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Premise of the question is weird to me. Who is relocating to Cleveland for a job which doesn't even pay enough to afford a car? There are only a handful of US cities I'd consider going completely car-free in and none of these are in that group.
Premise of the question is weird to me. Who is relocating to Cleveland for a job which doesn't even pay enough to afford a car? There are only a handful of US cities I'd consider going completely car-free in and none of these are in that group.
This is a fictional scenario. What's weird about it? Have you seen the prices of cars, insurance and gas lately? You can make it without a car in mentioned cities but it wouldn't be ideal or like Chicago or NYC.
Premise of the question is weird to me. Who is relocating to Cleveland for a job which doesn't even pay enough to afford a car? There are only a handful of US cities I'd consider going completely car-free in and none of these are in that group.
I thought I explained this pretty well-
Everything is getting more expensive, it's seems plausible that there are people looking into doing something like this.
2.1 miilion metro population, light and heavy rail with one of the few airport terminal connections in the nation.
Pittsburgh:
2.4 million metro, light rail that goes underground downtown, arguably the nation's premiere BRT system. Also things like incline trams and water taxis.
St. Louis:
2.8 million metro, the largest (46 miles) interurban rail system of any of these three (second in midwest ridership behind Minneapolis)
Just to note, St. Louis's larger mentioned system also does these two things.
Just like travel to cities like Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Denver is easier from St. Louis.
Also, staying on topic of car-free living, St. Louis has six daily Amtrak departures for Chicago, compared to one or two Pittsburgh-NYC trip per day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Losfrisco
I'm not moving its a completely fictional scenario.
Though I voted for Pittsburgh also, I find it strange that Pittsburgh gets credit for being "close to northeast cities", but St.Louis doesn't get credit for being closer to Chicago, etc.
Yeah, it has absolutely nothing to do with your question at all... Certain posters like to come out against St. Louis in every single thread it's brought up in though, usually with weird results like this...
Quote:
Originally Posted by mjtinmemphis
Ok. Since it is a fictional scenario I vote Pittsburgh as well for the downtown and something different.
St. Louis has some Chicago flavor. Especially in the neighborhoods. I hear so many Chicago transplants compare Central West End to Evanston. St. Louis doesn't get credit for a lot of things.
St. Louis is crazy underrated in real life and on here (with some trolls to boot)... Pitt is very underrated in real life as well, but def a bit overrated on here.
I think there are neighborhoods in all of these where living without a car can be done pretty easily and pleasantly, but that's provided that you're either working from home or can live within easy walking, biking, or transit distance/time to your workplace while living in one of the nice walkable neighborhoods. Without considering that, I think maybe it's Pittsburgh, then St. Louis, and then Cleveland but without a massive distance among these.
Pittsburgh has the largest contiguous bloc of fairly walkable areas and with some outside of it and relatively little of very abandoned areas. The bus system is great though it's weird that downtown and the East End don't have more rapid transit among each other. I think there should be a Y of sorts for its rail system that meets in downtown with one going north, one headed east, one headed south and these should be interlined so that there's always two services on each set of tracks. A North-South, a North-East, and a South-East.
St. Louis has multiple somewhat disjoint blocs of nice walkable areas generally just a bit cut-off from each other if walking the distance though its light rail system does a good job of connecting several of these. It would be great if there was a north south line though that went through downtown and
Cleveland has a strong downtown and multiple areas where it's pretty walkable with some of them connected by rapid transit as in actual rapid transit. I think a Detroit Ave-Superior Ave rapid transit subway would be fantastic.
All of these need some highways removed, capped, and/or boulevard-ized though. Also, it's incredibly silly that there isn't frequent, usable rail service between Pittsburgh and Cleveland via Youngstown. Capitol Limited should run twice a day and with the second run set something like eight to twelve hours apart from the current run (maybe keep these as going through Warren). A separate similar twice a day service but terminating in Detroit should also run. The Pennsylvanian should run three times a day and extend to at least Cleveland, maybe terminate in the airport. That's a good solid seven trips each way.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 06-21-2022 at 03:50 PM..
All of these could work just fine, it just depends on where you live in each (and frankly, this is the same in almost all of the major US cities... cities way larger are relatively just as bad/good...)
I do think it's a bit more between St. Louis and Pitt though. I could def see Pitt winning if we talked just about downtown and immediately adjacent areas, but I feel like St. Louis pulls ahead as a region. It's a larger region, so it has more walkable nodes, and it has a larger rail network to connect them. I just feel like St. Louis gives more living options for this question vs Pitt being better if we narrower it down to just a much smaller area. Then as others mentioned, weather and topography come into play as well.
Just to note, St. Louis's larger mentioned system also does these two things.
Indeed it does, with not one but two Terminal stations.
San Diego's light rail is constantly being criticized by locals for not having an airport link or going underground downtown and I'll bet %90 of the nation doesn't know STL has a system that does this.
With all the nonstop fawning over the super-amazing transit of NYC, DC, and Chicago, and how all the other systems in the country are unusable, I've never heard these facts about the MetroLink on this forum.
I think there are neighborhoods in all of these where living without a car can be done pretty easily and pleasantly, but that's provided that you're either working from home or can live within easy walking, biking, or transit distance/time to your workplace while living in one of the nice walkable neighborhoods. Without considering that, I think maybe it's Pittsburgh, then St. Louis, and then Cleveland but without a massive distance among these.
Yes, and I"d say Pitt's buses are giving them more of an advantage then their LRT. I've taken sub- 1 hour bus rides from central PGH to suburbs like Oakmont. Nothing groundbreaking, but good for two bucks in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh and St. Louis has the same level of education attainment. Costs of living to income ratio of the three are about as close as they can get. Walkscore, bikes score and transit score for Cleveland, Pittsburgh and St Louis are about the same. I think OP should narrow down to neighborhoods and get an idea where he or she would be working and shop different areas to live in so when they visit each city there would be a focus.
Agreed, although St. Louis does score highest on two out of the three metrics you mentioned. The one it doesn't (transit), I, weirdly enough, consider least important... Reason being, if you're not living on one of the rail / major transit lines in these cities (or any US city), your situation is probably irrelevant to this question.
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