Why USA has so many cars per 1000 population?

[CincyBearcats]

Originally Posted by BOSDAN

America is a large country as far as land size goes. You also need to remember there are a ton of American cities that have massive sprawl over a large area of land and either have no transit, or very poor transit. I am talking cities like Houston, Dallas, Orlando, Miami, Denver, Phoenix, Charlotte, Raleigh/Durham, Austin, Los Angeles. These cities are also some of the main ones that prefer to simply widen their highways, or add more of them instead of investing in transit options.

In those cities car is king. You do have a good number of cities that have more urbanized, denser populated areas that have good transit options. Cities like Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. are examples.

I went to Detroit for the first time last year, and ended up making the trip up there four times total as of recently last month. There is something very intriguing about a city that has lost so much, has so much decay, but still has some pretty awesome bones. I quoted you because you can add Detroit to the list of cities with no rail. I rode the People Mover which is in downtown, and that probably was the biggest joke of PT I can think of. I guess I was shocked. I have friends down here in Cincinnati that are originally from Detroit (Livonia, Michigan), and I went up expecting to park the car and take rail anywhere in the city. I really knew nothing about Detroit besides its downfall. Needless to say, Detroit sprawls very far, the suburbs want nothing to do with the city, and rail does not exist.

[LtBk]

Originally Posted by hudkina

Not at all. A cell phone gives a person the freedom to communicate whenever and wherever he chooses. A car gives a person the freedom to travel whenever and wherever he chooses.

Except that mass transit still exists(unlike pay phones), and in much better shape than 50-60 years ago.

[hudkina]

Originally Posted by LtBk

Except that mass transit still exists(unlike pay phones), and in much better shape than 50-60 years ago.

Whether one exists or not anymore is irrelevant. All that matters is that two options represent complete independence and two options do not.

[Nexis]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

LA is investing 40 Billion into our growing Transit system with 2 lines currently under construction (another starting in June) and with a rail ridership soon to be over 400,000 daily boardings.

Its actually over a million , if you include buses and for a car society like LA thats very good...

[Nexis]

As for the Northeastern Megapolis , we have some of the best PT in the Nation. Buses and Rail connect most of the cities with smaller towns and by 2030 every Capital and City above 100,000 should have a Rail line running through it. Ridership is currently 20.5 Million with 14 Million being in the NYC region and the fastest growing PT usage is in the DC region which grew to 1.8 Million Daily users in 10 years... By 2030 there expecting at least 40 Million people a day will use Mass Transit out of 65 Million people....including 100,000 Intercity Travels.... Were also building up a Bike lane network in both the Suburb and Urban areas , already 500,000 bike to work....were getting there slowly.

[bayviews]

Originally Posted by CincyBearcats

I went to Detroit for the first time last year, and ended up making the trip up there four times total as of recently last month. There is something very intriguing about a city that has lost so much, has so much decay, but still has some pretty awesome bones.

Yeah. For one, Detroit still has a large stock of solid brick housing that's still in pretty good condition. For another, its managed to retain a large share of it's downtown buildings & skyscrapers, rather than tearing them down. Even though many are vacant or largely so.

By contrast Buffalo a smaller city, albeit with similar de-population, is stuck with a heavily wooden housing stock that has aged poorly. While Buffalo's contracters have demolished a large share of downtown for ever more parking space.

[hudkina]

Detroit had a lot of wood-framed housing, but that was basically the first to go. Most of the supposed "prairies" are where you would have found the wood-framed housing. While I bet a majority of the city is now brick-sided, that's only because the wooden houses are mostly gone. If you go out into the inner-ring suburbs, you'll find probably hundreds of thousands of brick homes built primarily in the 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's.

[VelesHomais]

Originally Posted by ducus

I always wondered why US has so many cars per 1000pop. (over 800)? Why are you guys so comfortable that almost every family memeber or citizen must have car?
Why didn't you encouraged the public transportation like other countries from Europe? The biggest US cities have subway, railways and public transportation so why the car has risen so much in your eyes?
I undestodd that practically it's a shame in USA not to have a car, even the emigrants first thing they do when arrive in USA is to look for a car.

Because most people in the U.S. don't live in large cities, they live in suburbs:

[hudkina]

Actually most people in the U.S. live in cities and their more urbanized suburbs. While there are plenty of people in the lower-density outer suburbs as well as in rural areas, most people live in areas like this:

image hosted on flickr

[I-275westcoastfl]

Maybe up north but the rest of the country lives in the awful sprawl as pictured in this thread. I personally am a car person but I would love to commute and be able to take the train to go out too. Then I could own one nice car and only use it for fun and when I want to instead of having to worry and deal with idiot drivers and extra wear and tear from more driving. One unfortunate thing is most cities with good mass transit systems and walkable neighborhoods are expensive to live in.

[tvdxer]

Originally Posted by ducus

You guys had once upon a time in the early 1900's trams in cities such NYC, but you renounced to them, god knows why? Only to fill the pockets of car manufacturers, untill the phenomenon has grew so much that nowadays, even if you'd want to introduce trams in the city, you could'n.
You're the only country who spoiled their public transport (especially the electric one) in favor of personal car. In Europe that didn't happened, all major capitals have public transport by tram, trolley or bus.

I think the car dependency of the U.S. is the result of several factors.

The U.S. was well ahead of most of (if not all of) Europe in income and standard of living before WWII, and we dominated industry in the years following the war. This allowed the middle and working classes and farmers - the "normal Joe" - to afford cars beginning in about the 1920's, while the car was the reserve of the rich in Europe at that time. By the post-WWII years, most American households had at least one vehicle, and cities were planned accordingly. Also remember that urban pollution was much worse then, and racial tensions, etc. made people WANT to leave the cities for a house on a nice plot of land in the suburbs. By the time women entered the workplace in the 1960s, two cars became obligatory for each household. Public transportation was the domain of the poor, and you can not make much money off poor people.

Although many Americans like the idea of "public transportation", in practice they do not utilize it nor wish to do so. Even in the rare city where public transportation is efficient, most Americans, if given a choice, would probably choose driving to their destinations over public transportation or walking or biking.

Also, you have to factor in our geography (we have much more space to build land-intensive development on while preserving our agricultural surpluses) and perhaps culture (Americans are more individualistic than most Europeans, and probably more demanding of personal space, which a vehicle gives).

[weava]

because owning a car is awesome. I walked to work for 3 years and still loved owning a car so I could go anywhere I wanted when I wanted on weekends. Public transportation goes very few places and only certain times of the day.
I considered taking a bus to the airport recently until I looked at the schedules, it would have taken over an hour to get there even though it only takes 10 minutes by car.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by weava

Public transportation goes very few places and only certain times of the day.

In a nutshell, this is it. There are very few places in the US where public transit infrastructure is dense enough and frequent enough to make it more appealing than a car. And even in these few select places, transit is localized: you still need a car if you want to leave the area. The only intercity rail worth mentioning in the US - Acela - is laughable by OECD standards and still only takes you from one central Northeastern city to the next.

The US' size and comparatively small amount of geographic barriers will always work against the type of dense transit network that makes living without a car so easy in other places. I've lived in Japan for over a decade and will never consider buying a car, despite the fact that I could easily afford one - there's just no reason to do it. The train network here is so dense and so frequent that I could walk 2 minutes from my condo to the nearest subway station and take trains to essentially any rural town on any of the four major islands. It's like having Acelas that go from any Point A to any Point B in the country, it's nuts.

Japan is geographically about 11% smaller than California, but 73% of that land is uninhabitable mountains. That means there are about 127 million people living in just 39,500 sq miles of land, which I believe is about the same size as the Los Angeles CSA. Needless to say, it's a lot easier to build and support a national rail network when you've got a habitable land population density of about 3,200 pp sq mile!

[milquetoast]

According to the Census, 80.7% of Americans are living in urban areas,

like the one below (Beverly Hills).

.

[Alwaysmyway]

Originally Posted by aaabbbccc

We are very rich compared to the world if you makes the minimum wage working 40 hours a week and you have food / clothes a car and a very simple studio apt , you are at least upper middle class compared to the entire world

.

I don't agree with that,it is an exageration.

[hudkina]

The middle class is "middle class" regardless of where in the world they are located. Some countries just happen to have more "middle class" residents than others.

[WeimieLvr]

Originally Posted by ducus

You guys had once upon a time in the early 1900's trams in cities such NYC, but you renounced to them, god knows why? Only to fill the pockets of car manufacturers, untill the phenomenon has grew so much that nowadays, even if you'd want to introduce trams in the city, you could'n.
You're the only country who spoiled their public transport (especially the electric one) in favor of personal car. In Europe that didn't happened, all major capitals have public transport by tram, trolley or bus.

edit

[WeimieLvr]

Originally Posted by ducus

You guys had once upon a time in the early 1900's trams in cities such NYC, but you renounced to them, god knows why? Only to fill the pockets of car manufacturers, untill the phenomenon has grew so much that nowadays, even if you'd want to introduce trams in the city, you could'n.
You're the only country who spoiled their public transport (especially the electric one) in favor of personal car. In Europe that didn't happened, all major capitals have public transport by tram, trolley or bus.

What do you want as an answer other than "Europe is so much more awesome than the U.S."? We like to drive. Get over it and worry about your own problems, of which there is a multitude.

[Jennifat]

A better way to have replied to that would be to just acknowledge that our planners and greedy auto industrialists of the mid-20th century did us an enormous disservice by ripping out our public transportation infrastructure, and that we're unfortunately paying for it now.

Ducus is just a troll looking for an easy shot. Most people overseas are well-aware of why the US is in the public transportation situation it's in, and why it's an uphill battle trying to correct our past mistakes. Not sure why it's necessary for him to point out and criticize us for choices our grandparents made.

[RaiderATO]

Originally Posted by Jennifat

A better way to have replied to that would be to just acknowledge that our planners and greedy auto industrialists of the mid-20th century did us an enormous disservice by ripping out our public transportation infrastructure, and that we're unfortunately paying for it now.

Ducus is just a troll looking for an easy shot. Most people overseas are well-aware of why the US is in the public transportation situation it's in, and why it's an uphill battle trying to correct our past mistakes. Not sure why it's necessary for him to point out and criticize us for choices our grandparents made.

You seem so positive that they were mistakes...

Currently, no transit system in the US can properly support itself, other than NYC. You might cite the lack of transit infrastructure, and how it led to sprawl, but one can counter with "we've got a lot of land, people were going to spread out into it no matter what" (which is what people did).

We're not as dense as europe. THAT's the answer to the OP. We need to travel farther distances, and on fewer common routes than Europe. That's not even TOUCHING the innate psychological differences between Americans and Europeans.