Living in San Francisco without a car does not mean staying in San Francisco. It means you rent one for two days, six or eight times a year, and each of those weekends costs less than a single month of owning a car would have. The full math on that is here.
This is where I actually go, what it costs, and the specific ways people give the savings back without noticing.
Renting the car without overpaying #
Never rent at SFO. Airport rentals carry a concession fee, a facility charge, and a customer facility charge that stack up to twenty five or thirty percent on top of the base rate. A city location a mile away is dramatically cheaper for the identical car. Downtown SF and neighborhood locations in the Marina, SoMa, and the Richmond all run well below airport pricing.
Rent from a hotel garage location if you can. These are often the cheapest in the city and the least busy. The tradeoff is limited weekend hours, so check the return time.
Decline the rental counter insurance if you already have coverage. Many credit cards include primary or secondary rental car collision coverage when you pay with that card. That is worth thirty to forty dollars a day, which on a three-day trip is more than the rental. Read your card’s actual benefit guide before you rely on it, because coverage differs by card and by country, and confirm whether it is primary or secondary. This is one of several places where knowing what your cards actually do is worth real money, a topic on its own in credit card rewards without getting burned.
Refill the tank yourself. The prepaid fuel option is priced so that it only wins if you return the car on fumes, which nobody does.
Check car share for short trips. For anything under about eight hours, Zipcar or Getaround often beats a daily rental because gas and insurance are included.
Set the car up before you leave the lot #
Two minutes in the parking space saves you a bad hour later.
Every rental has the controls somewhere different, and the speedometer is the one that matters most. Highway 1 and the roads into the Sierra are heavily patrolled, out-of-state and rental plates get noticed, and a California speeding ticket starts around two hundred dollars and goes up fast from there. Paying two hundred dollars in fines on a hundred dollar weekend is a bad trade.
I keep Speedometer GPS running on a phone mount for this. It reads speed straight from GPS rather than from the car, so it looks the same in every rental I get into, and it shows trip distance, average speed, and max speed for the whole drive. What matters on these trips specifically is that GPS works without cell service. Along the Big Sur coast, in the Sierra, and through most of Point Reyes you have no signal at all, and a navigation app that has quietly given up is not much help. Satellites do not care about coverage. It is free, the data stays on the phone, and it also settles the argument about whether the rental’s odometer reading is going to blow through the included mileage.
Eight trips, with real costs #
Costs below assume two people splitting a car rental at roughly $70 a day plus gas, for a Saturday-to-Sunday weekend.
Point Reyes National Seashore, 1.5 hours #
Wild coastline, elk, the lighthouse, and beaches that are usually empty because everyone else went to Napa. Park entry is free. Hiking is free. Bring your own food, because the two towns out there are priced for tourists.
Weekend cost for two: about $110 with a day rental and gas, or a lot less if you go up and back in one day.
Big Sur, 3 hours #
The famous one, and it earns it. Highway 1 south from Carmel is the drive. Camping is the expensive part in season and worth booking months ahead, or skip it and do it as one very long day trip.
Day trip for two: about $130. Overnight with a campsite: $180 to $230.
Mount Tamalpais and the Marin Headlands, 45 minutes #
The cheapest good trip on this list. Free parking in most of the Headlands, staggering views of the city, and enough trails to fill a full day. Go early on a weekend or you will spend the morning looking for a spot.
Cost for two: about $60, mostly the car for a day.
Santa Cruz and Highway 9, 1.5 hours #
Beach town, boardwalk, and the redwood drive through Big Basin and the mountains on the way back. Beach and redwoods in the same afternoon.
Cost for two: about $90 if you pack lunch.
Sonoma Coast and Bodega Bay, 2 hours #
Better than Napa for a cheap trip because there is nothing to buy. Coastal state beaches, sea stacks, and the drive up Highway 1 north. Day-use parking at state beaches is around ten dollars, or park on the road for free.
Cost for two: about $100.
Yosemite, 4 hours #
Long, and worth it once a year. The trick is that a single vehicle entry pass is around $35 and is good for seven days, and an annual America the Beautiful pass is $80 and covers every national park in the country. If you are going to two parks in a year, buy the annual pass.
Lodging in the valley is expensive and books out a year ahead. Staying in Groveland or Mariposa outside the park costs a third as much.
Weekend for two: $280 to $400 depending on lodging.
Lassen Volcanic National Park, 4 hours #
The national park almost nobody in the Bay Area goes to, which is exactly the appeal. Hydrothermal basins, a volcano you can hike, and campgrounds that are not a lottery. Same national park pass applies.
Weekend for two: about $250.
Mendocino and the Lost Coast, 3.5 to 5 hours #
The far end of the list. Empty coastline, redwoods, and dispersed camping on national forest land which is genuinely free. This is the trip where offline navigation and an offline speed readout stop being nice and start being necessary, because there is no signal for long stretches.
Weekend for two: $200 to $250, less if you camp free.
Where the money actually leaks #
Eating out is the biggest swing on the entire list. Two people eating three restaurant meals a day on a weekend is a hundred and fifty dollars. A cooler with sandwiches, fruit, and coffee in a thermos is fifteen.
Last-minute lodging is next. Camping reservations for California state parks open six months ahead and the good ones are gone in minutes. Book early or plan around free dispersed camping.
The airport rental premium, covered above, is a quarter of the cost.
Buying gear for the trip. You do not need a new jacket. Borrow a tent. The buy it once approach means owning a small amount of good gear rather than a large amount of trip-specific gear.
Gas station food. Four dollars a bottle of water, six dollars a bag of chips, and it adds up faster than the actual gas.
Free camping, briefly #
Dispersed camping on national forest land is free and legal in most of California, with rules that vary by forest. The nearest options to San Francisco are in Mendocino National Forest, Stanislaus National Forest near Yosemite, and parts of Los Padres south of Big Sur. Check the specific forest’s site for current fire restrictions, which are frequently in force between summer and late fall and which are not optional.
Free camping turns a two hundred dollar weekend into a hundred dollar weekend, and it is generally quieter than a campground.
The point #
A weekend out of the city, done this way, costs somewhere between sixty and a hundred and fifty dollars for two people. Eight of those a year is under a thousand dollars, and it is most of the reason not owning a car does not feel like a sacrifice.
This is the same pattern as everything else in Frugal SF: find the version of the thing where you get essentially the whole experience and pay a third of the price. Same as the $2.05 bus to SFO, same as shopping for produce in Chinatown, same as not owning a car at all.