About Us

The car-free movement is an ongoing campaign aimed at making automobiles obsolete in urban areas where population density favors mass transit and other more efficient and environmentally friendly modes of transportation, such as walking, bussing, cycling. It aims to decrease automobile dependency by lobbying for better mass transit, improving alternative transportation options, and encouraging people to modify their car use habits.

Car-Free Sonoma County is a group of concerned citizens who strive to implement these goals within our local community. We do this by:

• Promoting the benefits and enhancing the image of the car-free life
• Advocating for improved public transit and pedestrian and bicycle friendly neighborhoods
• Educating the public and raising awareness about alternative methods of transportation
• Offering support and resources to individuals interested in decreasing their automobile dependency

Car free opportunities

If you think of car-free living as just the typical North American suburban lifestyle without the cars, it sounds horrible. But if you think of it as an opportunity to live in real neighborhoods, to get more exercise in the natural course of your day without joining a health club, to patronize local businesses instead of some multinational conglomerate, to not have to chauffeur your children everywhere, to gain an annual tax-free increase in disposable income worth several thousand dollars, to redesign your community out of strip mall ugliness and into a real there and to lose your fear of people who are racially or socio-economically different�, it sounds a lot better.

Stages of Recovery From Car Addiction (by Dan Burden)

1. Acceptance that walking is OK, and people who walk may be a lot like us.
2. Not putting down (or running down) people who walk who are unlike us.
3. Trying the activity ourselves.
4. Building walking into daily life.
5. Choosing to park a minute or two walk from your destination: not driving for four minutes to find the closest space.
6. Giving up the car for a whole day.
7. Giving up the car for an entire week.
8. Giving up the car all the time except when it is needed.
9. Moving to a part of town and building a lifestyle where you forget where you parked the car.
10. Selling the car because it is a pain a bother and a nuisance ... and renting one when you really need it.