Nate Silver: Is American Car Culture on the Skids?
Nate Silver, the stat-mining fortune teller behind FiveThirtyEight.com, has written a piece for Esquire
suggesting that Americans may be weaning themselves off their
collective auto addiction. Falling gas prices aside, driving has been
on the decline since late 2007, Silver notes. Taking factors like
population and unemployment into account, he wonders:
Could it be that there'sbeen some sort of paradigm shift in Americans' attitudes toward theircars? Perhaps, given the exorbitant gas prices of last summer,Americans realized that they weren't quite as dependent on theirvehicles as they once thought they were.
Silver
also points out that between 2004 and 2008, cities that took the
biggest hit in home prices, like Las Vegas and Detroit, were "highly
car-dependent," while Portland, Oregon had the largest gains.
Stay in touch
Sign up for our free newsletter
More from Streetsblog Los Angeles
Metro Board Funds Free Student Transit Pass Program through July 2025
Metro student free passes funded another year - plus other updates from today's Metro board meeting
Eyes on the Street: New Lincoln Park Avenue Bike Lanes
The recently installed 1.25-mile long bikeway spans Lincoln Park Avenue, Flora Avenue, and Sierra Street - it's arguably the first new bike facility of the Measure HLA era
Brightline West Breaks Ground on Vegas to SoCal High-Speed Rail
Brightline West will be a 218-mile 186-mile-per-hour rail line from Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga - about 40 miles east of downtown L.A. - expected to open in 2028
