I don't think there is such a great divide. The greater divide is between people who own a car (or cars) and who do not, however, seems for USA it is a divide between New York City and the rest of the country.<p>Also, I can comment on one thing I personally enjoy a lot – walking. I lived in many European cities, and recently moved to USA, so I can comment on it. To be able to walk, you need to live close enough to your work / some places of interest (like ~3–4 km is a threshold usually), the path should be interesting and beautiful.<p>USA fails miserably at "interesting and beautiful" part. Grid system makes it super boring, a lot of buildings are just a relatively small building and huge parking space around. There are no parks in between, no yards – moreover, you can bump into unsafe places!<p>Architecture (in downtowns) is straight up horrible (although it is subjective). So, after couple of walks I have no desire altogether to walk around anymore – it is dirty, ugly, in some places overcrowded (since everybody works at the same spot in the downtown and time, essentially).
Warning: speculation. Suppose that a city’s value and economy descend in large part from connectivity.<p>A transit system is extremely useful at a few very specific points, but your connectedness drops off sharply as you get even a few blocks away from it, due to the extreme inefficiency of walking or (worse) waiting for a connecting bus.<p>A road network’s utility is broad and diffuse, with gentle gradients of utility from place to place, as an extra few miles means little. Two points have to be very far apart indeed before they are noticeable different in terms of access/connectedness.<p>So it makes complete sense to me that transit-oriented cities should be higher-maximum-value, higher-variance, while car oriented cities should be lower—maximum-value but much more equal. Exactly what the article finds.
> <i>We are cleaving into two nations—one where daily life revolves around the car, and the other where the car is receding in favor of walking, biking, and transit.</i><p>Walking, biking, and transit are not actually the same thing, except that they are "not driving". So it's more accurate to say that there are two kinds of commuters, those that take cars and those that don't. There's absolutely nothing new about this though. It's likely true that more people are not driving these days, but that's got more to do with the fact that more of us are living in large cities where it's simply not possible for everyone to drive, and where transit is more practical because of the density.<p>This notion that at some point in the future there will not be people commuting in cars is just dumb, and kind of tiresome. There's a lot of noise being generated by people who think driving a car is flat out immoral, and I'd contend this isn't a moral issue it's just a practical one, and I really wish it were treated this way.
Would be really interesting to see this done on a map of Europe. You'd think there's a lot more public transit used.<p>As a visitor to the US, the main thing that strikes me is always the vast amount of car related space there. Wider roads, massive car parks. Places with no sidewalk!<p>And I'm also surprised at the two places I thought would have more public transport usage. Really, only 30% of NYC? I guess it's sparse outside Manhattan? SF I kinda understand because what I saw of the underground looked way too small for a city of several million.
>> "a smaller-than-average share of workers drives to work alone in more compact college towns"<p>We all talk about trying to get people our of their cars, but imho isn't all about cities or even transport systems. Imho it is about jobs. The great divide is between those who work in places that support alternative to private vehicles and those that do not.<p>If your employer wants you to work changing hours on short notice, public transport doesn't work. Asking someone to show up an hour earlier than normal is difficult if that means they won't have a bus/train available. I want to see studies comparing various sectors. I'd bet good money that those working government and/or education jobs (the college towns in the above quote) are less likely to drive cars to work. And conversely, those who work private sector jobs (swing shifts, late hours, on-call etc) are more likely to drive cars.<p>Personally, I now work in a government job (military) with a few hundred people in one building. Lots of people do bike/walk/run to work. We have bus stop right in front of our base, but nobody uses it. It just isn't reliable. Our bosses don't want to hear that we are late because the bus was stuck in traffic. We also sometimes have to work strange hours/shifts. Sometimes our day ends "whenever it ends". 2000 quickly becomes 0300. Will the bus get me home at a random hour and with enough time to sleep before the morning? My car/bike/feet sure will.
I don't understand why Americans love their cars so much.<p>I grew up in Oklahoma and you pretty much have to have a car. Huge amount of land, not many people. Virtually no public transportation.<p>I moved to the Bay Area back in 2000 and car-pooled for exactly one year of that time and then took BART the other 16 years before moving to Chicago. Even though I like driving I really hate traffic. Why would I sit in traffic when I can read/sleep/work/etc. It was cheaper as well. I wouldn't even talk about a different job unless they were within reasonable distance to a BART station.<p>I moved to Chicago recently and now take Metra (commuter train) and then walk 15 minutes. It's a little sucky in winter (today was 16 F, Friday is expected to be -6 F in the morning - dress in layers and have warm boots). Even then, I wouldn't drive. The cost, the time, the potential for accidents just aren't worth it to me.<p>I get why people drive in rural areas. You pretty much have to. But I don't know why folks don't push for mass transit more in cities. Cars are so expensive and monopolize your entire time getting to/from somewhere. I tried car pooling and really didn't like it since I'm essentially trapped with the same people every day. Mass transit can be crowded but I can still read or listen to audio books if I don't have a seat. But cars are ingrained in so much of the culture here plus I think a lot of people won't admit it but just don't like being around other people.
I find this interesting. Of my tech coworkers and friends in Seattle, its 50/50 on car ownership, but the vast majority do not commute to work by car. I personally drive, but that is due to circumstance where public transit is inconvenient for me and I can easily afford to drive and park downtown, saving me 30-45 min both directions. In my view, driving a car becomes much more necessary once you exit the 20-something tech stage of life and actually have a family to support and move around.<p>Also, unpopular opinion, public transit is only worthwhile for commuters. Shared uber/lyft is more efficient in pretty much all other situations, except for people wealthy enough to live in easy transit corridors. Subsidizing ride share infrastructure via uber/lyft would benefit a much broader class of people than investments in cute but pointless public transit like our Seattle streetcar.
I'm not sure why but the transit system in my city seems to keep making decisions and changes that benefit people making short trips within the central areas while detrimenting those that use it to commute outwards to work. I'm not sure the reasoning for this. But every time the schedules or fares change it always becomes more difficult, takes longer and costs more to travel to outer areas.
I moved from the long island suburbs to New York City, and it's very interesting taking the subway to work instead of driving. It really feels like the subway people and the drivers are living in two separate countries. It's a totally different way of living, and I really enjoy it.
Most places in the US are just very spread out. It's too much area and too low density for trains and buses to cover. Simple as that.<p>When I lived in New York I could walk to the ferry and then walk to my designated skyscraper a short distance away. But in southern California or Fort Worth, the only place with significant density is downtown. The houses and malls are spread over large distances. Sure there are sidewalks and it is possible to walk to the closest mall or Walmart, but that may easily take 20 or 30 minutes, that is the only place you can walk to and you generally feel like you are taking your life in your hands crossing traffic.<p>You can theoretically live in a downtown area but for most places in the US it's too expensive for the average person to buy a home or even for most people to rent. And again there is a massive area around the downtown that you would not be able to go to without a car.<p>It just comes down to this: there is just so much land that people wanted to use all of it. So it is designed to sprawl out. Then people get used to having single family houses with big yards and the skyscrapers are far away and everyone needs a car.
It's weird, but I first noticed this when I went to Greece. It's kind of difficult to get around in Greece. They don't have a wide-ranging national train system like some other European countries. They have a bunch of regional bus lines to get you from area to area, and they may only run once or twice a day. That'll mostly just get you between major cities, and they take a while.<p>I also noticed how difficult it was to get from my SO's place in NJ farm country to a nearby big city. From Philadelphia, I have to take an Amtrak up to Newark (or a SEPTA regional line up to Trenton, and then an Amtrak/NJT to Newark), then another train to the closest NJT stop in NJ, and then bike a couple dozen miles. That's at least 4 hours, compared to 1.2 hours by car.<p>Nearby towns and cities have shuttle services between other cities/towns, but trying to get to Philadelphia with those would require 5 or 6 transfers, basically the entire day, if you can even time it right to do it in one day. Anyone who lives out in the boonies and wants to work a well-paying job in the city is going to need to commute hours by car, which is expensive both in transportation cost and in time.<p>Having a car is expensive, but anyone trying to improve their station in life will need one to get to a better job. And the time it takes to transport themselves takes them away from things like family/personal time, childcare, continuing education, or additional jobs. So transportation will definitely hold the country's economic development back (in terms of increased access to jobs that pay better), as long as most of the good jobs are located in hard-to-reach metropolises.<p>If you suggest a plan for people to ditch their car in exchange for better public transit, the response seems to be <i>"but I like my car!"</i>. Nobody wants to give up a convenience just to improve the economy.
Working my way through Alain Bertaud's <i>Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities</i>[1] at the moment and it's proving to be a really great resource for understanding this kind of thing and in the process marrying together a bunch of urban planning concepts and principles from economics. Also has some pretty great graphic design work on the charts and figures side of things and a nice layout wherein there are many small sections of 1-2 pages or less with condensed lessons.<p>Not halfway through yet, but I feel pretty comfortable recommending it if you're into the topic area of this article (urban mobility, how commutes+jobs shape urban areas, etc.).<p>[1] <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/order-without-design" rel="nofollow">https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/order-without-design</a>
More than 50% of commuters drive to work alone in NYC? That seems insane to me. I don't know or know of a single person that drives to work in NYC. Tolls and parking alone would eat around $10k per year, plus even if it was free the traffic seems to make it not worth it when compared to subways. Also, if you're willing to shell out the money to drive, why not just take a cab or uber at that point?<p>Is there some large subset of workers I'm not seeing that it would be more economic / convenient to drive into or around the city on a daily basis? (truck drivers / cab drivers / uber drivers don't count I wouldn't think?)
Interesting definition of "class" in the article. It tries to contrast the knowledge-based "creative class" with the "working class" when it reality both are primarily earning wages and salaries rather than dividends and capital gains.
Here is everything you need to know about public transit, commuting and car culture in America:<p><a href="https://www.ispot.tv/ad/wy2O/state-farm-backstory-truck-song-by-john-taylor" rel="nofollow">https://www.ispot.tv/ad/wy2O/state-farm-backstory-truck-song...</a>
I have never seen a train this empty during commute hours. An empty seat on each side of a person? Standing room only and packed like sardines is more realistic (and a needed density for economic viability of trains not subsidized by others).<p>BTW, cars are also a mode of "transit".
Why do people with car drive alone to work? There is a big chance that someone from your neighborhood is going at least in your direction. We practice co-driving in Europe all the time.
0.5% bike to work and 6% walk to work. Interesting that the difference is so large, you'd think that so many more people live withing short biking range vs walking range. I wonder what the stats are for other continents.
I know their job is to talk about cities and stuff. But what's the point?<p>The United States is the 4th largest country in the world and the third most populous.<p>Is it any wonder that we have a wide diversity of experiences?
If you want the base data <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/" rel="nofollow">https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/</a>
These maps don't show a dam thing and the analysis is super weak. Its common sense that people in cities make more money and are more likely to walk to work. Then workers in rural areas drive alone to work and make less money.<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/1138/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1138/</a>