You definitely don't need (or want) a car in Boston. Boston is extremely pedestrian friendly and correspondingly hostile to cars. 95% of the people who complain about getting around here are commuters from outside the city.
Unfortunately this isn’t true in all of greater Boston or even within the whole metro core. If you live in Watertown, Quincy, Waltham, Newton, etc etc you are going to have a very different experience
My main complaint with Boston is that even if you’re happy with just the walkable city center, it’s still tough commuting if you can’t walk/bike and you aren’t going to/from downtown Boston.
For example if someone in Somerville takes a job in Boston Landing they’re looking at a multiple seat commute over an hour most likely, to effectively travel maybe 5-10 miles. Driving still ends up winning.
Somerville to Boston landing is kind of a tough example, but I agree it’s annoying that there’s no way to go “sideways” on most public transport in Boston - everything goes to the center
This is true of even the most public-transit-centered cities like Tokyo and NYC. It's easy to find commutes that are short as the crow flies but cover a much longer distance on public transit.
Yep, the drive and bike times for my example are roughly the same at rush hour according to google. For someone interesting in biking as a commute, Boston/camberville is probably one of the best places to live+work. If you can deal with the winter anyways
> You definitely don't need (or want) a car in Boston
I have never been to Boston, but if this is true then why is the public transport map so weird? There's the subway for inter-city travel but if you're commuting then commuter rail does not seem practical at all because of this weird gap? To me it made the impression of a neglected system, presumably because everyone commutes by car. Is there still space downtown for e.g. bicycle lanes? Otherwise this surely would have been fixed for decades now.
Or is it just painful to commute because there's a livable downtown with public transit, bike lanes etc., which was not completely sacrificed for cars, but just without a great commuter solution?
The public transit system is shaped by natural barriers and landfill, so the weird layout really has nothing to do with neglect (though there's plenty of that too!). The subway system actually covers a large area including Boston and the urban area surrounding it. The commuter rail mostly serves the urban cores of suburban communities outside Boston, so people drive to the commuter rail and then commute by train from there.
Before covid (no idea what the numbers are now) only 40% of people in the Boston metro commuted by car alone, roughly the same share as those who took the commuter rail and subway. 20% of people commuted by car and bike. The share of people who commute by car in the core of Boston is extremely small. At least 50% of roads in the city are single lane and one way. Parking is expensive and scarce. Driving 2 miles (as the crow flies) can easily take an hour, which makes walking pretty competitive as a mode of transit.
My main complaint with Boston is that even if you’re happy with just the walkable city center, it’s still tough commuting if you can’t walk/bike and you aren’t going to/from downtown Boston.
For example if someone in Somerville takes a job in Boston Landing they’re looking at a multiple seat commute over an hour most likely, to effectively travel maybe 5-10 miles. Driving still ends up winning.