What states can you survive in without a car?

"MojoMotors.com" (MojoMotors)
08/14/2014 at 09:32 • Filed to: ridesharing, uber, lyft

We looked at the biggest ridesharing companies operating in each state to determine if you can survive without owning a car. If you live in or around a city, you should be good. Unless, that is, you live in Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Louisiana, Kansas, Arkansas or West Virginia.

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DISCUSSION (34)

GhostZ > MojoMotors.com
08/14/2014 at 09:44

This is idiotic. Yes, there are 5 companies in IL that provide car sharing, but they are only in downtown Chicago where tourists go. 90% of IL is without public transit, and 99.9% has no ride sharing at all. Lyft and Zipcar are the only ones that are actually available, and both of them are very, very rare to actually see in operation.

Worse yet, ride sharing in IL has no impact on whether or not you can survive without a car, because public transit covers are much larger area than all of the ride sharing programs combined.

Imirrelephant > GhostZ
08/14/2014 at 09:45

Came here to say this!

MojoMotors.com > GhostZ
08/14/2014 at 09:47

That's why we mentioned, "if you live in or around a city." No one expects Farmer Jack outside Peoria to ditch his Ford Super Duty.

GhostZ > MojoMotors.com
08/14/2014 at 10:03

That's my point, even in the city, most of these ridesharing programs only operate in a 20-block radius of a city (downtown) that is well over 200 blocks long in any direction. That doesn't even count the greater chicago area which is even larger.

I can't speak for the other cities, but just because we have ride-sharing doesn't mean that they're at all useful. The model fails here, and are really only good for university students who don't want to pay for cab and their parents won't let them ride public transit. Some people might actively seek out ridesharing, but it's basically a last-ditch option if you refuse or can't afford the many other services that already exist, as opposed to being a preferable alternative.

As in, I've never seen someone use uber for a legitimate ride, it's always just to book a cab through their website.

AMGtech - now with more recalls! > MojoMotors.com
08/14/2014 at 10:03

The map and title are very misleading. Maybe a density map showing where in each state ride sharing is available would work better. Also it should take into account how bicycle and walking friendly these states and their major cities are. In Portland for example, many more people commute by bicycle or public transit than by ride sharing.

Stapleface-Now Hyphenated! > MojoMotors.com
08/14/2014 at 10:07

Good in theory. But in actuality even if you live near a big city it still sucks. I work in Philly, which I believe is the number six city in the nation. The public transit system here blows. The buses don't take you everywhere you need to go, which leaves hoofing it or taking an incredibly expensive cab.

There are a few car share programs, but the maintenance fees for having an account are too high in my opinion. While the city might have transportation options, in reality it probably ranks slightly above Montana in terms of being able to get around.

The Transporter > MojoMotors.com
08/14/2014 at 10:08

If by "Farmer Jack" you mean 99% of Americans, then yes, you are correct.

MojoMotors.com > The Transporter
08/14/2014 at 10:19

"80.7 percent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas as of the 2010 Census"

Source: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2012/0…

The Transporter > MojoMotors.com
08/14/2014 at 10:23

You didn't read that article past the first paragraph, didn't you?

PelicanHazard > Stapleface-Now Hyphenated!
08/14/2014 at 10:24

Same on the other side of the state. At least Pittsburgh is smaller so the teeth-pulling doesn't last as long.

SamJackson > GhostZ
08/14/2014 at 10:24

Probably worth noting that it's not a literal title... I would imagine that it is possible to "survive" in any state without owning your own car.

MojoMotors.com > The Transporter
08/14/2014 at 10:26

Did you?

GhostZ > MojoMotors.com
08/14/2014 at 10:35

Urban area =/= public transit or ride sharing is available.

I don't think people are opposing ride sharing, it's just the misleading graphics and data. So why don't you take the opportunity to do it right yourself? Right now you have the equivalent of a Verizon "Coverage" map that they use to try and convince people that they are omnipresent, and that pisses people off.

This is the graph I would like to see, and if you could pull it off I would actually learn a lot from it:

Map out the locations of available cars that are operating ridesharing programs at various times of the day, every day for a week. Give them a reasonable radius of "pick up" and assume 2 people per ride. Do this for the entire nation. Do it for 8AM, noon, and 5PM, which is when these services would be most useful, and on the weekends do it across the day.

Now you have a graph of the area these services are in (location of the car + radius where they can pick you up from, probably about 5 miles max. Give each circle a "2" and then add 2 for every time it overlaps. So if 5 cars are in the same area, then it can support 10 people at any given time. Count cars that are being used. Overlapping coverage regions wouldn't add to the total service area.

I bet you'll find that while some cities have good 'coverage', they can at most support 100 people at a time or less, spread out over a large area. But anywhere that demands dense transit? They would fall flat on their face.

This is far from being an 'urban' system in a city that runs 200 buses at any given time, each packed with 50+ people, and trains that can carry several hundred at once, where the serivce capacity is measured in the hundreds of thousands.

Personally, I've always believed that ride sharing is better suited for rural areas. I have no idea why they're trying to introduce it in cities other than that most of these companies are managed by people who never stepped outside of a city.

That would be a pretty groundbreaking data set, because it would also compare each ridesharing company. We could answer questions like "Does Uber cover less area, but with more drivers?" and "Which service should I use if I want to get a car closest to me?" It would probably be front-page material and get you a lot of views.

GhostZ > MojoMotors.com
08/14/2014 at 10:40

For clarification, by location map I don't mean "city" I mean street corner or address. It's important to know the density of the vehicles within a city, not just that they're in a city, because like I said, a city that covers a 20 mile area might as well be a desert. So none of this "There are 200 cars per week operating in Chicago, New York, and LA! And that's all that matters!" Because 200 cars could all be clustered downtown where 99% of the city can't access them, and they could also be spread out so thinly that if more than 2 rides are needed in a locality, the system will hemorrhage with demand.

The Transporter > MojoMotors.com
08/14/2014 at 10:41

Yes. It basically said that "urban" in the census meant everything from downtown Manhattan to Hickory, NC. I drove through Hickory once, or at least I think I did. I blinked and I missed it. Saying that 80.7% of the US population lives in urban areas is woefully misleading. The reality is that little over half the US population lives in actual urban areas and, as other people here have mentioned, of those urban areas only those people living within the dense centers of those urban areas can benefit from public transportation and ride sharing services.

Now you don't have to read it.

William Byrd > MojoMotors.com
08/14/2014 at 10:59

I love cars. I hate commuting in cars. Its tempting to live closer to the city.

norskracer98-ExploringTheOutback > GhostZ
08/14/2014 at 12:09

I see zipcar in my town everyone and a while in my smallish town. We are a college town though.

GhostZ > norskracer98-ExploringTheOutback
08/14/2014 at 12:12

Zipcar has an aggressive college marketing platform, too.

ILLec > MojoMotors.com
08/14/2014 at 13:21

You must not be from the area. Pretty much 99% of the suburbs of Chicago have little to no public transport.

GhostZ > SamJackson
08/14/2014 at 13:23

The article goes on to imply that because of state regulatory laws, people are required to own cars when they may not want to because of the state they live in, namely, those states with only 1 sharing service. Reality is, the failure of car sharing services to actually have a working, scalable model is what keeps them from being adopted long before regulations will.

mazda616 > MojoMotors.com
08/14/2014 at 14:51

Not a good representation of the entire states, really. In Kentucky, if you don't live in downtown Louisville, then you're going to have to have a car to get around or else you're going to be waiting all day for the bus or bumming rides off of other people. Things are still pretty spaced out and rural once you leave Louisville and Lexington.

Saf1 > MojoMotors.com
08/15/2014 at 06:25

This is a very basic way of thinking about this but - England has about 60m people (UK 70m) and is comparable in size to a medium state. It's a pretty congested place as you can imagine, unless you go up North it's rare to find miles of "empty" land within towns and cities. Therefore (and ofcourse the planning of towns in the UK and US is very different) everything is closer together and you get microcosms where you have an estate with the local shops being within a 15minute walking distance for almost everywhere. Anyways I would think smaller, more dense states probably have more such microcosms and thus reduced need for cars?? From your graph, though as said below rideshareing is not as big a factor as public transport, it seems the Easternmost blue state underneath the orange ones is the winner!

deshleman > MojoMotors.com
08/24/2014 at 20:23

The headline seems misleading. Wouldn't the walkability of cities and public transit be much bigger factors.?

Keith O'Toole > MojoMotors.com
08/25/2014 at 01:00

This should be about cities not states. This is a dumb article.

Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs > ILLec
09/04/2014 at 10:03

Aren't much of the 'burbs serviced by the L?

Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs > GhostZ
09/04/2014 at 10:04

I bet apps like Uber and Lyft would be able to generate very detailed maps of just what areas they have covered.

ILLec > Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs
09/04/2014 at 10:29

Closest location for me to get on an L would be around a 40min drive. The city is only ten minute drive farther. The L only covers are very small area outside the actual city limits

GhostZ > Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs
09/04/2014 at 11:54

I really think it's possible and would like to see this data done right.

adonyc2014 > GhostZ
10/02/2014 at 12:31

Good grief, your statements are full of errors.

1. Tourists don't use car shares, urban-dwellers do.

2. "90% of IL is without public transit." You are inferring that Chicago is 10% of Illinois' total population. Which is wrong. Chicago is more than 50% of Illinois' population. Most of Chicago is serviced by public transit options.

3. Chicago, which is more than half of the population of Illinois has many car share and ride share programs.

adonyc2014 > The Transporter
10/02/2014 at 12:32

Not 99% of Americans. Not even close.

GhostZ > adonyc2014
10/02/2014 at 13:52

1. Urban-dwellers in chicago do not use ride sharing. They might use temporary rentals (like Zipcar, which isn't a ride sharing) but it's mostly Tourists, students, and maybe the elderly who don't have a license and can't afford a car. Taxis are way better than any of that though and are still a large business here, urban-dwellers use buses and trains.

2. Chicago public transit doesn't cover the greater chicago area, only the inner city. The inner city is about 2.7mil, greater chicago area is 9.5mil. Total Illinois population is 12 mil. So the area covered by public transit is roughly 2.7 (in reality, less, as the outer limits have far less than the inner areas) out of 12 million. So actually about 22%, not 10%. Still far from "most".

3. My whole point that while they have many ride sharing programs on paper , in actuality, so few of them are being used that they really don't have a reliable ride sharing system. The data is misleading because it assuming HAVING ride sharing on paper is as good as it being ubiquitous, which isn't the case.

It would be like listing the number of different ice cream flavors in a state, and the one with the most must mean it has the most ice cream. Totally not true, since you can have 5000 flavors, but if they're only being sold at one location to a relatively small group, it's less total ice cream than if you have 1 flavor with 5000 stores spread throughout the state.

adonyc2014 > GhostZ
10/02/2014 at 18:21

Much better.

Tina Corbett > MojoMotors.com
10/13/2014 at 16:42

I live in Ohio..Columbus to be precise, and I call BS on this. If you live in the capitol city and you are car-less, you are also SOL. Trust me on this one.

Tina Corbett > MojoMotors.com
10/13/2014 at 16:44

I live only 7 miles out of downtown Columbus Ohio and work right NEXT to Port Columbus International Airport (on Hamilton rd) ...and if you don't drive, you're screwed.