I had the opportunity to live and work in D.C. for two months in 2006.  Because my wife and I lived about 3 blocks from a Metro line, we were able to live car-free for those entire 9 weeks.

It was delightful.  Easy to get around at reasonable prices at most hours of the day, and generally faster than driving.  From time to time we hired taxis for the ride back home, e.g. late at night after going to a club, but even doing that a dozen times a month is small change compared to the cost of owning, operating, insuring and parking a car.  

D.C. also has a business that rents cars by the hour -- I forget the name -- that we used occasionally on weekends for our major shopping expeditions or for sight-seeing ... perfect!  Didn't need a vehicle the rest of the time.

A side benefit that's rarely mentioned: exercise!  In a city like D.C., you typically walk a few blocks at one end and the other of your Metro ride.  And/or you walk between one stop and another, stopping to run errands, or pick up a few groceries, or meet a friend along the way.  So just in the everyday business of getting around you walk a mile or two.  Relatively painlessly.

Compare that to the typical suburbanite who won't park more than 100 feet from the front door of MallWart (or from the front door of their favorite health club) if they can possibly avoid it.  (To do otherwise would be an insult and an embarassment).  Internal combustion carries them from home garage to store curb to garage to office ... and they don't even have to get out of the car to buy a latte or their Egg McMuffin.

And then they wonder why they are getting fatter and fatter.  So they spend more money at the health club to hire a 'fitness coach' to help them lose the pounds.  Which requires that they work harder to pay the fitness coach, hence less time to walk or bike anywhere.  Not enough time!

Never ceases to amaze me.  It really needn't be that difficult, if we designed our communities sensibly.

It is about time. After all the articles on electric cars, it is really refreshing to see one on a real solution that hundreds of millions of people around the world are using.

Instead of wasting money and effort on biofuels, electric cars and hybrids, all our efforts should be put into public transit and cycling. Rapid transit has been proven to shape the development of communities greatly reducing the need to drive.

If we make great transit systems, people will use them.

Richard

none of you live here. i've lived in the MD/DC area for 30 years. if i want to take the Metro, i have to drive 30-40 minutes to the station, park a good 15 minute walk away and then travel on the train for 15 minutes, catch a bus ( not timely, i assure you) and then walk 15 minutes to my office from where the bus leaves me off. OR i can drive to work in 40 minutes.
ALL TIMES increase during rush hour.

Metro only works if you live RIGHT IN DC, downtown, next to all the gov't/business buildings AND if you happen to work in downtown DC. most of this whole MD/DC/VA work area is spread out into massive traffic congested SUBURBAN areas around the cities. this is true of ALL big cities - also, living downtown can be great if you can afford the housing prices.

most of us around here in the MD/DC/VA area can't use mass transit unless we want to spend 2+ hours getting to work. also, a lot of people live in VA and work in MD or vice versa, or live in MD and work in DC or whatever combination you want.

the trains in and around DC don't support the spread out suburbs where most of the people live!

mass transit works great in concentrated areas - unfortunately, i don't think the USA has been built this way.

how are you going to change how/where bazillions of Americans live and work?

I'm sorry you live far from the transit system, but (a) not everyone does and (b) by driving to work, you waste 80 minutes a day you'll never get back. I commuted to H.S. in the city (from MD) every day, and that extra few minutes of cramming time in the train (and on the escalator---I was an efficient crammer) helped me through high school. My Metro commute was at most 1/3 of the time it would have taken to drive, waiting at every light and sometimes in between, all the way down CT Ave. I also took classes at the U of MD, a 1.5-hr commute one way, and got tons of interesting reading done (as well as, ahem, cramming). Instead of driving for 1.5 hrs a day, I read for 3 hours a day. No contest!

But the bottom line is, you seem to think the current system cannot be changed, and that where people live is dictated by some sort of lottery. The vast majority of people make a choice about where to live and whether to drive or not.

well, you obviously miss the point, and continue the fallacy that everyone can CHOOSE where they work and where they live. you're talking about many millions of people. there are too many people   and not enough good jobs to go around. i work where i'm qualified to do a good job in my field and i live where i can afford to live.

you also missed my point that if i did as you said, i would STILL BE DRIVING to the train station for as long as it takes me to get to work!! so, all the subsequent travelling was using even MORE energy that i didn't need to use!!
you also ignored the fact that i said my commute
would be 4+ hours a day round trip if i tried to get the work using public transportation. almost 4 times as long as it is if i drive both ways. i don't LIKE to commute on the Beltway, but i have no choice.

so how do you propose to cram millions of workers into the DC downtown area over and above all the people who live close to the Capital now? and that doesn't take into account all the many more people who work in any of the major cities in Maryland and Virginia who live away from where they work. how about everyone who works in Alexandria? they couldn't ALL live near work, there's no housing for them.

there is not enough affordable housing near downtown DC either to accommmodate all the people who commute into DC to work there.

i too used a lot of public transportation when i was at UofM because i could, and when i was in graduate school at Catholic Univ. in DC. now i can't because it isn't available. it can't be available. (i refuse to still live a crummy little apartment near a metro stop, and i can't afford Chevy Chase or Bethesda, etc. high end areas)  it would cost the gov't trillions of $'s just to have efficient public transportation for the east coast of the USA. everyone forgets how BIG this country is.

i lived in Japan for 4 years and only drove twice, public transport was great there, but it is the size of California! with a national-sized budget!

Beam me up Scotty......

I lived in the DC area (Takoma Park/Silver Spring) for over a year, and I commuted by bus to the Metro, and then to work. I lived about halfway between the two Metro stations, and it was right on the border of a lower-income residential neighborhood. I didn't have a car the entire time I lived there.

I think the issue here, mat, is that we all choose where we are going to live based on a variety of factors. You have chosen yours based on both not being too expensive (Bethesda) and on not being a "crummy little apartment." Just because you made YOUR choices, you can't deny the fact that the DC area has some of the most accessible, comprehensive public transportation in the country. I loved the Metro and Metro bus. Yes, sometimes it took a longer time to get somewhere, but if you consider what your daily route will be when you are CHOOSING where to live, you really can avoid it for common trips such as commutes (as opposed to one-offs).

For example, I moved to Austin, TX, about a year ago, and for my first apartment, I chose to get a 6-month lease at a place that was clearly safe and was affordable, based on my need for personal security and a lack of time to do a lot of research. The location also happened to be not that useful bus-wise (despite the city's having a green rep, bus service here is not stellar). So - once my lease was up (and once I knew the city better and had more time to look for apartments), I made the CHOICE to actively seek out a decent, safe, fairly affordable place near the bus line. WHICH, with time and effort, I found.

It's all about making location part of the decision-making process, not just something that "can't be avoided."