a car. I do have access to a car coop/Car sharing. IMO the perfect solution. Except for once a month (+/-), I don't need a car. Public transit is cheaper and well established where I live. Apart from using it for bigger shopping trips or picking someone up from the airport, I love car sharing for driving new cars. A mini, a jeep, a nissan cube, a smart car..next: the small fiat they have..To me, car sharing is the way to go.

I read that title as "Cat For a Day" and got unreasonably excited to read this article.

I'm trying to imagine living in a place whith good enough public transport to not have to have a car. That would be so awesome. On the other hand, having a car all the time doesnt necessarily mean that all your chores get done. (My goodwill donations have been in the back of my car since mid-November, I need to get on that.)

I have to have a car. Not only because the nearest store is over three miles but because I'm a pizza delivery driver by trade. Even before I want back to pizza I had a serious panic attack after learning our one and only car broke down. It was the longest three days of my life before we got the new one. Living in rural America means absolutely no bus systems outside school buses. It's a trade off for privacy and, despite the greater percentage of car owners, cleaner air.

I recently bought a car after many years of being a City Carshare member here in the bay area. I have mixed feelings about owning a car but I recently bought a house with a garage in a "transitional" neighborhood, not all that close to most of my friends, and I'm a middle-aged woman living alone . . . so when my friends offered to sell me their well-cared-for car at trade-in price I couldn't say no.

Anyway, I got around mostly by bike, on foot, and via mass transit, and I used Carshare cars for picking stuff up and dropping it off. Mostly when I went out of town I either rented a car or hitched a ride with a friend. Now that I have a car (for the first time in my life, really) I don't necessarily save a huge amount of time, if you factor in traffic patterns, accidents, and looking for places to park. And I feel responsible for a big hunk of metal that mostly just sits in my garage -- it I had to leave the car out on the street I might not have bought the car. BUT I do feel freer, I must confess.

Since you're in the Bay, GetAround is a great option-- it's like Zipcar meets Craigslist, where you borrow someone's car for cheap ($4-9/hour). Friends of mine have used it and love it. If I didn't have a car, I'd totally do it too!

Long story short, I have been without a car in LA for over a year now due to...stuff, one of them being a DUI. I JUST got my restricted license and today, I am going to IKEA. I am excited. Also, I did not mind not having a car at all. I have discovered so many places, lost some weight, have funny bus stories. I could do without a car here but I wish I could have access to a Zip Car but they do not allow people with a DUI on their records to be a member. Hopefully the company will be around in 2019 when the violation is off my record.

We're in Manhattan, so a car is rarely necessary, but we do have ZipCar. If I had a free car for the day at this moment, I would probably go to Target and Trader Joe's wine to stock up. I really can't think of anything else. If it was summer, I'd go to the beach.

Oh yes I LOVE my zipcar days. Stop-offs always on that list are: goodwill, recycling center, trader joes! And often mixed in with dry cleaners, art store, and spice shop. Those days where I can knock out 5 or 6 errands in an afternoon are SO rewarding.

You can get almond milk delivered from Amazon - set up a subscription. That is what I do with heavy and frequently used items. I have been car-free always and in DC for 13 years.

I have a car. I go wherever I want, whenever I want. yee haw

I lived car-free in DC for 5 years and have now lived car-free in NYC for 11. I used to belong to Zipcar, but found that I just didn't use it enough (and it was such a pain trying to reserve the things when I wanted them. If I wanted a Zipcar to run errands on a weekend, I found I often needed to reserve MONTHS in advance, or reserve a car in some far-fetched part of the city that would take me an hour to get to via train in the first place.

The only time I really need a car is to go out of town for a long weekend or to drive to OH for a week at a time to visit family. Parking can be such a pain in the neck, that I generally prefer to just take my shopping cart and enjoy a nice long walk to places like Trader Joe's. When it comes to IKEA, I happily pay the $59 they charge to deliver all your stuff to your door later in the day.

I suppose if I had a car for a day, I'd collect all the stuff I want to get rid of (I have a lot) and take it to Goodwill or a thrift store. If there's one thing I'd love to see offered in cities like NYC it's a mobile donation center of some sort. A big truck that would park in different neighborhoods, tweet out locations and times, and accept donations from those of us who have a hard time finding easy ways to donate our stuff.

Living in NYC with it's excellent public transit I don't need a car and haven't had a license for over 20 years. My husband has a license and when a car is needed we rent it. We rent a vehicle for vacations, picking up large item purchases (home reno supplies, furniture, etc) and a couple of times during the summer we'll take a work day off, combining the beach, golf course and the mall in one day trip. Zip cars are great too, I have friends who have a membership and we sometimes share in the cost of a rental.

I love that I'm not alone in being a license-less, car-free citizen :) I live in a city with fairly decent transportation options, and driving just looks to be more of a hassle than it's worth in this town, so I never bothered to get my license. Besides, it's just one 20-minute bus to work; 10-20-minutes to most places I want to go; 40 to the outer reaches of the city. A car in this traffic would save me 20% in time and I'd get much less reading done.

What I especially miss, however, other than what you've so eloquently noted, is being able to wear un-sensible shoes! I have a closet full of shoes I would never be able to wear running for a bus, or hauling groceries and paperwork home. I can get a way with some pretty great casual/semi-casual options on a daily basis, but I dress around my shoes. So the fancy-cute ones get star treatment a few times a year for events with taxis/chauffeur (as in friend-with-car).

Will I ever get my license? I sometimes think I'll be Maude's (as in Harold and Maude) age by the time I get around to it :)

I don't have a car or a license either and a lot of the things mentioned by the author I, too, would do. I don't drink wine but I do drink Coke so I would definately stock up on that and oh ya I would hit Ikea after the coke or before. I need so much from there but it's over an hour bus ride away and totally unable to bring back a chair or table and chairs. I think then I would have my driver take me to Whistler, the drive is magnificent and what beats Whistler? Not much.

I am carless at the moment, and I can't wait to get my new car. DC has decent public transportation, but still. If I had a car for a day, let's say Saturday, I would drop things off at Goodwill on the way out to the countryside, go for a hike all day, go hang out at a winery for a tasting, stop at Whole Foods on the way home and stuff the trunk full of heavy groceries, and bring it home. That would be bliss.

if I had a car, I would go drive as fast as I could on the autobahn.

I've thought about buying a car, but every time I've rented one it was such a PITA (traffic, mostly) that I am firmly of the mind that I have no need for it.

public transport here is AMAZING, not expensive, and often is quicker than driving. Case in point, I drove to Frankfurt once and it took over 6 hours because of traffic. train only takes 3 and would have been comparable in price. I would love to drive to the alps for some snow fun right about now, but would everyone else! I can take a regional train/bus combo and get to plenty of interesting destinations, no hassles, no hours spent waiting in traffic to finish off an otherwise blissful day.

I LOVE to drive. In my heart a car feels like total freedom, but in reality it's just not so, at least not here (or in most big cities, in my opinion).

Regarding donations: when I was in Boston there were several places that would pick up donations at my door. just google it?

Delighted to see other car-and-license-free citizens! I thought I was practically alone in this world!

Moving downtown (and having incredibly kind parents) has meant that I don't really long for a car. But if I had one I would definitely go out of town, probably to the Nordik Spa in Chelsea, QC, someplace I've longed to go but is inaccessible without a car. I used to love Sunday drives with my family when I was a kid, searching out small towns and hamlets, stopping for ice cream, etc.

Of course, I'd probably just end up doing something much more mundane like dropping off electronics at Future Shop or picking up a load of things I don't need at Costco ;)

You know le nordik is only a 20 min cab ride from downtown Ottawa, right? And they'll call a return cab for you while you change- so easy.

We sold our car when we moved to Toronto, and joined zipcar after a few months when we had accumulated an errand list long enough for it to make sense. Our 2012 ziptrips for errands, weekend trips, day trips out of town cost about the same as just our previous car's insurance alone. sweet!
I'd do what we usually do with a car for a day; weirdly located errands, a big grocery shop, and find a lunch place far from transit.

We are car-free but use a car sharing service. Every time we have the car for a whole we always end up doing a huge Target run.

I have to have a car in suburbia, with a 45 minute commute to my job which is not possible to car pool to (different hours every day, nobody else goes from A to B...) But I have always had one, at least since college. I can't totally imagine the constraints of public transportation after a lifetime of freedom, but I've never lived "downtown" either. If I could walk everywhere, maybe I wouldnt miss driving, which frankly I don't enjoy anyhow. But with my handicaps, "walking everywhere" would mean within two miles round trip, no hills, and not carrying any weight... sort of impractical from a food shopping standpoint!

I was car-free for 15 years until I finally got a little Toyota early last year. The luxury of being able to stop at the supermarket whenever I need something is priceless. For all those years, I'd have to bus it to the store, buy my groceries, then pray that I'd be able to get a taxi back home. Or order online from Safeway.com and hope that my order would be complete. When I did have access to a car for a day, I spent my time grocery shopping and going to Walmart or Target; with any leftover time I would take myself to dinner someplace I wouldn't ordinarily be able to get to on public transit.

I'm car-free have been for the past 7 years in Chicago. Transit gets me wherever I need to go. The only thing I hate about it is having a dog. Luckily our vet is just a few blocks walk away, but getting him to training/boarding/traveling is an absolute nightmare. I still hate cars though.

Is car free just for the kid-less? I'm happy to get by with one car, but carless just wouldn't fly with twins where I live.

I haven't owned a car in a million yrs and will probably need to relearn how to drive if and when I ever drive again. But now that I live outside of San Francisco, it's a real challenge to run certain errands without a car.

Most everyday and weekly stuff I can manage just fine without wheels, but if I had a car for a day, I'd take a bunch of things to a framer's to be framed; take my heavy bedspread to the dry cleaner's; buy some baseboard and molding material for my condo; maybe get more plants for the patio (OK, this is actually an example of an instance where it may be a good thing I don' t have a car and spend more money); and would definitely hit up a number of salvage or consignment stores or flea markets for some older bargain pieces that are too big and heavy to take home via BART, bus or taxi. I always admire the great finds that people score on craigslist, but without a car, most of those things are out of my reach.

We live in a small town where we can walk to work at the college, and get to all the important places (groceries, post office, pharmacy, etc.) on foot as well. But we also have a small car for driving to visit family or for driving into the nearest big city. We'll usually save up all our errands for a day and then treat ourselves to dinner or a movie at the end of the car day. Our last big trip to the city involved dropping off a guitar for a fret job, picking up our watches from the repair shop, finding a pair of brand new old favorite discontinued jeans at a consignment shop, and a trip to our favorite Indian restaurant. But I love it that I haven't needed to drive my car at all in the last week!

Oh my lord, e-town.. I had no idea. People kept telling me how far it was... I guess most of them lived in the suburbs. This is so exciting - thank you!