Before the pandemic, Europeans relied on automobiles for 70 percent of their travel, compared with 77 percent for U.S. residents. But after the pandemic, in 2021, the European share of passenger travel that used automobiles climbed to 80 percent, while the U.S. share increased only to 78 percent (and dropped to 74 percent in 2022), according to a recently released report from the European Union. That means that Europe is more auto-dependent than the U.S.
Click image to download a 12.4-MB PDF of this report.
Although the report is labeled “2023,” it actually was released in late January 2024 and includes data through 2021. The title of the report is “key figures,” which is literally true: it consists almost solely of figures as in charts, with little or no actual data. However, the charts are clear and can be read to the nearest percent or so. Meanwhile, National Transportation Statistics table 1-40 shows the share of passenger travel in the United States that relies on autos, airplanes, rail, and other modes.
I added lines corresponding to 80, 85, 90, and 95 percent to help estimate mode shares. See the second page of the report for the counties that correspond to the two-letter codes shown on this chart.
Page 13 of the European report breaks down transport shares for each member of the European Union. Although they are not members, Norway and Switzerland (CH) are also included, but the United Kingdom has been spitefully deleted. In any case, about half the members of the EU rely on autos for a greater share of passenger travel than the U.S. These include Germany, Belgium, Poland, Finland, and non-member Norway. The only countries that are significantly less dependent on autos than the U.S. are Austria, Croatia, and Hungary.
Of course, I prefer to use the term “auto liberated” rather than auto dependent as liberation better reflects the actual benefits of auto ownership. Autos give people better access to jobs, quality housing, lower-cost consumer goods, and other economic and social benefits than any other form of urban travel.
Despite many European countries spending billions on high-speed rail, rail’s share of travel declined from about 8 percent before the pandemic to about 6 percent in 2021. In the U.S., counting both urban and intercity rail, it went from 0.6 percent in 2019 to 0.25 percent in 2021, recovering to 0.4 percent in 2022. While rail’s share is insignificant in the U.S., it is not very important in Europe either.
Switzerland hasn’t built any high-speed rail yet it relies on rail for more of its passenger travel than any other European country, about 13 percent. Spain has built more high-speed rail than any European country, yet rail’s share there is less than 5 percent. Austria is 8 percent. France, with the second-most high-speed rail, is around 7 percent as is the Netherlands. Every other country appears to be less than 7 percent. (Keep in mind these shares include both intercity and urban rail.)
Air travel has the highest share in Croatia at about 25 percent. Bulgaria is next at about 16 percent. Air travel has a greater share than rail travel in most countries, including Spain, and appears to be almost tied with rails in France. The European-wide chart on page 12 shows that air’s share of travel grew much faster than rail between 2011 and 2019 and was roughly twice as big as rail in 2019. The pandemic greatly reduced both but air bounced back faster in 2021.
Because the report shows percent shares in charts and not actual passenger-kilometers, it doesn’t really show how mobile Europeans are. According to National Transportation Statistics, in 2022, the average U.S. resident traveled well over 16,000 miles, including 13,000 by auto, 2,000 by air, 1,000 by non-transit bus (though this number is questionable), and only about 100 miles by transit and intercity rail.
In contrast, the European report shows passenger-kilometers only for rail travel, reporting the average resident of an EU country traveled about 833 kilometers, or slightly more than 500 miles, in 2022. If rail is about 6 percent of the total, that means the average European travels only about 8,500 miles per year, barely more than half that of the average U.S. resident. Of that 8,500 miles, about 6,500 miles are by auto, 1,000 by air, and 1,000 by rail, bus, and water.
Europeans are less mobile than Americans because every European country has heavily taxed motor fuel. This hasn’t so much boosted other modes of travel as it has suppressed overall mobility. At about 500 miles each, rail and bus travel plus a thousand miles of air travel don’t come close to making up for the 6,500-mile difference in per capita auto travel, not to mention the 1,000-mile difference in air travel.
Though per capita miles (or kilometers) of auto travel may be lower than in the U.S., that doesn’t make Europe any less dependent on automobiles. The data show that trains and buses just don’t provide the same mobility benefits: despite many European countries spending tens of billions of euros subsidizing these modes, they account for only about 12 percent of the total. To truly benefit from personal mobility, European countries should end those subsidies and correspondingly reduce taxes on auto driving.
But Europe’ transportation infrastructure is in Excellent condition, both roads and transit…
Because they’ve been piggy backing off US Defense spending since COld War, they have money to spare to keep their infrastructure intact.
We cant have nice bridges… we have Wars in Ukraine and Izrail to pay for, tune of 200 Million dollars a day…..
Europeans are less mobile than Americans because every European country has heavily taxed motor fuel…. That’s a load of garbage. Europeans are NOT less mobile; they can go virtually anywhere and many nations cross borders without even so much as miship; as for access; they solved it’s problems with GAS MILEAGE; as they drive around in predominantly small vehicles called “A-Class” which tend have substantial fuel economy, like Renault Clio, Citroen C3.
https://uk.motor1.com/news/695853/most-fuel-efficient-inexpensive-cars-europe/
Europe also didn’t let it’s cities rot, so they have less infrastructure neglect which makes them palitable places to walk/bike.
Even European suburbs are more bike/pedestrian friendly.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mV6ZENGko1I/maxresdefault.jpg
Because THEY use the street grid, not the dead worm; and have no zoning abhorance to object to mixed use retail in neighborhoods. More issue we banned the housing types that helped fight inflation
– Houses with ADU’s (Granny flats/Garage Apartments)
– Duplexes
– Sixplexes
– apartments above 3 stories.
70% all trips in EU-27 under one Mile a day are done in bikes. Going car free/reduced is a immediate 10-20% increase in income.
While I would agree that european powers have underspent defense spending in comparison to the united states, I would say they are quite justified in this since following the collapse of the soviet union everyone kind of just assumed that russia was out of the game in europe, at least militarily if not economically, and thus these nations did not fear an invasion. Now that russia has proved that financing russian-sympathetic powers and proxy wars are not going to be the only cards it plays, and that invasion is still on the table, defense spending has been increased and has plans on continuing to increase. This combined with what i’d call united states overspending on military (I mean we “lost” like 50 billion dollars last year and no-one cared), combined with the extra 300 billion that we as americans spend on healthcare compared to the estimated cost of a private system, europe has had a lot more money compared to us to finance its infrastructure. Also yeah the big graphic that anti-planner pulled up does not include bike or foot trips, so cars have all the short trips taken included while aircraft and trains dont even travel in a way that qualifies as such. Also I dont see tram systems or subways included in the data, so its easy to construe that local transit is not that big when only bus transit is included. tl;dr: Theres a big spending difference that is partially both of our faults and important things from transit stats have been excluded.
WOW What pile of Bull Skat!
” Going car free/reduced is a immediate 10-20% increase in income.”
Which DOES NOT MAKE UP FOR THE FACT THAT YOU CANNOT REACH A BETTER JOB.
Reduce Poverty by Increasing Auto Ownership – https://ti.org/pdfs/APB54.pdf
Cars reach more jobs (Brookings): http://www.debunkingportland.com/transit_and_jobs.html
Cars reach more jobs (Cox): http://www.debunkingportland.com/Cars_Improve_Living.html
Bikes/Transit reaches far more jobs than bike or transit: https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=21887
European Drives almost as much as we do- http://debunkingportland.com/transit/EuroTranistShareLoss.htm
Urban Transit Is an Energy Hog: https://ti.org/pdfs/APB33.pdf
Subsidies – http://www.debunkingportland.com/Autos.html#subsidies
The nation’s fifty largest urban areas housed 82.5 million jobs in 2020, and auto drivers could reach 98 percent of them in an hour of travel. Transit riders, by comparison, could reach only 8 percent in an hour while bicycle riders could reach 7 percent, according to the University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory. https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=21375
you ever thought that the reason why they cant reach that many jobs is cause american transit systems suck complete ass? Like austria has regular trams and bus lines in innsbruck, showing up every 5-10 minutes it felt like, and the bus and trolleybus systems in Salzburg were always packed to the brim with people despite the busses showing up so regularly I saw one at most every 5 minutes. Meanwhile minneapolis cant even get the light rail to be regular despite only having two lines cause the funding is in the dumps. Transit not working as well compared to cars when yall dont fund it is like cutting the leg off a rat and complaining it cant run as fast anymore.
Within the US you may have better opportunity if you own a car, since the US is car dependent. That’s not necessarily the case anywhere else. The most ridiculous claim is that people with cars have better access to cheaper goods. That’s a US thing as well. The US has created a situation, where you are screwed without car. This is why these studies are worthless. The situation in Europe is different. You don’t need a car to have a good job or cheap food here.
Good one
Another reason their roads/highways are in excellent shape….
Gas taxes by nation (US Gallon/USD equivalent) in 2017.
Australia: 1.17
Canada: 0.74
Denmark: 2.63
France: 2.78
Germany 2.79
Ireland 2.51
Spain: 1.97
Sweden: 2.73
UK: 2.82
USA 0.56
Average OECD nation pays 2.24 in Gas taxes…
Texas, Nevada and Idaho have lower gas taxes than CA yet they have better highway conditions
For the Antiplanner, mobility (kilometers traveled over some time, e.g. yearly) is something good *in itself*. Imagine a society that successfully implemented a policy that intentionally doubled or quadrupled, or increased by 100, the aggregate distance that its people must travel yearly to accomplish their daily activities, but otherwise changed nothing else. By the AP’s metric, this society has improved by twice or by 4x or 100x, since it has increased aggregate mobility by that amount (where, again, mobility means nothing other than distance traveled over yearly).
You made this post believing it made you seem clever, but all it revealed is your inability to think logically.
He proved that he can think very logically. Having to drive longer distances doesn’t equal more opportunity. It only equals more car dependency for getting around. I am not even saying it is the result of policy, it may just be the case, that the US has a much lower population density and the US being much bigger than any European country. The need for driving longer distances has nothing to do with opportunity.
Meanwhile in Japan and Europe.
https://live.staticflickr.com/7261/13238240884_1f4cd29e52_b.jpg
YOU can live in the most transit friendly/walkable cities, without cars or some form immediate transportation you’re on transit’s time table or stuck in tight urban foot print…..
Me thinks honestly Urbanists who whack off to Jane Jacobs have rose tinted glasses; tend glorify/romanticise urban life in historic past. Urbanism is just nostalgia. there’s a lot of ignorance about American urban history. The streetcar era was a flash on the pan, over almost as quickly as it began. Street cars were cool, but nostalgia isn’t planning. And while our cities were “Walkable” they had to because widespread adoption of transportation hadn’t been developed. Because few understand honest history; much American history few people ever lived in Cities until tail end industrial revolution. And the grim living conditions and appalling industrial hygiene practices which came to light in books like “How the Other Half Lives” and Upton Sinclair’ “The Jungle” convinced city leaders to clean up.
The City Beautiful movement was a scheme to scoot social rif raf and working classes out of sight of grandiose public building/development aspects. The first generation of urban planners; helped spearhead suburban plan for working class Americans.
The economic forces from 1780s to early 1900s that built cities up based on monolithic widespread factory intensive technology were quickly and swiftly supplanted by the economic decentralization forces that emptied out our cities happened in little as 10-20 years after that. It was not the Car; it was…
1: Horizontal manufacturing, which replaced vertical manufacturing; it required more land , but was efficient for widespread production of LARGER, heavy consumer goods like cars, etc whose weight was burdensome for multistory warehouses/buildings. Factory production also benefitted another industry; Homebuilding. From 1908 to 1942, Sears Roebuck Co. Sold more than 70,000 manufactured houses. Horizontal manufacturing favored any consumer good too heavy to pick up yourself. As factories spread to where land was cheaper, so to made sense employees to consolidate where work was easy to get to before the car…….
2: Electricity: While electric power had been around since 1870s; By 1900s, society progressed from steam industrial power to motive power, steam provided power to generate electricity; but power to run machines was shifted from steam machines to new motors. Some factories had their own power plant, some even sold steam to the city/community, some used steam for other industries like greenhouses, laundry. But by segregating Steam power directly from workers; steam explosions, flash burns, dust fires became rarer occurrences. Electric lighting eliminated costly/dangerous oil lamps. Electric power also eliminated direct proximity demands for small factories connected to emerging electric grid, water supply; eliminating need for factories being near large bodies water.
3: The Telephone: Instantaneous telecommunication by allowing people to connect with each other in real-time over long distances. This breakthrough not only improved personal relationships but also transformed business practices and societal functioning.
– Companies could now conduct negotiations, make deals, and resolve issues with suppliers or customers; call centers/operators, service centers, supply orchestration.
EVEN before internet and fax machines… The telephone opened up opportunities for remote work and decentralized offices. CEO’s/Managers could contact their superiors/employees in real time. Secretaries/administrative staff would organize central demands/commands. Era of corporate skyscraper HQ for single business came close, often that single enterprise had it’s firm in just 2-3 floors.
– telephone ushered in era secure money wire transfers.
– phone proliferation allowed small/isolated groups into instant customer base.