From the Chicago Tribune.

NO WHEELS THE JOYS OF CARLESSNESS -- NON-CONFORMISTS REJECT THE AUTO CULTURE

By Connie Lauerman Tribune Staff Writer October 7, 1999

The way things are going it's surprising that the image of an automobile hasn't replaced Stars and Stripes as a symbol of America. Cars are more than our dominant means of transportation.

Our car-worshipping culture equates motor vehicles with glamor, prestige, youth, power, success, individuality and, most of all, freedom. The romantic image of a shiny automobile barreling across an open landscape may be the only shared mythology we have left. (Never mind that these days most of the roads are in
gridlock.)

Millions of pounds of asphalt have been poured for highways to speed vehicular passage. Countless acres of verdant land have been sacrificed for parking lots. As of 1996, the number of registered vehicles exceeded the number of licensed drivers: 206.3 million versus 179.5 million. As unimaginable -- or un-American -- as it may seem, some non-conformists have rejected the car culture.

"My whole family acts like I'm from Mars because I don't own a car," said Jerry Marcoccia, 42, a program analyst for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Chicago. "Buying a car is considered a rite of passage, like getting a telephone, and some people think you haven't achieved the American Dream if you don't own a car."

Marcoccia, who lives in Edgewater, a neighborhood he selected for its proximity to the CTA's Red Line, eschews car ownership for economic and political-philosophical reasons. "Cars are a luxury," he said. "I'd rather save my money for my travels, my home, my dogs and my future than spend it on a car. "I also believe that cars ruin cities. They destroy the environment and farmland because of sprawl. It's a quality of life issue."

Marcoccia does accept rides in cars occasionally and has rented cars as a last resort, but he said his ambition is to hold the line against conspicuous consumption and never to own one.

Goldie Seligman, an octogenarian who lives in a Sheridan Road highrise, said she gets around easily without a car. "I take the bus," she said. "I take the `L.' I walk a lot. You'd be surprised how often people say, `You took the bus??!!' They don't believe you can get around without a car. It's like you're from outer space."

Seligman learned to drive late in life, after her husband died. "I passed the driving test, but I just was not happy driving," she said. "I wasn't using the car, and I got rid of it." Steve Buchtel bicycles around suburban Markham easily, he said, because the older suburb is built on a grid pattern with mixed-use zoning that makes
the stores more accessible. "Being carless in the suburbs is lot bigger deal than being carless in the city," he said.

Most suburbs separate residential areas from retail development and even public transportation and often don't include many sidewalks in their plans. The day Buchtel rode to court to appear as a witness after a motorist hit him highlighted another little difficulty that the carless face. He was carrying his helmet, a small air pump and a spare inner tube as he entered the courthouse. At the security checkpoint, he was told that he couldn't bring his necessities into the building. "I said, `What am I supposed to do with them?' and they said, `Take them out to your car,' " said Buchtel, who is communications director for the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation. "I said, `I don't have a car.' They said, `That's not our problem.' " Buchtel wound up hiding his gear under a bush outside. "When I left the courthouse that day. I saw other people looking for things under that same bush, like their cell phone, their pager, their Walkman. The assumption is that everyone who shows up is going to drive there."

Oddly enough, not being saddled with a car offers its own kind of freedom. "The expense, the insurance, the rude drivers, the stress of searching for parking spots and getting your car bashed in and all that are things I don't want to deal with," said Kevin Siarkowski, an advertising account executive at Conscious Choice magazine who bikes to work in River North from Edgewater a few times a week during mild weather and also uses public transportation. "And you appreciate the fact that by not buying a car you're not contributing to pollution. Less pollution, less consumption, less waste, less expenditure of energy and less time wasted looking for parking spaces."

Suellen Long, who owns a public relations business in Uptown and walks to work, doesn't drive a car simply because "I'm a bad driver and driving doesn't interest me at all. I don't think I belong on the road." She relies on taxis and buses.

Gin Kilgore, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago and lives in Wicker Park, prefers walking, taking public transit and bicycling because it makes her feel "more connected. "I enjoy noticing details when I'm walking around. I enjoy the seasons. I love taking the bus and train because I see people, I talk to people and I get some work done" while riding. "I always feel very stimulated, and the exercise that I get keeps me very energized."

Kilgore also mentioned "ideological" reasons for not owning a car, namely polluting exhaust and noise, the continuing destruction of green space for roads and parking lots. "Cars also generate social alienation," she said.

Mary Ann Smith (48th), a leader in urban pedestrian issues, agreed. "Traffic relates directly to quality of life, feelings of safety, community-building, investment and disinvestment, and it's at the heart of community policing," she said. "The more comfortable it is for people to walk (in a neighborhood), the more positive presence you have and the less (likely) the negative takes root."

Smith said the pedestrian infrastructure in Edgewater had been "decimated" to accommodate commuter traffic speeding through the community on the way to somewhere else. Consequently, she has been on a 10-year crusade to make her ward more walkable by widening sidewalks, slowing traffic, reconfiguring intersections, landscaping and encouraging neighborhood retail development.

"People have told us that it is so hard to get across Sheridan Road at Hollywood Avenue to catch the bus that they drive instead," Smith said, citing a particularly busy, accident-prone intersection. Smith walks the four blocks to her office and generally walks, rides the "L" or drives "depending on how long the trip is and how much I have to schlep."

For the carless, getting things done on foot, public transit or bicycle is, at best, an adventure and, at worst, inconvenient and a threat to safety.

"Going out to shop by bicycle or on the train, you learn to pack well, you learn to make your trips more efficient, you learn how to fix your bike," said Dave Glowacz, Chicago author of "Urban Bikers' Tips & Tricks" (Wordspace Press).

"You get used to anticipating potential problems or dealing with them," said Kilgore, who recently acquired a Radio Flyer wagon. Now, she said, "if I want to buy a dresser I can haul it down the street."

Most of the unpleasant aspects of living carfree are the result of autocentric urban design. For example, large boxlike chain stores in the city are usually built as if they were located in a sprawling suburb. To reach them, pedestrians must face down cars, trucks, mini-vans and SUVs at congested intersections with short walk signals and thread through vast parking lots with those same vehicles bearing down in order to get to the front doors.

"I've gone to the Target store on Elston Avenue," Marcoccia said. "I took a train and a bus and I walked. It's not convenient. It's designed for people with cars." "I often find the experience of being a pedestrian unpleasant," Kilgore said. "You often don't have nice shade cover. You're dealing with the sounds and smells of traffic, waiting for traffic lights, dealing with motorists coming in and out of driveways and parking lots.

"I feel a little more up to the task when I ride my bike, although you sometimes still get the same kind of intimidation." Eric Anderson, who hadn't used his car in months and recently sold it, said he is sometimes "amused" when he shops for groceries.

"Occasionally, I forget to bring my bike messenger bag or my panniers for the rack, so I have to hang the grocery bags from my handlebar. I'll ask the bagger to use double bags and pack the groceries in two bags of equal weight, because I'm on a bicycle.

But there's lack of understanding that people are going to be doing anything besides hopping in a car to take the groceries home. Frequently, I have to repack them myself." Anderson, who recently took a job with Chicago's bicycle program, is such a committed cyclist that he and a group of friends even organize moves by bicycle using trailers.

"We've carried queen-size mattresses and box springs, couches, huge tables. It turns a trial into an adventure. "I firmly believe that there is nothing that cannot be transported by bicycle with the proper equipment." Anderson said he is not anti-car, but subscribes to a concept he calls "appropriate usage," depending on individual circumstances.

"If you're a contractor who has to carry hundreds of pounds of tools to job sites, then obviously driving a small pickup truck is going to be appropriate usage," he said. "However, it doesn't mean that you have to use the same pickup truck to go buy groceries, rent a video or visit a friend. You can go on your bike, walk or take the CTA and limit your usage of the truck to what's appropriate."

Randy Neufeld, executive director of the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, hasn't owned a car since 1980, when he graduated from college in Newton, Kan., and moved to Chicago.

"It matters where you live," said Neufeld, who lives in Ravenswood and bicycles to work downtown. "We live a block away from Sears, and we're their best customers because the prices are decent and it's convenient.

"We probably use mail-order a little more than average because that's very convenient for certain sorts of things." Neufeld hooks a trailer to his bike for serious grocery shopping, and he transported his son and daughter the same way when they were younger. "A lot of people said, `It's one thing not to have a car when you're single, but once you get married and have kids . . .' But it doesn't seem to be a problem at all."

Americans took the roads in full force after World War II when the federal government financed most of the interstate highway system, and suburban home building and car manufacturing kept the economy humming.

"The result was a changed landscape," said Hank Dittmar, director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project's Transporation Quality of Life Campaign. "Zoning codes, financing systems and tax laws encourage developers to build single family homes on large lots which are separated from shopping and schools.

"I think we spend more on advertising automobiles than the federal government spends supporting public transit. You need to work on a whole variety of interconnected fronts to change things. I don't think our target is to make the automobile go away; it's to make it reasonable and possible for people to get around in other ways."

MANY WORKING TO CURB CARS

Many initiatives to reduce auto use are underway nationally and locally, including a collaborative effort by the American Planning Association to write new zoning and lending standards favoring mixed-use development that is less auto dependent.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago and non-profit organizations in San Francisco and Los Angeles have developed a location-efficient mortgage. This new mortgage product will enable home buyers to qualify for a larger mortgage by calculating the money they save either by not owning a car or using a car significantly less than average.

"All the major pieces are in place and we're almost ready to go," said James K. Hoeveler, manager of the mortgage program at the Center for Neighborhood Technology.

"A house in the suburbs generally is less expensive than a house in the city, but the price of the home in a suburb doesn't take into acount that one or two cars are essential to go from place to place."

For occasions when using a car is appropriate and helpful, the center also is developing a car-sharing program. It would eventually spin off from the center as a neighborhood business owning two or three vehicles. Members would pay a fee to join and then be able to reserve a car when they need it, paying a usage fee based on time and mileage.

In the meantime, some stealthy asphalt rebels are using a form of civil disobedience to get their message out. They have been affixing stickers to stop signs in some of Chicago's most congested neighborhoods, altering them to read: STOP Driving or STOP Building Roads. --