I started this blog nearly seven years ago, and gave up owning a car eight years before that. But in a sense, I started it back in the 20^th century, as a kid from Maine stuck in a middle-aged body in Southern California.

“This is no way to live,” I muttered to myself almost every day, often when mired in a traffic jam on a four-lane freeway. There was plenty to do in San Diego, but you had to be willing to sit in traffic for almost any of it, because there were always a thousand people trying to do the same thing, and we were all trying to do it in cars.

I moved back to Maine in 1999. Aside from a year in Bulgaria, I’ve lived here ever since. I’m convinced that Maine provides the best bang for the buck, in terms of quality of life measured against the cost of living, anywhere in the United States. We may not have California’s climate, but we’ve got every bit of its natural beauty at a fraction of the cost. People are mostly reasonable and easy to get along with; public services are decent, and a lowly adjunct English professor can moor his boat next to a millionaire’s.

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Though I’d rather be on the coast, I live in Bangor, because it’s close to where I work, and because I don’t have to own a car here. Where else in Maine could I live without owning a car? Portland, certainly, and maybe Brunswick or Rockland. That’s about it. But it’s an expanding base from which to build.

When I started this blog, some people told me it was unrealistic. “You can’t live without a car in Maine,” they said. We have widely accepted car ownership as a necessity, and we have reflected that attitude in public and private policy. But that is starting to change, thanks to a groundswell of demand for alternatives. It’s been gratifying to see topics I’ve written on, like the hidden subsidies for cars and the efficacy of public transportation, addressed with increasing frequency in the mainstream media. A new bus depot is going up in the heart of downtown Bangor, where everyone will see it, thanks to a groundswell of advocates and the majority on the City Council who listened to them (us). 

I was born the year after the creation of the Interstate Highway System, the most massive federal subsidy ever allocated to a single form of transportation. It’s a myth that the car culture pays for itself. Suburban sprawl is completely car-dependent, wastefully resource-intensive, and ultimately soulless. Rail is a more efficient way to ship goods than trucks. And we don’t all need 24/7/365 access to an automobile. 

That’s what this blog is all about. Our relationship with cars is a less a love affair than an addiction, and we are surrounded by enablers. I’ll continue to offer comment and comfort to readers who want to loosen or lose the yoke of car ownership, and to advocate for policies that can help break the cycle of dependence. To read these posts regularly, please subscribe – it’s free!