Roughly a third of Baltimore residents don’t have a car in a city where getting around without one can be, at best, an exercise in planning ahead, or, at worst, a serious barrier to work and life.

For many, it’s a reality forced by physical disability or the soaring cost of car ownership. Others choose to go without, even though they could afford four wheels, to save money and be free of the headaches of finding a parking spot.

“You really get a different perspective when you’re actually using our streets, our sidewalks, our public transit, and you get a firsthand experience on how those systems might work or not work,” said Daria Pugh, an attorney with Disability Rights Maryland, which recently sponsored a Week Without Driving campaign and invited local lawmakers to participate.

The goal, Pugh said, was to bring mobility issues to the forefront of lawmakers’ minds so when they are crafting policy, they’ll remember what carless Marylanders go through.

Here’s how a car-free life works for four Baltimore-area residents.

‘A lot of sitting and waiting’

As Toressa Dennis waited for the CityLink Purple, four buses turned onto East Fayette Street. Each time, she picked up her bag off the bench and craned her neck to see if it was the right bus.

Not the Purple. Back to the bench.

Dennis, a 65-year-old in-home medical aide and lifelong Baltimorean, takes two buses most days to work. Her commute — East Baltimore to West, just single digits in miles — takes about 45 minutes, she said.

She’s one of about 200,000 city residents who rely on the Maryland Transit Administration. It’s how she commutes, shops and visits friends and family.

“It’s a lot of sitting and waiting,” she said.

There’s been some improvements lately. MTA riders now have free premium access to the mobile Transit app, for example, which tracks the locations of their rides so they can better time when to get to the bus stop. More lanes on major city streets are now designated for buses.

Calls from City Hall and beyond are sounding louder to give the MTA more money for more buses. But money is tight and the state has many priorities, so riders will have to make do for now.

For Dennis, the Transit app is a little outside her technological wheelhouse, she said. The bright red dedicated bus lanes? Often ignored by Baltimore drivers. Dennis hopped onto a Purple after about a 10-minute wait, just in time to sit at a red light.

‘The work that needs to be done’

In New York City, living car-free meant living carefree for Jerome Horne. When he moved back to his hometown of Baltimore he had to be more intentional about where he lived to avoid having to buy a car again.

“I was hyperfocused on a checklist” of stuff within walking distance, he said — a grocery store, bus stops served by multiple lines, etc. “Where is the triangulation of these things that would allow me to live my best car-free life?”

His apartment in Mount Vernon’s southern edge, next to downtown, meets the mark, with multiple bus routes nearby. He bought an e-bike to explore neighborhoods farther away. When he needs to haul something, there’s Zipcar. When out late, there’s Uber.

But what’s missing? Access to nature and to the rest of what Maryland has to offer. In New York, he could get to the beach and the Appalachian Trail via public transit.

“I’d love to be able to go to the Eastern Shore, to Ocean City, to Cumberland, but they are so difficult to get to ... even Frederick, I’d love to go, how do I get there?” he said.

And race was on his mind, too.

“I was also consciously aware that most of the places I was looking to live were in the White L,” said Horne, referring to what Morgan State University professor Lawrence Brown coined as the shape of Baltimore’s white neighborhoods, compared with the Black Butterfly of its Black neighborhoods.

Baltimore has long been criticized for not offering enough services, such as public transit, in Black neighborhoods.

“In my head I was like, ‘Oh my gosh ... what does this say about me or the city and the work that needs to be done?’”

‘You have to schedule everything’

Danielle Phelps leaves her Timonium home for her job in East Baltimore each morning at 7:15, and typically arrives around 8:45. Her ride zigzags across the city, picking up other passengers along the way.

She’s relied on the Maryland Transit Administration’s Mobility paratransit service for roughly 20 years now, a reality she called a “double-edged sword.” She’s grateful there’s even a service for the thousands of people with limited mobility who rely on it, but also wishes it were better. Friends and family step in with occasional rides, too.

“It’s challenging because you have to schedule everything, you can’t just come and go as you please, and you also don’t want to wear out your welcome,” Phelps said.

Mobility rides have to be scheduled by 5 p.m. the previous day. They also cannot be scheduled for less than two hours apart, making it difficult to rely on for errands unless there are several in roughly the same location.

“Most of the time it never worked out the way I planned because I would be waiting too long for the ride and I wouldn’t have enough time at the next destination, and then sitting around waiting I’d get frustrated,” she said.

“I’d be like, ‘Forget it, just take me home.’”

Beyond getting rides, rolling her wheelchair is difficult, too. She’s used one since she was 19, and finds many sidewalks and buildings simply aren’t accessible.

A missing or broken sidewalk may seem trivial to most, Pugh said, but they could be “the difference between life and death.”

‘Quicker on a bicycle’

When commercial real estate agent Peter Jackson rolls up on his bike to show clients properties, they’re often surprised and ask if he wants a ride to the next place.

He usually declines, then gets there faster than the clients in their car.

“I get around quicker on a bicycle than I ever could in a car,” said Jackson, who lives in Bolton Hill. “There’s nothing fun about a 20-minute drive through Baltimore.”

He began relying on his bike when his car’s transmission broke. He opted for building exercise into his day over spending thousands on new wheels.

It’s not perfect, but there are fewer challenges than he expected. Biking in bad weather certainly can be unpleasant, he said, and he waits until he can use his wife’s car to take the dog to the vet.

He also recognizes that hopping on a bike may not be a realistic option for everyone.

It takes a “certain level of comfort to do it in the city,” he said — a diplomatic way of saying you need to be a little brave and a lot careful. “There’s still a lot of work to be done to make it as easy, accessible and safe as it is in other cities.”

But the graces have outweighed the difficulties by a long shot, he said.

“You just have this more intimate relationship with the city around you. It’s not, I get into this box and close the doors,” Jackson said. “I run into people on the streets, I’ll talk to people at the bus stop, you just have a much richer understanding and experience interacting with everyone in the urban environment around you.”