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SD would probably win at parity in terms of local mass transit as it arguable has the best Light Rail system and for sure the most utilized one. In that same token, it's hard to compare Baltimore or Denver's bus system to Houston at parity when Houston is 5-7x their geographic size with 4x their population.
Downtown Baltimore is the primary economic engine of the city, but it's not the cultural, attraction or transit hub. The cities downtown has been in a rough patch since the late 70's-80's when Federal Hill & Fells Point started gentrifying into what we see today and the nail in coffin was driven when Harbor East/Point started developing and vacuuming office tenants with modern Class-A office buildings.
Downtown Baltimore (functionally) is more akin to downtown DC than it is to Center City, Philly.
I'm in Uptown Dallas as I type this visting family. It's impressive for sure from a scale/scope perspective but I wouldn't call it a walkers paradise in terms of ergonomics.
I understand what you were getting at, so thank you for clarifying.
Baltimore is going to be geographically smaller because it's a rowhouse city with corner stores, tiny street grids interlaced with infill multistory apartments. Comparing it to cities like cities like Dallas, Portland, Denver etc.. which are SFH dominated cities with relatively walkable multi-family/retail arterial roads is never going to pencil out perfectly.
Shape files probably aren't the best to use in comparison. Population inside walkscore neighborhoods is a better metric of how people probably live in "x" cities neighborhood.
From a transit standpoint? Mt. Vernon takes the cakes.
From an amenities standpoint? Harbor East/Point or Fells Point.
Downtown has the highest "ceiling" in terms of potential, but every downtown right now is going through hard times so I don't expect and overnight transformation but a gradual shift as more "pieces of the pie" come to fruition.
SD is definitely high up in this tier for transit and the light rail system is its backbone. I think transit-wise in this tier, Atlanta is also high up there with its metro system as its backbone. I believe Baltimore pre-pandemic across all modes was also quite high, but has not had expansions and has had a rough recovery.
Downtown Baltimore is where the light rail and subway get close to each other and run through and where bus route density is highest. The buses do carry a lot of Baltimore's ridership, so in a sense Downtown is a transit hub though not concentrated into a specific single hub which is a little weird. I wonder if that has anything to do with its sort of odd status within the metropolitan area. There is still quite a bit of downtown venues and functions that are or should probably make it a pretty large focal point for the city, but it does seem like things are a bit diffused. I think it's something where a lot of the cities in this tier for a pretty solid downtown area and neighborhoods and most transit systems are geared towards getting to and from downtown, so the candidates for premier neighborhoods for living without a car will factor in ease of getting to downtown and the kind of attractions downtown has. That's why I mention downtown and not so much that it's necessarily going to be the best neighborhoods to live in without a car.
I'm trying to structure the comparison in a way that makes it less odd by not having it be about overall density, citywide average, or most common built form because the cities that boomed in the post-war years are going are starting to heavily infill in a few places overall. I'm ignoring for the most part the large expanses where it is very much strictly detached SFH and where it is near impossible to live without a car--essentially, in this comparison, a lot of those boom town usually sun belt cities are in effect similar size or "smaller" than the older cities that were heavily built pre-war. Even on the smaller neighborhood level, there might be interspersed patches of detached SFH lots, but those are usually offset by having some very high density developments in very close proximity and so in effect that still makes for a similarly walkable area on a human scale.
Mt. Vernon, Harbor East and Fells Point sound about right for top neighborhoods in Baltimore to me. Do you feel like Federal Hill also hangs in about that level as well? I think these are all pretty close to downtown, but are on different sides of it, and it to me feel like a much cleaned up and bustling downtown would really help things along.
Among these, if you were to live without a car which ones would you prefer to live in?
SD is definitely high up in this tier for transit and the light rail system is its backbone. I think transit-wise in this tier, Atlanta is also high up there with its metro system as its backbone. I believe Baltimore pre-pandemic across all modes was also quite high, but has not had expansions and has had a rough recovery.
Yes, Atlanta & SD transit is used more than Baltimore even pre-pandemic so it kinda of is what it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
Downtown Baltimore is where the light rail and subway get close to each other and run through and where bus route density is highest. The buses do carry a lot of Baltimore's ridership, so in a sense Downtown is a transit hub though not concentrated into a specific single hub which is a little weird. I wonder if that has anything to do with its sort of odd status within the metropolitan area. There is still quite a bit of downtown venues and functions that are or should probably make it a pretty large focal point for the city, but it does seem like things are a bit diffused. I think it's something where a lot of the cities in this tier for a pretty solid downtown area and neighborhoods and most transit systems are geared towards getting to and from downtown, so the candidates for premier neighborhoods for living without a car will factor in ease of getting to downtown and the kind of attractions downtown has. That's why I mention downtown and not so much that it's necessarily going to be the best neighborhoods to live in without a car.
The Light-Rail, Subway, Amtrak/Penn Line & MTA Bus routes converge at Penn Station in Midtown because Penn Station is the actual geographic center of the city, not downtown.
If/when the E/W Red Line is constructed transit will shift to downtown as that line will not run through Penn, but Charles station in DT. The proposed N/S Yellow Line will run through Penn Station as well.
The biggest focal points in/near downtown are the Camden Yards, Convention Center and CFG Bank Arena. If you want to loop the Inner Harbor/Aquarium into that so be it. Outside of those things it provides nothing you can't find in Harbor East/Point and soon Port Covington. Baltimore is become a more and more diffused city, not hyper centralized around one relatively small geographic area.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
Mt. Vernon, Harbor East and Fells Point sound about right for top neighborhoods in Baltimore to me. Do you feel like Federal Hill also hangs in about that level as well? I think these are all pretty close to downtown, but are on different sides of it, and it to me feel like a much cleaned up and bustling downtown would really help things along.
Among these, if you were to live without a car which ones would you prefer to live in?
People get by in Federal Hill without a car all the time, it's not serviced by the Light Rail and MTA buses are infrequent in that section of town due to the gentrification/college vibe. You can very much do it, I just personally wouldn't. Without a car, I'd live in Mt. Vernon or Station North.
Downtown has major plans, so it's not stagnant.. but financing $1 billion dollar projects is kind of hard in this economic environment
Yes, Atlanta & SD transit is used more than Baltimore even pre-pandemic so it kinda of is what it is.
The Light-Rail, Subway, Amtrak/Penn Line & MTA Bus routes converge at Penn Station in Midtown because Penn Station is the actual geographic center of the city, not downtown.
If/when the E/W Red Line is constructed transit will shift to downtown as that line will not run through Penn, but Charles station in DT. The proposed N/S Yellow Line will run through Penn Station as well.
The biggest focal points in/near downtown are the Camden Yards, Convention Center and CFG Bank Arena. If you want to loop the Inner Harbor/Aquarium into that so be it. Outside of those things it provides nothing you can't find in Harbor East/Point and soon Port Covington. Baltimore is become a more and more diffused city, not hyper centralized around one relatively small geographic area.
People get by in Federal Hill without a car all the time, it's not serviced by the Light Rail and MTA buses are infrequent in that section of town due to the gentrification/college vibe. You can very much do it, I just personally wouldn't. Without a car, I'd live in Mt. Vernon or Station North.
Downtown has major plans, so it's not stagnant.. but financing $1 billion dollar projects is kind of hard in this economic environment
Several years ago, I lived in Charles Village, a block from Johns Hopkins' Homewood (undergrad) campus without a car for a while. Even though this lively area unfortunately has no rail service at all, the No. 61 express bus downtown (to my job), plus other buses through the area, were fast and frequent. Baltimore's kinda weird in that the most interesting, historic and walkable neighborhoods (Mt. Vernon, Federal Hill, Fells Point, Canton, Charles Village) have no rail at all, while the City, given the Metro, LRT and MARC commuter rail, has a very robust rail transit network for its size.
Several years ago, I lived in Charles Village, a block from Johns Hopkins' Homewood (undergrad) campus without a car for a while. Even though this lively area unfortunately has no rail service at all, the No. 61 express bus downtown (to my job), plus other buses through the area, were fast and frequent. Baltimore's kinda weird in that the most interesting, historic and walkable neighborhoods (Mt. Vernon, Federal Hill, Fells Point, Canton, Charles Village) have no rail at all, while the City, given the Metro, LRT and MARC commuter rail, has a very robust rail transit network for its size.
Baltimore had the opportunity to build rail like DC when the federal gov was throwing away money but the city has never had control of its own mass transit authority, the state does. Gov. Hogan also killed Red-Line to allow Montgomery Co. Purple-Line to be built after the former had guaranteed federal funding so theres been a lot external factors that have hampered the city in getting comprehensive transit system.
Yes, Atlanta & SD transit is used more than Baltimore even pre-pandemic so it kinda of is what it is.
The Light-Rail, Subway, Amtrak/Penn Line & MTA Bus routes converge at Penn Station in Midtown because Penn Station is the actual geographic center of the city, not downtown.
If/when the E/W Red Line is constructed transit will shift to downtown as that line will not run through Penn, but Charles station in DT. The proposed N/S Yellow Line will run through Penn Station as well.
The biggest focal points in/near downtown are the Camden Yards, Convention Center and CFG Bank Arena. If you want to loop the Inner Harbor/Aquarium into that so be it. Outside of those things it provides nothing you can't find in Harbor East/Point and soon Port Covington. Baltimore is become a more and more diffused city, not hyper centralized around one relatively small geographic area.
People get by in Federal Hill without a car all the time, it's not serviced by the Light Rail and MTA buses are infrequent in that section of town due to the gentrification/college vibe. You can very much do it, I just personally wouldn't. Without a car, I'd live in Mt. Vernon or Station North.
Downtown has major plans, so it's not stagnant.. but financing $1 billion dollar projects is kind of hard in this economic environment
I think part of why I think downtown is still a bit of transit hub is because so many of the buses converge downtown and Baltimore doesn't seem to rely on the light rail and subway system as the backbone of the system all that much. I felt like Federal Hill has pretty good bus service, but I'm specifically thinking of the CityLink Silver line and the Purple Charm City Circulator. Those seem pretty oriented towards downtown.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheProf
Several years ago, I lived in Charles Village, a block from Johns Hopkins' Homewood (undergrad) campus without a car for a while. Even though this lively area unfortunately has no rail service at all, the No. 61 express bus downtown (to my job), plus other buses through the area, were fast and frequent. Baltimore's kinda weird in that the most interesting, historic and walkable neighborhoods (Mt. Vernon, Federal Hill, Fells Point, Canton, Charles Village) have no rail at all, while the City, given the Metro, LRT and MARC commuter rail, has a very robust rail transit network for its size.
Yea, the buses seem very much to be the workhorses of the city.
This whole thing is a bit hard to make sense of. Take Phoenix for example, the entire city is 517 sq miles. Enormous. If you are downtown, sure you can live without a car. If you are in North Phoenix, good luck.
This whole thing is a bit hard to make sense of. Take Phoenix for example, the entire city is 517 sq miles. Enormous. If you are downtown, sure you can live without a car. If you are in North Phoenix, good luck.
That's a very good point, so that's why I'm specifically talking about the best neighborhoods of each within the urban area rather than looking at an overall score over the vastly differing municipal land area of different cities.
Is it actually easy to live in downtown Phoenix without a car? Are there people you know doing so? What do you think are the top neighborhoods / areas of the Phoenix metropolitan area for doing so and is that area actually at a point where living without a car isn't a massive drop in quality of life?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays25
The OP said urban areas. Municipal boundaries aren't relevant.
This discussion on Houston, and to a lesser extent, Dallas, is interesting! I want to note that I'm going towards a more specific sort of question that which one on a city wide level is more walkable overall. I don't think the city-wide level is that helpful because of how large the physical area is compared to what one would conceivably be walking to and from every day or covering by transit. This even applies for some of the neighborhood definitions as I was mentioning with some of the shape files used for places like Walk Score which at times can encompass some pretty large, for walking scale, physical areas.
I'm looking more along the lines of "peak urbanism" and whether you would personally qualify them as pretty easy and even *favorable* to live in without a car. I think in that sense, transit is pretty important to get people out to other places that'd be interesting and that is a major factor while the experience of walking around is also important. I do think Uptown is solid and it's okay if a lot of the retail is on McKinney as Uptown by most definitions isn't all that large and McKinney runs through the center of Uptown and so is accessible from many parts of the neighborhood and meanwhile there are quite a few other commercial corners and side streets (I do think they should cap I-75 though). There are people living in Uptown without a car or at least almost never using it on purpose, and it does seem like the neighborhood is built that way. I don't think other parts of Dallas really come close.
From the way Google Maps and other places outline Montrose, it seems to be quite large, so I'm wondering if there's a sort of heart of walkable Montrose that highlights its "peak" more and where it currently seems like a significant number of people without a car. I feel like one of the things that's a bit odd with what I'm seeing of Montrose is how often there are surface parking lots around the stores which makes the walking distance among things kind of long (and hopefully without parking minimums goes away quite rapidly). I feel like this seems particularly wild in Midtown where it has light rail stations next to some really large surface lots.
Currently, though not well-informed, I think Dallas in the form of Uptown is a higher peak than Montrose (though Montrose seems large on Google Maps so I might be looking at the wrong parts or missing something entirely). Though I myself would not put Uptown at the top of neighborhoods for cities in this tier, it does seem very solid and a place I think living without a car can be very comfortable.
What do you think about Bishop Arts District and Jefferson Blvd in Oak Cliff? I feel like it's in the early stages of being an Uptown-type of neighborhood. The city has been trying to connect these two areas together through complete streets redos (also two way conversions and ripping out streets) and rezoning. The city has invested a significant amount of money in this area for infrastructure improvements in recent years. It has a streetcar line there at Bishop Arts connecting it to downtown. The area is really hot right now. They banned auto related business from opening on the major thoroughfares here when they rezoned the area. The remaining are grandfathered in. Just a fun fact: Jefferson Blvd is the old downtown for Oak Cliff. It was Texas' first "city within a city" (during the early 1910s/20s) but fell off after white flight in the late 60s/70s. Bishop Arts was the busiest streetcar stop in Dallas. I'd say in another 10 years or so, Jefferson Blvd will start to look very similar to Lower Greenville, just on a larger scale. This is the Dallas Streetcar in Oak Cliff, starting at Bishop Arts. This has been where the core of the new development has been taking place - Zang Blvd and Davis St. There's already 2 grocery stores on Jefferson, but a site for a new grocery store was purchase some years ago right on Davis, a block away from Zang.
Jefferson Blvd starting at 3:00 to 6:00 - Davis St at 8:30 to Bishop Arts at 12:00. Jefferson Blvd and Bishop Ave at 14:10 has a walkscore of 94. That's the corridor that the city is trying to connect with Bishop Arts (4 or 5 blocks away) to become seamless. It's almost there with planned projects on the vacant lots.
There's a plan to connect the Dallas Streetcar in Oak Cliff to the McKinney Ave Trolley in Uptown, through Downtown. Yes, I agree about about a deck park or something over Central Expressway. Especially, with that new huge development going up next to Cityplace Tower.
Uptown should get even better with the street improvements planned or already fully funded. At 22:00 he talks about the McKinney-Cole Aves two way project with pocket parks (will start in 2025). It'll run all the way to Knox-Henderson, another urban neighborhood rapidly transforming. There's a plan to extend the McKinney Ave Trolley to Knox-Henderson. At 24:11 they're planning the redo of McKinnon St and Harry Hines Blvd near Victory Park/Harwood District. Both are incredibly wide 6 lane one way streets leading on/off the Dallas North Tollway.
I've heard people say they do everyday things without a car in Lower Greenville. There's a Trader Joe's in the video at 0:20 you can see a woman walking on the sidewalk, carrying grocery bags out of the store. Also, starting at 1:40, it looks like a few other people are carrying bags from Trader Joe's. There's a proposal to link this area with a streetcar on Ross Ave to Downtown. It is only in the talking stages at this point. There's still a bus route though that connects the two areas.
I'm pretty familiar with the Montrose area back when it was more affordable and I'll say that while the place might seem to have a lot of fancy groceries now it wasn't that way ten years ago. Even now you don't really see that many people on the sidewalks even on the weekends. Whether Montrose is more walkable than Dallas or ATL I'll let people who's actually been to all 3 to comment, but despite its walkscore I would not consider the area to be all that walkable. If it is walkable because there are many corner groceries then most of the barrios are also walkable. Even Long Point in Spring Branch is packed with grocery and restaurants.
I know exactly 0 Houstonian who live without a car in the 20 year I lived there. I know there are people who do but all you need is to take a ride on the bus to see that public transportation is almost exclusively used by people too young or too poor to own cars. The only exception are commuter park and rides but then those people still drive. Anyone who can afford to live in a trendy area can afford a car.
And it's not that way NOW. Yes Montrose has a lot amenities like grocery stores, restaurants. Yes I suppose people could walk to these places in Montrose if they so chose to but majority of residents in Montrose use a car to get around even in Montrose due to the infrastructure not being pedestrian friendly.
This stretch of Westheimer in Montrose is probably the most "walkable" section of the neighborhood which is not really what I would consider a walking paradise.
This discussion on Houston, and to a lesser extent, Dallas, is interesting! I want to note that I'm going towards a more specific sort of question that which one on a city wide level is more walkable overall. I don't think the city-wide level is that helpful because of how large the physical area is compared to what one would conceivably be walking to and from every day or covering by transit. This even applies for some of the neighborhood definitions as I was mentioning with some of the shape files used for places like Walk Score which at times can encompass some pretty large, for walking scale, physical areas.
I'm looking more along the lines of "peak urbanism" and whether you would personally qualify them as pretty easy and even *favorable* to live in without a car. I think in that sense, transit is pretty important to get people out to other places that'd be interesting and that is a major factor while the experience of walking around is also important. I do think Uptown is solid and it's okay if a lot of the retail is on McKinney as Uptown by most definitions isn't all that large and McKinney runs through the center of Uptown and so is accessible from many parts of the neighborhood and meanwhile there are quite a few other commercial corners and side streets (I do think they should cap I-75 though). There are people living in Uptown without a car or at least almost never using it on purpose, and it does seem like the neighborhood is built that way. I don't think other parts of Dallas really come close.
From the way Google Maps and other places outline Montrose, it seems to be quite large, so I'm wondering if there's a sort of heart of walkable Montrose that highlights its "peak" more and where it currently seems like a significant number of people without a car. I feel like one of the things that's a bit odd with what I'm seeing of Montrose is how often there are surface parking lots around the stores which makes the walking distance among things kind of long (and hopefully without parking minimums goes away quite rapidly). I feel like this seems particularly wild in Midtown where it has light rail stations next to some really large surface lots.
Currently, though not well-informed, I think Dallas in the form of Uptown is a higher peak than Montrose (though Montrose seems large on Google Maps so I might be looking at the wrong parts or missing something entirely). Though I myself would not put Uptown at the top of neighborhoods for cities in this tier, it does seem very solid and a place I think living without a car can be very comfortable.
You pretty much hit it on the nail with Montrose. The heart of Montrose is Westheimer and even that's still filled with parking lots in front of businesses. It's too many lots to constitute the place as being somewhere to live without a car. Is it possible to live in Houston without a car? Sure but if you can afford a car in Houston you're going to buy it cause you need it.
The same thing applies to Dallas. Dallas just has very very VERY few neighborhoods where one can live without a car.
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