Rent a Car in Boston

Boston's downtown — Beacon Hill, the North End, the Freedom Trail, Back Bay — is one of the most walkable historic cores in the US, and the MBTA subway (the T) covers it well enough that a car is actively unhelpful if your stay is confined to the city itself: narrow one-way streets, rotaries and scarce parking make driving downtown more stressful than useful.

The case for a hire car starts the moment you want to leave the city. Cape Cod's beaches are about 90 minutes south-east, Salem's witch history sites are a 30-minute drive north, and in autumn the fall foliage routes through New Hampshire and Vermont are three to four hours away but justify the whole trip. Plymouth, site of the Mayflower's landing, is under an hour south — all destinations that Boston's excellent transit simply doesn't reach.