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by msutherl 3666 days ago
US cities that aren't car centric: Portland, Seattle, New York, Boston. Nearby: Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto. Afar: London, Paris, Berlin.

Arguably San Francisco is the most car-centric of the bunch with its comparatively non-functional transportation system.

4 comments

As somebody who lives in Portland it still seems very much "car centric". There are some people who are able to get along without a car. There are others who can commute via bus or bike.

But it's really difficult to get around without a car. What sucks is that the city is making it more difficult to get around by limiting the number of cars on streets (Glisan, Division, heading into town on Burnside, soon Foster) without providing much in the way of alternatives. Buses aren't running more often and they don't have protected right-of-ways that would let get around traffic jams.

I'll agree that what they're doing on NE Broadway, protecting bicyclists, looks good. But they're doing it that very rarely.

Most of these lose on weather, culture or proximity to the ocean for me.

All of SF isn't easy car free, but I live downtown. SF could have significantly better mass transit. In order to get completely car free in my lifetime would probably require opt in to a new city due to people who have jobs related to things that should be removed.

NYC is too dense and the main prominent industries appear to be wall Street, advertising, and fashion which are not things I like. Car traffic is also pretty horrible.

How about Chicago? The #2 biggest non-car centric city in the nation?
You can get around D.C. without a car---by which I mean the city proper and not the other metro areas.

In fact in the city, you're burdened by having a car.

You can easily extend that across the river to Arlington, VA. There's extensive public transportation. Cycling is taken seriously. Maybe the City of Alexandria, too; but, not the "Alexandria" part of Fairfax.
Before the Metro ceased to exist.