This Commuter Challenge Ambassador Blog Post comes from Riin over at the UM:

I admit it.  I’m a bit of a zealot.  I haven’t driven a car since 2002, so the Commuter Challenge isn’t really a challenge for me.  Instead it’s a chance for me to keep on doing what I normally do, and get points for it, and to tell people why they should be doing this great thing!

I love my commute!  How many people can say that?  I have a two part commute.  First I take the bus downtown, about a 25 minute ride, and then I walk the rest of the way, about a 15 minute walk.  I could take the bus all the way to work, but I like walking.  In the evening I just walk downtown and catch the bus home.

It’s perfect.  The walk gives me time to clear my head and get some exercise, and see things up close.  I can look at gardens and watch animals and look at all the great public art around town.  (One day I’ll take photos of all my favorite Ann Arbor public art to put on my blog, but so far I’ve been procrastinating…)

I love the bus for a lot of reasons, but the best thing about it for me is that it gives me time to knit.  There’s never enough time to do everything I want.  (I really could use a 48 hour day!)  I wish I had a lot more time to knit.  But twice a day AATA is kind enough to give me 25 minutes to knit.  The gift of time!  It is sweet!  And I relish it!

Ok, not everyone’s a knitter.  But a lot of people read on the bus, or study or do other things.  The point is, it’s free time! When you’re driving a car, all you can do is drive.  That’s all you should be doing anyway.  Yes, we’ve all seen people talking on the phone/eating/putting on mascara while driving, but that’s not safe.  Driving is not free time, and drivers who treat it as such are more likely to crash into something.

But you know what?  If you’re in another car and some idiot driver crashes into you, you’re likely to be hurt.  If you’re in a bus and an idiot driver crashes into the bus?  Ha.  Idiot driver’s going to get hurt, but you’re not.  So safety is another advantage of the bus.

And frankly I just didn’t enjoy driving.  I found it to be very stressful, always having to deal with other drivers cutting me off, not letting me merge, tailgating, and of course dealing with bad weather, poor visibility, bad road conditions, having to take time to put gas in the car and get oil changes, and the expense of the gas and the maintenance and the insurance and the registration and the constant repairs, always at least $300 (sure, the car was paid for, but I was still spending how much?).  It is so much easier (and cheaper!) to just take the bus.  Now I just leave the driving to the professionals and I have no stress.  If there’s a mechanical problem, another bus comes and we just get on that one.  Someone else takes care of all of the details, all of the problems.  Because really, all I want out of my transportation is something to get me from Point A to Point B.  I don’t want to deal with all of the stuff required to make it happen.

What first motivated me to stop driving years ago was when one day it just occurred to me while I was driving that I was contributing to air pollution.  It wasn’t just a vague, nebulous “cars” that were causing air pollution.  If I was driving a car, I was polluting.  Me.  Personally.  I was contributing to rising asthma and cancer rates.  Once I realized that, I just couldn’t keep driving.  The cognitive dissonance was getting too loud.  So I stopped driving.

I really enjoy life so much more without the car though.  I didn’t “give up” my car.  I found a better way to live.