Athens without a car

[eli250]

I'm thinking about going to UGA and getting rid of my car to save money?  Is anyone familiar enough with Athens to know how easy it is to get around without a car?  What is the bus service like?

[Mookie Blaylock]

The Bus service kind of sucks, and the city is pretty spread out.  Unless you plan on living really close to campus, I would keep the car.

[wmroyal]

Agreed.  Athens would be really tough without a car unless you lived right on campus.  I consider a car to be a necessity if living in a town that has a mediocre to poor public transit system.  So I would really only get rid of my car if I were to end up in DC or another large city for law school.  It sounds like you may be less attached to your automobile than I am, but I would still wait until I were there before I made a major decision like selling my means of transportation.

[Steve Butabi]

what is the public transport system like? are buses free for students? how late do they run? how often does one come along to the average bus stop?

[Mookie Blaylock]

I'm not a uga student, but there is the campus bus system and athens-clarke county has them running across the city.  times vary, and they should be free for students:

http://www.transit.uga.edu/

http://www.athenstransit.com/

[UGAfootballfanatic]

i used the bus system to get to class while I was a student at UGA, which was pretty convenient for the trip to class. However, the problem lies in buying groceries, shopping, getting home from bars, etc. Most of the grocery stores are pretty far from campus and downtown Athens (think Eastside or a few miles West- this will make more sense if you more there) and the buses are pretty unreliable for any of the non-college routes. That said, I had a roomate who got by with a bike to get to campus and carpools with us to the grocery store. PM me if you need where to live suggestions, I did lease consulting in Athens for 2 years as a part time job and know most of the apt's in town.