aaudetat wrote:
togafoot wrote:
If you have Ithaca questions, let me know.
There are no bad areas in Ithaca. (Seriously - we had a house in Ithaca that was essentially kitty-corner from some public housing. The "danger" was that someone might toss an empty 40 in your yard. We didn't even lock our back door.)
Is a car necessary? Because I don't drive.
Not 100% necessary, no.
Ndhlp and I had just one car. I biked to work, he bussed to campus. That was fine. A friend of mine lived in Ithaca for years without a car. Here's what you should know:
You'll want to live close to campus (which will make rent more expensive) so you can walk to the Johnson school. Or live close to the Commons so you only need to take one bus and so that bus will be frequent. You can get farther from the Commons and still only need to take one bus, but it will probably pass only once an hour. Nearly all the busses go to the Commons and then up to campus, so that's a good place to be.
Ithaca is highly walkable - all of the downtown neighborhoods are walking distance to the Commons (restaurants/shops/bars) and some of them are walking distance to the grocery store. The one place where having a car is nice is if you want to go to a big box store - Home Depot, Target, WalMart. Some of those are on the south side and potentially walkable and certainly bikable. Some of them are up by the mall - not walkable or really bikable from downtown.