So our family currently owns two vehicles from (alright, we own one and the bank currently lets us use the other): a 2005 Ford Freestar and a 1996 Toyota Corolla. You can guess which vehicle is mine, it won’t take you long.
With the move coming up I’ve been debating whether keeping two vehicles is both needed and/or beneficial. Milwaukee has a bus system which can pretty much get you anywhere, but I have no experience actually riding it to and from work. Couple that with the fact that we are not going to know where we are going to be living for the mid-term and I really can’t make a decision as to what to do at this moment.
Part of me would really like to ditch the second vehicle (the Corolla which is very dear to me) and just swing it with one vehicle and riding the bus. Only having to pay for maintenance, insurance, gas, etc. on one automobile sounds like sweet music to my ears. It is a minimalistic approach to living that is appealing to me at the moment.
However, losing the second vehicle also limits us in many ways. If the van needs work, we will not have a second vehicle around to use. If I work late, I’ll still have to take the bus, I’ll be limited by the schedule the bus has (which can lengthen the commute considerably) and we also lose an asset we actually own.
So it becomes a conflict for me. Right now no decision will be made. I am driving the Corolla (complete with two cans of freon added as of tonight) to Milwaukee where I will use it to get around for the short term. I will be taking stock of the amount of money we are going to be sinking into it over the next month or so and then compare that to a month-long bus pass along with time constraints of the ride to see if it might be a better fit for us to just go with one automobile.
This could also be remedied by having teleportation devices.