Glen Coburn Hutcheson: A Worthwhile Tradeoff — Sustainable Transportation Vermont

Glen Coburn Hutcheson has never owned a car.

As a teenager, Glen followed the traditional steps of learning to drive and earning his driver’s license. However, instead of taking the anticipated next steps of purchasing a vehicle and incorporating driving into his everyday life, Glen set out on a path of figuring out how to get where he wanted to go without a car.

Glen’s choice to stay car-free wasn’t motivated by an altruistic call to save the environment or a desire to make a bold political stance, but rather from a very basic understanding of the dangers of driving.

When first confronted with the task of learning to drive, many people (myself included) experience some degree of terror as they realize that they’re in charge of an extremely powerful piece of machinery that could cause serious damage if the driver does anything wrong. Even the slightest mistake could have enormous repercussions, ranging from expensive to fatal. Most people eventually make a choice, consciously or not, to set aside those feelings and proceed with driving in a state of cognitive dissonance, simultaneously aware of the enormous risks posed by driving and accepting those risks because of the convenience that driving offers.

“I could never really get past that,” Glen told me.

The opposition to placidly accepting the huge risks that come with driving was so strong for Glen, and over time, his motivation to stay car-free only grew stronger. While acknowledging that driving can eventually become a fun activity for some people, he’s never personally experienced that, and the notion of propelling himself around at high speeds in a two-ton hunk of metal still hasn’t reached the point of being appealing to him.

These shoes were made for walking

Walking is Glen’s primary mode of getting where he needs to go. From his home, Glen can walk to his job as a picture framer at The Drawing Board in under ten minutes. From there, it’s maybe a two minute walk to The Front Gallery, a cooperative art gallery on Barre Street that he co-founded and where he exhibits his artwork. A trip from his home to Hunger Mountain Co-op for groceries takes a comparable amount of time as the walk to work.

While he owns a bicycle that he rides for fun from time to time, walking has proven to be the most efficient and pleasant mode of transportation for Glen. He explained that by the time he’s gotten his bicycle out, put on his helmet, retrieved his lock, and rolled up his pant cuffs to prevent them from getting caught in the chain, he could already have walked halfway to where he’s trying to go.

A uniquely walkable location

Montpelier fits the model of a “15-minute city,” with everything that an average person needs to live a happy life, from groceries to entertainment to healthcare, within a 15-minute travel distance from a person’s home via foot or public transit. This makes Montpelier a uniquely walkable location. In regards to getting everything that he needs accomplished without needing to climb into a car, Glen explained that, “If I’m willing to limit what I wear to athletic gear and vintage clothes, I can meet all of my shopping needs right in downtown Montpelier.”

Glen acknowledged that being car-free isn’t something he could necessarily manage if he lived in a different place. Even living in neighboring Berlin, Vermont, would make a car-free life considerably more challenging (if not impossible) given the lack of sidewalks and sprawling nature of businesses and residential areas scattered far apart from one another. Having a downtown where housing is clustered near a densely walkable, mixed-use space is what enables Glen to live a satisfying life without owning a car.

Trekking on

While nearly everywhere that Glen needs to go is within a comfortable walking distance from his house, there are some notable exceptions. In particular, accessing medical appointments outside of basic primary care usually requires travelling outside of Montpelier’s downtown, which can pose a real challenge.

A while back, Glen needed to visit dermatology, which was located at the Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin at the time. He charted out an unusual course to the hospital along a string of back roads, trekking uphill through farmland and forests on an hour-long journey that turned out to be “a lovely walk.”

Unfortunately, the dermatology clinic later relocated to Colchester, and upon researching potential routes to the new location, he found that a car-free journey to the clinic would be much less feasible. It would require two bus trips on either side of the journey, plus a mile-long walk through an area with no sidewalks, resulting in one appointment becoming an all-day affair. Glen was able to simply put off getting an appointment until the University of Vermont Medical Center opened a dermatology clinic on their main campus in Burlington, but in different circumstances with an individual who needs a visit with a specialist in a more limited time-frame, the remote locations of specialist offices in Vermont could prove to be quite a problem for folks who don’t have their own car.

A “prolonged adolescence”

Glen reflected upon the social and psychological experience of being car-free, something he’s spent some time thinking about. There is a definite unspoken stigma around being an adult who doesn’t drive. It’s a feeling of a sort of prolonged adolescence: of not quite having checked off all the boxes that bring you into adulthood. I thought of my own experience of being car-free up until about a year ago, when I purchased my first vehicle so that I could visit my partner without having to use public transit during the pandemic. I vividly recall the many times before that when I felt embarrassed about admitting that I needed a ride, or the times, as Glen has also experienced, of trying to conversationally dodge the topic of not being someone who drives.

Trading on, trading off

Glen acknowledges that choosing to be car-free comes with a set of limitations.

“It’s a tradeoff,” he told me, “and I feel content in the choice that I made, but it is a tradeoff.”

One of the limitations that comes as part of that choice is the challenge of finding satisfying, well-paying employment that can be accessed without a car. Glen is open about the fact that his choice not to drive has shaped his career in terms of where he’s chosen to live and what kinds of opportunities have been available to him. That said, he’s found creative ways to find work that he’s happy with despite this constraint. Before moving to Vermont, he lived in New York City, where he could ride his bicycle and take advantage of the train system to go anywhere he needed. After finishing school in New York, he took a job at a retreat center in a rural setting where he was able to live on-site, thus eliminating the need for any sort of commute. After that, he moved to Montpelier to live with his partner and started work as a cook in the Mad River Valley, which he navigated by riding his bicycle out there once a week and staying on-site for the duration of the work-week.

A backyard bathtub

The flip-side of the limitations that come with forgoing car ownership are the time, space, and energy that get freed up by not driving. Glen explained that, “It’s difficult for me to do anything casually.” If driving were a part of his life, he imagines that he would be devoting a considerable amount of time and brain space to developing the skill of being a good driver. Since he’s not having to expend energy on the task of operating a motor vehicle, he’s been able to invest that energy into more rewarding activities like becoming a better cook, honing his artistic abilities, helping to start up The Front Gallery, serving on the Montpelier City Council for two years, or even engaging in creative home-improvement projects, like installing a clawfoot bathtub in his backyard where water from a natural spring trickles out from the ground and had, prior to the arrival of the bathtub, accumulated in a permanently mucky puddle.

“The worst kind of being indoors”

Another set of benefits that comes from being car-free is, quite simply, not having to be in a car all the time. Glen referred to riding in cars as “the worst kind of being indoors,” given the confinement and impersonality of the space. Because his primary mode of transportation is walking, he gets to spend a lot of time outside. This, he imagines, has a positive impact on his health, noting that the exercise afforded by walking is definitely good for him, and the simple act of spending time outside is enough to boost his mood if he’s ever feeling down.

Walking around in Montpelier is also a fun and social activity. Glen describes spending time downtown as, “kind of like you’re always in the same living room,” explaining that he can’t leave his house without seeing at least a dozen familiar faces. He adds that there’s also a lot of interesting stuff to experience and enjoy while you’re out walking, whether that’s meeting friendly dogs, savoring the shade of the lovely trees planted and tended to by Montpelier’s Tree Board, or checking out new public art installations.

The curse of cars

Walking is, by nature, a safer activity than driving, yet so much space in the Western world has become dedicated to roadways and parking areas for cars that it’s made walking unsafe or impractical in many places. Somewhere along the way, a collective choice was made to prioritize the needs of automobiles over pedestrians, and that decision has shaped our society and the choices we now have available to us. In Glen’s words, “Like everything, it’s a tradeoff. And I don’t think that’s the choice we should have made.”

Making choices

Talking with Glen was intriguing, inspiring, and sobering. Hearing about the walkable life he’s chosen for himself, the time that he spends outdoors, and the energy that he has for creative projects made me lament all of the time and resources that I devote to driving my car. I longed for the long walks in the woods and the friendly chats with neighbors that are Glen’s norm. But hearing his words also reinforced the notion that there are many challenges that our cities and towns have yet to overcome: that while Montpelier offers a welcoming space for those who want to live without a car, so many other places have yet to decenter the automobile from the built environment and to construct a robust infrastructure for pedestrians.

In our culture, we have this notion that we can “have it all,” but that’s not really possible. Every choice, whether it appears to expand or limit our options, inevitably does both to some degree. Glen made a choice that deviates from the cultural norm - instead of sacrificing his time, energy, and money to driving, he chose to accept the limitations of not having a vehicle along with embracing the benefits of getting to know a place more intimately, of having time and energy for creative endeavors, and of cultivating a satisfying life within a walkable zone. Glen’s intentional approach to the decision of whether or not to drive highlights a different way of thinking about the costs and benefits that come with that activity. Getting to talk with Glen was an eye-opening and thought-provoking experience in learning about the choice to embark upon a car-free life.