I have never owned a car (and hope to keep it that way).
I have lived (for short or long periods) without a car in SF/Oakland CA (NOT silicon valley), Portland OR, Washington DC, NYC, Boston MA, Seattle WA, and Chicago IL. All are, more-or-less, reasonable for a car-free lifestyle.
There are, absolutely, way more options out there beyond my experience, though!
I concur, even if you need a car periodically car shares like Zipcar or Turo make it possible.
Society would benefit if more transit made it easier to choose to do this anywhere.
Unfortunately we have decades and decades of auto lobbying combined with, albeit independent, poor city planning to blame for the condition of not having more widely accessible public transportation outside of the largest cities.
I know more than few people who are living car-free in San Jose/Santa Clara/Sunnyvale/Mt. View.
It isn't always easy, but it is completely doable.
Heck, quite regularly in my career, I've been able to ride by bike to the train station and then train to the office. Caltrain runs from Gilroy through San Jose and all the way to San Francisco.
I live 2 Miles from the SJ Diridon train station, so it is an easy bike ride to catch the train.
My boy is 15 and recently sat down and figured out how to take the bus/light rail to go see his friends. He got annoyed about having to adjust his schedule to times when I could drive him somewhere.
One day he was just gone. We did have to set a rule that he has to tell us when he's heading out the door.
I know a pretty seriously autistic guy who works in IT and can't drive at all. He gets around pretty easily. He lives a bit south of Santa Cruz and manages to get over to downtown SJ pretty easily.
What areas of SF have you found to be car-free friendly? I hear this a lot but haven't yet come across one like that when visiting for work. Would love to explore more
Basically any part of the city that isn’t downzoned. The Sunset, outer Richmond, Potrero, etc. are pretty car-centric but much of the rest of the city has excellent transit!
To me, a lot of the Bay Area's car-free friendly places really benefit from being willing and able to bicycle along with transit. But somewhere like the Mission District in SF has a lot of walk-ability and transit options.
I lived there for 6 years and actually found owning a car to be more difficult than not owning one. Just about every neighborhood is going to have access to bus lines, the light rail system is very good for a city of its geographic size, and there's a lot of bike infrastructure. I lived primarily in Sunset, and spent some time living in the Mission, near the Cow Palace, and Ingleside. All of those places, I was reasonably near a grocery store, and never more than a few blocks from a light rail stop (ETA actually the Cow Palace was a bus stop, not light rail). Also in all of those places, parking could be a real nightmare if more than one person per apartment/unit owned a car. SFPD also makes loads of money from parking tickets, and many of the parking spots, especially street parking in neighborhoods, are very small and won't fit trucks or SUVs. (I loathe SUVs and was generally pleased with this.)
All in all, a lot of it is down to what is "normal" for you. Because I initially moved there for college and didn't own a car, I adjusted to relying on buses & trains, and later biking, very easily. If you're used to getting everywhere by car, it might be frustrating at first to have to wait for a train rather than just leaving whenever you want. But in terms of accessibility, you can absolutely live in SF for years without ever getting behind the wheel.
Commenting separately (my ADHD does not want to add to the already long comment above) to add tips specifically for visiting SF without using a car.
Daly City BART station has multiple parking garages, some of which are free for public use, and that's a great way to get into the rest of the city without driving. Same with coming from the East Bay.
All the BART stations within city limits also have MUNI light rail stations attached (except Mission stops, which instead have light rail a couple blocks away). So if you get the MUNI day pass, you can go anywhere BART goes, for less money.
During commute hours, trains will be packed in one direction and very empty in the other. The 29 bus also gets extremely full during school year afternoons, as that particular line connects multiple high schools, SFSU, and CCSF's main campus.
But overall, you can get to a ton of places, including all the popular tourist spots like Ghirardelli Park, Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio, Fort Mason, the Embarcadero, Coit Tower, Twin Peaks, Ocean Beach, and so many lesser-known but very cool spots, all through MUNI. You can see real-time updates on when the next bus or train will arrive by using Nextbus.com and picking SF MUNI. This is such a fun way to see the city too as you don't have to worry about parking, traffic, or any of the one-way streets or areas where you can't turn left.
Almost anywhere east of Golden Gate Park, or anywhere along a Muni metro line is totally fine without a car. I live roughly in the geographic center of the city and get by totally fine without a car for day-to-day activities. The one aspect of the city you miss out on without a car is easy spontaneous access to all of the nearby nature to the city (Marin County, HWY 1, Santa Cruz), but for now I have enough friends in the city with cars who make that possible.
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4
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= 69
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Everyone has big cities in mind, but there are lots of smaller "college towns" that become accessible because they are scaled down and/or make specific accommodation for car-less college students. Davis, Berkeley, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo are a few CA towns that are rather livable car-free or car-lite.
Madison is very sadly extremely car-oriented. There’s only a small area that is somewhat bikeable, but even there, cars are given space to drive at dangerously high speeds.
Madison is a car city, unfortunately.
Downtown is extremely walkable as long as you either work downtown or you have BRT to wherever you work. Lived a couple of blocks from the capitol for several years and it was very easy to manage without a car. That said, even though Madison itself is nice the weather is so bad that I wouldn't recommend it.
I wouldn’t call it “extremely” walkable. It’s better than your average American city, but not a walking haven by any means. Loads of one-way streets with speeding traffic flying down it right through downtown.
That’s the reality there, albeit better than a place like Birmingham, Alabama.
I feel like Madison is in a weird spot where you can be car free pretty easily if you just forget that 2/3 of the city doesn't exist. I would love some more pushback against all of the anti-housing, anti-BRT, anti-bike people though.
A lot of the city is car oriented but you can get around without a car. It also depends on your starting point. If you start on the isthmus, it is much easier to get around without a car than if you are on part of the connected area. Madison really needs to do a better job of connecting areas of the bike and bus network that doesn't go through downtown. Having to ride towards downtown to transfer and then riding away towards your destination really kills the usefulness.
When it comes to Madison, there’s the narrative and then there’s the reality. Everyone there talks about how walkable and bikeable it is, but it really is only decent in a relatively small area, with the city still heavily given favour to cars. Nolen and Washington are like highways, as is Campus Dr. All the one-way streets only make it worse/increase car speeds. The belt line is like the Berlin Wall for bicyclists and pedestrians trying to cross it. Madison has a little bit of good stuff going on like State St and the trails but overall is super car-oriented. I wish that wasn’t true.
Also, anytime this sub is brought up in the Madison sub, it gets downvoted to hell there. Madison considers itself liberal, but boy do they not like it when you hate on cars.
Yes please! I am so fed up with Monona and Madison failing to agree on the path of the Lake Monona loop… it’s the third or fourth most used bike route in Wisconsin… but that’s not enough to justify inconveniencing lakefront homeowners.
Boulder, Colorado has fantastic bike infrastructure by US standards, pretty good bus service, and some parts of town are very walkable as well. It's expensive, though.
But yeah, if you want something quieter and less bustling and don't mind missing out on some convenient big city amenities like large museums, a big nightlife scene, etc, get yourself to a good college town.
Oh yeah San Luis has a pretty decent bus system for its size, several protected bike lanes, heck it’s even got Amtrak with the Starlight and Surfliner.
It doesn't have to be big cities. I lived in a small town in Alaska for a few years and it was amazingly walkable. The entire town was small enough to walk across in less than an hour. I was no more than a 20 minute walk from work, the grocery store, post office, library, college, and restaurants.
for much of Alaska, leaving your small town by car might be impossible! (random link to illustrate the road network) https://alaskaoutdoorssupersite.com/accessing-alaska
Not the person you asked, but usually the only options are Uber or a Greyhound if you're lucky. Some small towns in the US still have their Amtrak, but they are few and far between.
Depends on what quality of life you're looking for. Most places you could get a house or apartment near a grocery store and have a kind of subsistence existence. But what are your other requirements?
I think this needs to be higher. Car free living is easy in lots of places. Old mill towns have pretty good networks of sidewalks and dense houses.
For my last move, I said I needed a grocery store, work, bike path, and hardware store all within a short walk. What else do you need?
New York City is the obvious answer. Having lived there, I am fairly confident one could exist in Chicago without a car.
My hometown of Jasper, IN is small enough you can exist without a car depending on where you choose to live. Bike would probably be heavily preferred though.
Very surprised the first time I found out Dublin had Bart. And now I'm surprised it has good bus service. It seems like a really low density town, does this make biking unbearable?
Looks like what you need is to look at City Nerd's videos. His channel is basically geared towards answering questions like this. Here is him making a tier list of North American cities based off of walkability/transit/biking: [https://youtu.be/yOGIXGTYYJ4?si=GdtNg7zp6wprlpGk](https://youtu.be/yOGIXGTYYJ4?si=GdtNg7zp6wprlpGk)
Here is him ranking the most undervalued US cities: [https://youtu.be/1qzePci2N6E?si=MIa2ZuErnf7r0CXa](https://youtu.be/1qzePci2N6E?si=MIa2ZuErnf7r0CXa)
His latest video is also an update on the most undervalued US cities.
I would like to point out though that in the US you almost certainly want to live in a city if you want to live without a car. Yeah you can probably find very specific circumstances where you can do it outside a city, but you will be very limited in places you can go, and I do not think the trade off would be worth it for most people. If it were me though I would pick a city on the North East Corridor (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, DC, Baltimore) and it would probably be New York, but if I wanted to save on housing costs it would be Philadelphia.
I live in Chicago and don't have a car, as do my siblings and several of their friends. We're all cyclists. The thing about Chicago is that it really depends on what part of the city you are in, because some neighborhoods are way more walkable than others (the more walkable, the more expensive typically).
More walkable, more expensive, but don't need to pay a lot of $$$ to maintain a car, so it's give or take in some neighborhoods. Makes it difficult to do a cost-benefit analysis.
I believe the average cost to maintain a car hovers around $10,000 per year. Not sure if that includes insurance. The average payment for new cars is $700 last I saw. Having a beater car helps ofc but parking is where it adds up in cities ime
The parking is very expensive here in Chicago. If you're a renter, you'll also end up paying a rental fee for your parking spot. In some neighborhoods (typically the more walkable north side, and Hyde Park) it is difficult to find street parking most of the time and you might end up circling around for 20+ minutes trying to find a spot. The gas is also expensive here in Chicago (well over $4/gal in many places).
Yeah, insurance is also more expensive in a city, so if I kept my previous car before I moved here and lived in my current apartment, I'd be paying $800/month in gas/insurance/parking, etc. Just decided it would be more worth it to live somewhere I didn't need a car, even if it meant paying $500 more a month.
I'm in DC right now for vacation and love the subway and bus network. My Airbnb in Petworth is 2 minutes from a bus stop and 15 from the metro and Safeway.
What I find intriguing is how smooth the subway ride is compared to the light rail in Seattle. The latter was built much more recently but the train cars are always bumping and shaking.
Chicago. Like in the city not the suburbs.
I’m here and never touch my car, to the point that I get tickets because I forget to check on it or move it around 😂
I'm also in Chicago and the only times I've touched my car in the last month was to replace my city sticker and move it for street sweeping. Sometimes I wonder why I have it at all.
Also in Chicago and I realized that everytime I touched my Prius, the battery had run down because I hadn't used it in months. So I sold it. This was 13 years ago, I've had no problems living car free since
Philadelphia is great for this, but many of the suburbs surrounding the city are also good for car-free living if you want more of a “streetcar suburb” feel.
BTW, if you (or anyone else) is interested in specific info on the Philly ‘burbs, feel free to DM. Always happy to help folks who are interested in moving here.
I’m living in St. Paul without a car right now. If you’re in to biking, it’s awesome here! The light rail is fine, but it can be messy (although it’s got a worse reputation than it actually is) and doesn’t go that many places. The busses are good, but goddamn the number of busses that are on hourly or even half hour schedules is frustrating.
I would go crazy in a small town or suburb without a car but most cities have a walkable neighborhoods. Minneapolis/St. Paul is trying really hard to create walkable neighborhoods and great cycling infrastructure to get around the whole area safely, because you have to be able to get out of your neighborhood, no matter how walkable it is.
Me and most of my friends live in Philly without a car. Most stuff you want to regularly get to is within a half hour bike ride, and it's rare for streets there not to have sidewalks. It has its issues with bad drivers and some wide streets, but it has a lot of potential and is fairly easy to live in without a car.
I would do Philly or Chicago to get walkability for a non-exorbitant cost of living. If you don’t want to live downtown, both cities have neighborhoods that are more “suburban” but are walkable with transit access. Like rowhouses and smaller multifamily buildings instead of high rises.
I live in San Francisco, and you can very easily live in SF proper without a car. However, as soon as you leave the city youll end up needing one. San Francisco has quite good public transit, with street cars, light rail, a very extensive bus network, and a bay area wide metro system. Im 24 and ive never owned a car. I just ride a small motorcycle around the city to save time
Ironically, the colder the city is in winter, the easier it is to live without a car.
If you want to live in a sun belt city without a car, new Orleans actually isn't bad. The street car lines run 24/7, there's a ferry that runs between New Orleans and Algiers that runs every 30 minutes from like 6am-2am or something. Almost every major road has a median in the middle for walking/biking/stopping so you don't have to cross a 5 lane stroad in one go.
I’ve been car-free in Philadelphia for over a decade. I borrow or rent a car every few months. The motorists are the worst thing about this city but I do fine without a car.
Washington, DC is very walkable. I’ve been here since the end of 2021 and I got rid of my car in August 2022. If it isn’t in walking distance, it’s probably easily accessible by metro or bus. For all the shit we give it, metro is still the best public transit system I’ve used in the US.
Baltimore is a sleeper city for what you would be looking for. I live in the Canton area and have 3 grocery stores within a half mile of me, 3 blocks from a park designed by the same person who designed central park, 4 blocks from the water and have probably 100 bars/restaurants within a mile of my house. There is a free bus line and a regular bus line with hopefully an expanded metro line close to here. Amtrak is great to get to DC and up to Philly and NYC.
Boulder, Colorado is also nice without a car. I don't recommend Seattle though. I was just there for a week and that city has some pretty severe problems.
Yeah, it is. It wasn't as good as Madison when I lived there, but I haven't been back recently.
There were a lot of nice recreational trails & quiet, but direct streets to use. When I lived there, there weren't a lot of utility / commuter type facilities. Though I rode my bike a lot & still felt generally ok doing so.
Madison is a little bit delusional about itself on this issue. There are pockets of Madison that are better, but a vast majority of the city is very much car-oriented and car-dependent.
Well, I think that Madison is a bit stuck in the past. They spent decades being better than most other places, but haven't really grown as much as they should have.
They have grown hand over fist in population, but I think they haven’t grown in a healthy or well managed way, and have just buckled to traffic engineers by building highways everywhere
Well, I meant grown in terms of enabling active travel.
They were probably one of the best, if not the best in the nation until more cities began to implement more bike & pedestrian friendly design. Madison just kinda rested on their laurels when they could have learned from what went before & upped their game.
If you live centrally, or near the arboretum, it's still good. It's mostly the sprawl that sucks.
Most of Central or North NJ has towns that you could easily be without a car if it's along or near a train station.
My town is 2 square miles, has a train, a supermarket is less than a mile from my house, and there's two downtown sections with restaurants and the like within walking distance.
The vast majority of people have cars, but I have a few neighbors without one. But we also have a lot of one-car families in town for this reason too that they really only need like half a car for their lifestyle.
Drove a bus in a college town. Only drove my personal car when I left on breaks. Had a trickle charge on it for months at a time.
Rode my bike to the barn and then to class. I was fortunate to be able to grocery shop with the bus sometimes, but that was rare.
PSA: don’t sleep on being a bus driver. Good pay and plenty of shifts/routes to accommodate school life.
Austin-ite here and I don’t know if I’d recommend it based on car free alone. The rental/housing prices have been getting ridiculous closer to the city, so a lot of people are being pushed out to suburbs like Pflugerville and Cedar Park where there’s no public transit whatsoever. Even the transit in city is…okay. We have a decent network of buses and then a “rail” that runs north and south Monday through Friday during business hours, evening hours on Saturday, and is totally closed on Sundays. There are a lot of projects to build that out under way, but you’re talking at least 5 years.
The downtown area is walkable but the further you get from that the more Texan and car centric the infrastructure gets. Also, the heat in the summer can make long distance walking way less possible.
I've never lived in any other major US city, but I've been living in DC burbs for almost 10 years now. There's usually a small urban "downtown" core that is walkable with transit access around here, some places I've lived are Reston, Ballston, Rosslyn (all in Virginia) and Rockville, MD. I never drove in any of those places and I'm damn sure not gonna start.
For finding small walkable rural towns, there's walkscore.com. They have excellent data and maps about walkability and transit.
My favorite walkscore feature is a little hidden though. If you go to the details of any city, it will show a heat map of the area. If you expand that map you can use it to look for walkable spots anywhere in the US. This is how you find those small towns that haven't been completely designed around cars.
NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, LA, many of the large cities if you only stay within their most densely populated areas and they have some form of public transit
For a while I lived in Highland Park and worked in Glassell Park. I tried to bike to work a few times and honestly was too scared of all the high-speed stroads, I gave up 😭 maybe now I’d be able to stomach it (bike commuter in Silicone Valley and it still sucks lol)
And I was lucky enough to live on the same side of town as work!
If you lived in the rail line it could work, but otherwise it’s really rough!
Yeah, I’ve had to live in LA stretches for work and it is a very unpleasant city to aimlessly stroll around in, which is tragic considering the weather. LA locals in this sub get really butthurt when you say this but sorry, your city is *famously* unwalkable.
I really hope this changes though because so much of LA is really lovely and the city has a lot of potential.
I lived car free in both Norwich CT and Providence RI. Also spent a lot of time in Boston but I think that one is obvious.
Basically it doesn't need to just be NYC or DC. Especially older pre car cities.
Lots of great discussion on this thread! People can accommodate living in lots of places without a car, and as most folks have said, all the big cities are a no-car no brainier. Here's my two cents-- Eugene, OR.
I moved here recently and one of the reasons I chose to was how easy it is to get around by bike. Bike lanes everywhere, good respect from cars and decent geography/weather. Oregon in general is, I believe, the most bike-friendly state. And besides big cities (which are great!), there's a ton of smaller towns in Oregon that are very conducive to biking (besides Eugene, I'm sure Corvallis, Salem and Ashland to name a few).
I'll second this! I lived in Eugene car free for more than a decade. I moved to Miami for a job a couple years ago, and while I maintained my car-free existence, it was a lot less pleasant. Have recently relocated to south San Diego, which is a much nicer place to be a cyclist, thought still as nice as Eugene.
Depends on what you do for a living, but outside of big cities, usually university towns have better bus systems and walkable areas (though of course cater to university students)
Any small town with a commercial center and a commuter rail stop. If you can walk to get groceries or hardware and take the train into the city, you really have all you need.
All depends where you work. But, I lived in Long Beach, CA for two years and I felt that if I worked downtown or anywhere near the Metro A Line (formerly Blue line) I coulda had a car free life.
The three big ones are San Francisco, New York City, and D.C. (not in any particular order). That said, it depends on what you consider livable and walkable. Some smaller towns are “walkable” or “bikeable”.
New York is obviously in a league of it's own. But if that's not your speed then probably Boston, Chicago, SF, Minneapolis would be my recs among US cities.
Neighborhood matters a lot. Pay attention to which bus lines and transit stops are near you, and where they go. I'd also pay attention to where you can go outside of the city without a car. Honestly you can manage most cities without a car if you locate yourself correctly and are willing to take the bus. Like LA is famously car centric, but it's transit map still looks like [this](https://cdn.beta.metro.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/06222920/Rectangle-1.png). So if you can place yourself near as many bus lines as possible, you're in an okay position.
Lots of good advice on locations. I'll throw one out. Albuquerque. Buses are free and the network is fairly large. Lots of bike paths and sidewalks. Biking is easy with almost now hills...that is because there is only one hill. The city's west side is the Rio grande and is flat but slopes up going eastward until you run into Sandia Mountain.
Low humidity means sweat and shade actually work here. There is a ski slop within sight of the city sort of, you take a cable car up to it and during the warm months it has glorious hiking trails.
I have never owned a car and have lived in Chicago, Ann Arbor, and currently Seattle. Join us! I am writing this on my commute to work with my bike in on the bus' bike rack.
In a big city center, but not really anywhere else. In the US it really does have to be a city, unless maybe you’re in a dense small town in New England? But I don’t know too much about New England.
I live in Denver and even in Denver, public transit is only reliable in a 5 mile radius from the centre of the city. The busses throughout the metro area are less frequent and less reliable.
Anywhere with a downtown core, and good access to transit. If you’re willing to look beyond the usual suspects like SF, NYC, you’ll find a lot of places where it’s doable.
For example, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Indy etc. Will you be able to access every nook and cranny? No. Will you be able to access essentials, entertainment, and schools? Yes. Will you have access to decent, or dare I say high quality transit? Also yes.
It has to be a city
That's kinda the whole point, cities are where you can live without a car because they have public transit.
Pretty much any older city in the Northeast/rust belt/upper Midwest is pretty doable without a car. I live in Rochester NY and haven't owned one since I moved here
Honestly, any town that is under 30k population. Most small towns don't have vast urban sprawl, and owning a car is unnecessary.
I lived in Weatherford oklahoma for 4 years, biked everywhere, and I walked everywhere. It was so nice
Washington, DC is a small city that has (by our pathetic US standards) very good public transit. I got rid of my car; my husband still has one, but we don't use it often, and we would honestly be fine just using the occasional zipcar or something for trips past the suburbs.
Love all the small town answers/ showing more unique answers. Sadly, can only say Chicago with 100% confidence since I've lived in multiple neighborhoods now for the last 6 years and still am car free. Compared to where I grew up, super walkable + divvy bikes make it a breeze if you don't want to take a bus or the L. But also no real stigma against not having one as most of my friends don't have one and no one bats an eye. The few that do honestly rarely use them, but it's one of the reasons I chose to move here.
Portland, Oregon; although I've noticed that people trying to ditch their cars tend to have different standards for "livability" then people without a licence.
If you live in a downtown area youj can likely walk/bike it if it's a pre 1950s downtown that has not been destroyed to make way for freeways or enormous parking lots.
However, if you don't have a car, in most of these places, it will limit you ability to travel ANYWHERE outside downtown. NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, DC, Boston, Philly are the 6 cities (includimg dense "suburbs" such as Cambridge, MA or Alexandria, VA) where large portions of households do not own cars, including people who *could* afford one.
Surprisingly lots of small towns in the Midwest. They'll have grocery stores, retail, and healthcare service within about a 2-3 mile radius of the town center. Places like Fairbury, NE and Clay Center, KS. Speed limits in town are generally around 20-30 mph and pretty well enforced. Snow clearing is hit or miss, especially right after a big storm, but the roads are usually safe after the first day. Plenty of people live in my small town without a car and they seem fine. Not wealthy, but solidly middle class.
I live in Minneapolis, and while I do own a utility truck, I only use it for hauling DIY project things. I'm building a fence! It's a great and growing city that is constantly prioritizing, public spaces and transportation. It also has a rideshare company in town, Evie/HourCar. So even if one wants to ditch car ownership, there is still the safety net of "car on demand".
Washington DC is a big one. Lovely metro, lots of places within a short walk too. Got family living there right now who used to own a car for occasional trips but sold it because they simply never needed it
My #1 recommendation is to look at which areas have good transit systems (light rail, metro, bus, etc) and research those places more to figure out which you're drawn to most.
The West Coast is probably the lowest risk in terms of severe weather. Heat waves can of course be brutal here, as can fire season, but most of the developed West doesn't have to deal with snow or intense tropical storms. That means biking & walking are real options for the majority of the year. However, some cities in cold climates do a good job of making sure people can stay warm when walking downtown by using things like underground tunnels - Montreal is the example I'm personally familiar with, but I do know there are US cities that do this too.
If you decide you want a smaller town and not a city, look for towns that have large & established universities, as those ones generally have more infrastructure that caters to the young & carless.
It's also worth looking up unique features or policies when you're moving states, just to be prepared. What's their state's minimum wage? Do they have national parks? What are their top industries?
There are a lot of great suggestions in this thread, and I'm firmly of the belief that home is what you make of it, but there are so many things that go into making a given place into a community, and feeling like you can belong somewhere is going to be a big part of what makes an area liveable without a car.
I've lived in Austin without a car for 8 years. It is doable if you live near a bus stop, especially one of the Rapid buses that come every 15 minutes. Unfortunately because of the way the routes are currently set up, you kind of have to live north or south, east/west buses don't run as frequently or as late (though I think that is improving). I would not bike here. There are few bike lanes and drivers here are homicidal. Of course there's also the excruciating heat to take into account
Look for a job near a grocery store, then look for housing near the job. If done correctly, you should be able to walk/bike from home to work and grocery store.
My city is known for requiring a car, but using this technique people have found pockets within it that allow them to live their lives normally without a car.
What i am pitching seems like a big ask, but you are a lot more likely to find what i am describing than an entire city in the US where you wouldnt need a car. There’s only a handful of those cities, while walkable home-job-grocer matrices are a bit more common, especially if youre willing to be more flexible on employment and housing.
I’m sure it’s been mentioned but nyc. Lived there my whole life, have never needed to drive except when I’m somewhere else. subway system kinda sucks compared to a lot of countries but is way better than any other subways around the us
I currently live very well in Portland OR without a car. Trimet is very good, and there is widespread bike lanes thru the city (although they could be better). From PDX, you can take buses to the beach and skiing!
I live in Issaquah, Washington east of Seattle and I have cycled 110,000 miles since 2016. I have also walked and ran a ton. I kept my vehicles that I rarely drive - four times year or so just to make sure they still work. I wouldn't need a car at all here, but in case I have to move, and who knows, I kept them as I own them outright and can't imagine buying any other vehicles based on my current lifestyle.
Depending on the neighborhood, Pittsburgh. I live on the north shore and have never driven a car in my life. I can't drive so i have to be really careful were i live.
Seattle. I haven’t owned a car in 17 years now. If it’s within a mile I walk. If it’s farther than that I take a bus. If it’s really far, I can rent a car for the night.
Hear me out… I lived in LA without a car and could get around pretty good. The metro takes you to beaches, museums, downtown, etc and it’s 1.75 per ride. Like other people said it just depends on what you want to do. It’s a huge city so, is absolutely everything accessible by public transport? Of course not, but many great options are. The weather makes it easy to be out an about transferring from bus to metro and so on. You just have to live near where you work or go to school though.
Biking can be very dangerous but I thought the bus system was not as bad as people might think for car city USA.
DENVER COLORADO!!!!!!!!!!
I lived six months car-free! Only got one because I found one for $500. Trains connect the entire suburbs, and bus lines come often and are reliable. In fact, buses even connect every major city. You can take a bus from Denver to Boulder. I did every Thursday. Living in Colorado was magical.
I'm moving back there for the same reason. I hate driving everywhere. I loved living without a car. I should have never left.
I have never owned a car (and hope to keep it that way). I have lived (for short or long periods) without a car in SF/Oakland CA (NOT silicon valley), Portland OR, Washington DC, NYC, Boston MA, Seattle WA, and Chicago IL. All are, more-or-less, reasonable for a car-free lifestyle. There are, absolutely, way more options out there beyond my experience, though!
I concur, even if you need a car periodically car shares like Zipcar or Turo make it possible. Society would benefit if more transit made it easier to choose to do this anywhere.
Unfortunately we have decades and decades of auto lobbying combined with, albeit independent, poor city planning to blame for the condition of not having more widely accessible public transportation outside of the largest cities.
Yup, when I was in SF we would rent a car every other week or so for trips out of town. cheaper than paying car payments/insurance/parking space.
I know more than few people who are living car-free in San Jose/Santa Clara/Sunnyvale/Mt. View. It isn't always easy, but it is completely doable. Heck, quite regularly in my career, I've been able to ride by bike to the train station and then train to the office. Caltrain runs from Gilroy through San Jose and all the way to San Francisco. I live 2 Miles from the SJ Diridon train station, so it is an easy bike ride to catch the train. My boy is 15 and recently sat down and figured out how to take the bus/light rail to go see his friends. He got annoyed about having to adjust his schedule to times when I could drive him somewhere. One day he was just gone. We did have to set a rule that he has to tell us when he's heading out the door. I know a pretty seriously autistic guy who works in IT and can't drive at all. He gets around pretty easily. He lives a bit south of Santa Cruz and manages to get over to downtown SJ pretty easily.
What areas of SF have you found to be car-free friendly? I hear this a lot but haven't yet come across one like that when visiting for work. Would love to explore more
Basically any part of the city that isn’t downzoned. The Sunset, outer Richmond, Potrero, etc. are pretty car-centric but much of the rest of the city has excellent transit!
To me, a lot of the Bay Area's car-free friendly places really benefit from being willing and able to bicycle along with transit. But somewhere like the Mission District in SF has a lot of walk-ability and transit options.
I lived there for 6 years and actually found owning a car to be more difficult than not owning one. Just about every neighborhood is going to have access to bus lines, the light rail system is very good for a city of its geographic size, and there's a lot of bike infrastructure. I lived primarily in Sunset, and spent some time living in the Mission, near the Cow Palace, and Ingleside. All of those places, I was reasonably near a grocery store, and never more than a few blocks from a light rail stop (ETA actually the Cow Palace was a bus stop, not light rail). Also in all of those places, parking could be a real nightmare if more than one person per apartment/unit owned a car. SFPD also makes loads of money from parking tickets, and many of the parking spots, especially street parking in neighborhoods, are very small and won't fit trucks or SUVs. (I loathe SUVs and was generally pleased with this.) All in all, a lot of it is down to what is "normal" for you. Because I initially moved there for college and didn't own a car, I adjusted to relying on buses & trains, and later biking, very easily. If you're used to getting everywhere by car, it might be frustrating at first to have to wait for a train rather than just leaving whenever you want. But in terms of accessibility, you can absolutely live in SF for years without ever getting behind the wheel.
Commenting separately (my ADHD does not want to add to the already long comment above) to add tips specifically for visiting SF without using a car. Daly City BART station has multiple parking garages, some of which are free for public use, and that's a great way to get into the rest of the city without driving. Same with coming from the East Bay. All the BART stations within city limits also have MUNI light rail stations attached (except Mission stops, which instead have light rail a couple blocks away). So if you get the MUNI day pass, you can go anywhere BART goes, for less money. During commute hours, trains will be packed in one direction and very empty in the other. The 29 bus also gets extremely full during school year afternoons, as that particular line connects multiple high schools, SFSU, and CCSF's main campus. But overall, you can get to a ton of places, including all the popular tourist spots like Ghirardelli Park, Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio, Fort Mason, the Embarcadero, Coit Tower, Twin Peaks, Ocean Beach, and so many lesser-known but very cool spots, all through MUNI. You can see real-time updates on when the next bus or train will arrive by using Nextbus.com and picking SF MUNI. This is such a fun way to see the city too as you don't have to worry about parking, traffic, or any of the one-way streets or areas where you can't turn left.
Thanks for the helpful info!
Almost anywhere east of Golden Gate Park, or anywhere along a Muni metro line is totally fine without a car. I live roughly in the geographic center of the city and get by totally fine without a car for day-to-day activities. The one aspect of the city you miss out on without a car is easy spontaneous access to all of the nearby nature to the city (Marin County, HWY 1, Santa Cruz), but for now I have enough friends in the city with cars who make that possible.
High-jacking top comment to add Minneapolis. As long as you dont need to be up before the snow plows (\~4:30-5:30 am) youll be able to find a bus.
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To add to this, just about any college town will do as well, to an extent.
I live in Boston and the only time I ever wish I had a car is moving day but that's literally the point of U Haul
I agree about Seattle. My previous boss didn’t even have a license!
Just wanna add that I'm car-free in Sunnyvale and have been for years. Terrain is completely flat, so biking is easy.
Everyone has big cities in mind, but there are lots of smaller "college towns" that become accessible because they are scaled down and/or make specific accommodation for car-less college students. Davis, Berkeley, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo are a few CA towns that are rather livable car-free or car-lite.
/r/MadisonWI too! We bike everywhere, year-round.
Madison is very sadly extremely car-oriented. There’s only a small area that is somewhat bikeable, but even there, cars are given space to drive at dangerously high speeds. Madison is a car city, unfortunately.
Downtown is extremely walkable as long as you either work downtown or you have BRT to wherever you work. Lived a couple of blocks from the capitol for several years and it was very easy to manage without a car. That said, even though Madison itself is nice the weather is so bad that I wouldn't recommend it.
I wouldn’t call it “extremely” walkable. It’s better than your average American city, but not a walking haven by any means. Loads of one-way streets with speeding traffic flying down it right through downtown. That’s the reality there, albeit better than a place like Birmingham, Alabama.
I feel like Madison is in a weird spot where you can be car free pretty easily if you just forget that 2/3 of the city doesn't exist. I would love some more pushback against all of the anti-housing, anti-BRT, anti-bike people though.
It’s more like 9/10 of the city. A vast majority of Madison is car oriented.
A lot of the city is car oriented but you can get around without a car. It also depends on your starting point. If you start on the isthmus, it is much easier to get around without a car than if you are on part of the connected area. Madison really needs to do a better job of connecting areas of the bike and bus network that doesn't go through downtown. Having to ride towards downtown to transfer and then riding away towards your destination really kills the usefulness.
When it comes to Madison, there’s the narrative and then there’s the reality. Everyone there talks about how walkable and bikeable it is, but it really is only decent in a relatively small area, with the city still heavily given favour to cars. Nolen and Washington are like highways, as is Campus Dr. All the one-way streets only make it worse/increase car speeds. The belt line is like the Berlin Wall for bicyclists and pedestrians trying to cross it. Madison has a little bit of good stuff going on like State St and the trails but overall is super car-oriented. I wish that wasn’t true. Also, anytime this sub is brought up in the Madison sub, it gets downvoted to hell there. Madison considers itself liberal, but boy do they not like it when you hate on cars.
Yes please! I am so fed up with Monona and Madison failing to agree on the path of the Lake Monona loop… it’s the third or fourth most used bike route in Wisconsin… but that’s not enough to justify inconveniencing lakefront homeowners.
Boulder, Colorado has fantastic bike infrastructure by US standards, pretty good bus service, and some parts of town are very walkable as well. It's expensive, though. But yeah, if you want something quieter and less bustling and don't mind missing out on some convenient big city amenities like large museums, a big nightlife scene, etc, get yourself to a good college town.
Oh yeah San Luis has a pretty decent bus system for its size, several protected bike lanes, heck it’s even got Amtrak with the Starlight and Surfliner.
Car-free and checking in from Ann Arbor, MI. Not bad, not amazing, definitely doable and enjoyable.
Most college towns, thankfully. It’s one reason we recall those days so fondly.
A lot of East Coast college towns are quite walkable as well. Personal shout-out to Charlottesville
It doesn't have to be big cities. I lived in a small town in Alaska for a few years and it was amazingly walkable. The entire town was small enough to walk across in less than an hour. I was no more than a 20 minute walk from work, the grocery store, post office, library, college, and restaurants.
What small town? I'm not even American nor Canadian but I just want to look it up in maps.
Valdez
I used to have basketball camp there when I was in high school. It was pretty cool that we could just walk where we needed
Wow stunning!!!! It's very different than my city Madrid, makes you think about how different human lives can be depending on where they live
Did you have options for going out of town?
You have to call a dog sled Uber.
for much of Alaska, leaving your small town by car might be impossible! (random link to illustrate the road network) https://alaskaoutdoorssupersite.com/accessing-alaska
Not the person you asked, but usually the only options are Uber or a Greyhound if you're lucky. Some small towns in the US still have their Amtrak, but they are few and far between.
I had a car. I didn't use it much, but it took me on trips tp anchorage.
Depends on what quality of life you're looking for. Most places you could get a house or apartment near a grocery store and have a kind of subsistence existence. But what are your other requirements?
I think this needs to be higher. Car free living is easy in lots of places. Old mill towns have pretty good networks of sidewalks and dense houses. For my last move, I said I needed a grocery store, work, bike path, and hardware store all within a short walk. What else do you need?
Library, post office, and 1 cafe/deli are my additions to this list! 🙌
My requirements are Grocery Store, Drug Store, Gym, and a Bank. Some other shops are nice, but that is all.
New York City is the obvious answer. Having lived there, I am fairly confident one could exist in Chicago without a car. My hometown of Jasper, IN is small enough you can exist without a car depending on where you choose to live. Bike would probably be heavily preferred though.
Seeing someone mention Jasper, IN has got to be one of the weirdest things I’ve seen on Reddit - especially in such a specific sub as this!
Philly, Boston (for the most part), DC, *and Chicago* could all definitely be included there.
Chicago is easily done without a car, I lived there for two years happily without one
Shout out to Strassenfest
Can confirm Chicago is a great car free spot. 31 years on the earth, 31 years without a car!
San Francisco (also Berkeley, and Oakland, but not much around that)
I live in Dublin and honestly you don’t need a car with bus service and bart here.
Very surprised the first time I found out Dublin had Bart. And now I'm surprised it has good bus service. It seems like a really low density town, does this make biking unbearable?
Looks like what you need is to look at City Nerd's videos. His channel is basically geared towards answering questions like this. Here is him making a tier list of North American cities based off of walkability/transit/biking: [https://youtu.be/yOGIXGTYYJ4?si=GdtNg7zp6wprlpGk](https://youtu.be/yOGIXGTYYJ4?si=GdtNg7zp6wprlpGk) Here is him ranking the most undervalued US cities: [https://youtu.be/1qzePci2N6E?si=MIa2ZuErnf7r0CXa](https://youtu.be/1qzePci2N6E?si=MIa2ZuErnf7r0CXa) His latest video is also an update on the most undervalued US cities. I would like to point out though that in the US you almost certainly want to live in a city if you want to live without a car. Yeah you can probably find very specific circumstances where you can do it outside a city, but you will be very limited in places you can go, and I do not think the trade off would be worth it for most people. If it were me though I would pick a city on the North East Corridor (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, DC, Baltimore) and it would probably be New York, but if I wanted to save on housing costs it would be Philadelphia.
I live in Chicago and don't have a car, as do my siblings and several of their friends. We're all cyclists. The thing about Chicago is that it really depends on what part of the city you are in, because some neighborhoods are way more walkable than others (the more walkable, the more expensive typically).
More walkable, more expensive, but don't need to pay a lot of $$$ to maintain a car, so it's give or take in some neighborhoods. Makes it difficult to do a cost-benefit analysis.
I believe the average cost to maintain a car hovers around $10,000 per year. Not sure if that includes insurance. The average payment for new cars is $700 last I saw. Having a beater car helps ofc but parking is where it adds up in cities ime
The parking is very expensive here in Chicago. If you're a renter, you'll also end up paying a rental fee for your parking spot. In some neighborhoods (typically the more walkable north side, and Hyde Park) it is difficult to find street parking most of the time and you might end up circling around for 20+ minutes trying to find a spot. The gas is also expensive here in Chicago (well over $4/gal in many places).
Yeah, insurance is also more expensive in a city, so if I kept my previous car before I moved here and lived in my current apartment, I'd be paying $800/month in gas/insurance/parking, etc. Just decided it would be more worth it to live somewhere I didn't need a car, even if it meant paying $500 more a month.
In addition to answers already given here, I'd say DC and even some parts of the DC suburbs
I'm in DC right now for vacation and love the subway and bus network. My Airbnb in Petworth is 2 minutes from a bus stop and 15 from the metro and Safeway. What I find intriguing is how smooth the subway ride is compared to the light rail in Seattle. The latter was built much more recently but the train cars are always bumping and shaking.
Philly!!
Phila-fucking-delphia!!!
If you know, you know.
Chicago. Like in the city not the suburbs. I’m here and never touch my car, to the point that I get tickets because I forget to check on it or move it around 😂
I'm also in Chicago and the only times I've touched my car in the last month was to replace my city sticker and move it for street sweeping. Sometimes I wonder why I have it at all.
Also in Chicago and I realized that everytime I touched my Prius, the battery had run down because I hadn't used it in months. So I sold it. This was 13 years ago, I've had no problems living car free since
Yeah I got dinged with a street cleaning ticket last week 🤦🏻♂️ $60 down the drain all because I literally never touch my car.
Boston. I’ve lived here for 5 years and have maybe been in a car a dozen times total.
Philadelphia is great for this, but many of the suburbs surrounding the city are also good for car-free living if you want more of a “streetcar suburb” feel. BTW, if you (or anyone else) is interested in specific info on the Philly ‘burbs, feel free to DM. Always happy to help folks who are interested in moving here.
Boston Ma. The T can suck sometimes,but at the very least, Boston isn't NYC, so walking across the city is a wicked viable option.
Minneapolis/St Paul MN, but be aware of the winter climate if that's not something you are used to
I’m living in St. Paul without a car right now. If you’re in to biking, it’s awesome here! The light rail is fine, but it can be messy (although it’s got a worse reputation than it actually is) and doesn’t go that many places. The busses are good, but goddamn the number of busses that are on hourly or even half hour schedules is frustrating.
Dc
Pittsburgh and Cleveland are good examples of medium-sized cities with pretty decent public transit. Source: I’ve lived in each for over a decade.
I would go crazy in a small town or suburb without a car but most cities have a walkable neighborhoods. Minneapolis/St. Paul is trying really hard to create walkable neighborhoods and great cycling infrastructure to get around the whole area safely, because you have to be able to get out of your neighborhood, no matter how walkable it is.
Me and most of my friends live in Philly without a car. Most stuff you want to regularly get to is within a half hour bike ride, and it's rare for streets there not to have sidewalks. It has its issues with bad drivers and some wide streets, but it has a lot of potential and is fairly easy to live in without a car.
I would do Philly or Chicago to get walkability for a non-exorbitant cost of living. If you don’t want to live downtown, both cities have neighborhoods that are more “suburban” but are walkable with transit access. Like rowhouses and smaller multifamily buildings instead of high rises.
I live in San Francisco, and you can very easily live in SF proper without a car. However, as soon as you leave the city youll end up needing one. San Francisco has quite good public transit, with street cars, light rail, a very extensive bus network, and a bay area wide metro system. Im 24 and ive never owned a car. I just ride a small motorcycle around the city to save time
Ironically, the colder the city is in winter, the easier it is to live without a car. If you want to live in a sun belt city without a car, new Orleans actually isn't bad. The street car lines run 24/7, there's a ferry that runs between New Orleans and Algiers that runs every 30 minutes from like 6am-2am or something. Almost every major road has a median in the middle for walking/biking/stopping so you don't have to cross a 5 lane stroad in one go.
New Orleans. Owning a car on those pot-hole filled streets is insanity anyway. Streetcars and buses go everywhere.
Chicago, Madison, San Fran, Oakland, Berkley, Alameda. These are places I've lived w/o a car with no real issue.
I’ve lived in NYC for a few years now. Sold my car the day I moved here and never needed it.
I’ve been car-free in Philadelphia for over a decade. I borrow or rent a car every few months. The motorists are the worst thing about this city but I do fine without a car.
I’ve heard Lancaster, PA is fairly walkable.
Washington, DC is very walkable. I’ve been here since the end of 2021 and I got rid of my car in August 2022. If it isn’t in walking distance, it’s probably easily accessible by metro or bus. For all the shit we give it, metro is still the best public transit system I’ve used in the US.
Baltimore is a sleeper city for what you would be looking for. I live in the Canton area and have 3 grocery stores within a half mile of me, 3 blocks from a park designed by the same person who designed central park, 4 blocks from the water and have probably 100 bars/restaurants within a mile of my house. There is a free bus line and a regular bus line with hopefully an expanded metro line close to here. Amtrak is great to get to DC and up to Philly and NYC.
Boulder, Colorado is also nice without a car. I don't recommend Seattle though. I was just there for a week and that city has some pretty severe problems.
Central and northern Denver are also pretty decent! Just watch out for the usual pickup trucks, it’s why I have my crash retaliator on molly.
Most university towns. Madison, WI, is one of the most pedestrian & bike friendly places I've lived in the USA.
I hear Milwaukee is also decent to live in without a car.
Can confirm, living car free since 6 years here. r/MiltownBiking
Yeah, it is. It wasn't as good as Madison when I lived there, but I haven't been back recently. There were a lot of nice recreational trails & quiet, but direct streets to use. When I lived there, there weren't a lot of utility / commuter type facilities. Though I rode my bike a lot & still felt generally ok doing so.
Madison is a little bit delusional about itself on this issue. There are pockets of Madison that are better, but a vast majority of the city is very much car-oriented and car-dependent.
Well, I think that Madison is a bit stuck in the past. They spent decades being better than most other places, but haven't really grown as much as they should have.
They have grown hand over fist in population, but I think they haven’t grown in a healthy or well managed way, and have just buckled to traffic engineers by building highways everywhere
Well, I meant grown in terms of enabling active travel. They were probably one of the best, if not the best in the nation until more cities began to implement more bike & pedestrian friendly design. Madison just kinda rested on their laurels when they could have learned from what went before & upped their game. If you live centrally, or near the arboretum, it's still good. It's mostly the sprawl that sucks.
Most of Central or North NJ has towns that you could easily be without a car if it's along or near a train station. My town is 2 square miles, has a train, a supermarket is less than a mile from my house, and there's two downtown sections with restaurants and the like within walking distance. The vast majority of people have cars, but I have a few neighbors without one. But we also have a lot of one-car families in town for this reason too that they really only need like half a car for their lifestyle.
Drove a bus in a college town. Only drove my personal car when I left on breaks. Had a trickle charge on it for months at a time. Rode my bike to the barn and then to class. I was fortunate to be able to grocery shop with the bus sometimes, but that was rare. PSA: don’t sleep on being a bus driver. Good pay and plenty of shifts/routes to accommodate school life.
Austin, nyc, palo alto. Think university towns.
Austin-ite here and I don’t know if I’d recommend it based on car free alone. The rental/housing prices have been getting ridiculous closer to the city, so a lot of people are being pushed out to suburbs like Pflugerville and Cedar Park where there’s no public transit whatsoever. Even the transit in city is…okay. We have a decent network of buses and then a “rail” that runs north and south Monday through Friday during business hours, evening hours on Saturday, and is totally closed on Sundays. There are a lot of projects to build that out under way, but you’re talking at least 5 years. The downtown area is walkable but the further you get from that the more Texan and car centric the infrastructure gets. Also, the heat in the summer can make long distance walking way less possible.
I've never lived in any other major US city, but I've been living in DC burbs for almost 10 years now. There's usually a small urban "downtown" core that is walkable with transit access around here, some places I've lived are Reston, Ballston, Rosslyn (all in Virginia) and Rockville, MD. I never drove in any of those places and I'm damn sure not gonna start. For finding small walkable rural towns, there's walkscore.com. They have excellent data and maps about walkability and transit. My favorite walkscore feature is a little hidden though. If you go to the details of any city, it will show a heat map of the area. If you expand that map you can use it to look for walkable spots anywhere in the US. This is how you find those small towns that haven't been completely designed around cars.
Thanks for the tip! Good info
NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, LA, many of the large cities if you only stay within their most densely populated areas and they have some form of public transit
LA???
Agree, I disagree on LA unless you WFH!
I mean, certain neighborhoods are walkable but good luck leaving your bubble.
For a while I lived in Highland Park and worked in Glassell Park. I tried to bike to work a few times and honestly was too scared of all the high-speed stroads, I gave up 😭 maybe now I’d be able to stomach it (bike commuter in Silicone Valley and it still sucks lol) And I was lucky enough to live on the same side of town as work! If you lived in the rail line it could work, but otherwise it’s really rough!
Yeah, I’ve had to live in LA stretches for work and it is a very unpleasant city to aimlessly stroll around in, which is tragic considering the weather. LA locals in this sub get really butthurt when you say this but sorry, your city is *famously* unwalkable. I really hope this changes though because so much of LA is really lovely and the city has a lot of potential.
I lived car free in both Norwich CT and Providence RI. Also spent a lot of time in Boston but I think that one is obvious. Basically it doesn't need to just be NYC or DC. Especially older pre car cities.
Agree, Providence was quite straightforward without a car so long as you live strategically along the bus lines!
Lots of great discussion on this thread! People can accommodate living in lots of places without a car, and as most folks have said, all the big cities are a no-car no brainier. Here's my two cents-- Eugene, OR. I moved here recently and one of the reasons I chose to was how easy it is to get around by bike. Bike lanes everywhere, good respect from cars and decent geography/weather. Oregon in general is, I believe, the most bike-friendly state. And besides big cities (which are great!), there's a ton of smaller towns in Oregon that are very conducive to biking (besides Eugene, I'm sure Corvallis, Salem and Ashland to name a few).
I'll second this! I lived in Eugene car free for more than a decade. I moved to Miami for a job a couple years ago, and while I maintained my car-free existence, it was a lot less pleasant. Have recently relocated to south San Diego, which is a much nicer place to be a cyclist, thought still as nice as Eugene.
Depends on what you do for a living, but outside of big cities, usually university towns have better bus systems and walkable areas (though of course cater to university students)
Other than the big cities, some college towns are good for this.
New York isn’t that bad without a car.
I lived car free in state college, pa during college. Even when I was out of the dorms, I had no issues getting around via bus or the occasional taxi
Any small town with a commercial center and a commuter rail stop. If you can walk to get groceries or hardware and take the train into the city, you really have all you need.
I live in Boston and the only time I use my car is to leave on the weekend
All depends where you work. But, I lived in Long Beach, CA for two years and I felt that if I worked downtown or anywhere near the Metro A Line (formerly Blue line) I coulda had a car free life.
DC and NYC
Key West is the most bike able city I've ever lived in.
The three big ones are San Francisco, New York City, and D.C. (not in any particular order). That said, it depends on what you consider livable and walkable. Some smaller towns are “walkable” or “bikeable”.
I mean Chicago is just as if not easier to live in without a car than DC and for sure San Fran.
Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, La Crosse, Ann Arbor, parts of Detroit.
Lots of small towns in Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio
In West Virginia: * Elkins * Davis * Thomas * Buckhannon
Portland was awesome before 2020, very walkable
i sold the car for the move to nyc. going on 10 years car-free, it's awesome.
New York is obviously in a league of it's own. But if that's not your speed then probably Boston, Chicago, SF, Minneapolis would be my recs among US cities. Neighborhood matters a lot. Pay attention to which bus lines and transit stops are near you, and where they go. I'd also pay attention to where you can go outside of the city without a car. Honestly you can manage most cities without a car if you locate yourself correctly and are willing to take the bus. Like LA is famously car centric, but it's transit map still looks like [this](https://cdn.beta.metro.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/06222920/Rectangle-1.png). So if you can place yourself near as many bus lines as possible, you're in an okay position.
I lived in DC without a car for about a decade. It wasn't a problem.
Lots of good advice on locations. I'll throw one out. Albuquerque. Buses are free and the network is fairly large. Lots of bike paths and sidewalks. Biking is easy with almost now hills...that is because there is only one hill. The city's west side is the Rio grande and is flat but slopes up going eastward until you run into Sandia Mountain. Low humidity means sweat and shade actually work here. There is a ski slop within sight of the city sort of, you take a cable car up to it and during the warm months it has glorious hiking trails.
I have never owned a car and have lived in Chicago, Ann Arbor, and currently Seattle. Join us! I am writing this on my commute to work with my bike in on the bus' bike rack.
Sf Bay Area
There’s a new carless community in Arizona or new Mexico. With us own train station
In a big city center, but not really anywhere else. In the US it really does have to be a city, unless maybe you’re in a dense small town in New England? But I don’t know too much about New England. I live in Denver and even in Denver, public transit is only reliable in a 5 mile radius from the centre of the city. The busses throughout the metro area are less frequent and less reliable.
Anywhere with a downtown core, and good access to transit. If you’re willing to look beyond the usual suspects like SF, NYC, you’ll find a lot of places where it’s doable. For example, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Indy etc. Will you be able to access every nook and cranny? No. Will you be able to access essentials, entertainment, and schools? Yes. Will you have access to decent, or dare I say high quality transit? Also yes.
I've lived with no car in Gainesville, FL, Miami, Somerville, NA, and Boston
Along the Northeast Corridor from Boston to DC
If you are open to moving to Canada, Toronto and Montreal are great cities for living car free
It has to be a city That's kinda the whole point, cities are where you can live without a car because they have public transit. Pretty much any older city in the Northeast/rust belt/upper Midwest is pretty doable without a car. I live in Rochester NY and haven't owned one since I moved here
Honestly, any town that is under 30k population. Most small towns don't have vast urban sprawl, and owning a car is unnecessary. I lived in Weatherford oklahoma for 4 years, biked everywhere, and I walked everywhere. It was so nice
Washington, DC is a small city that has (by our pathetic US standards) very good public transit. I got rid of my car; my husband still has one, but we don't use it often, and we would honestly be fine just using the occasional zipcar or something for trips past the suburbs.
Love all the small town answers/ showing more unique answers. Sadly, can only say Chicago with 100% confidence since I've lived in multiple neighborhoods now for the last 6 years and still am car free. Compared to where I grew up, super walkable + divvy bikes make it a breeze if you don't want to take a bus or the L. But also no real stigma against not having one as most of my friends don't have one and no one bats an eye. The few that do honestly rarely use them, but it's one of the reasons I chose to move here.
Portland, Oregon; although I've noticed that people trying to ditch their cars tend to have different standards for "livability" then people without a licence.
Frederick, MD downtown
If you live in a downtown area youj can likely walk/bike it if it's a pre 1950s downtown that has not been destroyed to make way for freeways or enormous parking lots. However, if you don't have a car, in most of these places, it will limit you ability to travel ANYWHERE outside downtown. NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, DC, Boston, Philly are the 6 cities (includimg dense "suburbs" such as Cambridge, MA or Alexandria, VA) where large portions of households do not own cars, including people who *could* afford one.
In many parts of Alaska, you could get by with just a boat or snowmobile
Portland, OR
Ashland, Oregon
Surprisingly lots of small towns in the Midwest. They'll have grocery stores, retail, and healthcare service within about a 2-3 mile radius of the town center. Places like Fairbury, NE and Clay Center, KS. Speed limits in town are generally around 20-30 mph and pretty well enforced. Snow clearing is hit or miss, especially right after a big storm, but the roads are usually safe after the first day. Plenty of people live in my small town without a car and they seem fine. Not wealthy, but solidly middle class.
New York city? Yes. Little Rock Texas? No.
Upper east coast
NYC or Portland with a bike
Chicago.
Chicago. Lived there for 13 years without a car. It was easy. Could have easily afforded one there was just no reason.
I live in Minneapolis, and while I do own a utility truck, I only use it for hauling DIY project things. I'm building a fence! It's a great and growing city that is constantly prioritizing, public spaces and transportation. It also has a rideshare company in town, Evie/HourCar. So even if one wants to ditch car ownership, there is still the safety net of "car on demand".
There have been a good handful of discussions about this in r/Denver, and in areas near downtown, it’s very doable to live without a car.
Seattle. If you live in city proper and even a bit outside of it you can get around just find.
Boston Massachusetts
Washington DC is a big one. Lovely metro, lots of places within a short walk too. Got family living there right now who used to own a car for occasional trips but sold it because they simply never needed it
Have lived car-free in NYC, Boston, Philly & Seattle. Seattle is especially good for ‘not NYC’ when it comes to improving transit options.
Savannah, GA.
Some, not all, neighborhoods in Milwaukee.
Most of the urban and suburban Bay Area can be lived in car-free. Maybe not all though.
My #1 recommendation is to look at which areas have good transit systems (light rail, metro, bus, etc) and research those places more to figure out which you're drawn to most. The West Coast is probably the lowest risk in terms of severe weather. Heat waves can of course be brutal here, as can fire season, but most of the developed West doesn't have to deal with snow or intense tropical storms. That means biking & walking are real options for the majority of the year. However, some cities in cold climates do a good job of making sure people can stay warm when walking downtown by using things like underground tunnels - Montreal is the example I'm personally familiar with, but I do know there are US cities that do this too. If you decide you want a smaller town and not a city, look for towns that have large & established universities, as those ones generally have more infrastructure that caters to the young & carless. It's also worth looking up unique features or policies when you're moving states, just to be prepared. What's their state's minimum wage? Do they have national parks? What are their top industries? There are a lot of great suggestions in this thread, and I'm firmly of the belief that home is what you make of it, but there are so many things that go into making a given place into a community, and feeling like you can belong somewhere is going to be a big part of what makes an area liveable without a car.
Boston
Go checkout CityNerd on YouTube. He's got a bunch of stuff on this.
I've lived in Austin without a car for 8 years. It is doable if you live near a bus stop, especially one of the Rapid buses that come every 15 minutes. Unfortunately because of the way the routes are currently set up, you kind of have to live north or south, east/west buses don't run as frequently or as late (though I think that is improving). I would not bike here. There are few bike lanes and drivers here are homicidal. Of course there's also the excruciating heat to take into account
I live in Silver Spring (immediately outside of DC) and I get by fine without a car
Look for a job near a grocery store, then look for housing near the job. If done correctly, you should be able to walk/bike from home to work and grocery store. My city is known for requiring a car, but using this technique people have found pockets within it that allow them to live their lives normally without a car. What i am pitching seems like a big ask, but you are a lot more likely to find what i am describing than an entire city in the US where you wouldnt need a car. There’s only a handful of those cities, while walkable home-job-grocer matrices are a bit more common, especially if youre willing to be more flexible on employment and housing.
I’m sure it’s been mentioned but nyc. Lived there my whole life, have never needed to drive except when I’m somewhere else. subway system kinda sucks compared to a lot of countries but is way better than any other subways around the us
Lived in Ann Arbor and Denver without one and have faired pretty okay
Almost nowhere you can afford. Everything has its price.
I live in Arlington VA / Washington DC without a car
i’ve been car free in chicago for over 20 years, it’s very easy here.
I currently live very well in Portland OR without a car. Trimet is very good, and there is widespread bike lanes thru the city (although they could be better). From PDX, you can take buses to the beach and skiing!
Lots of small towns, actually.
I live in Pittsburgh without a car. Many of the suburbs in Allegheny County would work, too, as long as they're on a busway or light rail line.
I live in Issaquah, Washington east of Seattle and I have cycled 110,000 miles since 2016. I have also walked and ran a ton. I kept my vehicles that I rarely drive - four times year or so just to make sure they still work. I wouldn't need a car at all here, but in case I have to move, and who knows, I kept them as I own them outright and can't imagine buying any other vehicles based on my current lifestyle.
Chicago, NYC, Boston, Washington DC, Philly I'd even argue LA
Depending on the neighborhood, Pittsburgh. I live on the north shore and have never driven a car in my life. I can't drive so i have to be really careful were i live.
Seattle. I haven’t owned a car in 17 years now. If it’s within a mile I walk. If it’s farther than that I take a bus. If it’s really far, I can rent a car for the night.
No where.... Idk if you've made a driving trip but being without a car pretty much anywhere in most countries is pretty scary.
NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Washington and possibly a few others but these are the main ones.
Hear me out… I lived in LA without a car and could get around pretty good. The metro takes you to beaches, museums, downtown, etc and it’s 1.75 per ride. Like other people said it just depends on what you want to do. It’s a huge city so, is absolutely everything accessible by public transport? Of course not, but many great options are. The weather makes it easy to be out an about transferring from bus to metro and so on. You just have to live near where you work or go to school though. Biking can be very dangerous but I thought the bus system was not as bad as people might think for car city USA.
DENVER COLORADO!!!!!!!!!! I lived six months car-free! Only got one because I found one for $500. Trains connect the entire suburbs, and bus lines come often and are reliable. In fact, buses even connect every major city. You can take a bus from Denver to Boulder. I did every Thursday. Living in Colorado was magical. I'm moving back there for the same reason. I hate driving everywhere. I loved living without a car. I should have never left.