DC Ranks as 4th Best City to Travel Car-Free

• April 18, 2013
• 4 Comments

by UrbanTurf Staff

Downtown DC by Shay Thomason

DC ranks near the top of a lot of silly lists. In the last two years, our fair city has ranked as one of the best cities for online dating, vegetarians, and romance.

But today, DC made a very cool top 10 list and the methodology behind how the list was created is actually quite sound. Walk Score ranked the nation’s capital as one of the top five places in the U.S. where visitors can get around without a car.

Using Walk Score and Transit Score in addition to the availability of car shares within a 15-minute walk of hotels in a given city, Walk Score ranked DC as the 4th best city for visitors to get around sans car, right behind New York, San Francisco and Boston.

For the full list, click here.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dc_ranks_as_4th_best_city_to_travel_car-free/6950

4 Comments

1. JP said at 9:38 pm on Thursday April 18, 2013:
   San Francisco is a great walking city if you enjoy mountain climbing and don't mind stumbling upon "gritty" neighborhoods like the tenderloin district. Shaw and Petworth are considered to be gritty DC neighborhoods but are relatively posh compared to what you'll see in random places around San Fran. Not sure why I thought otherwise given San Francisco's cultural history, but I was totally unprepared for the amount of poverty, open air drug dealing, and number of homeless young people strung out on heroine lying on the streets. Aside from the challenge of walking up and down hills, and fear of getting mugged by a junkie, all of the major sights are spread out over a large geographic area. The same is true in New York. I would consider DC the best walking city because the majority of sites are around the National Mall or otherwise accessible by metro and are located in "safe" parts of town.

1. Gavin said at 9:50 pm on Thursday April 18, 2013:
   SF is amazing but it is not more walkable than DC or Boston, esp. if walkable is defined by the availabiltiy of taxis and mass transit. Cabs are impossible to hail there. The Muni moves in two directions and BART is really a commuter train. I’ve always felt like one would ultimately succumb to needing a car in SF; thus, collosal parking probs there, too Anyway, it’s a great city with way better weather and streets built for shaping a nice butt.

1. Josh said at 10:12 pm on Thursday April 18, 2013:
   I agree, San Fran is a pain to get around. It's a lot bigger than you'd think, and the muni "subway" runs under one street. one.

1. Alan B. said at 3:51 pm on Friday April 19, 2013:
   You think Shaw and Petworth are considered the gritty hoods in DC? Maybe circa 2005.