Surviving Without a Car
By Upon my return from Seattle, I found this from Dana Goldstein:
Rybczynski claims that only six American cities have downtowns dense enough for a mass transit-dependent lifestyle: New York (midtown and downtown), Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. This will come as news to those of us who live in Washington, D.C. and Brooklyn without cars, just to name two communities in which I’ve spent a lot of time. But while the childless lifestyle without a car is rather easy in a number of mid-sized cities, things get substantially more complicated when you’re responsible for ferreting a small, fussy person around to all their activities, while still being on time yourself. Any parents out there have experience with the car-less lifestyle outside of Manhattan? Any childless people who are making car-lessness work in cities other than the ones I’ve discussed here?
I managed most of my eight years in Seattle without a car, and rarely used the car during those periods in which one was available. Seattle doesn’t have a train, but the bus system is as good as I remembered. Even from West Seattle, you only need to make one connection to get most anywhere in the city. The first caveat is what Dana mentions; I never had to drag around a small child. The second is that I was often able to depend on friends or roommates for particularly car-critical tasks like buying new furniture.
Lexington and Cincinnati are, unsurprisingly, far less friendly to the carless. Part of this is social; while a bus route serviced the non-walking neighborhood where I spent my first year in Lexington, I never even considered riding. No one I knew did. Car-free isn’t even really workable in downtown Lexington, because of the lack of a grocery store. In Cincinnati I live in a very walk friendly area (grocery stores, drug stores, gym, lots of restaurants within fifteen minutes), but I occasionally use the bus to get downtown for baseball games and such. Nevertheless, bus ridership in Cincy is, fair to say, radically different than in Seattle; professionals (or, more accurately, people wearing suits and ties) were never out of place on the bus in Seattle, but would stick out like a sore thumb in Cincy.
Back to Dana’s question; childless car-free is certainly workable in Seattle. I suspect that I could manage it in Cincy if I didn’t work 87 miles away, but it’s not as easy as Seattle. In August I will begin evaluating the city of Baltimore on these metrics (for reasons way too complicated to explain right now); are there any Baltimoreans here who have thoughts on the plausibility of the car free lifestyle?