The Oil Drum

In one of the recent threads, I asked for good local statistical sources and got a few gems, including the Bikes at Work census data commute-to-work mash-up by zipcode. So I ran a quick search on the highest walk to work locations in the US for towns over 1000 population. The results were surprising to me in the lack of diversity:

Location	POP	% Walk to work
Naval Academy, Maryland	4264	82.99%
Houghton, New York	1730	67.84%
Alfred village, New York	3926	60.98%
West Point, New York	7138	60.25%
Air Force Academy, Colorado	7536	59.63%
Parris Island, South Carolina	4841	58.45%
Lackland AFB CDP, Texas	7132	58.09%
New Square village, New York	4707	57.28%
Hamilton village, New York	3510	55.56%
Avalon city, California	3181	52.79%

They are almost all locations that are centered around an institution, like a university or military academy where many people are housed very close to their classes or jobs and the concentration of people and buildings conspires to reduce the amount of spaces that could be used for roads and parking of automobiles.

Over time, I think we've gotten a sense of how TOD readers feel about various transportation issues. Now I've put together a poll to find out what the reality is: how prevalent is driving (and how many miles a day do people drive)? How many people have a hybrid? How many people use a bike as their predominant form of transportation? What about subways, light rails, or even walking?

Update [2006-5-15 16:25:5 by Yankee]: I usually read Treehugger everyday, but I must have missed their post from the other day called "Have You Reduced Your Dependence on Cars?" 90 Treehuggers left comments, and a lot of their sentiments seem pretty similar to the ones seen here.

As readers of this page may know, I have about a two mile commute from my apartment to my office. It's basically a straight shot down Second Ave. I have several commuting options, which is unique in America where most people rely completely on their car.

When I first moved here about 6 months ago I reflexively took the 4 or 5 train from 86th street to Grand Central Station, but in the NYC Summer it started to get really, really oppressively hot in the tunnels, so I took the bus a few times and much to my surprise, it was a pleasure! Typically I had a seat the whole way (something I never got on the Subway), although it was slower due to traffic, particularly around the Queensboro Bridge off ramp at 59th and 2nd Ave.

Then I started to walk more to get a little exercise in. Below you can see the breakdown of the various considerations in choosing which transportation to take.