Mendocino village is tiny — you can walk the entire historic district in fifteen minutes. Everything in town is reachable on foot: the museums, the galleries, the restaurants, and the headlands trails. A car is only needed to reach Fort Bragg (10 miles north), the Botanical Gardens, Anderson Valley, or the more distant state parks.
There are no taxis or rideshares operating reliably in Mendocino. If you are staying at an inn without a car, you are essentially walking everywhere in the village, which works fine for the town itself but limits your range. Some visitors rent bikes — the highway north to Fort Bragg has a reasonable shoulder, though it is not separated from traffic.
The Mendocino Transit Authority operates the Coastal bus route (Route 60) north to Fort Bragg and south toward Ukiah. For day-trippers without a car, this can work for reaching Fort Bragg and the Botanical Gardens, but the schedule is infrequent.
Highway 1 through the village becomes Main Street and has a 25 mph limit that is taken seriously. The streets are narrow and parking considerate of other vehicles is expected — locals notice.