Another demonstration of how NYC is the only real city in America and anywhere else is a suburb larping as a metropolis.
You can't call yourself a metropolis unless half the population uses public transit: change my view.
50% of Boston's workforce commutes using the T every day, but it doesn't show up on the map. I'm assuming because most of those stops are in outlying towns and, therefore, only make up a minority of the commuting workforce in each area. According to the federal government, the T is the third best public transit system in the US due to it being the fastest average commute out of any by at least half an hour, only outclassed by the quality of DC and Seattle (I believe, might be Portland that's #1? I'd have to look again).
That's just an example of how useless the map is. You can't look at it at this scale and only pay attention to the top most used transportation from a county level. New York City shows up because it literally is those counties, geographically, nearly edge to edge.
Ok! As per the marriam-webster definition of a metropolis:
the chief or capital city of a country, state, or region,
the city or state of origin of a colony (as of ancient Greece),
a city regarded as a center of a specified activity,
a large important city.
As per Cambridge:
a very large city, often the most important city in a large area or country.
Collins:
A metropolis is the largest, busiest, and most important city in a country or region.
Britannica:
a very large or important city — usually singular
Oxford:
A very large urban settlement usually with accompanying suburbs. No precise parameters of size or population density have been established. The structural, functional, and hierarchical evolution of global metropolises is rooted as much in the past as in the present: modern information and communications technology may be more advanced than the 19th-century telegraph, but the processes and outcomes are much the same (Daniels (2002) PHG 26). ‘[Berlin's] wealth of facilities, as well as their scatter across the metropolis, can be understood only in the light of the city's history and, paradoxically, its troubles.
Longman:
a very large city that is the most important city in a country or area
You:
NYC but only if half the people use public transit
I don't think they were being literal or looking for a dictionary definition. I think they were saying the definition of a real city should hinge on the use of mass transit.
Personally I think anywhere that's car dependent isn't somewhere I'd want to live.
I think of it more as transit is a characteristic of a functioning city. You can’t scale well without it.
not OP, but according to some of those definitions (cambridge, collins, longman), NYC would be the only metropolis in the US, as it is the US' largest, busiest, and most important city.
Nah buddy I grew up in Atlanta you can't convince me it's a metropolis.
There's a nice little downtown core and then 99% suburban sprawl. Fuck that
I remember going to a job interview when I was younger. My dad dropped me off there on his way to work and then I took the bus home after my interview was done. It took my dad about 13 minutes to drive me to the interview and it took me TWO AND A HALF hours to take transit home. That includes bus travel time as well as time spent waiting for buses. I have also biked that route before and it takes about 25-30 minutes one-way.
The North American approach (because Canada is guilty too) to transit is to just throw a bunch of busses at the problem and act like they've "solved traffic". Meanwhile those buses are noisy, stinky, often unsafe things which spend most of their time stuck in traffic and are almost always late, if they even arrive at all. Most of the bus routes in my city stop at midnight so if you were out at the bar for the night and needed a way to get home then you better have funds for a cab or Uber or you're going to be stranded. (something something car-centric cities encourage drunk driving deaths somethingsomething)
Depending on the distance you need to travel - it's often faster to just walk. That's right, we have created a method of transportation that is actually slower than walking. And all the while our city planners, officials, and politicians pat themselves on the back for their "commitments to public transit".
And don't even get me started on how the war on unhoused people has lead to almost all bus stops being uncovered and with no seating. Raining? Fuck you! Snowing? Fuck you! 35c+ outside? Fuck you! Disabilities? Fuck you! What few covered stops I have seen usually have glass roofs so the sun still cooks you under them.
Maybe more people would use this method of transportation if it literally wasn't intentionally made to be as miserable and useless as possible.
The North American approach (because Canada is guilty too) to transit is to just throw a bunch of busses at the problem and act like they’ve “solved traffic”.
Nobody thinks they're "solving traffic". In most of North America, buses are seen as transportation for poor people. Cities feel like they need to supply them because poor people need to get to their jobs, but it doesn't have to be a good solution.
In Switzerland where they actually do try to solve traffic with buses, those buses have their own dedicated lanes, their own stop lights, etc. Plenty of rich people still drive because it's a status symbol or something, but buses, trams and trains are the fastest way to get from A to B. Cars are forced to yield to bus traffic. The result is that buses are fast and predictable, so everybody's happy to use them, which means they get increased investment, which leads to even better bus service, so even more people use them, etc.
My entire company of 150 people here in Switzerland in Zürich has 11 parking spaces, one is reserved for the CEO, who doesn't even use it often, three are rented by other C-suite members, five are for visitors or the occasional internal reservation, and two hold our bike racks.
But you really have to be masocistic to even want to drive in Zürich during the commuting times. Right in front of our office there is an train station for a local train line right under the river, and on the side of our block there is a tram station. Or you can walk to the main station in 10 minutes. I usually bike home though, it's half an hour and at least somewhat counteracts my sedentary lifestyle.
I very seriously tried to be a no car household, I got to one car and I just walked a mile to work, rain or shine.
But my wife was a 6 minute drive from work, but due to criscrossing highways it was entirely unwalkable and like a 40 minute bus ride.
Not too far from me there's a family with three kids in the school literally across the street from their house. They take the bus to school. Literally directly across the street.
Why? Some kid got killed there back in the 1980s. And instead of making it safe for children to walk to school they have them take the bus to cross the street.
Why? Because that street is a state route, and doing anything to calm traffic is anathema to it being a "highway."
I'm in a similar boat. 45m drive by car. 2h using PT. Including a 30 minute walk for the last bit to my office. This doesn't include waiting for busses or trains.
Realistically it'd be 2.5h without delays. And that's just one way. After that I'm expected to work for 8h and do it again.
So if i leave at 7am, +5h+8h +30minute lunch break I'd be home by ...8.30pm?
And that is hoping the connections line up after work... Cycling isn't really an option as there's no shower in the workplace. And knowing corps I'm pretty sure they won't appreciate people charging their electric bike battery in the office for free.
RIP work-life balance using PT. And I already feel like it's shit.
Though I do try to use the train when I can. Even though it ain't cheap either...
I was excited because I thought the bike path extension construction was going through, federal funding had been secured. I’d have been able to bike my kid over to daycare in a year. Well I guess the time to start building ran out and the funding expired. I don’t precisely know why, but I heard a council member was being petty. I’m so very disappointed In addition, that daycare closed down as well, so moot I guess
I'm guessing those red areas in Alaska are literally only because there are no roads.
That, or those people live in the place they work, or else only a few minutes away.
I think you nailed it. The majority of the northern portion of alaska is going to be oil/gas workers, lumberjacks, and perhaps researchers and native tribes. All of those probably have company barracks, cabins, or if there is a 'town' it's going to be a few hundred yards wide. For the towns, it's due to the winter, when you almost need to be close to other people in case something goes wrong, because significant help is a long way away in distance and time.
Or people
The US needs so, so, so much reform. Especially regarding public transit. In most parts of the nation anything that isn't a car stuck in traffic is for poor people who are also disregarded across volumes of needs issues.
We're falling back to where we were in the great depression, and it still seems nothing short of violence and bloodshed will stop our ownership class from exploiting the rest of us.
Are there similar maps available for other countries? Would be really intereseting to see
(source)
Not a map, but at least some more data from some other countries. The own car is unfortunately the most used mode of transport for commuting in every surveyed country, but the US seem to be especially far behind when it comes to alternatives.
They mixed taxi and ride sharing with walking in that statistic. For the purposes of car usage, it's not really helpful. That's still one car for one person, on the road for the amount of time that person is commuting (i.e. it doesn't park, it goes and picks up another commuter)
Moreover, difference in land mass and population density matters when looking at this from a national perspective. United States has significantly more rural space than Germany. The map posted is kind of pointless because it's only showing the most used form of transportation in each county, and that will always be cars with extreme outliers like New York City, no matter how much we invest in public transportation.
What they're using is Bumblefunk County Oklahoma to get from their little town of 2,000 people to the factory 20 minutes away in some industrial park between Nowheresville and Chickentowm isn't really relevant to the discussion. Public transportation is only really viable in dense areas, but everyone else in the country is going to still drive because they've got distance to cover or irregular routes. Even if we expanded rail across the country, people in those counties would still need to drive to the station.
I think this map would really benefit if the colors would be slightly adapted to show the percentage. In some regions, 50% commute by car, in other regions maybe 90% - and both are green.
It really highlights the fact that most of us (also in europe) depend on our cars to make a living.
Why is "motorcycle" in a different category than "Drive Alone"?
Climate impact is significantly less for motorcycle riders, that's the only mitigation I can think of.
One, they are much better on gas use. So less energy in general to move them.
Two, they are much lighter, which as we are discovering with electric vehicles, matters a great deal in how horrible the tire wear is (and remember that 28% of microplastics in the environment come from car tire degradation alone!).
Three, for traffic purposes, they are much, much better. They are smaller, so recall that picture that floats around of how much space 100 passengers takes up. They aren't near the train/bus level, but are closer to the bicycle portion of the picture than the cars. It becomes even better if they are scooters compared to motorcycles (scooters are generally even lighter and have smaller engines with better gas usage). I always hear the stat thrown around that if 25% of individuals switched to motorcycles, modern traffic jams in cities (in America, I guess, where I hear it uttered) would nearly disappear.
Did San Francisco sink into the bay? It looks like the map didn't include it, shame since that's probably the only place outside NYC that may be a different color.
EDIT:
Looks like someone else noticed it to and did a close up on the original. It shows SF is public transit and also shows that dc is missing on this map as well and also is more public transit then driving, so not just New York. You can also see it by borough in NY and Staten Island is cars but Hudson county NJ is public transit too.
This is why we Americans may be happy to hang out and chat on /c/fuckcars, and try to vote for sane transportation policies, but then also be like lol no I can’t actually get rid of my car.
Every big American city you’ve ever heard of is solid “car” except for the heart of New York. Now just imagine what it’s like for the folks in rural areas or even in the suburbs of medium cities.
This is a pretty sparsely populated country on average, and it’s all designed assuming everybody is in a car. Sidewalks and bike lanes get sprinkled around where there’s room and desire for them.
i like how alaska is included in this like the majority of it is populated lmao.
of course it's only "walkable" you have to hike over mountains and through forests to see it
I assume carpooling would be blue? I'm surprised that is hidden under "other means"
I'm all for a significant reduction in vehicles commonly on the road. Apart from a monumental restructuring of the entirety of every major infrastructure in the United States, how would we go about effectively reducing the number of cars that are daily drivers?
Make public transit a viable alternative.
My commute is 45 minutes by car, over 2 hours by public transit. We need massive investment into public transportation. More buses, more trains.
And, I'll get crucified by this I'm sure, but it's true: bicycle infrastructure is nice but a far far secondary goal. When we prioritize cycling over buses and trains, all we're doing is supporting upper middle class office workers and work-from-home recreational cyclists. It's not a sea change. It doesn't move the needle. Taking away a car lane to make a dedicated bus lane moves the needle. Taking away a car lane to make a bike lane does not, unless mass transit is already a viable option.
Wait what? Don't people use the train in NY?
Honest question. Does everyone in this instance live in a major city?
A large majority of the United States lives in a city or urban center.
Most people live in cities.
What about Mackinac Island?
It's funny that it's both visible and wrong
USA should play a bit of OpenTTD or other public transit simulators on their country map to get some ideas ^^
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