Can you live in Pittsburgh without a car? (Bridgeville, Bloomfield: car insurance, how much)

[EddieOlSkool]

So Pittsburgh apparently has a distinction of having a very well setup public transportation system. It also is a city that can be horrible to drive in due to the fact that roads seemingly go nowhere and everywhere at the same time (why does every Ohio River City have this problem?) and also due to icing in the winter. Plus Pennsylvania doesn't exactly seem like a great state in terms of how much car insurance costs (I mean I would probably register my car with a fake address in Ohio just to avoid the huge jump lol)

Anyway friends, is it feasible for someone to rely entirely on Port Authority if living in this wonderful river city? Discuss. I think such a person would also get a ton of great exercise from using all those damn stairs.

[guy2073]

Originally Posted by EddieOlSkool

So Pittsburgh apparently has a distinction of having a very well setup public transportation system. It also is a city that can be horrible to drive in due to the fact that roads seemingly go nowhere and everywhere at the same time (why does every Ohio River City have this problem?) and also due to icing in the winter. Plus Pennsylvania doesn't exactly seem like a great state in terms of how much car insurance costs (I mean I would probably register my car with a fake address in Ohio just to avoid the huge jump lol)

Anyway friends, is it feasible for someone to rely entirely on Port Authority if living in this wonderful river city? Discuss. I think such a person would also get a ton of great exercise from using all those damn stairs.

I lived in castle Shannon and bridgeville for years without a car. Bridgeville was walkable and castle Shannon was on the t. I had no problems.

[Moby Hick]

With Uber and Zipcar to fill in the gaps, it wouldn't be any problem at all.

Also, having lived Pittsburgh and Ohio, I didn't find the car insurance rates that different. Philly has high car insurance rates, but they don't see high here.

[EddieOlSkool]

Originally Posted by Moby Hick

With Uber and Zipcar to fill in the gaps, it wouldn't be any problem at all.

Also, having lived Pittsburgh and Ohio, I didn't find the car insurance rates that different. Philly has high car insurance rates, but they don't see high here.

Really? I read somewhere that Ohio was cheapest in car insurance and that Pennsylvania while not the most expensive (like Massachusetts or Michigan) was somewhere in the middle but closer to expensive).

Either way. Northern Kentucky was annoying enough to drive on for me.

[ferraris]

It can definitely be done as long as you choose where to live with car-free in mind. Any idea where you will be working or what your budget is?

Definitely don't register with a fake address; you're throwing money down the drain because they won't cover you if something happens because you used a fraudulent address.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by EddieOlSkool

Anyway friends, is it feasible for someone to rely entirely on Port Authority if living in this wonderful river city? Discuss. I think such a person would also get a ton of great exercise from using all those damn stairs.

It's absolutely 100% feasible as long as you keep three things in mind.

First, because of the hub and spoke style of transport, our system is very efficient at getting people into the main job centers (Downtown and Oakland - the university hub) but not great at neighborhood-to-neighborhood links. Therefore, if you're car free, you want to either work in Downtown/Oakland or be able to walk to work in your own neighborhood.

Second, you need to realistically limit yourself to highly walkable neighborhoods to live in, like Shadyside, Bloomfield, Oakland, Lawrenceville, South Side, etc. I'd put special emphasis on areas which are near a grocery store.

The biggest limitation, due to the bad neighborhood-to-neighborhood service, is going to be "socialization." Let's say, for example, you live in Lawrenceville and need to get to a friend's house in South Side. You'll need to take a bus Downtown and then get a transfer, which will probably take around 50 minutes. There are two possible ways around this. One is to live in a neighborhood, like Bloomfield or Oakland, where you can get direct buses to most anywhere. The other is to live along the East Busway, which will make a very quick ride into town, so even if you need to take a surface route to get to somewhere like South Side or North Side, you will cut down on the total commute time. Another would be just to rely on Uber for those random times you need to get to somewhere without direct bus access.

Use of public stairs, however, is highly situational. There's really not too many highly walkable areas near the public stairs, so unless you happen to be living in a hilltop area you're really not going to need to use them more than a few times per year. They really aren't salted in the winter for the most part, so I'd probably avoid using them in the winter even if I lived in such a neighborhood. Biking is a pain though. I mean, I do it frequently, and most of the destination neighborhoods are pretty flat, but there's a big height difference between Downtown and the East End, making commuting back at the end of the day decidedly not fun at times.

[bluecarebear]

Pittsburgh is a suburb city with limited, if any, transportation to the burbs. They are the hottest places to live so being without a car will exclude you from these areas.

We only have one T line, the rest is serviced by bus.

[speagles84]

Originally Posted by bluecarebear

Pittsburgh is a suburb city with limited, if any, transportation to the burbs. They are the hottest places to live so being without a car will exclude you from these areas.

We only have one T line, the rest is serviced by bus.

Do you know this city at all?

[xdv8]

Pittsburgh is an urban city with little, if any, reason to travel to suburbia.

Look into the East End, my spouse has lived car-free very comfortably in various eastern city neighhoods for 30 years.

[Pitt Chick]

I lived in Pittsburgh for 7 years without a car, before ZipCar and Uber.
It is totally doable!

I know seniors who grew up never having owned a car. They got around perfectly fine.