New York City Traffic vs Los Angeles Traffic

[That_One_Guy]

Originally Posted by WizardOfRadical

There is plenty of need to drive in NYC. The entire city does not function like Manhattan, and there is a crap tone of traffic there too.Not sure why people like to pretend NYC has Paris level transit.

No, not really at all. I'm guessing you probably haven't spent a lot of time here in NYC. In some parts there are, like Staten Island or Eastern Queens, but in most of Brooklyn, The Bronx, and a good portion of Queens, walking + subway is the easiest and by far most common way for people to get around.

Car ownership per household is under 50% City-wide, as in all 5 boroughs (not just Manhattan). Again, that's the majority of entire households that do not have a single car, not individual people. It's very common here for some households to have a single shared car that is not used on an everyday basis, but only to go outside of the city or the far edges/outskirts with poor subway access. That's how it was in my household growing up in Queens.
Staten Island and Queens are the only 2 boroughs where single car ownership per entire households is higher than 50% (and are we even counting Staten Island anyway?).

Most of Brooklyn and The Bronx, plus parts of Queens do actually "function like Manhattan" if you're talking about getting around by transit + walking. It's not like NYC turns into suburbs as soon as you leave Manhattan. The Bronx and Brooklyn are still more dense and urban than any other city in America, and have far superior transit too. I can't say the same for the entirety of Queens, but you can include many parts of Queens in that too. And parking can be just as hellish in sections of outer boroughs as parts of Manhattan.

And if we're talking about commuting to work (where most people work in Manhattan), then the # of people driving drops significantly more. Even Staten Islanders will not use their cars to get to work, they take the ferry.


Also the NYC subway is the largest rapid transit system in the entire world by # of stations. Paris city limits are much smaller so I'm sure they have higher coverage by % though, but that's because NYC is much larger in area. It's also the only rapid transit that stays fully open 24/7. I'm not staying it's the best, but NYC transit can definitely compete with cities over the world.

[Codederick]

Originally Posted by That_One_Guy

No, not really at all. I'm guessing you probably haven't spent a lot of time here in NYC. In some parts there are, like Staten Island or Eastern Queens, but in most of Brooklyn, The Bronx, and a good portion of Queens, walking + subway is the easiest and by far most common way for people to get around.

Car ownership per household is under 50% City-wide, as in all 5 boroughs (not just Manhattan). Again, that's the majority of entire households that do not have a single car, not individual people. It's very common here for some households to have a single shared car that is not used on an everyday basis, but only to go outside of the city or the far edges/outskirts with poor subway access. That's how it was in my household growing up in Queens.
Staten Island and Queens are the only 2 boroughs where single car ownership per entire households is higher than 50% (and are we even counting Staten Island anyway?).

Most of Brooklyn and The Bronx, plus parts of Queens do actually "function like Manhattan" if you're talking about getting around by transit + walking. It's not like NYC turns into suburbs as soon as you leave Manhattan. The Bronx and Brooklyn are still more dense and urban than any other city in America, and have far superior transit too. I can't say the same for the entirety of Queens, but you can include many parts of Queens in that too. And parking can be just as hellish in sections of outer boroughs as parts of Manhattan.

And if we're talking about commuting to work (where most people work in Manhattan), then the # of people driving drops significantly more. Even Staten Islanders will not use their cars to get to work, they take the ferry.


Also the NYC subway is the largest rapid transit system in the entire world by # of stations. Paris city limits are much smaller so I'm sure they have higher coverage by % though, but that's because NYC is much larger in area. It's also the only rapid transit that stays fully open 24/7. I'm not staying it's the best, but NYC transit can definitely compete with cities over the world.

That One Guy simply gets it.

Feel free to own/lease a car in NYC but understand it's completely unnecessary and a mondo waste of money.

[That_One_Guy]

Originally Posted by Codederick

That One Guy simply gets it.

Feel free to own/lease a car in NYC but understand it's completely unnecessary and a mondo waste of money.

Yeah, it is not necessary at all. There are people that live here that do drive, but it's not the everyday norm. It's one of my favorite parts about living here. It's probably the only place in America where driving everywhere isn't normal.

Here's the method of transportation for people in NYC (all 5 boroughs) to get to work, taken straight from here, City Data:



So the subway is by far the most common way to get around, unsurprisingly. Over 50% of NYers take some form of transit to get to work (subway, bus, railroad) where it looks like about a quarter use a car, whether driving alone or carpooling. I'm willing to bet that most of those people don't work in Manhattan, though I'm sure some do. You have to be crazy IMO to drive to Manhattan for work everyday though. Or rich enough to rent a parking spot. Or maybe a mix of both.

There's a good amount of people that just walk to work. I'm jealous of those people. I would love to be able to just walk to work (I take subway).

Here's LA for comparison:



An overwhelming majority of people drive their own cars to work everyday. Combined with carpooling, about 75% of people use cars to get to work. It looks like a similar proportion of people that walk to work in NYC use the bus to get to work in LA. But there are some people in LA too that walk to work too.

So in a way, it's almost flipped: about 25% of people in NYC use a car to get to work (whether their own car or carpooling), where in LA it's about 75%. So you can say that for as many people (proportionally) that use a car in NYC is about the same as the people in LA that don't. And vice-versa