Have any of you commuters decided to keep a car in base, to use when you're stuck or on reserve? As the kids get settled in school, I'm coming to terms with the idea of being a long term commuter. I'd like to keep a car in base (ORD) so that it's more comfortable when I get stuck there.

I'm concerned about keeping a car sitting for, potentially, weeks at a time if I happen to get commutable trips for a stretch. In the cold Chicago winter. All I can figure is to keep some jumper cables and maybe one of those battery pack jumpers in the trunk. Has anyone done this, what are some pitfalls to avoid?

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I was based in ORD for one winter. One winter only.

Get a snow shovel and leave it in your car; you'll appreciate it when the snow plow clears the parking lot and in the process buries most cars in snow. Make sure the snow shovel is not in a spot that would get buried if a snow plow came by your car.

I dug my car out of parking ~3 times during that winter.

You might also want to do the math of keeping a commuter car vs renting a car on occasion. I've had a commuter car before in LAX and left clothes and stuff in it, but when computing the math, I finally decided to give the car to my sister-in-law because insurance costs alone were more than I would have spent on rental cars.

Anywhere you need to go in Chicago you can go on the CTA or Metra. For those few times that won't do it, rent. Winter and long term parking don't work out.

Public transit is probably best.

But you can buy a battery cut off switch, cheap and easy to install. The battery will last for many months if disconnected. Also keep the gas tank pretty full, and throw in a bottle of heet with each fill up. Modern cars have synthetic seals which probably won't dry out, so you can probably get away with not starting the motor for weeks on end.

If you wanted to go crazy, you could install a PLC to start the car and run it for 30 minutes each week.

Thanks for the tips, guys!

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