Living Car(e) Free With Kids in Cambridge

By: Nate Sharpe

There are a number of things about my life that tend to elicit a certain wide-eyed surprise from new acquaintances, often followed by a slightly bewildered “How?” (and also “Why?”). I’m sure this is the result of a number of factors, one of which might be the common refrain I heard from my dad during my childhood, “Do you have a mind of your own?” Among my handful of somewhat unusual traits is the fact that I have never, in my entire adult life, owned a car. This fact, when paired with the additional fact that I am the father of ten-year-old twins, frequently triggers a cascade of incredulous inquiries. “How,” people ask, often with a hint of genuine concern, “can one possibly navigate the labyrinthine demands of modern parenthood without a family vehicle?”

My answer, delivered with a calm born of two decades of lived experience, is simple: it is entirely possible. And not just possible in the sense of “technically achievable if you’re sufficiently masochistic,” but genuinely, demonstrably, preferable, at least for my family and myself in our specific Cambridge context. We are, to put it mildly, a cycling-first household, supplementing our primary mode of transport with the usual suspects: walking, public transit (the T, as it’s known to locals), occasional rental cars, borrowing a car from kind friends or family, or hitching a ride with a friend.

Why, Indeed?

The justifications for this seemingly eccentric lifestyle are, as one might expect, numerous, and have evolved over time. (For a more exhaustive catalog, you can consult my wife’s excellent “Why We Bike.” ) But for the purposes of this post, let us consider the primary drivers, presented in no particular order:

Cost

This is, for many, the most immediately compelling argument, and for good reason. Bicycles, it turns out, are dramatically cheaper to acquire, maintain, and store than their four-wheeled counterparts. A respectable new commuter bike, for instance, might set you back a mere $500-$1,000, with annual upkeep rarely exceeding $200. Storage, a perennial urban headache for car owners, is typically free or negligible. Last year we spent $2400 on 12 rental cars (including a round trip drive to Chicago and back) and $600 on gas, versus an annual average cost of over $12k to own or lease a car. As a family that prides itself on a certain pragmatic frugality, and given our rather limited need for regular travel beyond a five-mile radius, the financial calculus simply doesn’t favor car ownership. Many people buy cars for the 5% of trips where they actually need them, then use them for the 95% of trips where they don’t. It’s like buying a moving truck because you move once every five years.

Health

This point, I concede, borders on the self-evident. To propel oneself via muscle power, be it cycling, walking, or running, is healthier than sitting inertly in a metal box. The scientific literature, for those who demand empirical validation for such seemingly obvious truths, is quite unequivocal: regular physical activity, including cycling, is robustly correlated with a reduction in all-cause mortality.

Environment

Another self-explanatory one – bikes possess a mere fraction of the embodied energy of an automobile (that is, the energy expended in their manufacture), and are, rather delightfully, fueled by whatever caloric intake one has recently consumed, rather than the fossilized remnants of ancient flora and fauna. While electric vehicles (EVs) certainly represent an improvement over internal combustion engines – particularly when charged with renewable energy – the environmental footprint of their production remains substantial when compared to a bicycle (or, for that matter, one’s amortized share of public transit infrastructure). A bicycle, for instance, clocks in at a modest 96 kg CO₂eq for its creation, whereas a gasoline car demands around 3,700 kg CO₂eq, and an EV, due to its battery production, a hefty 7,800 kg CO₂eq (source). The choice, from a purely environmental perspective, seems rather stark.

Convenience

This is the point where I often detect a subtle shift in the listener’s expression, a flicker of disbelief. “Convenience?” they seem to silently ask, “Surely you jest.” And yet, I assure you, at least in the Cambridge/Boston area and especially during rush hour, cycling frequently proves to be faster, more predictable, and significantly less fraught with the anxieties and financial penalties associated with parking. The variance in trip time, a bane of car commuters, is dramatically reduced. The uncertainty and stress of finding a parking spot, a minor but persistent psychological drain, simply vanishes. It’s a counter-intuitive truth, perhaps, but a truth nonetheless.

Experience

This is, admittedly, the most subjective of my justifications, and one where my inherent bias is most pronounced. Nevertheless, I genuinely prefer the visceral experience of cycling, walking, or even riding the bus or train, to the insulated, often frustrating, act of driving. Cycling, in particular, offers a unique blend of speed and immersion. You move swiftly enough to cover ground efficiently, yet slowly enough to truly see the world around you, rather than merely observing it through a pane of glass. You are present, engaged with your surroundings, and crucially, operating at a speed where a momentary lapse of attention is unlikely to result in catastrophic consequences for others. (A rather stark contrast, one might observe, to the potential lethality of a multi-ton vehicle.)

Leading by Example

The problem with being an early adopter of biking in a car-centric world is that you’re fighting against the infrastructure. Bike lanes that end at busy intersections. Drivers who don’t expect cyclists. Parking designed for cars, not bikes. But there’s also a network effect: every additional cyclist makes biking safer for everyone else. Drivers become more aware, infrastructure improves, and the social norm shifts. Our family’s car-free choice isn’t just about us, it’s about contributing to a coordination equilibrium where more people feel comfortable biking. We’re not just choosing a transportation mode; we’re voting for a version of the world we want to live in.

How, Then? A Phased Approach

Our journey into car-free parenthood was not, as some might imagine, a sudden, radical leap, but rather a gradual, almost evolutionary, process. It began before we had kids and has progressed through several distinct phases, each marked by new challenges and corresponding adaptations. (For a more granular account of these “progressions,” check out this post by my wife.)

Pre-kids: The Genesis of a Lifestyle

While my wife hadn’t ridden more than 5 miles at a time before we met in college, she’s a quick learner and loves stepping up to a new challenge, so I didn’t have to work that hard to convince her to bike most places, it just kind of happened. Post-graduation, we specifically prioritized jobs that were within biking distance and our hobby of choice (gymnastics) was easily practiced only 1.5 miles from home. Grocery shopping, initially a logistical puzzle, quickly became a matter of optimizing backpack capacity (a skill later augmented by the acquisition of panniers, those glorious saddlebags of urban utility). Caption: My wife and I on our first bike trip together.

It is worth pausing here to consider the various alternative child-transport solutions we eschewed, and why. Each, it seems, presented its own set of compromises:

• Cargo bikes: Many cargo bikes (e.g., the Bike Friday Haul-a-Day) require a certain level of self-possession and decision-making from the child, making them less ideal for toddlers. Furthermore, their sheer bulk and weight presented a significant hurdle for storage in our basement, and their single-rider design rendered them impractical for our multi-caregiver pickup/drop-off routine. And, perhaps most critically, they offer little to no protection from the elements – a non-starter for year-round, rain-or-shine cycling (although we do own one of these for transporting larger loads, or hauling luggage when we bike to the airport).
• Bakfiets (Dutch front cargo bikes): These are, if anything, even heavier and bulkier than standard cargo bikes, though they often come equipped with rain covers – a definite improvement. However, the fundamental multi-caregiver logistical challenge remained unresolved, and we really didn’t relish the idea of lugging one of these up and down our steep bulkhead stairs. 
• Front/back seat attachments: These are inherently limited to a single child per bicycle, rendering them unsuitable for our twin-parenting predicament unless we were to perpetually deploy two adult cyclists for every outing. Moreover, they offer minimal weather protection and put the child up a lot higher (and thus at more risk) than a trailer. Also I may have roundhouse kicked (gently) one of the kids when dismounting while trialing one of these. Whoops. 

During this time we were also starting to go on short trips with the kids using balance bikes. These have been shown to be the best way to teach kids the difficult part of riding a bike first (balancing) instead of training wheels which teach pedaling and steering first. Once they graduated to pedal bikes around age three, we started having them bike with us on short trips. We steadily increased the length of the trips, always riding on the sidewalk (my wife documented many of our adventures during this period at “The Art of Sidewalk Cycling”).

Age 5-10: The Road to Independence

Since then it’s been a gradual process of increasing distances we ride as a family. In tandem (pun intended), we’ve slowly introduced more and more serious road conditions:

Sidewalks: in MA it’s legal to bike on the sidewalk everywhere that isn’t explicitly posted otherwise, such as most “business districts”. We’ve seen other families have the parent bike in the street while the kids go on the sidewalk, but this felt dangerous for the adult to us – splitting your attention between keeping yourself safe and monitoring the kid(s) seemed like too much. We instead would keep the kids sandwiched between two adults on bikes going at walking or jogging speed.

This was when they were still practicing starting, I had forgotten how cute they were!

Bike paths: Dedicated bike paths allowed for longer sustained rides to build up confidence and endurance, and had the benefit of not having so many distractions and other people. It also gave us a chance to experiment with the kids leading in a safe environment.

Throwing up dust along the Erie Canal Path on our way home from Buffalo.

Protected bike lanes: Once we’d established that the kids could ride in a straight line and follow directions, we started doing stretches of riding in protected bike lanes. For several years, the “sandwich” formation remained in effect, only gradually transitioning to allowing them to practice leading around age eight.

Riding on their own: After four years of biking with us to and from their elementary school half a mile from our house, with much of third grade done with them taking turns leading, we transitioned to them biking themselves at the start of fourth grade. Over the course of September, we went from following at a bit of a distance, to following just until they crossed the one busier intersection, to watching to see them turn the corner of our street, to just monitoring their watches to make sure they made it safely.

Beyond Errands and Commuting

Over the years, our family’s cycling adventures have grown increasingly ambitious, often incorporating my parents (who are, happily, also avid cyclists). We began with modest long-weekend trips, the children still ensconced in the trailer, punctuated by frequent, strategically timed stops for playgrounds and snack breaks (the latter being, as any parent knows, a critical prophylactic against “hangry” meltdowns). This gradually escalated to multi-day excursions, carefully calibrated to the children’s evolving endurance. Our most significant learnings, beyond the aforementioned snack-break imperative, involved the strategic deployment of cyclometers on the children’s bikes. These simple devices, by allowing the kids to perform their own real-time calculations of remaining mileage and maintain a consistent speed, proved to be a surprisingly effective motivational tool.

Buffalo, NY, back to Boston

Our magnum opus, thus far, was last summer’s epic journey: nearly 700 miles over 18 days, from Buffalo, NY, back to Boston. Upon arriving at the hotel after a new personal best of 55 miles, one might have expected a certain degree of exhaustion, perhaps even a quiet, contemplative repose. Instead, the children, seemingly fueled by some inexhaustible reserve of pre-teen energy, were literally bouncing off the walls, clamoring for the pool before dinner. This summer, therefore, we plan to push the envelope further, with a Chicago-to-Buffalo traverse, including a planned 60+ mile day – a new record! The kids’ biggest concern isn’t the distance or the road conditions, it’s how many of the motels have pools and whether we can stop for ice cream every day.

Our kids are growing up with a different relationship to their city, to risk, to independence, and to the environment. They’re learning that the way things are isn’t the way things have to be. Whether that’s a gift or a curse, I suppose we’ll find out in twenty years.

FAQ

How do you ride in the rain/snow/cold?

Gear and clothing is the key here. When the kids were in the trailer, we only really needed to worry about the cold (it had a waterproof cover), but bundling them up in winter gear was sufficient. Once they were riding, rain pants/boots/jackets, and for hands bar mitts are key for both cold and rain. These ingenious inventions, which enclose the handlebars and brakes, offer unparalleled protection against both cold and rain. Finding adult handwear capable of keeping hands warm in 35° rain or 5° wind, let alone children’s hands (which, crucially, still require sufficient dexterity to operate brakes), is a Sisyphean task. Bar mitts, however, solve this problem with elegant simplicity. The only lingering dilemma is determining the precise meteorological moment when it is finally consistently warm enough to remove them for the summer season.

What about when you need a car to go farther away?

Our default heuristic is to prioritize trips and activities that do not necessitate car travel. However, we are not, I assure you, dogmatic in our car-free purism. Depending on the destination, we might opt for a train or bus, but we consistently weigh the cost and time implications against the perceived benefits of public transit versus a car. For those occasions when a car is genuinely required, we typically rent from one of the handful of agencies conveniently located within biking or walking distance of our home. Occasionally, we are fortunate enough to borrow a vehicle from generous friends, or, in the case of children’s sporting activities outside the city, we might hitch a ride with fellow attendees. It’s a pragmatic, rather than ideological, approach.

How do you get big stuff to or from your house (large groceries, big packages, takeout, etc.)?

This really depends on the exact nature of what we’re transporting! You can fit a surprisingly large amount of stuff in two panniers/saddlebags, and some things that are bigger than that can still be attached to the back rack on a bike with a bungee net or cords. For bigger or more awkward shapes, we have two other options: a bike trailer (designed for stuff, not the one we used when the kids were young) and a cargo bike.

What if the kids just won’t bike any further?

This is a fascinating hypothetical, and one that, to date, has remained purely theoretical. We have, in all our years of car-free living, never actually encountered a scenario where the children simply refused to continue cycling! My best guess is that when a gradual, incremental approach to increasing distances is combined with the clear understanding that continued cycling is the only viable means of reaching their desired destination, the incentive structure aligns rather neatly. The option of simply “stopping” is, in their young minds, simply not an option.