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I was riding the bus to work. We passed a cafe. “I’ll get out here,” I told the driver. “OK,” she responded, and popped the door open mid-block.

Wait, you can’t just get off a bus anywhere you want, can you? On this particular ride, yes, you pretty much can.

It’s Sacramento’s new SmaRTRide 10-seat shuttle bus. You summon it like Uber via a smart phone app. It picks riders up at a corner near their homes and drops them directly at their destinations.

It’s the latest of a growing list of imaginative and experimental transportation services to hit the Sacramento region the last few years, offering commuters the chance to do something unthinkable just a few years ago.

It’s called the “car-lite” lifestyle.

There’s a caveat: We’re not talking about a car-FREE lifestyle. Sacramento is not Manhattan or Paris, where fewer than one-third of residents own cars. Very few residents of sprawling and suburban Sacramento can live car-free. Regionally, 86 percent of people still arrive at work in a car, and most households are in fact car-heavy, owning two or three vehicles.

But in some communities, streets are now dotted with candy red Jump rental bikes, e-scooters and GIG electric rental cars, prompting thousands of Sacramentans to leave their own cars in the garage for some trips, or live with just one personal car instead of two or more in the family even though they may rent a GIG car or ride in an Uber from time to time.

Forty-five apartment complexes now offer residents on-site Envoy rideshare cars for rent, allowing them to save money by not owning a car. Some cities locally are painting new stripes on streets, taking lanes away from cars and handing them over to cyclists. And in West Sacramento, the Via Rideshare company is shuttling residents from homes to work in real-time, app-based van pools.

Add to that the ubiquitous Uber and Lyft rideshare fleets and you have what UC Davis transportation researcher Dan Sperling says is the start of the biggest revolution in mobility since the laying of interstate highways in the 1950s and 1960s.

“The real strategy here is to create more choice for travelers so they are comfortable giving up car ownership,” said Sperling, who also is a California Air Resources Board member.

How real is the car-lite lifestyle?

I’m The Bee’s Back-seat Driver transportation writer and I recently spent a few days over several weeks checking out the new smorgasbord of options to get a sense of what’s happening, where it’s heading and whom it might work for.

Crashing an e-scooter

What is the car-lite lifestyle? There is no set definition. But if you leave your car at home for one commute per week, or for a Saturday or evening outing and instead ride your bike, take light rail to a Kings’ game or carpool in an Uber, you’re going car-lite. (If you ride all alone in an Uber, however, you’re not really car lite.)

My car-lite commutes at times felt liberating, but they were also more time-consuming, logistically tricky and downright inglorious, like when I hit the brakes too hard on an electric stand-up scooter and landed in a planter box at a busy intersection, more embarrassed than bruised.

I’ll skip the details. Let’s just say rentable e-scooters are fun but probably require the most skill among non-car transportation options out there. By this spring there could be 3,000 of them plunked down on streets throughout central Sacramento as four private scooter companies vie for a foothold in the capital city.

If you are considering going car-lite, where you live counts. I live in one of the local epicenters of the movement, the central part of the city of Sacramento. West Sacramento and Davis also have emerged as leading regional car-lite cities.

But even historically car-centric suburbs are testing the water. Folsom, Rancho Cordova and Elk Grove are jointly looking at bringing rentable electric bike fleets to their communities. And Placer County officials say they are watching Sacramento’s SmaRTRide shuttle and West Sacramento’s Via microtransit service in hopes of bringing similar services to the streets of south Placer.

“This is slowly sneaking up on us,” said Sacramento city’s urban design manager Bruce Monighan.

Mia can’t afford a car

Thirty-year-old midtown Sacramento resident Mia Lopez doesn’t own a car. It’s too expensive right now. She lives just over two miles from her marketing job near Broadway in the heart of car-lite territory. Two years ago, when she sold her car, there were few options other than her bike. Now, she says, she can’t go two blocks between home and work without passing a rideshare bike, scooter or GIG car parked along the way.

Without a car, she’s been able to amass a solid savings account. Car costs are about 60 cents per mile, including gas, insurance, and wear and tear, according to estimates. For someone who drives 7,000 miles a year, that’s a $4,200 annual cost. That doesn’t include the cost of buying the car and the cost of a monthly parking garage pass.

Going car-lite takes work, she said.

“It is an investment in time. You have to think the day before: What is the best route? What is the weather? Do I have a meeting after work or an event? Can I hitch a ride with someone?

“Owning your own car,” she said, “will always be more convenient.”

Young financially struggling workers represent a challenge to Sacramento leaders, says James Corless, regional transportation planning head at the Sacramento Area Council of Governments.

“Cities, suburbs and small towns that can offer young people (better mobility) options are going to prosper,” he said.

Bicycle commuting in Sacramento

Going car-lite also can be messy.

Matt Ruyak, a downtown city attorney, rides his bike daily and that means getting wet. Last Thursday, he waited at home in Land Park an extra 15 minutes for rain to ease before starting his 20-minute commute.

He ferries extra pants, socks and good shoes at the office to change into if he gets wet.

“So, yes, there’s some thinking that needs to go into it,” he said.

His commute, though, offers exercise and drops his stress levels, he said. And during particularly busy commuting hours, it can be more convenient than a car. Last Wednesday he got home faster than he would have in a car.

“There was a big backup,” he said.

A car is needed in a California suburb

But the car-lite lifestyle just doesn’t work for suburban commuters who live many miles from work, with no light rail or convenient bus line nearby and no Jump bikes to get them to a bus stop or rail station.

Veronica Hunter, a real estate agent who lives in the Arden area, has put 40,000 miles on her Honda Accord in less than two years, spending up to three hours a day in her car driving clients to view houses, her trunk filled with wooden open house signs and lock boxes.

“My car is my office,” she said. She’s envious of clients who recently moved from El Dorado Hills to the new Crocker Village community near downtown where they are steps from a light rail line that takes them to downtown jobs.

“It’s a dream to jump on a bike and pedal to work, but it’s not realistic,” said Hunter, who works for Coldwell Banker. “To be successful, you have to be able to go to all areas of Sacramento.”

UC Davis transportation researcher Sperling’s recent life passage is an example of the difficulties of going car lite.

He got rid of his car in Davis a year ago and rides his bike a few miles to work through bike-friendly Davis, a city stocked with on- and off-street bike lanes. A recent study shows that more than a quarter of Davis residents walk or ride bikes to work.

Sperling rides the Capitol Corridor train, a few blocks from his house, on trips to the Bay Area. When he goes to Sacramento, he takes Lyft. He likes being chauffeured. It allows him to work along the way and it saves him from the cost and hassle of finding and paying for parking in downtown Sacramento.

His wife, though, is not thrilled.

“She’s a Southern California gal. She feels constrained,” he said.

So, this year they will get a car at her request. He’ll try to avoid using it when he’s not traveling with his wife.

Uber: Time is money

Like Sperling, I found leaving my car at home to be liberating. He talks about feeling reconnected to your community because you are more exposed to it. Plus, it boosted my steps-per-day on my fitness app. But it requires real homework: studying options, making cost comparisons, getting your timing right and generally spending more time getting places.

A few nights ago, on a cold evening, I left The Bee’s midtown building looking forward to getting home quickly for dinner. Then I realized my car was at home. Arrgh. What to do? Sacramento Regional Transit bus or light rail are legitimate options. The best bus stop for me is a half-mile from the Bee on J Street. That’s a reasonable walk. The bus would drop me off just two blocks from my home.

I also could use light rail. There’s a light rail station one block from my office. The train would take me a mile past my house, leaving me to walk a home, an acceptable but not desirable 35-minute overall commute.

I just wanted to get home. So I tapped my phone app for an Uber. I failed to check the price beforehand to see if Uber’s variable or “surge” pricing was happening that evening. That Uber rider cost me $7.01, plus a $2 tip. The bus or light rail would have cost just $2.50.

Another morning, it was raining. I was going to take the bus, but my cell phone GIG app told me a GIG electric Chevy Bolt car was parked just around the corner. Black and blue GIG cars, which launched in Sacramento last year, are billed as community rideshare rentals. There are several hundred of them parked on streets around the city of Sacramento. Once you’ve signed up with GIG, your GIG cell phone app serves as the key to unlock the car and to start the engine.

You can park a GIG car almost wherever you want and just leave it. If it’s at a parking meter, you don’t have to pay the meter. But, watch out, you can get a ticket if you park at a spot where parking is not allowed that day, such as street sweeper day.

GIG car: The meter’s running

Renting a GIG car for my morning ride to work, however, posed a time-versus-money conundrum. I really wanted coffee, so I stopped for an espresso on the way to work, and put the car on wait mode while I went into the coffee house. You have to pay 30 cents for every minute the car sits on hold. I sat in the coffee house for 12 minutes anyway.

The total ride cost: $9. Of that, $3.60 was for the time I spent in the coffee house. That made it the most expensive coffee I’d ever had, at $7.10 total. (But not as expensive as the time I got a ticket in San Francisco when I parked illegally to run into a Mrs. Fields to get a cookie. That was a $41.50 cookie.)

Then there is the ubiquitous candy-red Jump bike. The bikes are sturdy and steady. The motor assist allows you to go 15 miles per hour with minimal pedaling effort. Someone with knee, hip or back problems may find them more rideable than a regular bike. The cost to rent the bike is $1.50 for the first 10 minutes, then 20 cents every minute after. A 20-minute ride to work cost me $3.50.

As for the e-scooters, consider wearing a helmet. And practice your braking right away. On a quiet street. Seriously.

Will I continue to go car lite? Yes, at least some. I like the Jump bikes, the walking, the light rail. I can listen to podcasts. I learned I don’t always need to be in the hurry that I thought I was. But honestly, the bottom line is this: I get free parking at The Bee and my car can take me to any cafe I want in the morning and it’s the easiest way to get groceries home during the evening commute.

Microtransit arrives

The SmaRTRide microtransit service is the most intriguing new star in the emerging car-lite universe. SacRT launched it after seeing ridership shrink when Uber and Lyft came on the scene. The new microtransit service costs just $2.50, the same price as a fixed-route bus, which suggests SacRT is offering it at a deep discount.

It’s available so far in nine communities: Central Sacramento (downtown, midtown, East Sacramento and a sliver of Land Park), as well as Arden, Carmichael, Folsom, North Sacramento, Gerber-Calvine, Citrus Heights-Antelope-Orangevale, Franklin-South Sacramento and Rancho Cordova.

The first time I tried to order a SmaRTRide shuttle to pick me up last week, the phone app said I’d have to wait 32 minutes for the first available bus to show up. It was rush hour. Before I could decide, the screen flashed that the bus was no longer available.

The next morning, I waited until after rush hour. The app said a bus would arrive at my block in 15 minutes, so I clicked “yes.” The computer screen continuously showed me where the bus was, so I didn’t have to leave my house until one minute before the bus arrived.

The ride to work took almost 20 minutes, slower than if I had driven my car. But I was the only rider, so I didn’t have to wait for the bus to drop others off. I decided to jump off mid-block to get a coffee not far from work when traffic got blocked at a train crossing.

My ride was last week, prior to SacRT launching its public campaign this week to promote the new shuttles. It may have gotten more crowded. Bee readers who give it a try can email me at tbizjak@sacbee.com to tell me about your experience.

Will the car-lite lifestyle get easier?

A recent survey by the Sacramento Transportation Authority found that two-thirds of county residents now say congestion is a major problem, even worse than high housing costs. As that gets worse, will more people try to live car-lite lifestyles?

SACOG transportation planner Corless says one of the next big steps will be to create a smart phone app that acts as a transportation information center where all necessary information is housed to allow consumers to make the best choice.

“Everything under one roof,” he said. “Is there a carpool with an open seat nearby? Is it going to rain? Payment info. Quickest route.”

But if Sacramento residents are going to go car-lite on a broad scale, community growth patterns will have to change, he and others said. Downtowns will need to add more housing. More urban-style communities will have to sprout in suburbia, where home, work, restaurant and retail are closer together. And, the region will have to finally make good on its promise to create housing and job clusters near major light rail stations.

And leaders will need to keep coming up with creative ideas. In Elk Grove, City Councilman Patrick Hume says he has suggested to SacRT officials a SmaRT Ride microtransit shuttle for his city with bus interiors set up more like cafes, with tables for people to open their laptops.

This story was originally published January 16, 2020 at 5:00 AM.

Tony Bizjak

The Sacramento Bee

916-321-1020

Tony Bizjak is a former reporter for The Bee, and retired in 2021. In his 30-year career at The Bee, he covered transportation, housing and development and City Hall.