Randy Essex: "I'm happier than ever about not being a car owner." (Photo: LinkedIn)
Detroit Free Press editor Randy Essex lives downtown with his wife and they have no car.
So you may wonder how he fared when the Polar Vortex swept in two weeks ago. Pretty well, he notes in a column:
I channeled my Nebraska boyhood, layered up and walked a few blocks at a time in subzero weather for a couple days. On the coldest day of the year, I had a dental appointment at Renaissance Center and the People Mover apparently was frozen. But, hey, the sun was out. Maybe if I’d needed to be numbed up, it wouldn’t have required novocaine.
In any case, my experience was nothing like the time, cost and frustration that my motoring colleagues experienced. When the deep freeze broke, coworkers complained about potholes on I-75, sort of an early spring blossom here in Michigan.
He concludes:
While this has been a mostly mild, low-snow winter so far, I can honestly say that after the Polar Vortex, I’m happier than ever about not being a car owner.
In normal times how does he and his wife get around?
The existence of the Qline and Whole Foods, neither of which was here during our first stint, makes it possible to get groceries. Zipcar and Maven, hourly rental car-sharing operations, enable us to get to appointments outside the downtown core. Uber is an option, though we rarely use it.
