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Haha, greatest country in the world my arse!
There are a lot of reason why we’re not, but excessive car use is one of the lesser reasons!
Four out of the top nine counties are in NYC. Once again a common W for Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx (not you Staten Island, you suck)
Staten Island doesn’t have the subway infrastructure that other boroughs have. The one line it does have does have relatively high usage. Maybe it’s wise to expand it?
Im not saying Staten Island cant be good, there simply isn’t the political will to improve anything. If their government and people got the heads out of the sand they would notice that there is demand for more rail infrastructure. Kinda like how there’s significant amounts of unmet rail demand in Queens and Brooklyn (hopefully the IBX helps the issue)
Staten’s a bunch of republicans. They aren’t gonna pay for anything that lets the rabble in.
Are there maps like this for other part of the world? I’d imagine Europe has a much lower rate of car commuting.
In comparison to the US yeah probably but still overall pretty high would be my assumption.
What’s going on in that one area in Montana?
Those two counties are Petroleum County, with a population of about 500, and Garfield County with a population of about 1,100. Both counties have a single town with about a quarter of the population.
This means a majority of the population live in the country, and likely work the lands they live on. This means no commute to work, which is what was measured.
This is a flaw in the methodology. Rurual Montana is not a bastion of urban planning. It is a mistake to look at travel to work exclusively. People need to travel to many destinations. And those living in those two counties probably use cars for everything else.
I wouldnt say it is a flaw, really. The data in general is a good approximation of auto dependence. And any researcher who isn’t an idiot will see the same thing you did and simply discard the data in these counties as obvious outliers. Sure, we can imagine a more accurate metric for measuring auto dependency for the purposes of creating a very nice map for public consumption. But it your purpose is simply to conduct some statistical analysis, I don’t think this dataset is bad - or at least not a bad start.
It’s only bad if misinterpreted.
What the hell, Garfield county is about the quarter size of my country (the Netherlands, but only has 0,007% of the population. That’s mind boggling to me
Couple of areas of Nevada like that as well. But it’s not that they work on their own land a lot of the people work at the mines and they only drive maybe a half mile if that to get to their bus stop where the mines run buses for the hour to two hour drive out to the location and back.
I’m wondering that too. Just a guess, low population density with lots of farmers ‘working from home’ since they live on their farm.
They don’'t go to work. Farmers don’t travel for work but it’s likely low survey response. Very low population density there(1-10/mi)
You aren’t getting anywhere in Montana without a car
I mean that’s not really true. Most of the larger towns do have a bus system.
The only town I saw in that area in my 5 second search is Jordan, with a population of
357356.Edit: corrected population, my bad
So the only town you saw in the United States in a 5-second search with a bus system is some random town named Jordan with 356 people? I am so confused by your comment I think you meant to reply to somebody else but I can guarantee there’s more than that one town in the United States with a much higher population base that have bus trains and even large transit systems. The area that I live in has a massive transit system the spans the size of many states.
And if you think the largest town in Montana is a town called Jordan. You did a really really bad surge and you need a new search engine. Billings, Missoula, Great falls, Bozeman, Helena, etc all have large population bases and all have bus transit systems. There are several others that also have a transit systems and are larger than that.
I think they meant towns within the area highlighted in the initial image. Which would make sense, 'cause Jordan is in that area, is probably the largest incorporated community in that area, and definitely doesn’t have a bus system.
(Also, I know you meant Great Falls and not Great Colt, but it’s a funny typo)
Yea great falls. He didn’t say that are, he said, you aren’t getting anywhere in Montana without a car, so yea.
What’s going on in that one area in Montana?
Nothing.
I drove though there once. Hours of seeing nothing but road.
low population density means high variance in stats.
always expect the highest and lowest stats to come from those areas.
But it’s probably farmers who live on their farm or something.
So they don’t drive a car, they drive a tractor.
Horses, atvs.
A portio of that area I know is full of retirees who relocated to escape the woke coasts. (Speaking anecdotally of extended family that relocated to that zone for a community of old conservatives.) So I wonder if retirees are counted.
The area in Arizona thats a little lighter may also be a shade of that too. Snowbirds might be skewing it with people who just plain don’t commute.
escape the woke coasts
jfc the whiny shit these assholes come up with to justify their racism
Also, note the scale. It starts at 50% reliance.
I’d expect it’s pretty lightly populated at least, as that generally makes it easier to stand out in statistics.
Viridis always brings peace to the soul
Conclusion: the Gulf Coast makes Americans crave cars.
The lack of sufficient population density to support public transit makes Americans crave cars. Population density is low because the US has the space, and the areas that are dense are stupidly expensive.
I’d love to take a bus or light rail to work, but instead I end up having a saily commuteof over 100 miles round trip. In the city where I work, a 600sft studio apartment would cost an extra 30 grand a year versus my 3 bed, 2 bath place 50-ish miles away.
A living nightmare
What is supposed to be surprising about this?
Everywhere I have lived, and everyone I have ever met had to take a car.
There are like maybe 15 places in the US with a functioning public transportation system.
Jobs are downtown but nobody make enough money to live downtown. Last time I tried it would have been > 75% my wages in rent only just to live in shit hole. I literally would not be able to feed myself.
The map actually does a good job of highlighting how population dense places exist without a lot of cars per person. New York and San Francisco are both shown and have green or yellow patches. Mass transit works so damn good but, like election maps, the actual region highlighted is empty space with a few people all doing the same things.
The real alternative to cars isn’t public transit; it’s walking and biking (with zoning density that facilitates that). Public transit is a ‘nice to have’ layer built on top afterward.
You’re not going to live your life within biking distance.
And I say that as someone who’s lived their entire life without owning a car, in one of the most densely-populated areas of Germany.
Public transit is an absolutely essential part of life, not a “nice to have”.
Even in the most walkable of all cities, you’re going to want to get to a lake for swimming, meet friends who live two towns over, transit to the airport, or simply have a reliable option to commute during a thunderstorm or when it’s freezing.You’re not going to live your life within biking distance.
In my household, we:
- bike daily for commuting and errands
- drive maybe a couple of times a month (infrequently enough that I have problems keeping the car battery charged) to go out to the suburbs for Costco, Microcenter, or visiting my parents – things that are “wants,” not “needs”
- use public transit almost never (basically only to go downtown for Dragon-Con because I get nervous about leaving my expensive cargo e-bike parked there all day)
And that’s in Atlanta, a city not exactly known for its bike network, let alone for its public transit.
simply have a reliable option to commute during a thunderstorm or when it’s freezing.
That’s called “wearing appropriate clothes.” I have bike-commuted through rain so hard that I had to re-grease the bottom bracket afterward because that’s how deep the puddles were. We had an “arctic blast” last week with -10 to -15 C wind chill (not that it matters on a bike – there’s always wind chill riding at speed); my wife and I were commuting and taking the kids to school by bike anyway. IDGAF.
In practice, the only thing that causes me not to bike is mechanical failure, and frankly, my bikes are more reliable than my cars.
You drive a couple times a month.
To live car-free, you’d need another option for those trips.
And telling people that visiting their parents or shopping at specialty stores are “wants”, not “needs” is a non-starter.The fact remains that the local bike infrastructure is much more valuable to me than a transit system with shitty last-mile connections is. The reason I can’t get to Costco via MARTA, for instance, is that the nearest station dumps you out on a six-lane highway with no bike lane. (The bike infrastructure is decent near my house, but not out in the suburbs where the Costcos are.)
Transit is almost entirely useless unless you can walk or bike from the station to your actual destination. That makes ped/bike infrastructure a prerequisite for transit, not the other way around.
Absolutely not, having good rail infrastructure is an absolute bear necessity especially for the young, the elderly, and the disabled. But also people don’t want to walk and bike everywhere, people (myself included) want to just jump on a train and relax.
How are you gonna get your stroller, walker, or wheelchair from the train station to your actual destination without a sidewalk?
I literally never said sidewalks aren’t needed, you called public transport meanwhile a nice to have almost as if its a luxury and not a nesscesity. As if anyone could just walk everywhere or even want to.
Not everybody lives in the US and in a lot of countries being able to go to work without a car is normal.
This is a map of the us
I mean there are a lot of people that do go without cars. I went without a car for 8 years because I lived on a bus line and I worked on a bus or a train line depending on how far I had to go. The commute sucked sometimes was over 2 hours. There are times where I had to be on the bus at 4:30 in the morning to be to work at 6:30. And when you go 4 to 5 hours a day just commuting a car is very nice because that same drive was maybe 45 minutes between morning and afternoon. That gives you so much more time to do everything else. Having a functioning system doesn’t mean much when you have to go so far.
I am not sure what your point is.
So you went without a car and spent 2 entire months of your year commuting in hours.
And that’s…?
My point is if you’re spending that much time commuting it’s not really efficient nor does it work for most people’s lives. Which is why most people opt to drive their car to and from work and pretty much anywhere else. I don’t know what you’re asking and I don’t know how to explain that better than that to you. I thought it was pretty evident with making a statement that oftentimes commuting over mass transit is not the best option. No matter how efficient or get the bus system or chain system is. Hell the bus system in my area comes every 15 minutes and the train is usually every 5 to 10 minutes even on weekends. We have a large commuter train that comes anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes depending on the time of day and whether or not it’s a weekend. But when you’re having to travel so many miles it’s still takes time no matter what.
I’ve lived in some of the counties in the south under 100% reliance and let me assure you outside of the major cities many are only under 100% due to crippling poverty. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve know in my life thay have had to walk 2 hrs one way to a shitty low paying job at a gas station or dollar general.
Do farmers depend on cars to get to work?
No. Because farmers are quite wealthy. We’ve had more than a century of farm consolidation. Farming is only profitable at a large scale. Only the wealthy can afford to be farmers.
Truthfully there aren’t that many people whose full time job is just “farmer”. But those that are usually all have cars anyway.
Swear to god, every heat map of the US highlights how much of a shit hole the Mississippi delta must be.
It truly is
About all we really got is some damn good… Highly fattening… Food.
Yeah, this is one of the reasons why I only want to live in the NYC area of the US. Just take the train or bus, don’t worry about it.
America is essentially a third world country with just a handful of developed metropolitan areas
And those few developed areas havnt meaningfully evolved or improved in decades and especially compared to the infrastructure developments seen in asia or Europe
Does anyone know of similar maps for European or Asian countries? The only thing I’ve found so far it this report, but it doesn’t go into county-level detail.
I feel like the only interesting bits are the yellow places that aren’t big cities (with their subways or whatever), and that aren’t places separated by water, where it makes sense that they travel across by ferry e.g. The few places where you’d expect cars to be the vast majority, but isn’t. Those seem interesting to look closer into.
They’re farmer. They live on the farm, and ride a tractor to work.
Also interesting, but, if true, not much better than cars. 😬
Yeah, sorry about that. No secret Montana subway.
That’s just what they want you think /s
What’s that one tiny little yellow square in California? SF?
If it’s SF I gotta know why there are so many cars there then. So many cars, not enough parking. It’s common to see people double, or even triple parked. But it is also the most walkable city I’ve experienced next to New York. Though, going up hill fucking suuuuucks!
The cars belong to commuters whose car use would be reflected in their home county instead of SF.
If it’s SF I gotta know why there are so many cars there then.
Part of this will be people who simply have the habit of driving no matter what. A small part of that will be people who legitimately need a personal car even in a fairly pedestrian friendly area (eg, people with disabilities). However, a big part of the phenomenon you are observing is people who live in SF needing to leave it, and people who live outside SF needing to enter it. While SF itself may be pedestrian friendly (relative to the rest of the US at least), the bay area as a whole is still a cars-as-default space. So maybe you bought a house in the city proper and love living there, but your job (which you got after buying the house and which you must keep in order to pay the mortgage) is in a suburban office park. And you have many friends with homes in the suburbs who you like to visit. And you love travelling to the Sierras, but there is no good transit for this purpose. On the other hand, perhaps you live in the burbs, but work downtown - you could park at a more far-flung transit station and ride transit into the denser part of town, but due to the friction of transferring between modes, sitting in traffic for a few more minutes is a less painful experience.
The solution is simple: either charge more for public on-street parking and aggressively enforce parking laws with meter maids - or simply ban cars from streets/areas which are already pedestrian friendly. In either case, especially in a place like SF, you should also scale fines for breaking the law with the law-breaker’s income/wealth.
Saying there isnt enough parking in SF is like saying that there isnt enough ice cream in SF. Sure, everyone will admit that they like it when it is presented to them - but the fact is that the government shouldnt be in the business of ensuring that there is a limitless supply of it at all times.
This is bonkers.
