Helen Chandler and Thomas Ableman have two daughters and no car. “Thomas doesn’t have a driving licence, and I haven’t driven in the 22 years since I acquired mine,” says Helen. Thomas has spent two decades working across the transport industry – most recently as director of strategy for Transport for London. Together they run the CarefreeCar-free blog – and have chosen The Independent exclusively to launch their Car-Free Family Travel Manifesto.
Our car-free lives are a conscious choice. At first it was because we both hated driving and felt we had better things to spend our money on. More recently it is because not driving is something we can do to limit our carbon footprint and reduce the amount of air pollution our children (and everyone else) are forced to breathe.
Despite the lack of a car, we function as fairly responsible adults, holding down jobs, owning a home and parenting two children (and two cats).
We thrive as a car-free family and don’t believe our kids miss out on anything because of it. Probably the opposite, in fact: they are never short of exercise as we walk or cycle local journeys, and they haven’t been subjected to school runs or longer journeys breathing in harmful emissions which are four times higher inside a car than out of it. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy.
If the new government is serious about cutting carbon emissions, improving health, and cutting childhood obesity then getting families to ditch their cars is essential. Here’s what needs to happen for car-free family living to become a mainstream choice.
1. Free family railcards. Not owning a car saves money overall, but there’s no doubt that train travel can feel expensive when you’re hit with a three-figure bill. A Family & Friends Railcard gives you two-thirds off children’s train tickets, and one-third off the fares of adults travelling with them.
But there’s a catch: it costs £30 for a year, and you need to know you’re going to use the trains a lot before you buy one. By making the card freely available, the rail industry will lose a few tens of millions in card fees – but surely benefit by many times more as families wake up to the value of rail travel.
2. Invest to give all major cities the same standard of public transport as London. One of the phrases we often hear when we…
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