this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
346 points (98.9% liked)

Fuck Cars

14345 readers
964 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 87Six@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I think that's inflated. Many will say they depend on it without even having tried the local public transport, if available.

[–] Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 57 minutes ago

It's greatly inflated by virtue of doing it by county instead, mingling major transit routes with fully rural areas.

But even that aside I strongly agree. Cook county would be under 50 if people were more willing to take the train

[–] pipi1234@lemmy.world 10 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Haha, greatest country in the world my arse!

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 hours ago

There are a lot of reason why we're not, but excessive car use is one of the lesser reasons!

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

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)

[–] Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 4 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

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?

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 hours ago

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)

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

Staten’s a bunch of republicans. They aren’t gonna pay for anything that lets the rabble in.

[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 5 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Viridis always brings peace to the soul

[–] SupahRevs@lemmy.world 12 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Are there maps like this for other part of the world? I'd imagine Europe has a much lower rate of car commuting.

[–] Obi@sopuli.xyz 12 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

In comparison to the US yeah probably but still overall pretty high would be my assumption.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

I found this picture showing the whole world.

[–] some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

That is an abomination of data vis, good god

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 2 points 36 minutes ago (1 children)

Yes it takes some time to decode, but it has lots of info.

It would be nice to somehow compare distances, time and population density as well.

Americans drive a lot, but they don't actually drive very far for work, whereas in Europe it's rather common to work in a different city than where you live. Asia has the highest population density and this benefits them both in finding local work and building public transport.

[–] some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 2 points 22 minutes ago* (last edited 15 minutes ago)

Yeah, I'm in the US Northeast. My commute is only 20 minutes and is 95% on the highway/motorway between cities here. This goes for pretty much everyone here with an office job. it just varies of course how far away you have to drive to get on/off.

We mostly do it in the same direction (toward the biggest city in the morning and back to the 'burbs in the evening) and most of us do this at roughly the same time each day.

If only there were a way to link our cars up together? Maybe even make them bigger to accommodate more passengers and share costs? Oh and we could put them on some sort of low-friction guided track!

.... hey, wait a second!

[–] damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world 59 points 21 hours ago (10 children)

What’s going on in that one area in Montana?

[–] hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zone 26 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

It's only bad if misinterpreted.

[–] EddoWagt@feddit.nl 7 points 15 hours ago

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

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] teuniac_@lemmy.world 55 points 20 hours ago

I'm wondering that too. Just a guess, low population density with lots of farmers 'working from home' since they live on their farm.

[–] IndridCold@lemmy.ca 5 points 14 hours ago

What’s going on in that one area in Montana?

Nothing.

I drove though there once. Hours of seeing nothing but road.

[–] Rooster326@programming.dev 27 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

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

[–] titanicx@lemmy.zip 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I mean that's not really true. Most of the larger towns do have a bus system.

[–] Cenzorrll@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (4 children)

The only town I saw in that area in my 5 second search is Jordan, with a population of ~~357~~ 356.

Edit: corrected population, my bad

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 10 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 20 hours ago

Horses, atvs.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] GraniteM@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Conclusion: the Gulf Coast makes Americans crave cars.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 6 points 12 hours ago

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.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 6 points 14 hours ago

A living nightmare

[–] Rooster326@programming.dev 28 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (14 children)

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.

[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 9 points 19 hours ago

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.

load more comments (13 replies)
[–] arrow74@lemmy.zip 8 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (3 children)

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.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Toto@lemmy.world 30 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Swear to god, every heat map of the US highlights how much of a shit hole the Mississippi delta must be.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 11 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 11 points 20 hours ago

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

load more comments
view more: next ›