How many of you drive/don’t drive?

[Molandfreak]

Does the table assume only one vehicle per driver?

[JayhawkCO]

By the way, until today I didn't know how to make a table in BBCode.  If ever there was a time to learn the syntax, that post was it!

I normally just use Excel and do a big concatenate with ,"[/td][td]", kind of stuff.

[formulanone]

Wyoming being highest doesn't quite shock me – towns are far apart out there – but at an average that's over 20% higher than the next-highest state...wow.

Mississippi being up there is also surprising; there must be a lot more folks commuting longer distances. And I suppose other than Jackson, many cites of comparable size are all out of state (Memphis, New Orleans, Mobile).

[kphoger]

Does the table assume only one vehicle per driver?

Please explain to me how it would make a difference.

I normally just use Excel and do a big concatenate with ,"[/td][td]", kind of stuff.

That's what I ended up doing, but I had to learn what [] tags to use for what purpose before I could do that.

[Molandfreak]

Does the table assume only one vehicle per driver?

Please explain to me how it would make a difference.

Nevermind, I misread the data.

[webny99]

Mississippi being up there is also surprising; there must be a lot more folks commuting longer distances. And I suppose other than Jackson, many cites of comparable size are all out of state (Memphis, New Orleans, Mobile).

Meanwhile, I just assumed a correlation between being the lowest-income state and having to travel farther to find work. But it's also a good point that there isn't exactly an abundance of economic hubs in-state, and it's fair to assume longer commuting distances in suburban/semi-urban areas such as the Memphis outskirts and along the Gulf Coast.

[JayhawkCO]

Seeing Colorado that low on the list is surprising to me. Lots of people on the front range drive into the mountains at least somewhat frequently. I guess maybe it's because the largest cities of the state aren't that far away from each other.

[kphoger]

Seeing Colorado that low on the list is surprising to me. Lots of people on the front range drive into the mountains at least somewhat frequently. I guess maybe it's because the largest cities of the state aren't that far away from each other.

It's also easy to lose perspective.  Colorado's state average is within 10% of the overall national average.

[JayhawkCO]

Seeing Colorado that low on the list is surprising to me. Lots of people on the front range drive into the mountains at least somewhat frequently. I guess maybe it's because the largest cities of the state aren't that far away from each other.

It's also easy to lose perspective.  Colorado's state average is within 10% of the overall national average.

Sure. The wide open spaces just tend to lend itself to being higher than others as evident by a lot of the top of the list.

[kphoger]

Sure. The wide open spaces just tend to lend itself to being higher than others as evident by a lot of the top of the list.

It might also be that there are plenty of places that are fairly close to the urban areas.

Aurora to Black Hawk and back ten times a year would only add 1000 miles.

Highlands Ranch to Frisco and back ten times a year is less than 2000 miles.

[JayhawkCO]

Sure. The wide open spaces just tend to lend itself to being higher than others as evident by a lot of the top of the list.

It might also be that there are plenty of places that are fairly close to the urban areas.

Aurora to Black Hawk and back ten times a year would only add 1000 miles.

Highlands Ranch to Frisco and back ten times a year is less than 2000 miles.

Yeah, but add that to normal commutes, and you have a decent amount of "bonus" miles. Like I said, just a little surprising we're 37th when our neighbors are 1st, 3rd, 9th, 18th, 23rd, and 24th.

[kphoger]

Like I said, just a little surprising we're 37th when our neighbors are 1st, 3rd, 9th, 18th, 23rd, and 24th.

And Massachusetts beats you too.

[JayhawkCO]

Like I said, just a little surprising we're 37th when our neighbors are 1st, 3rd, 9th, 18th, 23rd, and 24th.

And Massachusetts beats you too.

I'm allowed to be surprised. Just let me have this.

[kphoger]

It also makes me question FHWA's vehicle-miles data.

[JayhawkCO]

It also makes me question FHWA's vehicle-miles data.

MA is one that jumps out that is surprising. Just thinking about the public transportation differences alone makes me wonder how that's possible.

[Rothman]

Drove a lot when I lived in MA.  Doesn't seem that surprising to me.

[webny99]

It also makes me question FHWA's vehicle-miles data.

MA is one that jumps out that is surprising. Just thinking about the public transportation differences alone makes me wonder how that's possible.

I think you're probably overestimating the density of MA's population outside of Boston proper and inner suburbs. Most of the state, especially the eastern third, is too dense to be considered 'rural' by Western US standards, but also way more sprawling than new-build suburbia like you have in the Denver area, so most people outside MA 128 are probably driving quite a bit to get to work.

And thanks to being developed several centuries ago, development is just a lot less organized in general. Living right near a shopping mall or grocery store or office building, much less finding all three of those things in close proximity to each other, is a lot less common than you might think.

[Rothman]

There's also this land called western Massachusetts...

[JayhawkCO]

There's also this land called western Massachusetts...

Yeah. But you're still not driving 80-100 miles to get to a decently sized town there like you are in large stretches of CO.

[Rothman]

There's also this land called western Massachusetts...

Yeah. But you're still not driving 80-100 miles to get to a decently sized town there like you are in large stretches of CO.

I would therefore think CO is surprising, rather than MA.  The annual VMD is rather dinky.

[webny99]

There's also this land called western Massachusetts...

Yeah. But you're still not driving 80-100 miles to get to a decently sized town there like you are in large stretches of CO.

Except that the majority of Colorado residents live in the Denver area, so they aren't actually driving between those towns, and the areas in between are too sparsely populated to meaningfully bolster the average miles driven.

[JayhawkCO]

There's also this land called western Massachusetts...

Yeah. But you're still not driving 80-100 miles to get to a decently sized town there like you are in large stretches of CO.

Except that the majority of Colorado residents live in the Denver area, so they aren't actually driving between those towns, and the areas in between are too sparsely populated to meaningfully bolster the average miles driven.

A considerably smaller proportion of Colorado's population (51%) lives in the Denver metro as compared to Massachusetts' population (64%) that lives in the Boston metro.

[Scott5114]

Phishing for driving habits with little other personal information to go on would seem to be inefficient.

Inephishent.

[Scott5114]

By the way, until today I didn't know how to make a table in BBCode.  If ever there was a time to learn the syntax, that post was it!

I normally just use Excel and do a big concatenate with ,"[/td][/tr][/table]", kind of stuff.

If it's a big enough table, I'll make a CSV, then...

Code Select Expand

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Text::CSV;
use strict;

# CSV parse object
my $csv = Text::CSV->new ({
  binary    => 1,
  auto_diag => 1,
  sep_char  => ','    # not really needed as this is the default
});

my $file = $ARGV[0] or die "No CSV file specified\n"; # Path to CSV file
open(my $data, "<", $file) or die "Could not open '$file' $!\n"; # Open file

print "[table]\n";

# Read file in line by line.
while (my $line = <$data>)
{
    print "[tr]";
   
    chomp $line;
   
    if ($csv->parse($line))
    {
        my @fields = $csv->fields();
       
        foreach(@fields)
        {
            print "[td]";
            print $_;
            print "[/td]";
        }
    }
    print "[/tr]\n";
}

print "[/table]\n";


[formulanone]

There's also this land called western Massachusetts...

Yeah. But you're still not driving 80-100 miles to get to a decently sized town there like you are in large stretches of CO.

One thing that trips me up about much of New England is that once you're away from interstates and freeways, it's agonizingly slow and disjointed to get from point A to point B.