Inflation Comes for Atlantic Canada’s Car Owners
HALIFAX – Last year, life got a lot more expensive for Emily MacNeil. The NHSA employee started living on her own and saw her paycheck take an 11 per cent hit. MacNeil had moved from casual to full-time work, which meant she no longer got wages in lieu of benefits.
“I managed to scrape by with selling weed cookies to friends for a while. Then gas started going up in cost, and so did groceries, and before I knew it, my pay would cover the bills and nothing else and I was using a food bank to feed myself. It got to the point that I couldn’t cut any more corners,” MacNeil told Huddle.
Taking a hard look at her finances, MacNeil realized her best option to survive was to sell her vehicle.
It’s a decision few would make lightly, considering the freedom a car gives and the difficulty many face without one. But that freedom is coming with an increasingly high price tag, especially if you live in Atlantic Canada.
Owning a car is most expensive in Atlantic Canada
According to a new study done by Turo and Leger, owning a car in this region costs $5,337 per year. That’s the highest of any area of Canada and much higher than the national average of $4,810.
Turo is a car-sharing company similar to Airbnb. People use it to share their car for a fee when they’re not using it and the company collects a 25 per cent commission from each transaction.
Owning a car is a high cost that is difficult for Atlantic Canadians to simply give up. More than 90 per cent of survey respondents said they own or lease a vehicle. Nearly 70 per cent of Atlantic Canadians surveyed said they’d have to change their job if they no longer owned a car, which is 12 per cent higher than the national average.
On top of that, 84 per cent believe it would be “impossible” to live without a vehicle.
But, despite how impossible it is to live without a car, many Atlantic Canadians are feeling forced to look at life without a set of wheels. One in three people surveyed were less likely to buy or lease a vehicle this year. Inflation is the key driver of their reasoning.
Even more alarming is the fact that three out of four Atlantic Canadians who said they are looking to stop owning a car cite financial reasons for such a drastic change. This is 20 per cent higher than the national average.
MacNeil says she tried everything she could to keep her car but that the math just didn’t make sense.
“I ate less, I skimped on gas, sold everything I owned worth any money, and couldn’t keep up let alone get ahead. Gas was steadily rising and my transmission was failing. I couldn’t see a way to keep the car.
“I decided I’d rather be able to go to the grocery store on payday and take the bus. First thing I did when I agreed to sell was spend my upcoming car payment on cat food and produce.”
MacNeil may be able to afford food more easily, but she is certainly feeling the loss of freedom that comes with owning a vehicle.
“Everything is significantly more difficult. My Mom doesn’t drive so I don’t get to see her as often, I can’t just get up and go any time I want. I get home from work way later; I feel housebound sometimes.”
A car-less life still tough in the region
For survey respondents who already don’t own vehicles, nearly 40 per cent say it’s the high costs that keep them away from it. Nonetheless, 86 per cent of these respondents say they hope to be car owners in the future, which is double the national average.
This survey reinforces the notion that it is difficult to not own a vehicle in modern society. But it sheds a light on something we may not realize. Despite being so reliant on our expensive cars, we barely use them. In Atlantic Canada, the survey found, our cars sit idle 95 per cent of the time, which is on par with the national average. Most people use them o get from point A to point B, clearly ignoring leisure drives.
The average Atlantic Canadian car owner sits behind the wheel for just 408 hours a year. Cedric Mathieu, the vice president and Head of Turo Canada, says such eye-opening stats are important for the company. Turo was started with the belief that the world’s vehicle universe was incredibly underutilized. Knowing that people only spend five per cent of their year inside a car reinforces the need for a new system like car-sharing.
“It goes back to our mission, which is about putting the world’s 1.5 billion cars to better use and more specifically, Canada’s 26 million cars to better use,” said Mathieu. “Because this platform and this company was really built on the idea that the car ownership model, as it exists today, is very inefficient. And it’s a huge waste of resources and assets that could be put to better use.”
Mathieu believes that Atlantic Canadians are more reliant on cars than anywhere else due to lack of viable alternatives. It’s a region speckled with rural towns and small cities. Public transportation is often nonexistent or unreliable.
The Turo vice president notes that in more populous areas of Canada, where there are more transportation alternatives, people are more likely to consider getting rid of their car.
“You see a real difference from one province to the next. When you look at British Columbia, you’re seeing higher openness to forgo car ownership and rely on other transportation methods. And I think it probably speaks to the availability of alternatives.”
Derek Montague is a Huddle reporter in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].