Best 10 American Cities to be CarFree 2017
 

So you're ready to become carfree for life? Here's a good article by Redfin showing the best big cities to become carfree and San Francisco came out #1. I guess it's because the weather being nice makes it easy to bike or walk to work. What surprised me was Miami came out in 8th place. Who knew?

The good news is that you don't have to live in these expensive cities to become carfree. You can still take advantage of their jobs living 10 - 15 miles away from downtown and live cheaply.

What do you think of the list and are there others they missed?

https://www.redfin.com/blog/2017/02/...out-a-car.html

Hmm...all very humid or rain-prone climates!

I live in Las Vegas and getting around on bike has constantly improved in the 9 years I've lived here. The dry desert heat is not a problem for me and the majority of the year is purely pleasant weather. Interstate 15 and Las Vegas Boulevard are difficult obstacles to overcome, though.

Cities? I live in a Small Town. But I'm Old..


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Strange that San Francisco was #1. It is a really hilly city, number 2 on the bike score.

But then Minneapolis, with its harsh winter, was #1 in bike score. We have difficult winters in Des Moines (not this year, though...) and I have enjoyed more than a decade of winter commuting. It really isn't that hard.

I always thought that Denver did a nice job. Public transit is pretty great, and the combination of paved MUPs, marked bike lanes, and decent side streets made it very easy to get around by bike. I suspect they didn't make the list because the perceived threat of crime in some of the trendy areas docks the walk scores. Likewise, many "professional" types are too cool to take the very functional bus system around town, though they'll use the park n' ride to take the light rail or long distance buses.

I also noticed that the list only includes cities of 300,000+. There's certainly some excellent car-free cities just below this mark, places still big enough to have urban amenities. Larger Midwestern towns with a university presence such as Madison, WI and Lincoln, NE (both pop. around 250,000) come to mind.

Miami has Trirail and I've seen some good reports about bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure, though I don't get there much so I can't say first hand.

Generally, Florida is a good place for LCF because it is relatively flat and weather is nice year-round. Heat and humidity can make walking/biking uncomfortable in hot months, but biking more-or-less solves that problem since you can pedal lightly to avoid sweating and generate a breeze to keep you cool and dry in the process.

Sun is biggest problem with CF living in the Sunshine state, and somehow I think this is known to LCF-haters, who strip away the trees that shade sidewalks and bike lanes in many places. Then, there are nice areas where conscientious effort is devoted to shading sidewalks and MUPs with trees. E.g. Orlando has terrible traffic and sprawl but also great areas with MUPs and shaded sidewalks, etc. that are ideal for outdoor recreation and LCF.

The SUN (shared-use non-motorized) trail project was initiated a few years ago and some progress has been made, though it's not widely politicized, maybe because of all the negativity that rises up at the mention of non-motorized anything. Plenty of tourists from anywhere and everywhere ride FL, along with locals from anywhere and everywhere as well. I wish the motorized crowd would wake up and smell the LCF, because every area could benefit from less motor traffic, but judging from all the driving-infrastructure projects going on, there is big money circulating for the motorized public and so there must be some incentives for that public to stay motorized.

The way you think is amusing. People don't cut down trees because they're LCF haters! :lol: They're probably barely aware there are people crazy enough to live carfree by choice. They cut the trees down because it's the cheapest way to develop the property. End of story. No conspiracy.

Indirectly, it is LCF-hate, because anyone who walks or bikes anywhere at all should be aware how hot it is to do so in direct sunlight. That means the people cutting down those trees already hate walking/biking enough to always avoid it in favor of driving.

It doesn't cost less to cut down trees; it costs more. You have to pay to have them cut. If you just work around them, it doesn't cost anything.

I spent an hour looking at Miami using Google maps street level and it was interesting seeing how one could become car free using a bicycle. However, I didn't see much activity on the streets and few people cycling since traffic probably moves fast on those broad boulevards.

Also, the Metro basically goes to the airport and little else. The whole Miami Dade county is serviced by bus which have 30 minute wait times, which isn't too bad but they tend to stop service by 8:00 pm! Overall public transit is limited for those wanting to be carfree. A bicycle would be in order.

What makes Miami attractive attractive for the carfree are the abundance of jobs. It reminds me of Manhattan in a sense where one could find work in all those office towers. You might have to buy a car if one intends to live in the suburbs. However, there are express bus service offered so one can have their cake, live in the burbs and still remain carfree!

Climate change has really created some mild winters. This actually works in favor of those wanting to be carfree.

Overall, the best city to become carfree is a personal choice. I'm carfree in New Jersey which has a very limited subway and fairly decent commuter rail service. However, people are becoming carfree all over the country so the cities mentioned are only a small sample.

How is Lincoln, as spread out as it is, bike friendly? Denver is decent, though, but not better than any of the top 10 in my estimation. Having lived in multiple personally, madison would be the only one listed. They're public transit is not on par with any, nor close.

Hate is a strong word, but these tree cutters show total disdain and disregard for anybody who is not travelling in an air-conditioned automobile. Good shade tree coverage is the single factor that most improves and encourages walkability. I don't think you've done much walking if you don't know that simple fact!

On summer walks, I frequently cross the street to take advantage of shade. I totally avoid streets that don't have any shade, which undoubtedly makes the LCF haters quite happy.

I'm talking about walking here, but shade trees also do much to improve bicycling. I'm really surprised that you don't get this!

He says it's not LCF-hate, but I truly believe there are plenty of automobilists who think of nice treed sidewalks as catering to 'bums' and 'vagrants.' They basically think that anyone worth making a nice treed/shaded sidewalk for would be driving anyway.

Granted, it does cost a little more to plant a tree next to a sidewalk than to leave it bare, but it saves money not to mow it; but they don't want to leave it unmowed because that would take away a mower's job - nevermind that costs more than letting it grow. And of course someone could just plant or transplant a small tree voluntarily if they knew the tree wouldn't get mowed away or otherwise damaged, and then it would cost nothing.

+1 The best city to become carfree is the city you are in.

Lincoln: I've always been impressed with the sheer expanse of their trail system and its connectivity to on-street bike routes in the city. My husband's mom moved down south of Old Cheney Road, and was sable to get downtown easily by bike. My husband's dad lived car-free near Bryan Medical West for a good 15-20 years (until he got remarried recently) and biked to work (not at Bryan Medical) and downtown...a lot.

I mention Denver only because of my own very positive experience living there car-free - with a school-age child for part of that time, and a commute to Boulder.

I'm certainly in favor of preserving as many trees as possible, but that assertion just isn't true.

Why would you think it costs anything to allow land to grow freely and reforest in that way?

Yeah, here in Michigan and many other parts of the world, trees are going to grow by themselves if you just don't cut them down. In 20 years, a $10 sapling is going to be a nice shade tree with no fertilizer, irrigation, or anything.

It would certainly be interesting to do an experiment where all mowing and pruning is stopped in a city, to see what the city looks like after 5, 10, 20, 50 years. Idk how fast the growth of organic systems would go, but I'm pretty certain it would be non-zero, assuming no efforts were made to prevent it.

Also, btw, biomass growth without artificial interventions like watering, fertilizing, planting, etc. is important to reforestation because it allows ecologies to re-establish according to the resources naturally available to them and adapt. Using energy to pump water for irrigation, make and transport fertilizer, transport and plant saplings, etc. might be good in some instances to jump-start the process, but ultimately it's better to allow reforestation to occur as naturally as possible, e.g. by allowing established local varieties to multiply and spread, possibly transplanting seeds/acorns and leaves across paved areas where they won't naturally reach across.

Wrong. Any real estate developer will tell you that it costs less to cut down the trees. More area to load/unload supplies, park, etc. After they're gone all moving around gets easier. Landscaping equipment shapes the land easily with trees gone. It's cheap to get them cut. There's potentially marketable wood there and what's not is quickly chipped and loaded on the back of a truck at the same time. People in the business use logging equipment that's hugely efficient.

There's a reason so many trees get cut down. It's the same thing that drives most of the world's activities. Economics. It's not LCF haters trying to keep you in the sun! Remember, it is rare that people do anything differently as a result of your presence. People care much less about you than you realize.

Reforestation wasn't the topic under discussion.

Developing land by hand is much cheaper, but developers don't do that. They use huge expensive power equipment and build as many square feet as they can as fast as they can, and justify it by a ratio of developed-area to cost. If they kept their total cost as low as possible, they would leave the trees and build smaller buildings. They would do it by hand to avoid using power equipment, and they would do it slowly, by themselves without hiring others, because it's expensive to hire other people.

I don't think it's directed personally at me. Roody sort of explained it already. They are living with a negative mentality toward anyone who doesn't drive. They themselves wouldn't be caught dead riding around on a bike or walking for transportation. They consider that something for losers and dropouts. So they don't think about what is harmful toward people using a sidewalk or bike lane because they simply don't think about those people. It would be like a pedestrian tossing rocks off an overpass because they don't pay attention to the cars driving below that could get damaged by the falling rocks. If you asked them if they were trying to harm the traffic below, they'd say they just didn't think about the traffic. Essentially they're just being egocentric, but the net effect is harm done to others.

It came up. This always happens here: a discussion evokes a side-discussion about some detail in a previous post and then someone eventually complains that it's not the thread topic. Please feel free to discuss the thread topic instead of just complaining about deviations from it.

It would look like this:


http://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/...15ba752ff9.jpg

Sxsw
 

i do not live in HOUSTON but i do go there ... when i go there i take my bike ... not only is Houston a terrible city to drive it is a nasty place to bike ... none of the large cities in texas trend to LCF ... by far AUSTIN is the best more so on its positive bike culture than biking enviro ... college towns are probably the best LCF enviros and college/college oriented jobs are probally the most conducive to being car free :commute: