I’ve heard that if you live in New York City nowadays that there’s no point at all in owning a car.  Traffic crawls and grinds to a halt across all the streets, making it next to impossible to get anywhere on time.  Thus, everyone relies on the subway to really get where they’re going.  In fact, New York City is basically synonymous with its subway system. 

            Having lived in Chicago all my life, I can’t comment much more on New York.  However, whatever neighborhood you live in, the local transportation will always be an important issue.  My parents live in Jefferson Park, which a northern Chicago neighborhood that actually borders the suburbs of Niles and Skokie.  Jefferson Park has its own CTA station standing right in the heart of the neighborhood.  The I-94 highway also runs right past.  Whether you need to go deeper into the city or out into the suburbs, Jefferson Park is a really convenient starting point. 

            When I left my parents’ house, I also moved out of the neighborhood into a different one called Wicker Park.  Wicker Park sits about 6 or 7 miles south of Jefferson Park next to the neighborhoods of Bucktown, Humboldt Park, and the Ukrainian Village.  It’s also only really a stone’s throw from the loop, or Chicago’s downtown area.  A really, really long stone’s throw, but it’s still not far off. 

            The Wicker Park area is one of the best places to live in all of Chicagoland.  All the local shops, grocery stores, bars, clubs, and restaurants are within easy walking distance, especially if you live on North or Division Avenue.  If something isn’t within walking distance, it’s an extremely short car drive away.  However, there’s still convenient local public transport.  The Blue Line of the CTA has stops at Division, Damen, Western, and California.  Its sister line, the Red Line, has a stop further down North Avenue (The Blue Line stop is at North and Damen) in another nearby neighborhood called Lincoln Park.  Of course a multitude of bus stops can be found from street to street and there are always cabs prowling up and down, looking for passengers. 

            Such local transportation becomes really important when you consider that main streets such as North, Division, and Milwaukee Avenues are all snow routes.  That means if there’s 2 to 4 inches of snow you can’t park there.  However, it’s really hard to get parking in the Wicker Park area any time of the year.  There’s hustle and bustle day and night.  Its actually much easier to get around by foot, cab, or the bus if you can.  Everyone loves their cars, but there are times when they’re just not convenient. 

            Even more importantly, the trains are now running on time.  For a few years, the city of Chicago was doing work on them to improve them, but, in the meantime, there were a lot of “slow zones” where the trains went very, very slow past construction sites and several stops were even closed.  Most of that work is done now and the trains are moving faster and better than ever.  It’s a short ten minute trip by train into downtown Chicago from Wicker Park, extremely convenient if you work in that area but live in Wicker Park.