My wife just sent this to me and I thought I'd pass it along. From Yahoo
15 Cities for People who Hate Driving and Long Commutes

You may commence firing.....now!

Interesting. Of the fifteen cities listed in the article Aaron linked, Portland and Honolulu were the only ones where the average "non-car" commute was faster than the average commute.

Interesting that most of the cities on the list are known as college towns. One of them--Cambridge, MA--probably shouldn't be listed as a standalone city given its close proximity to Boston.

Only Portland, Honolulu, and Minneapolis are cities that I wouldn't list as college towns. Honolulu is quite compact (and rather linear as well) due to the local geography, which makes transit a more attractive proposition.

That was my first take as well. Part of me wonders if they interviews students and that skewed some of the results.

And I've heard that Honolulu has some pretty good transit. Another factor may be that things (including gas) can be more expensive there since they have to be shipped from the mainland.

I tend to consider Portland a college town because PSU dominates the University District, OHSU dominates the south waterfront, University of Portland pretty much owns Willamette Bluffs, never mind Reed and L&C...

Portland ain't a college town--a term that is used for places where the local university is the raison d'etre of the city.

Corvallis is a college town, Eugene probably a bit less so.

But large cities like Portland, Seattle, etc. are almost by definition not college towns, despite the fact that virtually all large US cities have a major university within them somewhere--many having several.

You forgot Concordia up in NE ;), but I agree with Scotty, places like Ames (population 50k, student portion 25k) are college towns. Less extreme are places like Madison where maybe 1:10 attend UW. Even with PSU (27K) UP (5k) LC (3.5k), etc. you are still looking at a ration of more like 1:50.

I'd also argue that OHSU is more of hospital than it is a university and more pertinent to this discussion has the transportation needs of a hospital rather than a university. For example, limited barrier transportation options affect a larger portion of the people that go to OHSU than PSU.

I think the opposite can be said in general with college towns. If a large portion of your population consists of people in their prime physical condition years, those folks have a broader array of transportation options at their disposal than the general population.

Public transportation is great for college kids touring public houses (also known as "pubs")...