Ironic that the people making more money walk, (which historically has been what poor people do). And the current poorer people use a privately owned transport vehicle. That would not be common sense to an American living more than 100 years ago. :)

It's not common sense today either. I don't think many people actually understand how expensive driving a car is. These expenses are both individual (maintenance, gas, insurance, tolls, tickets, etc.) and societal (greenhouse gas emissions, crashes, infrastructure like roads, bridges, and interstate exchanges, inefficient land use from parking, etc.)

I'm confident in the future we'll look back at how most Americans live today, and cringe at the massive inefficiency.

There is another "expense" in driving cars - having to expend mental load on driving and not being able to focus 100% on something else during commute time.

Exactly one year ago, we tried an experiment and moved to Arlington VA, just outside Washington DC. We live ~5km from my office and i switch it up between walking, metro, and cycling with a big bias towards walking. Door-to-door, 95% of the route is dedicated trail so there is no mental load of avoiding traffic. I churn thru audiobooks, catch-up conversations with friends, and sometimes just plain uninterrupted thinking. This is the best gift given i've given myself for a long, long time. Summertime walks are so pleasurable that I look forward to going to work early in the day and coming back just as the sun subsides.

This is all awesome enough that I'm dreading the next job in SF/SV/NYC just because of commute alone.

If you are curious, this is the typical (non-winter) walk: https://www.instagram.com/p/BhCXV4eDvSZ/?utm_source=ig_web_c...

Agree. These days not owning a car can be either a sign of being extremely poor, or somewhat privileged.

I think it's along the lines of people with more money tend to live closer to downtown which means they are more likely to live in a walkable distance to work.

You mean places like Silucon Valley where people walk to work? A huge number of the good professional urban area jobs are not actually in the cities. And for those which are many mid-career and older workers live in suburbs or even further out.

Not sure why you are getting downvotes, like half of the map doesn't ever appear on any of the lists, implying that half of NY state, for example, simply don't work.

Their maps use percentage (rather than absolute numbers) of people in the area commuting with a given transportation mode. So it is a good usage of these maps imo.

It still doesn't provide any useful info. 70% of the map has no data, and it literally only shows urban vs. suburban vs. rural areas on every map.

70% of the map is farm land. They drive a tractor to work, or they drive a semi load of food to town. In both cases moving the driver is not the goal, just a side effect of autonomous vehicles not being ready yet.

I mean, it’s a map of commuting, so what else would it show?

My point is a map seems like a poor choice for the data. If half of your map is empty, and you’re really only showing a grouping of 3 categories, maybe use a graph or something else.

Yeah that’s fair, thanks for clarifying.

It would be interesting to show ratios on the maps.