2 ms·

What are we counting as high levels of car ownership? I always blindly assumed it was pretty high throughout the UK, for exactly the reason you give. I've no da

• nkoren 8y ago
  76% of UK households have a vehicle, as opposed to 91% of US households. More than vehicle-ownership, however, significantly higher petrol prices in the UK inhibit usage by a fair amount (2018 averages: $2.50/gal in the US, $7.00/gal in the UK). Finally, most US cities have much better-developed intra-urban motorway networks, rendering the car relatively more effective for commuting. UK urban roads saturate at lower volumes, on average. So the net result is that the while the UK population has moderately lower rates of actual car ownership -- actual spatial accessibility via the car, in generalised-cost terms (travel time * value-of-time + monetary cost), is substantially lower than in the US.