I live in NYC, and recently I spent two weeks in Simi Valley, a city north of Los Angeles, and was shocked that it's basically impossible to get around without a car. Even in LA, it seems as if the public transport system is nearly non-existent.
NYC is one of the only places in the country where it's feasible to live without a car (without major hassle).
Edit: I guess my point was that from my experience visiting New York that's a city where public transit is so good that a car really seems unnecessary. Someone from NYC might be surprised to learn (or be reminded) that it's the exception, and that in most other places in the country it's a hassle not to own a car -- that's not a problem just in LA.
I'm in Seattle myself (Capitol Hill) and while I could get by day-to-day without a car, it would make my commute to the east side almost twice as long depending on traffic and bus timing, which isn't worth it for me. And while Uber / Lyft are a good alternative, a car is still the most convenient way to visit other parts of the city.
Is that true? I live in Ballard, a pretty damn residential neighborhood of Seattle, which is only a medium-density city. I live perfectly comfortably without a car. I have heard of people living comfortably without a car in NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and I'm sure others that I'm forgetting.
I even did so myself in Tucson for a year, though I'll grant that that was pretty annoying.
I'm guessing you don't have kids and do work in downtown Seattle? And rarely visit Lake City or West Seattle or anywhere south of Seattle? Or anywhere requiring a transfer outside of commuting hours?
Because those are all significantly (hours more) to take mass transit than to drive.
I live near Lake City - getting to Ballard is not under an hour by mass transit - it's something like 20 minutes by car. Very frustrating! I hope the new light rail will create more E-W bus routes.
Where do you live that Ballard is an hour away from Lake City? I live at 125th/Lake City Way and the 41 to the 40 at Northgate is 40 minutes. If you really want to take an hour, you could get on the 65 and ride where it turns into the 32 to go to south Ballard via Fremont. Though I do agree, I really hope the station gets properly built at 130th so that hours from the 41 (and maybe even 522) can be diverted to a bus that goes from Fred Meyer west to connect to RapidRide D.
Down by 85th. The connections towards Ballard are either at 125th or 65th. There might be a sweet linkage of routes that Google or my wife hasn't found though. :-/
Not the op - but I do have a kid and don't have a car in Wallingford (Seattle) and it's very pleasant. But I don't travel beyond one transfer, and rarely that. And I do use car2go, or hertz, or my bike, if such travel is required.
As a Pittsburgher, I know some people who live here without cars but I wouldn't describe it as comfortably.
There are a few decent neighborhoods where one could make due without an automobile but they're pretty expensive (by Pittsburgh standards) to live in. Shadyside and Oakland are two such places. There are a few Hipster enclaves where a fair number of people do it but they're not very common. Outside of neighborhoods like these and especially outside of The City proper, it's a nightmare to try getting around without a car.
I've lived car-free in Chicago for 4 years. The only thing it'd be nice (for me, a child-free 20 something) would be to visit Michigan, which I just take Amtrak.
Instacart does my groceries and it's only about an hour or so going from the North side to the West side on the "L". Pretty great.
I live in Oakland and work in Alamo, CA. My commute by public transit is roughly 3x my commute by car. I do one or the other, depending on the day. Driving takes less time, but transit takes less useful time away from me. When I worked in Oakland, my wife and I could certainly have gotten by without a car, except for our trips to Tahoe, Sonoma, and Santa Cruz...
Actually, LA has a very good public transportation system. It's just bus-based, can be slow compared to driving, and is widely considered as only for poor people. Higher-income people have a strong aversion to taking the bus, even while happily taking subways.
I find that's mostly a function of how spread out LA is. Public transit is always going to be slower than personal transport - it's got to stop every so often, or what's the point? - and that's just magnified by the distances involved.
Also, we don't have great public transit through high-traffic areas from where people are to where they want to go, because we've got this weird kind of medium density continuous sprawl. There just aren't that many of the good high-density locations at which to place Metro stops, although that seems to be changing more because people go "Hey, let's get a stop here, and then we'll /become/ a destination location."
Also, I don't know of any city I've been in where the "Buses suck, subway rocks" relationship isn't true. I don't think it's just a "buses for poor people" thing, but I don't know what's going on to cause this anecdotally widely observed phenomenon.
I bet it's that subways don't compete for traffic, whereas buses have to deal with all the congestion that cars do, in most cases. If my choices are to Drive Myself (my own music, my own pace, no motion sickness, and no uncomfortable staring at the lady across the aisle from me because hers is the only window I can see out of) versus a bus, I'm likely to take the car. This is compounded by not having to __wait__ for the bus schedule.
Taking the Bus + Train from SF to LA area takes longer than driving, and has more stress. Can I stop to use the bathroom, or will I miss the bus? Not an issue if I am the driver. I realize that's not the same as city driving issues, though.
It could be better if Metro would implement a hub-and-spoke system with buses running within local neighborhoods and trains running longer distances. I worked at Metro for a couple years in the mid-2000s. Hub-and-spoke would come up occasionally but seemed to always get beaten down.
Simi Valley is a special case in LA. It is far from downtown (almost 50 miles), far from Santa Monica even (40 miles), and in a valley of its own, just beyond the farthest reaches of the San Fernando Valley ("the Valley"). It is deliberately isolated from the rest of the LA basin. In general, people live there because they want to be away from anything urban.
If you're into NYC comparatives, its isolation and ethos compares to Staten Island. Lots of cops and firefighters.
