A few years ago, I wrote about attending Anime Weekend Atlanta without needing to rent a car.
I was looking at the area around where AWA used to take place a couple days ago, and learned there is a CobbLinc bus route that connects to MARTA’s Red/Gold line that goes to the airport that has a bus stop very close to the venue. Obviously, that con has moved to the Georgia World Congress Center which is served by the GWCC/CNN Center MARTA Station, so it’s absolutely doable without a car now, in fact it’s even easier.
That said, over the years, I’ve done several cons without renting a car.
The first of them was when I flew to Boston in 2008 for Anime Boston. Boston has what I like to call “working” public transit. Being from the Atlanta suburbs, experiencing public transit that didn’t require a 30ish minute drive opened my eyes to life without a car. At AB, myself and a friend used the T to get around town that weekend as I’d wanted to visit Old Ironsides while I was in town.
The second time, at least in part, was Project A-Kon in Dallas, also in 2008. While the friends I was attending the con with had a car, and they picked me up at the airport with it, once we got to our hotel one of them and I used DART to get around town, but this wasn’t truly “sans car”.
The third was when I went to Otakon in Baltimore, also in 2008. The light rail goes from the airport to right by the Baltimore Convention Center, and the hotel I was staying at on that trip was a short walk from there. We didn’t go around too much around Baltimore on that trip, but again, I was able to fly from ATL to BWI, take the light rail into town, and not have to worry about renting a car.
The fourth, and likely my primary future con, was Sakura Con in Seattle, my new home, earlier this year (2025). I’m fortunate to have a King County Metro bus stop literally next to my building, and that route goes to the nearest Link light rail station. I’m also a short walk to one of the Seattle Streetcar stops. While I did use my car on this trip as the friend who flew in and I had plans involving things well outside of conspace, not to mention we were commuting from my apartment to the con, as long as what we wanted to go to was in Downtown Seattle, we were able to use public transit to get around town.
Oddly enough, I’d visited Seattle in 2021 on a business trip, and on that trip there were no rental cars available at the airport, so I used public transit and my own two feet, though I did use Uber once on the trip. Between the Link light rail and Washington State Ferries and Kitsap Transit’s Fast Ferry, I was able to get from the airport to my hotel and from my hotel into Seattle proper on one day of the trip, back to the hotel that day, and then back to the airport the day after.
Needless to say, if I ever do go back to AWA in the future, I’ll be not renting a car for it. But the time of year is less than ideal now, not to mention the current political climate in the US. But that’s a subject for a different blog.
Until next time!