The Petersons are a family of four from Issaquah, Wash. They like to hike, go to the movies, watch “American Idol.” A regular suburban bunch.
Minus the SUV.
Minus any car, for that matter.
The Petersons don’t drive. They haven’t since 1987. No one in the family has a driver’s license. At 17 and 20 years old, the Peterson sons have never been behind the wheel.
“We’re not anti-car,” said Kent Peterson, 47. “We have just figured out that we don’t need one.”
The mother, Christine, walks 25 minutes to her job as a personal shopper at Safeway.com. Sons Eric and Peter walk or take the bus to school and work. And dad, Kent, bikes 35 miles round-trip to his job at a Seattle non-profit. For identification, they carry passports or state IDs.
The Petersons’ choice to go carless is often met with shock.
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“We’ve gotten asked the weirdest things like, `How did you take your sons to Little League?’ or `How do you buy ice cream?’ Well, you know, we go to the store for ice cream just like anyone else,” said Christine Peterson, 49.
Americans sit in their cars an average of 206 hours commuting every year, according to 2004 figures from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The Petersons are part of a much smaller statistic–the 8 percent of U.S. households without a car. This is not a big deal in, say, New York City. It is something else when you live in a small town near the Cascades.
In the 1980s, as a newly married couple living on the East Coast, Kent and Christine drove 60 miles each way in separate cars from their home in Bethlehem, Conn., to software jobs in White Plains, N.Y.
After Christine had their first child, Peter, she went back to work right away, and her commuter frustration hit a new high.
“I had this new baby I never got to see,” she said.
She and her husband ran the math on what it cost for day care, gas, car repairs and dining out because both were too tired after work to cook. After factoring in take-home pay, they discovered they were clearing $70 a month. Christine quit to stay home with the baby, and they got rid of the first car.
In 1987, the family moved to Duluth, Minn. Burned out by the software industry, the Petersons took over a used-book store but weren’t raking in the kind of income they got in the tech sector. Something had to go. They sold the remaining car.
It was a new way of life. They biked four miles, even in the Minnesota winter, from their home to the bookstore. To transport the baby, Kent found a metal shopping cart and rigged it with bicycle tires. He strapped a car seat in the cart and bundled up the baby.
“We rode like this in the snow,” Christine said, laughing. “So when people say now, `You’re so lucky you don’t have to pay for gas,’ I tell them it’s not something that happened overnight. You make your choices, and you figure out what you have to do.”
In 1993, Kent was offered a software job in Issaquah. They were a car-free family with two children.
Peter and Eric grew up walking to school.
“I knew that other kids found it kind of weird that we didn’t have a car,” said Peter, 20, a junior at Eastern Washington University. “But now I’m a lot less reliant on one than everyone else I know.”
Kent took a new job in December as commuting-program director for the Bicycle Alliance of Washington in Seattle. It takes him three hours to bike back and forth to work.
The sons say they respect their parents’ decision, but they’re not sure it will work for them long-term.
“I have the attitude that I will get a driver’s license and learn how to drive,” Peter said. “Someday.”
– – –
You don’t what?
How do you get ice cream? “From the store.” The family has used foldable shopping carts, backpacks and bike baskets to carry groceries.
What if you want to go on vacation? “We take the train or the bus.”
What if there’s a real emergency? “Call 911.”
What happens if you buy something big? “We get it delivered.”
What if it rains? “I take an umbrella,” Christine Peterson said. Kent Peterson used to keep a week’s worth of anti-wrinkle clothes at the office.
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Have you saved a lot of money? The Petersons say their lifestyle afforded Christine the opportunity to stay home and raise their sons.
Is there some deep philosophy behind this? “No. We just don’t like driving.”