Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Car Dependence

FHWA Gleefully Reports That Driving Is Rising Again

By Angie Schmitt | Aug 21, 2015 | 12 Comments

After flatlining for nearly a decade, the mileage driven by Americans is rising once again. That means more traffic overwhelming city streets, slowing down buses, and spewing pollutants into the air. But to the Federal Highway Administration, it’s a development to report with barely contained glee. This June, Americans drove 8.7 billion more miles than last June, […]

Cities Lead the Way as U.S. Car Commuting Takes Historic Downturn

By Angie Schmitt | Aug 17, 2015 | 14 Comments

The decline is small in number, but in the scheme of things, it’s huge: New census data [PDF] out last week show car commuting among Americans is finally, after decades of growth, starting to reverse itself. Driving to work is still the predominant mode to a depressing extent. Almost nine in 10 Americans get to work by […]

Americans Aren’t as Dependent on Cars as You Might Think

By Angie Schmitt | Nov 7, 2014 | 10 Comments

Americans drive a lot. About 90 percent live in a household with a car. Among adults, 89 percent are licensed to drive. Overwhelmingly, most people get to work by driving alone. But those statistics obscure some important nuances. A new study by Ralph Buehler and Andrea Hamre in the journal Transportation looks at Americans who are “multi-modal” […]

Great Cities Don’t Have Much Traffic, But They Do Have Congestion

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 31, 2014 | 17 Comments

Here’s a great visualization of what cities get out of the billions of dollars spent on highways and road expansion: more traffic. Justin Swan at City Clock made this chart showing the relationship between congestion levels, as measured by TomTom, and car use. (Yes, it has no X axis — here’s Swan’s explanation of how to read […]

Confirmed: Sprawl and Bad Transit Increase Unemployment

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 30, 2014 | 5 Comments

Since the 1960s and the earliest days of job sprawl, the theory of “spatial mismatch” — that low-income communities experience higher unemployment because they are isolated from employment centers — has shaped the way people think about urban form and social equity. But it’s also been challenged. The research supporting spatial mismatch has suffered from some nagging […]

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