Can You Get Around Hartford Without a Car? My Honest, First-Hand Experience
Despite how car-dependent Hartford’s suburbs are, I have successfully traveled around both Hartford and nearby towns (West Hartford, Windsor, and Windsor Locks specifically) without a car.
I’m not the ideal person to write this article, because I don’t live in Hartford. However, my partner’s family lives in the Hartford area, and we visit frequently. What makes me qualified to write this is that I’ve traveled around the U.S. without a car for years, and I take avoiding cars to extreme lengths.
My girlfriend’s family looks at me like I’m from a different planet when I say I’m going to take the bus into Hartford from their cozy suburb, just to get Puerto Rican food or Dominican food.
Here’s the thing: I enjoy spending time in Hartford. Not just West Hartford, although I do enjoy West Hartford too. Yes, I know there’s a lot of poverty, which is associated with complicated and controversial social factors. Yes, it’s covered in parking lots. Yes, it has so many empty storefronts that it makes me sad.
It reminds me of some Bronx neighborhoods I visit for similar reasons, usually food, a hidden landmark, or a community garden I got invited to check out.
Hartford has food that punches above its weight for a small city, great museums (the Wadsworth and Mark Twain House), gorgeous architecture even when rundown, and the bones of a walkable city.
After all, it was Mark Twain, who lived in Hartford between the 1870s and 1890s, who said, “Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see, this is the chief… You do not know what beauty is if you have not been here.”
Maybe you just have to look for it.
Here are my notes on exploring Hartford and its surrounding area, car-free.
You’re Not Alone: Lots of Hartford Residents Live Car-Free
Yes, this is often a consequence of economic conditions rather than choice. However, 12.7% of Hartford households don’t own a car, and nearly 40% only have one car in their household. These numbers are well above U.S. averages.
Hartford’s suburbs can be impossible to get around without a car, but in Hartford proper, you can at least manage. Thousands of others do.
Downtown Hartford is Actually Nice
I’m starting here because there’s a decent chance you’re not from here, have to come downtown for work, or are just wondering about the vibes.
Downtown Hartford is genuinely pleasant. It reminds me of New York’s financial district—kind of sterile but perfectly functional. It’s the only neighborhood where cars don’t dominate.
It checks about every box you could want in an urban neighborhood: walkable streets, restaurants, cultural institutions, and the best transit connections.
CT Transit Buses: Better Than You’d Expect
The CT Transit bus system, for a city its size, is really good.
Even the ones outside of Hartford that run every 30-60 minutes, they’ve always come close to on-time for me.
Within Hartford, the buses are reliable.
It’s mostly a radial system, so everything runs between downtown and the neighborhoods. Lots of routes have 10-15 minute frequencies. They’re more reliable than many NYC buses.
To pay, download the Transit app. It’s $1.75 per ride and includes free transfers within two hours, meaning you can connect to other routes without paying again.
It’s one of the better transit apps with some nice features.
The buses themselves are perfectly acceptable, like any other mid-sized American city. Honestly, they’re much more comfortable than most of New York’s buses.
Buses to Surrounding Towns: Less Consistent
While buses within Hartford run frequently, service to surrounding towns drops off considerably.
West Hartford: A Pleasant Exception
West Hartford is genuinely nice. There’s a walkable main street area (West Hartford Center) with frequent buses to and from Hartford. It sort of reminds me of parts outside of Austin, Texas’s downtown, and sort of like upscale towns outside of Washington D.C.
If you’re staying in Hartford without a car, West Hartford makes for an easy day trip, with many bus lines that comes every 10-15 minutes.
Bradley Airport Connection: Good Service, Poor Frequency
The Bradley Flyer express bus connects downtown Hartford to Bradley International Airport. It’s a direct route, which is great, but it only runs every 40 minutes.
That’s manageable when you’re going from Hartford to Bradley, since you can plan around it. But when you’re landing at the airport and waiting for the next bus, 40 minutes feels like an eternity. For a major airport serving Connecticut’s capital, this frequency should be better.
The bus itself is pleasant and reliable.
Hartford Line: An Excellent Commuter Rail Option
The Hartford Line commuter train is really good considering the sizes of the cities it passes through. This commuter rail service runs between New Haven and Springfield, Massachusetts (some routes extend up to Greenfield, MA).
They all stop in Hartford as well as Berlin, Windsor, and Windsor Locks.
I’ve ridden it dozens of times, and you can see my extensive review of the Hartford Line here. Clean trains, reliable service, and it beats driving down I-91 any day. You can use it to connect at New Haven for trips to NYC as well.
Walking in Hartford: Good Bones, Rough Execution
Downtown has plenty of pedestrian-first amenities. The rest of the city? Not so much.
The Good
Hartford’s street grid is compact and logical. It’s clear this used to be a walkable, mixed-use city before the mid-20th century automobile takeover.
Even the architecture style reminds me a lot of some of New York’s most desirable neighborhoods with gorgeous brownstone, attached, and detached.
If history had gone differently (simply, if the highways were never built through the city), I bet those brownstones would be extremely desireable and we’d talk about Hartford like we talk about Boston and NYC. That brings me to the challenges.
The Challenges
Once you leave downtown, Hartford quickly becomes hostile to anyone not inside a car.
Car-First Street Design
Most streets are classic stroads: wide, fast arterials designed to move vehicles, not people, with sidewalks tacked on almost as an afterthought.
Crossing them is unpleasant at best and dangerous at worst.
Cars don’t expect pedestrians. The right-on-red turn concerns are in particular scary. Most intersections require pressing a crosswalk button, followed by a long wait while traffic cycles through. When the light finally changes, drivers often seem annoyed that you’re even there.
I’ve watched cars blow straight through crosswalks, not out of malice, but because stopping for pedestrians simply isn’t part of the local muscle memory.
This intersection sums up so much of Hartford. There’s lots of mixed-use housing nearby, and those old brownstones are beautiful. But the storefronts are all vacant. It’s definitely not a “nice area.” Crossing this road took several minutes. I had to wait for two different light cycles. This is a 5-minute walk from the Hospital, a major employer.
Varying Sidewalk Quality
Sidewalk quality varies block by block. Some are wide and well-maintained; others are narrow, cracked, or abruptly disappear. It’s not uncommon to see cars partially or fully parked on sidewalks.
Other Safety Considerations.
It’s no secret that much of Hartford struggles with poverty. I saw some drug use in the middle of the day.
Again, I don’t really know Hartford, so I’m not the best person to answer this. As a guy who’s spent lots of time in many cities, I “know how to act,” so to speak. I like to think my NYC street cred carries over to Hartford, and I know the etiquette.
Although for me, the cars posed the more tangible risk. The most consistent threat I felt as a pedestrian wasn’t crime, but traffic.
Jane Jacobs might have a word or two to say about the connection between these things. As she wrote in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, “A well-used city street is apt to be a safe street.”
Biking and Scooters: Limited by Infrastructure
Unlike a small city like Harrisburg, PA, which I explored on its bike share, Hartford’s streets tend to be wide and fast-moving. If you’re going to bike or scooter, stick to side streets.
I’ve logged nearly 2,000 miles on Citi Bike in NYC and have biked in cities across the country and in Europe. I would not want to bike in Hartford without better bike infrastructure.
Although when at Semilla Cafe (highly recommend), I did chat with a bike commuter who told me he’s biked around Hartford for 15 years. “You get used to it,” he told me. “But yeah, it’s not ideal.”
(Of course, opponents will say nobody bikes say that people don’t bike, so why would we build bike infrastructure? But you shouldn’t judge the importance of a bridge by how many people swim across the river.)
Hartford Has a Scooter Share
Hartford has a partnership with Veo scooters. It’s nice to see micromobility options available. However, scooters are even more treacherous than bikes on streets shared with cars.
They don’t have docks. You drop them off in select “zones,” which can see with the Evo app.
Cost: 36 cents per minute is steep. If you’re going further, you can buy minutes. 30 minutes for $8 is a better deal. If you use it regularly, there are cheaper options. ($15/week for the “Commuter” option, which is two free rides a day.)
When buses with free connections cost $1.75, transit is usually more economical.
Personally, I wouldn’t because of safety. But if you’ve ridden scooters as transit before, you probably know what you’re getting into.
The Parking Lot Problem
One of Hartford’s biggest challenges is how much space is dedicated to cars.
Roughly one-fifth of downtown Hartford is surface parking lots. Walk around, and you’ll see blocks of urban land sitting empty, waiting for commuters who drive in from the suburbs.
You’ll find CVS locations and McDonald’s built in suburban style, set back from the street with their own parking lots, even if the rest of the block is mixed-use.
The most famous examples of its car-centric infrastructures are the two wide highways (I-84 and I-91) cut right through the center of this small city, creating barriers between neighborhoods and generating constant traffic noise.
Jane Jacobs wouldn’t be happy.
The highways are such an object of disdain that, after one visit to Hartford, I wrote an essay about them.
Don’t Let the Challenges Overshadow the Charm
In the suburbs, people talk about Hartford in very negative ways. I get it. The challenges are real. But don’t let those very real problems keep you from seeing the genuine beauty here.
Visit the Wadsworth Atheneum. Walk around during the day and admire the architecture. Head to Semilla cafe for excellent coffee (though you’ll have to cross I-84, which is unpleasant, so maybe take a bus).
Try the food you won’t find in the suburbs. There’s lots of Caribbean food. Historically, Hartford has a heavy Puerto Rican population, and more recently has seen lots of immigration from the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
If you come to Hartford and don’t have some good Caribbean food, you messed up somewhere along the line!
Hartford has a lot more to offer than its reputation suggests, and you’ll be less limited than you think without a car.
