By Emma Brown, Globe Correspondent
When Janie Katz-Christy and her husband needed to take their three children from Cambridge to Newton for a cousin's birthday party this summer and to Medford for dinner at a friend's house, they didn't pile into the family car. They couldn't. There is no family car.
"We gave it away last November," says Katz-Christy, 51, a lifelong cyclist who drove infrequently but worried that going completely car-free might leave her stranded in an emergency. "I kept hanging on," she says. "I had had a car for 30 years, and was a little hesitant to get rid of it."
Now, she and her family get around by bicycle, bus, and train. Seven-year-old Max pedaled 10 miles to that Newton birthday bash with his father, while mom and two daughters, 9 and 11, took the subway and commuter rail. A little research revealed that a city bus leaving from just outside Katz-Christy's home would take the family to within a block and a half of their friend's home in Medford.
"It's been a really interesting, surprisingly easy time," says Katz-Christy, the director of the Green Streets Initiative, a grassroots organization that encourages people to use alternative forms of transportation, "and it's much more of an adventure."
Commuters have been ditching their automobiles in droves since gas prices spiked earlier this year. Now, a small but growing number of middle-class Boston-area parents are also embracing the car-free calculus. It's not an act of martyrdom, they say, but a choice to slow down, simplify, and improve the quality of everyday life. Plus, going without four wheels saves money, shrinks greenhouse gas emissions, and encourages exercise.
"This is something my husband and I have been talking about for a really long time," says Lisa-Maria Mehta, a Jamaica Plain mother who is replacing a Ford Focus station wagon with a cargo bicycle that can hold her three children, all under 6 years old.
The bike's $3,000 price felt like an obstacle at first. "But then we realized that what we were paying for insurance and gas for one of our two cars for a year was about that amount of money," she says. "It actually made economic sense for us."
Mehta, who describes herself as sedentary and had not been on a bicycle for six years until recently, says she's living differently now: shopping at Costco once every two months rather than twice a week, and getting groceries and other goods delivered to cut down on errands. She's been challenged by this summer's rainy weather and a steep hill she has to climb on her way home, but hopes to give up the family minivan when her youngest child, now 2 years old, starts kindergarten.
"I'm getting healthier," she says. "And the joy of riding with my kids - it's great."
According to the Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey, 35 percent of Boston households do not have a vehicle. It's hard to say whether that number is changing much, but anecdotal data suggest it's on the rise. Dan Sorger, co-owner of the Dutch Bicycle Company, a Somerville shop specializing in commuter bikes, says his sales have tripled this year, largely because of parents who want to ride with their children.
"We're seeing families coming in and buying two or three [bikes] at a shot because they've made a conscious decision to park the car," says Sorger, who moved the business from Florida in January because it was shipping so many bicycles to New Englanders. "It's like we're selling candy in a schoolyard."
Not all car-free parents depend on bicycles. Leslie Richman and her husband, Kenneth, a professor of bioethics at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, have been using the subway and buses to get around since 2004, when they sold their car after getting fed up with the cost of parking in Boston.
When they learned Leslie was pregnant with twins the following year, they decided to give car-free parenting a shot. So far, it's meant shopping and playing closer to home than they otherwise might - and struggling, occasionally, with wedging a double-wide stroller onto a crowded train.
"It's not like there aren't hurdles. There are . . . but they are not hurdles that are unmanageable," says Leslie, now a stay-at-home mother of two 2-year-olds. She orders cases of diapers from Amazon and gets her groceries delivered. "I have a responsibility to make sure the planet continues to be habitable for my children," she says of the environmental benefits of going car-free, "but frankly there are enormous health benefits. I lost all my pregnancy weight in three months and never even considered having to do Jenny Craig."
The Richmans chose their Brookline apartment based on its proximity to bus stops and the T's Green Line: They say Boston's much-maligned public transportation system is more convenient and far-reaching than people think. The family deals with winter by bundling up: Without the expense of a car, they have extra dollars for high-quality cold-weather gear, including miniature crampons for walking on icy sidewalks. And when four wheels are essential, they rent a Zipcar - whose membership rolls have grown by 40 percent this year.
It's easier for urban than suburban families to live without cars, and easier for parents with job flexibility than those with a rigid 9-to-5 schedule, admits Melissa Glenn Haber, a novelist who stopped driving when she crashed her father's car at age 16. She works during the school day and has time in the afternoons to shepherd her three children - a 10-year-old and 7-year-old twins - by bus or on foot to fencing, pottery, and music lessons.
How does she manage without a car?
"The same way you live without a jet pack," she says. "It's just a matter of getting used to things, a slight shift in expectations. I can't cram as much into a day as someone with a car. I have low blood pressure."
To keep her children occupied whenever a bus is long in coming, Glenn Haber carries a travel Boggle set and a dice game called Cosmic Wimpout in her purse. Her children are accustomed to walking, she says, and don't mind it.
"It doesn't really tire my feet out," says her daughter Mattie, 10. "A lot of places actually aren't very far away."
Emma Brown can be reached at e.strickland.brown@gmail.com.