I'm wondering that too. Just a guess, low population density with lots of farmers 'working from home' since they live on their farm.

Those two counties are Petroleum County, with a population of about 500, and Garfield County with a population of about 1,100. Both counties have a single town with about a quarter of the population.

This means a majority of the population live in the country, and likely work the lands they live on. This means no commute to work, which is what was measured.

This is a flaw in the methodology. Rurual Montana is not a bastion of urban planning. It is a mistake to look at travel to work exclusively. People need to travel to many destinations. And those living in those two counties probably use cars for everything else.

They don''t go to work. Farmers don't travel for work but it's likely low survey response. Very low population density there(1-10/mi)

You aren't getting anywhere in Montana without a car

Horses, atvs.

low population density means high variance in stats.

always expect the highest and lowest stats to come from those areas.

But it’s probably farmers who live on their farm or something.

What’s going on in that one area in Montana?

Nothing.

I drove though there once. Hours of seeing nothing but road.

Also, note the scale. It starts at 50% reliance.

A portio of that area I know is full of retirees who relocated to escape the woke coasts. (Speaking anecdotally of extended family that relocated to that zone for a community of old conservatives.) So I wonder if retirees are counted.

The area in Arizona thats a little lighter may also be a shade of that too. Snowbirds might be skewing it with people who just plain don't commute.

It truly is

The map actually does a good job of highlighting how population dense places exist without a lot of cars per person. New York and San Francisco are both shown and have green or yellow patches. Mass transit works so damn good but, like election maps, the actual region highlighted is empty space with a few people all doing the same things.

The real alternative to cars isn't public transit; it's walking and biking (with zoning density that facilitates that). Public transit is a 'nice to have' layer built on top afterward.

Not everybody lives in the US and in a lot of countries being able to go to work without a car is normal.

Staten Island doesn't have the subway infrastructure that other boroughs have. The one line it does have does has relatively high usage. Maybe it's wise to expand it?

In comparison to the US yeah probably but still overall pretty high would be my assumption.

America is essentially a third world country with just a handful of developed metropolitan areas

And those few developed areas havnt meaningfully evolved or improved in decades and especially compared to the infrastructure developments seen in asia or Europe

It's greatly inflated by virtue of doing it by county instead, mingling major transit routes with fully rural areas.

But even that aside I strongly agree. Cook county would be under 50 if people were more willing to take the train

The lack of sufficient population density to support public transit makes Americans crave cars. Population density is low because the US has the space, and the areas that are dense are stupidly expensive.

I'd love to take a bus or light rail to work, but instead I end up having a saily commuteof over 100 miles round trip. In the city where I work, a 600sft studio apartment would cost an extra 30 grand a year versus my 3 bed, 2 bath place 50-ish miles away.

They're farmer. They live on the farm, and ride a tractor to work.