^Yeah, I definitely agree with your bottom line. And with only a handful of cars, I can't blame that report for ignoring it. Hopefully more downtown residents take the plunge and go car free and Zipcar takes notice.

I call BS on this study for a couple of reasons.  For me, "Car Free" means not only not owning a car, but not using one either.  Car-share only fixes one of those standards- car ownership, but you're still basically relying on a car to get you around.  Truly car-free is using public transit (buses, trains, bikes, walking), and in that measure, Columbus is going to rank way lower unfortunately.  None of them have great public transit, but Cleveland does have the most, so they should realistically be ranked higher if we're talking about being able to truly be car-free. In Columbus, you could around the High Street corridor and Downtown, but not many other places. 

I call BS on this study for a couple of reasons.  For me, "Car Free" means not only not owning a car, but not using one either.  Car-share only fixes one of those standards- car ownership, but you're still basically relying on a car to get you around.  Truly car-free is using public transit (buses, trains, bikes, walking), and in that measure, Columbus is going to rank way lower unfortunately.  None of them have great public transit, but Cleveland does have the most, so they should realistically be ranked higher if we're talking about being able to truly be car-free. In Columbus, you could around the High Street corridor and Downtown, but not many other places. 

 

To be fair, this wasn't a ranking of cities that are easiest to live car-free in.  It's a ranking of cities with the most types of "innovative transportation" options.

 

I agree with you to a certain degree though.  My best friend and I both live car-free in Cincinnati.  He rents Zipcars a few times per week and takes Uber almost daily.  That's just crazy to me and I harass him for it all the time.  I probably rent a Zipcar once every month or so and take Uber maybe once every other week.  To me though, being "car-free" is about having the freedom to choose what mode I want to take and when.  My friend chooses to use those options WAY more than I ever will, but I still classify him as car-free.  He's not being forced to use a car all the time by owning one.

Heard a great statistic the other day....

 

If you don't earn $15 per hour or more, you probably can't afford to own a car. Consider that car ownership is 25-30% of a typical household transportation costs. AAA says it costs $9,000 to own/operate a car each year.

 

Also, interest.com reported last year that residents in only USA city (Washington DC) had a high enough average income to afford owning a car along with their other costs of living.

I call BS on this study for a couple of reasons.  For me, "Car Free" means not only not owning a car, but not using one either.  Car-share only fixes one of those standards- car ownership, but you're still basically relying on a car to get you around.  Truly car-free is using public transit (buses, trains, bikes, walking), and in that measure, Columbus is going to rank way lower unfortunately.  None of them have great public transit, but Cleveland does have the most, so they should realistically be ranked higher if we're talking about being able to truly be car-free. In Columbus, you could around the High Street corridor and Downtown, but not many other places.

 

I see your point but disagree with you. I think it's unrealistic to say being 'car free' means never using a car. I don't own a car, but have used Zipcar quite a few times for things like grocery shopping or for purchasing furniture items at Target or Walmart. The thought of lugging a bookshelf or television on the 81 bus back can't possibly be appealing to anyone. Even when I lived in DC (a very care free friendly city) I would still use Zipcar or Car2go for things like that. Or even if I needed to get somewhere really quickly and didn't have time to wait for the bus or Metro. Cars themselves are not the problem, but the way in which we build our cities around the use of them.

Cars are not the problem, but the way that we build cities around them..."

 

Architect Christopher Alexander says it like this: Cars are about 100 times bigger than humans. You can't design a place that is scaled for both cars and humans.

I don't like being 150 square feet and 4000 pounds everywhere I go. Sometimes it's nice to be 2 square feet and 200 pounds again.

Not sure where the best place to put this was, but figured this would be a good thread. From the Washingtonian:

 

 

Amazon Prime and Uber Are Changing the Map of Your City

 

Apps don’t just affect how we transport things and people. They shape where we choose to live, work, and play.

 

http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/transportation/amazon-prime-and-uber-are-changing-the-map-of-your-city.php

How many people on here have Metro monthly passes? If you do, the streetcar will be "free" for you.  Essentially, you will already be paying for it in your annual metro monthly pass. Very convenient for any car free downtowners with Metro passes. 

 

 

Car-free in Cleveland: Letting go of the wheel of the personal vehicle

 

By Ginger Christ, The Plain Dealer

Email the author | Follow on Twitter

on November 27, 2016 at 5:30 AM, updated November 27, 2016 at 5:33 AM

 

CLEVELAND, Ohio – From the Shoreway on the West Side to the Inner Belt Bridge, Cleveland, to many, is a city of highways.

 

Criss-crossing freeways bring suburbanites downtown and city dwellers to the burbs. Tree-lined boulevards lead families to the park and friends to the beach.

 

Day in and day out, steel boxes fill the roads and bridges of Cuyahoga County, taking their occupants to work, to school, to the store.

 

But that's not the reality for all Clevelanders.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/11/car-free_in_cleveland_letting.html

The comment section is a disaster as I assumed it would be.

"If your goal is to be carless, you're much better off being in Cleveland than in any other city in the state," Calabrese said.  "

 

 

You've gotta be kidding me. What a bold statement. Public transit in Cleveland is absolutely horrible compared to that of Columbus and Cincinnati. I've lived in all three of the largest cities in Ohio and have used public transit to get everywhere within them. Moving here from Columbus, I was just completely shocked by how infrequent the buses run and how they don't go anywhere near major employment centers in the suburbs or exurbs. Public transit in Cleveland is only good if you happen to only need the rapid lines to get to your destination, which for someone completely without a car, is not practical at all. Since transfers are non-existent, it's also very often extremely over-priced to go one way, in one direction and when you connect from a train to a bus, you're usually waiting a minimum of 40 minutes to transfer so you're wasting a lot of your day to pay to pay over-priced fares to get somewhere. People in Cleveland should be up in arms about this and protesting but I guess if you haven't lived in other cities with better service, you just don't know any better and assume it's normal.

 

For most bus routes in Cleveland, you could literally walk up to five miles to your destination, quicker than waiting around for a bus to show up and take you to your destination. You'll also save $2.50 and get some cardio in. It's absolutely tragic how poor public transportation is, overall in Cleveland.

 

 

Hmm, Seattle is a different ballgame than most cities, but I found this article interesting and perhaps applicable. I don't think downtown residential towers should have those ugly f'ing garages (don't live downtown if you want a car for goodness sake), but perhaps the developers/city requirements have a point.

 

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/a-tower-of-luxury-condos-with-almost-no-parking-this-experiment-seems-to-be-failing/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

A tower of luxury condos with almost no parking? This experiment seems to be failing

2 hours ago, TBideon said:

Hmm, Seattle is a different ballgame than most cities, but I found this article interesting and perhaps applicable. I don't think downtown residential towers should have those ugly f'ing garages (don't live downtown if you want a car for goodness sake), but perhaps the developers/city requirements have a point.

 

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/a-tower-of-luxury-condos-with-almost-no-parking-this-experiment-seems-to-be-failing/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

A tower of luxury condos with almost no parking? This experiment seems to be failing

 

A lot of wealthy Manhattanites own cars, even if the car is permanently parked many blocks from their residence. 

Sounds like the market will sort it out. 
 

Looks like the comment section out there in liberal Seattle is just as bad as anything the old Cincinnati Enquirer comment section ever produced.

The Seattle Times is just as conservative and anti-transit at the Cincinnati Enquirer. Of course they are going to do a feature on the one luxury condo tower that's struggling to sell units due to lack of parking, and downplay that fact that many new apartment and condo buildings are built in the city with very little or no parking, and do just fine. It's red meat for their readers in Issaquah.

 

I think it has everything to do with the fact that this is an expensive luxury building. Middle class people in Seattle are happy to leave their car behind and commute via Link, Sounder, or the bus. It's one of the few places in America where the share of people driving alone to work has been dropping, even as the number of total jobs in the core has been exploding. However, the rich executives who want to live downtown aren't going to give up their parking space.

Also, in general, condo owners seem less willing to give up their parking spaces than renters in cities across America. Part of the reason that the condo proposal for Eighth & Main in Cincinnati fell through is that the developers could not fit much parking into the site's geometry. They did not think that they could make a condo building with no parking work, but do think that an apartment building will do fine, so they just changed it to apartments. On average, renters are probably more willing to "deal with" the hassle of renting a space in a garage a block away, while buyers paying $500,000+ for a downtown condo probably aren't, except for the handful of places in America where even rich people are willing to go car-free.

The thread is about people going car-free. How about communities going car-free?

 

 

On 10/30/2021 at 6:00 PM, KJP said:

The thread is about people going car-free. How about communities going car-free?

 

 

There are several communities within the borders of CLE that could do this.  I would love to see Buckeye|S. Woodland go car free from E. 116 to Van Aken.  and Shaker/Larchmere go car free from 116 Street, Eat to N. Moreland. 

 

Seeing all these Twitter posts about Downtown Parking garages and lots costing $100 and people calling it "criminal" just continues to amaze me how attached people are to their precious cars, living miles and miles away in subdivions and have an expectation of free parking wherever they go. We literally have Park and Ride at bus and rapid stops that will literally drop you off 2 blocks from the stadium. You can literally park in Ohio City/West Side Market for probably 5 dollars total and hop on the train/walk/take a scooter/bike/trolley. Yet whenever these options are brought up, someone has to come up with an excuse of how these options don't apply to them, and thus don't apply to anyone. It's honestly incredible how pathetic cars and parking run our lives. I love how people opposed to alternative transit options always bring up the freedom cars bring, yet those same people will leave at the 7th inning because they "need to beat the traffic" - some freedom that is. 

 

It's pretty amusing to see people getting worked up about garage prices when they are literally choosing to pay for them. 

Imagining a post-car future

 

https://www.salon.com/2023/04/09/is-a-post-car-future-actually-possible-experts-say-yes-heres-how-we-could-get-there/

Study uses biometrics to show that people are happier living in car-free places.  (Duh.  But empirical evidence rather than "gut feeling.")

Quote

Car-Free Cities Are the Future, Biometrics Reveal

Quote

While the range of factors governing our reaction to space is as vast as the range of human emotion itself, our most recent project uncovered a statistically significant increase in positive emotions when people viewed urban streets without cars versus ones with cars on them: people appear to be happier when cars aren’t in the picture—literally. This research helps us to quantify the benefits of car-free spaces when urban planners are considering how to make their cities more welcoming and pedestrian-friendly.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/car-free-cities-are-the-future-biometrics-reveal/

We went car free this weekend. We live downtown. We rode bikes to a movie at the capital theatre Friday night. We rode bikes down to Voinivich Park then grilled out on Saturday. Today, we walked down to Cock’y’ Bagels for brunch and grabbed some groceries at Constantinos on our way home. Tonight, we’re walking to Pickwick and Frolick for dinner and then walking over to Rocket Mortgage to see Paramour. If I didn’t have a 13 year old, I’m pretty sure we could get away with only having one car or be car free.

I spend 10+ months of the year in Europe.

 

I spend 1-2 months a year in Ohio.

 

I don't own a car in Europe.

 

I have to keep and maintain a car in Ohio for the time I spend there. 

It's now been a year since I've been car-free in Cincinnati, so I figured I would provide some observations on doing this in Ohio.

 

In August 2022 my car (a Kia Rio) was stolen from in front of my house.

Some basic background: I work remote from home, and live within walking distance of Over-the-Rhine and Downtown Cincinnati. I'm mid-30's, male, and live alone. Obviously this is a near-ideal demographic to live car-free in Ohio.

 

I live a short walk to several bus stops ($2/ride or $4/day) that will take me to the other neighborhoods that I spend most of my time in when I'm not within walking distance. The 24 hour service on several lines is a huge relief so I don't have to plan out my night and have a hard cutoff for when I need to head home. The streetcar (free) is a 5 minute walk from my house, which can take me to the riverfront, and I have a bike share membership (Cincy Red Bike $100/year), which lets me get across the river to Northern Kentucky fairly easily. 

 

For groceries I subscribe to the Kroger delivery service. It's $60/year. You typically have to request your items about 24+ hours before you want to receive them, and then there's no added charge. There's also no tipping the drivers, so there are no added costs unless you're looking to get something delivered on short notice. You can get pretty much anything you want that they sell such as deli items, fresh produce, toiletries, etc. Occasionally they claim not to have something or try to substitute something you don't want. More often than not when I decline the substitution they recommend they still end up sending me the item, but don't charge me for it. Overall it's pretty good, but if you're super picky about produce, you might want to find an alternative. 

 

Rarely I'll need to Uber/Lyft somewhere. It's a pretty rare circumstance. Even going to the airport is pretty simple if you live close to downtown. It's only $1.50 from downtown, whereas a rideshare will typically run me $30+.

 

Probably the worst aspect of not owning a car for me is that my parents live about a 30 minute drive away in Mason. They usually come pick me up or we meet up in Cincinnati, but there is a bus I can take to Mason that is only about 40 minutes, and a 5 minute drive for them to grab me. I am lucky that the few times I do want to drive out of town for a vacation or something I can borrow one of my parents' cars for a week or so. They have two, and rarely need both of them. That saves me several hundred dollars for the couple of times I want to drive to another city.

 

I understand living car-free is pretty difficult for a lot of people with kids, or if you don't live in the urban core. I just figured I would report my experience. If you don't need your car to get you to work or a regular function far from transit or at odd hours, and you live close to downtown, you can do it. It's not too bad, honestly.

Let's just say you replaced your Kia Rio with a new one. Let's go with a conservative $18k.  Monthly payment somewhere around $250-300 + $75/mo for insurance, + $75/year for fees.    Annual cost: 4,000-5,000.

Let's just say you buy a bus pass, the suburban one so you can visit your parents: $150/mo. $160/yr for RedBike and Grocery delivery.  10 Uber's per year: $300      Annual Cost: 2,260.  So basically half the cost of owning a car. 

 

The question becomes: Would you pay $2,500 a year to save yourself some time visiting parents? Is the 30-60 extra minutes (either red bike or bus) it would take to, say, go to Oakley station to visit friends worth the $2,500 a year?

32 minutes ago, 10albersa said:

Let's just say you replaced your Kia Rio with a new one. Let's go with a conservative $18k.  Monthly payment somewhere around $250-300 + $75/mo for insurance, + $75/year for fees.    Annual cost: 4,000-5,000.

Let's just say you buy a bus pass, the suburban one so you can visit your parents: $150/mo. $160/yr for RedBike and Grocery delivery.  10 Uber's per year: $300      Annual Cost: 2,260.  So basically half the cost of owning a car. 

 

The question becomes: Would you pay $2,500 a year to save yourself some time visiting parents? Is the 30-60 extra minutes (either red bike or bus) it would take to, say, go to Oakley station to visit friends worth the $2,500 a year?

 

I typically add about $20 or so every month to my account for buses. Working from home and having most of my weekly needs in the immediately vicinity of my house means I rarely rely on the bus for transportation. It's usually to go to the Uptown area or Northside on weekends. Like I said, my parents are able to drive down and pick me up, or I spend $4 or so to get up to Mason and $4 to get back. So instead of budgeting $150/month, I would budget $25 or $30 to be conservative. That brings my transportation costs to about $360 for buses, $100 for red bike. The Uber/Lyft rides I currently take might not even change that much. It's usually when I'm out drinking somewhere, and I wouldn't want to drive then anyway. I would probably still keep the Kroger delivery even if I had a vehicle, so I wouldn't add that to the calculation. It's so much easier to browse on your phone and have it delivered than it is to walk around the store and buy it yourself.

 

So I can either spend $500 or so a year on daily transportation, or I can spend $400/month on transportation and have more freedom to go where I want when I want without really thinking about it.

 

I understand people who would choose the latter, and everyone is different. But for me the added cost of a car certainly isn't worth it.

19 hours ago, ryanlammi said:

Overall it's pretty good, but if you're super picky about produce, you might want to find an alternative.

How is the selection at Findlay Market? Is that a reliable alternative or is it fairly pricey by comparison?

10 minutes ago, Dev said:

How is the selection at Findlay Market? Is that a reliable alternative or is it fairly pricey by comparison?

 

Findlay Market is pretty good for produce. You're not going to have quite the quantity available to choose from, but they have most of the staples. Sometimes they bring in from similar sources as Kroger when things aren't in season, but at least you can inspect what you're purchasing. The biggest issue with Findlay Market is the hours. They are closed on Mondays when I'm thinking about my meals for the week, and they close early every day (around 6pm). I can go down during lunch and pick things up, but the hours are fairly limiting. 

People Hate the Idea of Car-Free Cities—Until They Live in One
Removing cars from urban areas means lower carbon emissions, less air pollution, and fewer road traffic accidents. So why are residents so resistant?

https://www.wired.com/story/car-free-cities-opposition/

It’s not surprising that cities like New York, Washington D.C., Boston, and San Francisco have the highest percentage of households without a vehicle. These cities boast some of the most robust public transit systems in the country, offering diverse modes of transportation and accessible networks.

 

But when you compare U.S. household car ownership data with median household income, an interesting contrast emerges. The average household income in NYC, D.C., Boston, and SF is close to or exceeds the national median of $82,000. This suggests that the strength of their transit systems plays a significant role in reducing car ownership—not economic constraints.

 

Meanwhile, cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia tell a different story. With average household incomes 50% below the national median (less than $40,000–$50,000), low car ownership is more likely driven by socio-economic factors. For many residents in these cities, public transit isn’t a choice—it’s a necessity.

 

The harsh reality is that being solely dependent on a public transit system that barely exists is the worst position a commuter can find themselves in.

 

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7286921269214638081/