Take the ‘One Less Car’ Challenge
While this won’t really work for me, as I just bought a new car, if you’re thinking of getting rid of your car, or switching to an alternate mode of transportation temporarily or permanently, the city of Seattle wants to help you by giving you some incentives.
If you commit to going carless for a month, you can get a $20 voucher towards a bus pass or gear from REI. You can also join Cascade Bicycle Club for $10 off the usual fee. If you commit to getting rid of your car (or going an entire year without driving it), you can get a $200 voucher and free membership at Cascade Bicycle Club and the Bicycle Alliance of Washington.
If you’re planning on doing this, post about it in the comments and keep us posted on how you’re doing!
I did the One Less Car thing. I sold my car last year. So far, between the bus and flexcar/zipcar, it hasn’t been that much of a loss. Especially when it kept getting broken into.
However, I’m going to be leaving school soon, and I don’t know if I will need to have a car for my job. If I do, well, I’ll get a car.
It looks like they took away the $600 worth of Flexcar use as one of their incentives. That was one of the perks of the One Less Car challenge when I did it, and I don’t know if I would have done it without that.
I too took the One Less Car challenge last fall (when they offered $600 in Flexcar/Zipcar benefits). We weren’t using our car much anyway so it wasn’t much of a loss. Our family of four gets around on Xtracycles (http://www.xtracycle.com/)most of the time.
However, I don’t think the new incentives are going to tempt anyone to sell a car. The Commuter Bonus Plus Voucher is hilarious – AAA, Brown Bear Car Wash, Union 76 – do you need those things if you don’t have a car?
Why doesn’t the city just give partcipants $600 in cash so they can buy a decent commuter bike. That would be an incentive people can use.
[...] author Patricia posted about the “One Less Car Challenge“. If you’re interested in saving an average $8,580 per year (or $715 (average) for the [...]