Getting around
Getting around California
For the towns, drives, islands, and wine-country clusters this guide covers, a rental car is the default tool — but not the only one. Big cities have real transit, the coast has ferries to Sausalito and Catalina, and a few zones (Catalina, parts of Big Sur) reward leaving the car behind entirely.
When you need a car, and when you don't
Most California micro-zones — Big Sur, Napa and Sonoma wine country, Mendocino, Lake Tahoe, the Palm Springs area — assume a car, and distances between sights are too long for transit. Reserve a rental early in peak season, and note that one-way coastal drives on State Route 1 are the point of the trip rather than a shortcut.
A few places work better without a car: Avalon on Catalina Island largely bans visitor cars and runs on golf carts and walking, and downtown cores like Santa Barbara's State Street, Carmel, and Sausalito's waterfront are best explored on foot once you park.
Ferries, transit, and mountain roads
Ferries serve two of the zones here: Golden Gate Ferry and the Sausalito–San Francisco routes cross the bay to Sausalito, and Catalina Express and the Catalina Flyer run from the mainland (San Pedro, Long Beach, Dana Point, Newport) to Avalon. Big cities have usable rail — BART in the Bay Area, Metro in Los Angeles, and the Trolley in San Diego — but these mostly serve the urban cores rather than the coastal and mountain zones.
Mountain and coastal driving needs preparation: Sierra routes to South Lake Tahoe can require tire chains in winter storms, and Big Sur's Highway 1 has no fuel or services for long stretches. Fill the tank before remote drives, download offline maps where cell coverage drops, and check Caltrans QuickMap for chain controls and closures.
Parking, tolls, and charging
Parking is often the real constraint in popular towns: coastal lots at Carmel, La Jolla, and Santa Monica fill early on weekends, and many state parks charge a day-use fee. Bay Area bridges use all-electronic FasTrak tolling — the Golden Gate Bridge is tolled southbound with no cash booths — so a rental's toll program or a temporary FasTrak avoids a violation notice.
California has the country's densest public electric-vehicle charging network, and most zones here have fast chargers, but Big Sur and remote stretches are thin; plan charging stops on long coastal or Sierra legs the way you would plan fuel.
Sources
Reviewed source trail
- Caltrans QuickMap — chain controls, closures, and conditions — checked 2026-07-12
- Catalina Express — mainland-to-Avalon ferry — checked 2026-07-12
- Golden Gate Ferry — Sausalito service — checked 2026-07-12
- Bay Area FasTrak — electronic tolling — checked 2026-07-12
- California Energy Commission — EV charging — checked 2026-07-12