What’s going on in that one area in Montana?
Everyone works and lives on the same farm?
I’m wondering that too. Just a guess, low population density with lots of farmers ‘working from home’ since they live on their farm.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I feel you missed the start of this thread. People weren’t talking about the entire US, or even all of Montana. It was about that specific area that seems to have way lower car usage, in Montana.
The person I responded to was specifically saying you’re not getting anywhere in Montana without a car. And so I specifically responded with that and yeah I did mess up the first part of my comment by responding back about all of the United States however I did change it and state that even in Montana you can take the transit system.
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.
Horses, atvs.
What’s going on in that one area in Montana?
Nothing.
I drove though there once. Hours of seeing nothing but road.
Also, note the scale. It starts at 50% reliance.
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
I’d expect it’s pretty lightly populated at least, as that generally makes it easier to stand out in statistics.
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.
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.
Not everybody lives in the US and in a lot of countries being able to go to work without a car is normal.
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.
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!
I can see how car dependency feels like a lesser issue, but car dependency destroys communities and even our shared humanity to some extent which in turn gives way to much larger problems
I think that’s inflated. Many will say they depend on it without even having tried the local public transport, if available.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Viridis always brings peace to the soul
This is bonkers.
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
I knew it was bad,but this really shows some perspective. Holy shit dudes.
Thanks for the reminder that suicide is a preferable alternative to living in the USA.
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.
