People who say driving is freedom have never lived within walking distance of the amenities they need. You think driving to Costco/Walmart is convenient? I’ve left the house 5 minutes before the grocery store closes. When I want to make a recipe, I don’t check the fridge for what I have until literally right before I need to start making it because forgetting something adds at most 15 minutes to the prep time. I’ve never had to haul ten grocery bags from my car because I never need to buy that much at one time and then watch half of it go bad in the fridge. I can go get snacks when I’m high as a kite on weed without killing someone on the road. True freedom for me is never needing to drive or own a car.
Depends how you see it. I live in the countryside and would hate living in the city. Yet one does not both live in the countryside AND eat without a car when the closest grocery store is 30km away. We used to have a local grocery store that hardly had anything and which unsurprisingly went out if business.
In my case, driving IS freedom. It’s the freedom to go where I want when I want without having to rely on anyone else.
Do I miss having the grocery store across the street when I lived in the city? For sure, but I sure am glad I’m back in the countryside now.
An entire continent is missing.
More than one!
There are no buses in Antarctica, silly
0% cars, 0% public transport, 30% walking/biking, 30% swimming, 40% belly tobogganing
Also excluding Mexico for some reason.
Mexico is part of North America…
The North America stat is fine if you’re only talking about the US and Canada… but since they left Mexico out it’s not really accurate
I think they’re trying to tell a story about the way cities in the US and Canada are brutally malformed for moving people around in them. Mexico is much more like Central America in its modality, and so adding their stats in obscures the abnormalities that are the US and Canada.
Unless I’m missing something, there’s no mention of cities.
The closest grocery store for me is a 20 minute drive. Of course I drive. There aren’t too many buses running around the woods of northern New England.
I’m not saying that the numbers are not still pretty bad. Boston has way too many cars. New York did an awesome thing with congestion pricing. But sometimes public transport doesn’t make sense for the area.
I would like to see a graph that just shows major metropolitan areas. I’m sure the US still sucks but you can’t include households that are many miles from any store at all and use that to skew the numbers.
Also, why exclude Mexico and then call it North america. Why not call it Canada and the US? Why not label Canada and the US separately? These numbers are pushing an agenda. I’m not saying the agenda is wrong but this graph seems a bit dishonest.
You’re right, this graph isn’t specifically about cities; it’s just that cities are currently the biggest transit problems in the US.
I would like to see a graph that just shows major metropolitan areas.
The org that did this research also has a visualizer tool where you can compare different cities around the world, and you can see that even new York City has something like 65% of its population using personal cars. And it’s by far the most multimodal city in North America; Ithaca gets close, because they have a robust cycling culture, and there are more Canadian cities in the hunt than US cities, but it’s still unbelievably skewed in favor of personal cars. Which means that, even if you excluded all rural areas from this graph, North America would still be dramatically anomalous.
you can’t include households that are many miles from any store at all and use that to skew the numbers.
I think that the reason that the graph doesn’t exclude rural areas from its data is that the density of North America isn’t dramatically different from the density of Europe or Asia. Yes, the US is slightly less dense than the world average, but not excessively so; and there are plenty of countries in those other continents with lower density than the US or Canada. In fact, Canada is quite a bit less dense than the US, but it’s pulling North America’s multimodality up. So no, you can’t use it to skew the numbers–but I mean that in the sense that you’re unable to do it, it’s impossible, because it’s affecting the numbers worldwide in more or less the same way.
Also, why exclude Mexico and then call it North america. Why not call it Canada and the US? Why not label Canada and the US separately?
Better readability, is my guess. The only divisions in this infographic that really matter are the political ones, because those are the divisions that affect the data in a meaningful way. So cutting out Mexico is no more arbitrary than cutting out Canada would’ve been.
These numbers are pushing an agenda.
All numbers are pushing an agenda.
Ok, not all numbers, but there’s no real reason to gather demographic research data otherwise. We do censuses and polls and studies to figure out what to do as a society. That’s why we do that. The numbers are telling a story, and it’s not a false story: multimodality in the United States and Canada is dramatically lower than in other countries around the world. Cities in North America don’t serve their citizens as well because their citizens don’t have as many options for how they get around.
Sure, they could use this data to highlight how multimodal transportation in Eastern Europe is, but that’s just another way of pointing out how one-sided it is in North America. Or you could use it to show how dominant public transit is in East Asia, or biking in South Asia, but again, they would just be another way of showing how anemic it is in the US.
And when you’re an organization called “Environment International,” that’s the story you’re trying to tell. They’re just slicing it up in a way that makes the story clearest.
I’m not saying the agenda is wrong but this graph seems a bit dishonest.
It’s not dishonest. It’s being pretty up-front about showing a huge disparity, and it’s not trying to hide the fact that they’re cutting out Mexico to show that there’s a serious problem in the US and Canada. It’s like if you took a photo of a purse-snatching in progress, and you cropped in to show the crime occurring. No one would accuse you of lying because you cropped out the kid getting a treat from the ice cream truck on the right-hand side of the frame; you just made it more clear what you were trying to show with that photograph.
How did they get an average of 51% for cars, when all but one bar is below that?
weighted averages.
Through extremely heavy use of cars in Africa of course.
Everyone knows that in Africa people get around in cars 24/7 100%.
Hello! Australia is a thing! We get around just as much as everyone else does, thank you very much! I’ve got the emu feathers to prove it!
I’m no mapologist, but I believe Austria is included in one of the Europe sections.
I didn’t know Hitler was from the land down under
You thought he’d be from Denmark like Hamlet?
he is strange and makes me nervous. i’m not eating his breakfast tho
Crickey mate, put another undesirable on the barby?
They’re called prawns. Hoges only said ‘shrimp’ at the time because the tourism board figured Americans wouldn’t know what prawns were. But, by God, you come here, you speak our language, dammit! Don’t make me get the man from Ironbark!
Australia
Austria
lmao
charts without New Zealand
So Africa/Mexico/Oceania must have a very high proportion of drivers to skew the world average, as from the graph alone there’s no way the average is 51%
Especially the area where China/India are in the 20% area and are 10x bigger in population than N-America
What about Africa ?
Now do urban, suburban, exurban, rural splits.
Me: stays in basement
I think the Mexico data is really off, but at the same time I have seen several cities (like Culiacan, Mexicali, and Guadalajara) where the price for public transport has gone way up while making the service quality worse (fewer buses, fewer routes, no AC on summer)
so it would not surprise me if usage keeps going down over time
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Weird to exclude mexico
Brother you realize you could have more than one sentence per comment right?
Why many when few do trick?
Did you see how many comments the top level commenter put out?
Link to article?
Is biking including motorcycles?
