The chart above shows the number of motor vehicles in US regions by mile of roads. Although the Northeast has the lowest rate of vehicles per residents and the Midwest the highest, in this metric the results are reversed.
Findings
- The difference between the region with the most vehicles per mile, the Northeast, and the region with the least, the Midwest, is 58 vehicles per mile of road (36 vehicles per kilometer of road).
- The Northeast has 2.31 times the number of vehicles per unit of road that the Midwest does.
- Only the Northeast has at least 100 vehicles per mile of road (62 vehicles per kilometer of road).
Caveats
- Ownership data is from 2015.
- Road length data is from 2015.
- Ownership and road length data come from different sources.
- Total vehicles include automobiles, taxis, buses, trucks, and motorcycles of both public and private use.
- The Northeastern US consists of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
- The Western US consists of California, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Hawaii, Idaho, Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming.
- The Southern US consists of Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia.
- The Midwestern US consists of Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
Details
Even though the West has by far the leading state in this metric, it falls far short of the Northeast which holds six of the top ten states.
The rate for the entire United States is 63 vehicles per mile of road which ranks the US as a whole just under the West and above the South.
Sources
United States Department of Transportation. 2016. "Table HM-10M - Highway Statistics 2015 - Policy | Federal Highway Administration." Accessed March 12, 2018. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2015/hm10m.cfm.
United States Department of Transportation. 2018. "Table MV-1 - Highway Statistics 2015." Accessed February 20, 2018. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2015/mv1.cfm.