(Leave the Car at) Home for the Holidays: Examining your car-dependency
Holiday season is upon us and for students, especially first-year Aggies, now might be a good time to reexamine your dependency on a vehicle while at UC Davis. Public transportation and ample bicycle lanes are some of the many things that make Davis such a commuter-friendly community. By now, maybe you have acclimated to your Davis-way of living and your car is collecting dust.
Many students end up having vehicles at college because your parents want to feel comfortable. For a parent, knowing your child has immediate access to a car can feel like a lifeline. While you or your parent may think you have an advantage over students without cars (those who have to wait for a bus or must bike longer than it would take to drive), the opposite is probably true.
A car can be a burden for a student. Parking is scarce and expensive on campus. There’s also the monthly cost of insurance, gas, parking tickets, maintenance, and the ever-present temptation to drive distracted. Plus, the slow burn of time you spend sitting in traffic, looking for parking, walking to class from the outskirts of campus (the UC Davis core is closed to private vehicles), and becoming a personal taxi for your friends without vehicles, can add up quickly. We don’t want to scare you into giving up your vehicle, we want you to understand that you are probably alright without it.
This holiday season, if you are a student driving home, consider leaving your vehicle at Mom and Dad’s house and going car-free for the Winter quarter. And if you have already embraced the myriad of transportation modes available in Davis and surrounding areas, cheers to your car-free Aggie experience!
Here are some public transportation options for traveling short and long distances from Davis:
- By Train: Capitol Corridor, Coast Starlight Train, and San Joaquins Train depart out of Davis and travel to Northern, Central, and Southern California. Purchase tickets here.
- By Bus:
- Yolobus doesn’t travel long distance, but there’s a bus route (42A or 42B) that travels from UC Davis to the Sacramento International Airport. See the schedule to the airport here.
- Solano Express travels along I-80 through, Solano, Yolo and Sacramento counties, linking riders to transit connections including Capitol Corridor, BART, Sacramento Regional Transit and the SF Bay Ferry. See a list of all the Solano Express transit connections as well as the fare schedule.
- MegaBus departs out of Sacramento and has regular routes to the Bay Area and Southern California. See the MegaBus route map here.
- Ride-Matching: Zimride is a goClub supported ride-matching program and links those in the UC Davis community together to carpool to the same (or similar) destinations. It’s free to register, easy to use.Sign up for Zimride here.
Need advice on living a car-free life at UC Davis? The goClub can help! Email us at goclub.ucdavis.edu to find out about transportation options around Davis, or email our goClub team to get a custom trip plan.