Carless in Savannah

Downtown Savannah is so walkable, in deciding to move here, I decided to rid myself of the hassles and expenses of a car. Having lived in NYC and London, and happily done without a car in either place, this was nothing new to me, and I'm loving it as much here as I did there. This has a lot less to do with environmentalism than with simple quality of life for me. The next time you're in a car, just make a mental note every time something aggravates you--the price of gas, dealing with traffic, your service light coming on, parking spot issues, etc. All that stress adds up more than we know, I think, and I'm glad now to be free of it.

I have a great neighborhood Kroger literally around the corner; I've probably carried groceries farther in a Wal Mart parking lot than I do from this place to my own front door.

Absurdly, I used to have to drive to an ugly, boring quarter-mile track if I wanted to jog; now I just jog a few blocks over and I've got the stunningly beautiful Forsyth Park, which is an even mile around on each lap, and, you know, stunningly beautiful. And surrounded by gorgeous historic homes. And always full of people doing fun stuff. And there are friendly doggies getting walked everywhere. I also walk, jog, or bike to the gym, which only makes sense, though I never could have done it previously.

I ride my bike to and from work now, which is an astonishingly soothing way to both begin and end the work day (now that I mention it, there's something just as calming about seeing all these other people on bikes--it's almost like watching fish drift around in an aquarium). Admittedly, I haven't had to deal with a downpour yet, or extremes of heat or cold, but the truth is, I always had to deal with them anyway in walking from whatever parking I could find (one of the hassles/expenses I'm most happy to be done with) to my work, which inevitably was always quite a few blocks' distance.

Amanda Marcotte deals nicely with the ZOMG SWEAT!!1! issue in this reply to objections to her post on cycling: "Even in Texas, most of the year I did not sweat while cycling. The key is a leisurely pace. Do you run everywhere you walk?" On flat terrain, you can do a lot of coasting with little enough effort that you'd probably sweat more if you walked a significantly shorter distance.

It's nice, as well, to have no drinking/driving concerns at all any more. As Atrios points out:

A big reason people drink and drive is we put bars in the middle of giant parking lots far away from any human habitation. I'm not sure what they expect will happen, but I think the consequences are pretty predictable.

Part of what's great about downtown Savannah is how ridiculously many fun, cool drinking establishments are within walking distance for residents. I think I could go on a different pub crawl every night of the year without exhausting the possible combinations, and always stagger home on my own two feet.

The eating is fantastic downtown, too. So many great local places in every price range, and not a Crapplebees in sight.

As for live music, I'm where it's at. Bigger acts like Wilco (whom I saw last year) will go to the downtown Civic Center, and smaller acts will certainly end up somewhere else downtown, most likely on Congress Street. There's no place in Savannah that's not downtown where any live music worth mentioning would appear.

It's a shame how flatly impossible this kind of life is for the vast majority of people in America. Part of that "impossibility" is the weird hostility the very idea seems to bring out in many motorists. The track I used to jog on was visible from a fairly active road, and it never ceased to amaze me how many morans felt compelled to shout something at me from a passing car (or usually truck), just because I was doing something--anything--on foot. In downtown Savannah, such an asshole would have to yodel nonstop to the point of hoarseness long before he insulted every pedestrian or cyclist in his path. That must be why nobody ever seems to bug me downtown.

By the way, I understand that cyclists can be exasperating to motorists when they have to share road-space that's really designed exclusively for cars. Downtown Savannah does a good job not only with bike lanes, but also with channeling cars along certain straight-on one-way roads, and leaving the more circuitous streets around the squares a lot more pedestrian- and bike-friendly.

I also got a big, bad taste of how impossible/utopian this kind of lifestyle would be for most people when I ventured by bus to "southside" Savannah--the part that's like every other comparable-sized city in America--and tried to get around on foot between a Wal Mart, a mall, and a Target, which are all right across the street from each other. Atrios has the right of it again:

One thing that's been puzzling me lately is just how unconcerned parking lots are with the pedestrian experience. I get that parking lots are about, you know, cars, but people still have to travel from their cars to the Wal-Mart somehow yet there's almost nothing in their design to appropriately accommodate people.

Any parking lot designed for ultra-mega-gonzo-Black Friday capacity has no human scale whatsoever. Which essentially means none of them do. When the bus doesn't have a stop near the entrance, but instead drops you off at the ass-end of one of these gargantuan lots, it's a long, boring, ugly, possibly hazardous walk to the shopping center or store. What's more, I've found these places tend not to have much in the way of sidewalks anywhere in their vicinity. The traffic signals near them often don't have crosswalks. The number of lanes and speed of traffic render them, again, practically inhuman. These places are downright anti-walkable. Considering how far they are from anywhere residential, I guess it makes sense to assume that anyone visiting them will come in a vehicle. And the other side of that coin is, most people live not walking but driving distance from any grocery stores, retail shopping, services like hair salons, etc. So, lots of cars, and lots of exclusively car-friendly spaces.

The one downside to downtown living is, there's no place where you can just go get home products or furnishings that aren't antique or hand-crafted (and priced accordingly). I understand why they'll never, ever let a big box downtown, but it would sure be nice once in a while if I could get to one safely and conveniently by foot or bike, if I just need an ironing board or pack of dvd-r's or whatever.