Do you need a car to live in Minneapolis (Richfield: car rental, apartment complex)

[kings4cup]

Basically I'm graduating college this may and I'm from the LA area.

I am interested a change and in living in a big city where I can get around via public transportation and walking.
I want to live in a downtown apartment where I can walk out of my room and walk to a restaurant or sporting venue or place of interest.

Does Minneapolis have a good mass transit system where I'd be able to make due without my own automobile.
Also, ignorant Californian question, do the winters get too cold where walking wouldn't be the wisest choice and driving would be essential.

Thank you for your help.

[MinnesotaBoy]

You can easily live in Downtown Minneapolis without a car, but the only thing lacking is a good grocery store, although one is on deck sometime in the near future I believe.

Uptown Minneapolis and Richfield (first ring suburb) are also great for walking and using transit if you are looking for cheaper living.

And yes the winters here are very cold (although worse this year compared to the past several) but if you live near a good bus line and/or can walk some places you are in good shape. I would check out Metro Transit for more info. Hope this helps.

[K-Luv]

If you live within Minneapolis itself, then you can survive just fine without a car. However, getting to and from the suburbs via public transportation becomes less and less convenient the further out you go.

As, stated, the main drawback will be groceries. I survived about 8 years in Minneapolis without a car and I did my grocery shopping one back pack at a time.

There will be a few days out of the year when even seasoned Minnesotans will remain indoors, but just invest in solid winter gear and you will be able to walk anywhere throughout most of the winter.

[Simple Living]

I currently live in downtown Minneapolis (Loring Park area) without a car and have done so for seven years. Rarely is it a pain to NOT have a car. By not having a car, you save yourself a LOT of money in car payments, insurance, upkeep, gas, and parking (both at your apartment complex and at work).

There are grocery stores in the works for downtown, but they've been slow to come. There ARE grocery stores you can still easily get to by a 5 or 10 minute bus ride straight down the road. There's The Wedge (co-op), Target (downtown) with a small, but good, grocery section, Walgreens (downtown) has a few things, CVS (downtown) is about to open, A Lunds is being built downtown, a Whole Foods is planned to be built downtown, Kowalskis is an upscale grocery store that's a 5-10 minute bus ride straight down the road and another five minutes down the road by bus is Rainbow and Lunds. Oh yes, there's another Lunds (upscale grocery) downtown just across the Hennepin Avenue Bridge.

Being near a grocrey store is important to me. I wouldn't have lived downtown if it wasn't completely doable. For big grocery shopping trips, just throw a friend a few bucks for gas and they'll take you gladly. There are also several car rental places available if you want to rent a car for a weekend to get a lot of errands done. Enterprise will pick you up at home and drop you off again. "Hour Car" is a hybrid vehicle renting organization that you rent by the hour.

If you want to live in downtown, the Loring Park area is the most affordable area of it.
Best Wishes.

[kings4cup]

Thanks a lot everybody for all of your help

[kuan]

You can carshare when you really need a car. Zipcar is one such outfit.

Singlespeed is of course the cool way to get around the cities. Busses and trains have bike racks. To get around in the winter there are a few things you need to invest in, and of course, riding in the winter will be slow.

Long underwear, especially windfront long underwear. Craft is one such brand.
A drying rack which you put in front of your vent to dry your clothes.
Pac boots. Ones with a removeable liner. Once again, wool.
Lots of reflective tape.

The rest of the stuff is kinda personal preference. Stuff like balaclava, helmet, pants, etc.

[Astron1000]

Another option is to score a place on or near the LRT line that connects Downtown Minneapolis to the Airport and Mall of America. Another LRT line is planned to connect the two downtowns as well.

Remember too that nearly the entire downtowns of both cities are completely climate-controlled via the 2nd-level pedestrian skyway system. It is, however, expensive to live in a building directly connected to the systems. You can download a pdf map of downtown here:

http://www.downtownmpls.com/images/directions/DowntownMpls-map.pdf (broken link)

[nick is rulz]

There is supposedly a Lunds in the works off Hennepin but that building has had a "coming soon" sign on it for the past 3 years. Its easy enough to bus from downtown to uptown and shop at the Rainbow though.