Hot off the presses. I did some playing around with the latest data I could find, via the Federal Highway Administration’s excel spreadsheet on the subject matter. They have good data on highway miles, but only estimated lane miles unfortunately. Still that is the critical one. Several two-lane highways would be better than few 10- or 20-lane monsters, spreading the traffic around rather than funneling it.
Here is the top 11 since we didn’t make the top 10 🙁
(Numbers = mile per 1,000 people):
1. Kansas City – 1.262
2. St Louis – 1.070
3. Houston – .822
4. Cleveland – .816
5. Columbus – .779
6. San Antonio – .759
7. Jacksonville – .745
8. Providence – .742
9. Pittsburgh – .731
10. Baltimore – .724
11. DFW – .719
It’s like a who’s who of decaying or soon to decay cities. Unfortunately, they don’t have DFW broken up like they do many of the larger metro areas that cross state boundaries. Here are the ten with the least freeway lane miles per capita:
1. Chicago
2. Tampa/St.Pete – wouldn’t want too many octogenarians out on the road anyway.
3. Miami – surprising. No worries, MIA will rectify this as soon as they expand I-95 to 40 lanes (this was really once an idea).
4. NYC/Newark
5. Portland
6. Sacramento
7. Phoenix
8. LA
9. Philly
10. DC
And then there’s crossing northern boundaries, we’d find Vancouver: 0. Of course, the metro area has freeways. But not the city proper.
