Living Car Free - Top 101 cities with the least people driving a car to work alone

Top 101 cities with the least people driving a car to work alone.

http://www.city-data.com/top2/h30.html

Top 101 cities with the most people carpooling to work

http://www.city-data.com/top2/h29.html

Top 101 cities with the most people taking a bus, a trolley bus, a streetcar, or a trolley car to work

http://www.city-data.com/top2/h32.html

Top 101 cities with the most people taking a bicycle to work
http://www.city-data.com/top2/h38.html


Top 101 U.S. Cities, Counties, and Zip Codes Lists
http://www.city-data.com/top2/toplists2.html

I'm surprised my hometown isn't on the list

I'm not going to say this list is a little off the wall, but is Stanford CA in the Netherlands? At 42%? I have a hard time buying that one.

Also, there were quite a few Florida towns that were up in the top 25. Things must have changed since the last time I was in Florida...

Well, Stanford was the only university to get a Platinum Bicycle Friendly University award at the National Bike Summit last month. It beat out UCSB and UCD which only got Gold. This list seems to reflect that, so I suspect it's correct.

I'm not going to say this list is a little off the wall, but is Stanford CA in the Netherlands? At 42%? I have a hard time buying that one.

Also, there were quite a few Florida towns that were up in the top 25. Things must have changed since the last time I was in Florida...

I was wondering about the Florida one too, wonder if they are counting all the retired people on their electric tricycles tooling around in the gated communities. The last few times I have been to Florida the area I was in, definitely WASN'T bike friendly as far as I could tell.

Aaron :)

Well, if you notice, most of the places in Florida tend to be smaller areas and their rates of bike commuting are 3-4% Only Key West really shines with 12.7% and Gainesville does 5.2% which I suppose is due to U of F.

Well... I suppose it's not a big deal, but I don't even see Minneapolis on the list. Yet it was selected as the number 2 city in the country for commuting by our beloved Census Bureau.

http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/bicycles/MinneapolisClosesGap.asp

The only Minneasota city on the OP's list was Falcon Heights (pop 5000) at #94.

I'm sure there's some different way they calculated all this...

They may have been right about Des Moines, though... it wasn't on the list. On Friday it was raining hard with a good 40mph wind. The only other non-car commuter was a guy running up the MUP with only swimming trunks on. He probably thought I was nuts,too.. :)

I'm sure there's some different way they calculated all this...

They may have been right about Des Moines, though... it wasn't on the list. On Friday it was raining hard with a good 40mph wind. The only other non-car commuter was a guy running up the MUP with only swimming trunks on. He probably thought I was nuts,too.. :)One thing I notice about the list in the OP is that many of those places are college towns. So while Des Moines isn't on the list, both Ames and Iowa City are. And at the top of the list are several communities that are completely dominated by their universities. Stanford, obviously, Isla Vista is basically off-campus housing for UC Santa Barbara, and UC Davis is a huge presence in Davis. For these college towns, the figures will depend a great deal on whether you count students biking to the campus as commuters.

t, so I suspect it's correct.

Where the list is not correct is in considering Stanford to be a city - Stanford is a University within the city of Palo Alto (which is also listed). There are other non-cities on the list such as Hickham housing.

Where the list is not correct is in considering Stanford to be a city - Stanford is a University within the city of Palo Alto (which is also listed). There are other non-cities on the list such as Hickham housing.

I think Stanford would be shocked to discover they'd been annexed by palo alto while their back was turned. They're in unincorporated Santa Clara county.

I think Stanford would be shocked to discover they'd been annexed by palo alto while their back was turned. They're in unincorporated Santa Clara county.
Then Stanford shouldn't even be on this list of "Top 101 Cities..." Number two on the list (Isla Vista, CA) is also an unincorporated community so it shouldn't be on the list either. That makes Davis, CA the actual champion, with 14.4% riding a bike to work. Key West FL is number two with 12.7 %.

The list is interesting, but it needs a lot of work. If somebody has the time, they could probably come up with a better list at the U.S. Census website.

This is a pretty old list. I remember seeing this at least 5 years ago. My town is 17 and we have an older population and hills with no university. And we still fight city hall about more cycling friendly streets. Our speed limits are 25 mph (most people obey it) and the population is only about 8500.

Then Stanford shouldn't even be on this list of "Top 101 Cities..." Number two on the list (Isla Vista, CA) is also an unincorporated community so it shouldn't be on the list either. That makes Davis, CA the actual champion, with 14.4% riding a bike to work. Key West FL is number two with 12.7 %.

And what is so special about incorporation? Having lived in Isla Vista, I know that it's a very distinct community from any of the surrounding communities and does have a governing body. The nearest city, Goleta, for many years had the distinction of being the largest unincorporated community in California.

Who came up with this? There are too many places listed that aren't even cities for me to take it seriously...Stanford and Coronado Ca. are two off the top of my head.

And what is so special about incorporation? Having lived in Isla Vista, I know that it's a very distinct community from any of the surrounding communities and does have a governing body. The nearest city, Goleta, for many years had the distinction of being the largest unincorporated community in California.

It's an apples-oranges thing. If Isla Vista wants to be on lists of "cities", they need to incorporate.

Here's a list of the most carfree large cities:

Top 101 cities with the least cars per house, population 50,000+ (http://www.city-data.com/top2/h21.html)

After the top 5 (which are all in New York City), most of these are cities with large numbers of poor people, but you can't tell from the data if the poor people and the carfree people are the same people.

Ironic--6 of the most carfree cities are historical centers of the automobile industry: Youngstown, OH, and in Michigan, Saginaw, Flint, Pontiac, and Detroit itself.

Some of the confusion about the lists Artkansas put up is that the definition of city isn't provided. So one list may vary considerable from another.

I recall a while back trying to get a handle on population density in US and European cities. I found about 6-8 lists and found that none of them seemed to agree. One would look at New York as a cosmopolitan center, while another would break it up into boroughs.

Luckily, I found some Wikipedia lists that also included a great number of footnotes to qualify the data. I know quite a few people who crap on Wikipedia, but I myself rather like the concept.

I am familiar with #85 on that list. North Charleston, SC. According to City Data it is 21.9% (http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty-North-Charleston-South-Carolina.html), and while there are quite a few people there riding bicycles to get around I suspect most use the bus service, which isn't too bad it you aren't in a hurry.

Aaron :)