Krista Hasert - The Car-Lite Life

Krista Hasert

Krista Hasert is a car-lite Vermonter. While she hasn’t owned a car for some time, and her everyday activities are all carried out via foot, bicycle, or bus, Krista has found a creative way of ensuring that she has access to a vehicle in the moments when a car is what she really wants as a mode of travel: a CarShare Vermont membership. 

Carshare Vermont is a nonprofit organization in Burlington that allows members to reserve and use vehicles on an as-needed basis. Members pay an annual or monthly fee (as well as a fee for each time they check out a car), which gives them access to an entire fleet of vehicles, ranging in type from compact hybrids to hatchbacks with ski racks in order to meet a variety of transportation needs.

Krista has praised the ease and convenience of having a CarShare Vermont membership. “It could be three in the morning,” she says, “and you just sign it out on the app, walk up to the car, let yourself in, and then return it to the same spot for the next person to use!” Unlike owning a car, there’s no hassle of maintaining or repairing the vehicle, nor is there the stress of where to keep the vehicle parked at the end of the day.

Krista uses her CarShare Vermont membership mostly for visiting her parents who live sixty miles away. It also comes in handy for errands that are a little too big for a bicycle; last April, Krista needed to buy some lumber and to get rid of large bags of leaves that she’d raked up from her yard. She was able to use one of the two pickup trucks that CarShare Vermont has available in order to tackle both of those tasks in one swift trip.

Everyday adventures

Being a Burlingtonian, most places that Krista needs to get to on a regular basis are only a mile or so from her home. Her commute to her job as the Point of Sales Supervisor at City Market is made via foot or bicycle, which offers a nice opportunity to get some fresh air and have some “mind-wandering time” before and after the workday. An avid cyclist, she’ll journey as far as ten miles one-way on her bicycle for errands, or sixty miles for a recreational ride.  

Groceries are stowed and transported neatly in two waterproof panniers that clip onto the back rack of her bicycle. For larger grocery runs, or for transporting side-of-the-road furniture and other such treasures that wouldn’t fit into a pannier, Krista has a collapsible bicycle trailer that clips onto her rear wheel. With her handy trailer, she can carry roughly what would fit into the trunk of a compact car.

Krista’s waterproof bicycle panniers

 Health and happiness

Krista notes that having an everyday routine composed of walking and bicycling instead of driving is beneficial beyond just being able to avoid the stress and costs of car ownership. Whenever she reads articles on how to be healthier or happier, many of the recommendations that she finds – such as “spend more time outdoors” or “get a little exercise every day” – are things that are already built into her schedule. She doesn’t need to seek out separate gym time for exercise or make a conscious effort to get fresh air because that comes automatically with her chosen methods of transportation.

“Shoutout to my parents!”

Krista reflected upon how lucky she was to have parents who showed her that bicycling is normal and practical and something that adults do. “I think a lot of people get the impression that people consider bikes as being for kids . . . but then you learn to drive, you get your license, you get a car, and you leave biking behind as a practical method of transportation.” That wasn’t so in Krista’s family. Her parents rode bicycles with her as she grew up, and her childhood was filled with the message that bicycles are for everyone and everything, whether that’s getting to work, going out for fun, or running errands. “Shoutout to my parents for setting a good example!”

Another helpful skill that her parents equipped her with was an efficiency mindset. As a child, she recalls her parents remarking upon neighbors who would drive out and back from their houses multiple times in one day. “That’s so inefficient!” they’d exclaim. Even when Krista still owned a car, she was intentional about planning her trips so as not to waste time or drive excess miles. Relying on bicycling and walking as her primary modes of transit now, that eye for efficiency has paid off in terms of intuitively planning ahead and balancing out the energy that she expends on getting from place to place throughout the day.

Roadside finds

Another advantage of walking or riding a bicycle instead of driving a car is experiencing the world at a slower pace. That slower pace makes it possible to see things that would have been a mere blur from the speed of a car, and it can result in some cool roadside finds. While out riding, Krista found a set of wrenches along the side of the road that she was able to take home. She mentions that Peter Burns, a fellow Burlingtonian and bicycle-enthusiast, writes a monthly blog post for Local Motion where he discusses biking and living a car-free life; “He’ll talk about finding free stuff, finding lost stuff on the side of the road, scavenging, and I’m like, ‘I do that!’ It’s another perk of riding your bike!”

Krista’s handy bicycle trailer

Helpful resources

Krista suggested a couple of helpful resources that people can check out if they’re interested in reducing their dependency on cars and branching out to utilizing more sustainable forms of transportation. Local Motion is a statewide nonprofit organization located in Burlington that, according to their website, is “working to make biking and walking a way of life in Vermont.” They offer in-person and online workshops to help people transition to commuting by bicycle or easing into a commute that utilizes a mixture of sustainable transportation options, including walking and riding public transit. While the transition to a car-lite lifestyle happened organically for Krista, she said that Local Motion is an excellent resource for people who are hoping to jumpstart that change in their lives.

Another awesome resource to check out is the Old Spokes Home, a bike shop and nonprofit organization in the Old North End of Burlington. The Old Spokes Home offers classes on how to maintain and repair your own bicycle, provides workshops for learning bicycle safety and how to transition to a bicycle commute, and sells bikes at a variety of price points so that individuals of all income levels can access bicycling. “A bike still has the power to open up your options and provide freedom for people,” Krista says. “Old Spokes knows that, and they get it, and they’re making it happen.”

A satisfying solution

Krista has found a happy medium in her life between the burdens of car-ownership and the challenges of not having a vehicle at all. While the unpredictable expenses that come with owning a car were once a factor in her decision to rely upon other modes of transportation, the appeal of car-ownership doesn’t feel strong to her now that her financial situation has changed, either. “Now, it’s like, I could afford a car, but it seems like a hassle.” Adding that being less-reliant on fossil-fuel-powered modes of transportation also contributes positively to her mental wellbeing, she explains, “There are ways in which I’ve tried to live my life in an ecologically low-impact way, and so it aligns with my principles.” 

Krista’s car-lite life is a useful illustration of one way that a person can go about reducing dependency on single-occupancy vehicles without completely forgoing the convenience of a car. She has found a satisfying solution for getting where she needs to go in a way that works well for her. While Krista’s particular transportation plan may not work for everyone, learning about the choices she’s made and the creative solutions she’s developed prompted me to think more about the options that exist in between being totally car-free and being totally dependent on a vehicle. In a world that can so often seem polarized between the “right” thing and the “wrong” thing, the best option and the worst option, the sustainable choice or the unsustainable choice, it’s helpful to remember that there are many options in between and many different ways to balance one’s own needs.

All photos by Amelia Sherman.