Driving in and around Boston is no picnic. Though some neighborhoods fare better than others in this regard, Boston’s old, narrow, crooked streets make for driving and parking can be a frustrating chore. Sure, some apps like SPOT aim to alleviate some of the congestion, but other times the best remedy is to rid yourself of your four-wheel vehicle and opt for a two.
City Clock magazine, an online publication devoted to city life, compiled a list of neighborhoods outside of New York City but still within urban areas that are the least dependent on cars. It should come as no surprise to most that Boston, a city with plenty of unnavigable roadways and dense communities throughout, made the list multiple times.
I know what you might be thinking: More than half of the car accidents on Commonwealth Avenue alone involved a bicyclist being struck or hitting a car between 2009 and 2012. So yeah, it might not be the safest idea to abandon a car just yet.
But keep in mind a number of innovations are currently in the works for Boston to make it less reliant on cars and more accepting of alternative modes of transportation.
There’s the aforementioned SPOT parking app which allows people to rent and rent out privately owned parking spaces; there’s Bridj, a pop-up bus service that takes more direct routes than those of the MBTA; there are the truck side guards currently being perfected by the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics aimed at securing bikers and pedestrians from being pulled beneath them; and a plethora of rideshare services like Hubway, Uber, Lyft and Hailo, just to name a few.
Boston is currently evolving into a municipality that embraces the independent car life, and hopefully soon more neighborhoods will adorn this list.
City Clock complied their list of 10 neighborhoods free from cars two categories: Non-university neighborhoods outside of New York City and university neighborhoods. The Big Apple was excluded because if it were not, it’s boroughs would dominate the entire list.
The list was dominated by Greater Boston, Greater Chicago and Greater San Francisco, with one Philadelphia neighborhood included for good measure.
The North End and Beacon Hill registered as number two and number four, respectively, on the non-university list while, Fenway/Kenmore and MIT/Harvard clocked in at number three and number six on the university list for obvious reasons – MIT, Harvard, Boston University, Simmons College, Emmanuel College, Wentworth Institute of Technology and plenty more.
Think there are more car independent neighborhoods in Greater Boston than these? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
