Getting Around for Three Months Before You Buy a Car

This is less a set of instructions about mobility without ownership in a car-shaped country than an argument, and it is worth saying so at the start.

The enormous variation between cities

A handful of American cities have transit systems dense enough that a car is genuinely optional, and most of the country is not remotely like them. In much of the country, buses run hourly, stop early in the evening and do not reach the industrial parks where a good many jobs are.

Assuming your new city works like the one you visited on holiday is the single most expensive assumption available to a new arrival. Check the actual timetable for the actual route between your candidate flat and your workplace before you sign anything, at the hour you would travel. Transit agencies publish schedules and route maps openly, and half an hour with them tells you more than any general article can.

What rideshare actually costs over a month

A daily commute by rideshare is comfortable and adds up to a sum that shocks people who only ever compared it against a single taxi fare. Prices surge with demand, so the exact journey that cost a modest amount on Tuesday morning can cost several times that in bad weather. Occasional use for the awkward journey is sensible; structural dependence on it for a daily commute is usually more expensive than a modest used car.

For a household starting from zero, airport journeys in particular are worth comparing against transit, because many American airports have a rail or express bus link that most newcomers never find. Track a fortnight of actual spending before concluding that you can manage without a car, since estimates in this area run low.

Bicycles, scooters and walking

Cycling infrastructure has improved substantially in many American cities and remains genuinely dangerous in others, with little correlation to the city's size. Helmet rules, where bicycles may be ridden and whether pavements are permitted all vary by state and by city, so check local rules rather than assuming.

Shared bicycle and scooter schemes are useful for the last mile from a transit stop, which is where a great many American commutes actually break down. Walkability is highly local: a suburb can have no pavements at all on the through road while being perfectly walkable two streets in. Look at the route on a street-level view before renting, because a half-mile walk along a road with no footpath is not a half-mile walk.

Choosing where to live around the problem

Rent near a transit line and you buy yourself several months of not needing a car, which is often worth a higher rent. Employers in car-dependent areas sometimes run shuttles from a transit hub, and this is rarely advertised to candidates but is well known internally.

The thing nobody tells you: university neighbourhoods tend to have the best transit, the most walkable amenities and the most housing suitable for someone without a vehicle. Living close in costs more per month and less per journey, and for a first three months that trade is usually the right way round.

The decision compounds, because a flat chosen for car dependence keeps costing you after you have bought the car.

The driving question when you get to it

Driving licence rules, the recognition of foreign licences and the testing process are all set at state level and differ meaningfully between states. International driving permits are recognised in some circumstances and not others, and the arrangement is time-limited wherever it applies. The current requirements are published by the relevant state authority, and that published source is the only one worth relying on because these rules are revised.

Insurance for a driver with no domestic driving history is expensive, and that cost is a real part of the calculation rather than a footnote. Give yourself time for the process rather than discovering the requirements a week before you need to drive somewhere.

Making the transition deliberately

Three months without a car is long enough to learn which journeys you genuinely make and which ones you merely imagined making. That knowledge changes what you buy, because a car chosen for a commute you do not have is the wrong car at the wrong price. Car ownership brings insurance, registration, maintenance, fuel and parking, and the purchase price is frequently the smaller half of the total.

Colleagues will offer lifts more readily than you expect, and accepting them is normal rather than an imposition in most American workplaces. Delay the purchase until the need is demonstrated rather than assumed, and you will buy better.

The takeaway

Choose the flat around the transport, not the transport around the flat. This article is general information, not legal advice.

Keep copies of everything, in two places, for longer than feels reasonable.