private vehicle ownership or not?
Last night I went to my van, which I am driving less and less and when I turned the key to start it, nothing happened. My suspicion is that the starter battery doesn't have enough charge.
I needed the van last night to do a Costco run to get food that at work, we would be preparing all together as a meal team that some of us from work would tomorrow serve to the homeless at a shelter.
I did not end up doing that last night. I will leave work at lunch time today to hopefully get the van issue ironed out, go to Costco, and then return to work in the late afternoon/evening.
Today I'm going to discuss this with my father-in-law who has dealt with automotive issues often. Specifically my question is if I get a boost to get the van started and then drive to Costco, that is only about an eleven minute drive. Is there a risk that it won't start again from there once I leave Costco. Or, optionally, I can always buy a new battery at Costco while I am there, but I am hoping to spend as little as possible on this van as I want to get rid of it soon.
So, getting rid of it; does this mean replacing it with a new-to-me vehicle, or ditching private vehicle ownership altogether?
The reason I am not driving so much any more is that I only get the kids half of the time and during the time I don't have them, I use public transit pretty much exclusively. When I have them, G-bot and C-ling both have transit cards that get them wherever they need to go, and where I live is within walking distance of V-8's school, so this is what we've been doing since the school year has begun.
There are and there will be some mornings that driving V-8 to school would be preferable (to walking) due to icy road conditions, or very cold windy weather, or heavy downpours. This could happen perhaps a dozen times throughout the school year, maybe less. My idea for this is to hire an Uber to bring V-8 to school.
Perhaps about once a month I go to Costco for my own groceries; I could use public transit to get there, and hire an Uber to get me home. For regular groceries I am within walking distance of a grocery store.
A few times a year (May Long Weekend, Family Camp, Spartan Race) where in the past I have really needed to have a car as the destination is not transit reachable. In these few rare cases I could rent a vehicle.
For these times (and other pre-planned times where having a car would be handy) that I am having to do a big Costco order for my work's meal team, perhaps I would sign up for Commun-auto, a car sharing service. An issue with this car-sharing service is that their zone for vehicle retrieval and return doesn't go as far west in the city as I live by about 15km; so any time I need to use this service there is an extra 30km added on to whatever my needs are.
I guess I will take a closer look at what my car-usage needs have been over the last year and do a cost comparison between what it would take with private car ownership and what it would take with Transit/Uber/Commun-auto.
