Commuting

We've seen this before: Freeways induce driving and when one closes people adapt their choices accordingly. There is no "carmageddon" after all.

Living near jobs in the first place is much more advantageous for workers than having access to free-flowing highways, new research finds.

Because the federal government lets car commuters claim thousands of dollars in tax-free income each year, an estimated 66,000 additional people drive to work in America's 25 biggest cities.

The future of biking is already here. It's just unevenly distributed.

Do the costs of congestion outweigh the costs of building wider roads? Probably not. Despite an impressive amount of data, Inrix falls into the same old traps with its congestion report.

What's the cost of a long commute? If you're struggling to make ends meet, spending hours each day just to get to work can not only cost you time, it can also be a major barrier to economic mobility.

With their powerful results, the studies coming out of the Equality of Opportunity Project, led by Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, have become an important touchstone for journalists and transportation policy advisers. In their 2014 [PDF] and 2015 [PDF] studies, Chetty and Hendren show that place matters for low-income families. When low-income families have the opportunity to raise their children in better environments, their children do better as adults. And with their use of “big data,” Chetty and Hendren can show that these better environments are not just correlated with improved incomes, but actually cause them.

Where are Americans making the shift away from driving to work?

Which places put economic opportunity within reach for residents who don't own cars?