The 100 Best and Worst Cities to Drive in

Traffic congestion and infrastructure are only a fraction of the story. Listen in as Scott and Ben sort-out and explain a recent study of the 100 most-populated U.S. cities. Find out if your city was ranked at the top or bottom in any of the key dimensions, and then learn the overall best and worst cities for drivers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the Wheel, under the Hood and beyond with
car Stuff from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hi, and
welcome to Car Stuff. I'm Scott, I'm Ben. We are
joined by our super producer Alex Williams. Most importantly, you're here,
which means we can start the show, ladies and gentlemen,

(00:23):
and we have, uh, we we have a brief thing
unrelated to today's episode that we want to catch you
up on. And listeners, I'm gonna be right there with you.
Scott had an adventure. We had an adventure, right and
uh and I do to scheduling, had to had to
miss out, uh with great regrets. But I would like

(00:47):
to hear about your your expedition, your experience. Oh yeah, yeah, Well,
you know I told you a couple of weeks ago
that I was going to meet up with Rally North
America when they were near us, you know, down here
in the southern part of the United States. Uh. They
were over at the Talladega Track in Talladega, Alabama, at
Superspeedway and they were going to run some laps and

(01:07):
uh Mr Glenn Beck invited me over to you know,
to partake with them of these laps, and uh, I
kind of find out the whole way it works. And
I could talk for an hour about this bend. We won't,
but but it was incredible. I got to drive the
team Limber Mustang on the track after he you know,
I rode first, and then and then we switched drivers
for you know, after four laps, and then I drove
for four laps and then I'll tell you we were

(01:29):
on you know, bank turns going hundred and thirty miles
an hour at some time, at some point with with
Glenn behind the wheel, I got it up about a
hundred and fifteen, maybe one seventeen. I was afraid to
look down at that point. But but man, it was fun.
It's a great car, it's fast, it was loud, it
was fun. Rally in North America. All the people were there.
They were all, you know, saying high to me and

(01:51):
and to pass along. You know, the thanks to you
for the video that we put together. Yeah, so you
Tony and Scott and the rest guys. Saw Tony and
Scott and Glenn and uh boy, I'm gonna forget people
and Tim and Danielle and uh smarty and I saw
a bunch of people there. So lots of people and um,
had a great time. It was a hot day, I
mean really really hot. It was like I want to say,

(02:14):
upper nineties and with you know the heat index that
they say it's something like a hundred and eight heat index,
so really feeling the heat on the on the tarmac there.
But it was a blast, had a great time and
I've just never driven on a track surface like that.
It's really unusual sometime off air, left to talk about
what that does to your kind of messes with your
mind a little bit when you're seeing doesn't match up

(02:35):
with what you're feeling. Really really, it's strange. Yeah, it's
really odd. When you look at your left window, you know,
the driver's side window on the bank at speed, all
you see is uh, you know, more tarmac down blow
you the flat party, you know, the apron I guess
for the racetrack, and out to the right, you know,
you're watching things like you know, the big flagpoles outside
of the outside the track, and they appear to be

(02:57):
going off at the wrong angle. They're not streight, they
don't appear straight to you because your mind is being
fooled that you're actually level uh huh, and that the
world is sideways on an angle. Yeah, and even though
you're making a right turn, I'm sorry, I left turn.
You know, at hundred and twenty miles an hour or whatever,
you're not being thrown to the right at all. You know,
you're not leaning into the door, you're being pushed down

(03:19):
into your seat. So it's all very very strange. It's
really unusual. You want to do it again. I would
do it in a heartbeat. It was so much fun.
And we ended up getting a second set of laughs.
So we so Glenn and I, you know, combined. I
drove four He drove most of these sixteen laps around
that thing. That's pretty unusual. I mean, we got in
for a second group run because he had done some

(03:40):
he did a little volunteer work too, so they allowed
us to go for a second time. Man, that was fun.
It was a fantastic experience, and it was good to
meet up with the you know, the rally people again.
It was great. And I wanted to just quickly tell
you that they raised a pile of money for the
Hope for the Warriors charity this time. One hundred and
forty nine thousand, three fifty dollars is the total for

(04:02):
you know, all of Raley North America for this one event,
for this one rally. Hey, Alex, can we get an
applause queue? Perfect? Yeah, congratulations Rally North America. Amazing. That's
a pile of money. I mean, I think they broke
a record this time for you know, their own record
for raising money and um, just it was a lot
of fun. Again that was the Rally Appalachia to event.

(04:24):
If you want to look up you know, Raley North
America dot com and and you know find out, you know,
if they've up at at all by the time this
episode finally airs, because I have a feeling that the
donations are still going to continue to climb up, right,
And this is this is a good cause, you know,
this is uh, this is providing support for US veterans,
you know what, and their families. Yeah, and their families.

(04:46):
And we know that when veterans return to the US,
this kind of support is crucial, right. Uh So this
is a cause that Scott and Alex I really believe in.
We we support it. We hope you do too. And
Scott I wanted to say thank you so much for

(05:07):
starting this podcast on a positive note because this is, uh,
this is gonna be a show with a lot of
ups and downs. My friends, here's here's one down. Ben. Yeah,
I'm gonna slip on my new reading glasses. I was
gonna say it looks fiffy. Oh my gosh, these are
that's my first pair of reading glasses ever. I'm I'm

(05:29):
getting up in age right and uh. And here's the thing.
When I wear contacts, which I am today, it kills
my short visions. So when I'm in the studio it's
a little bit dim in here. It's not bright. Um,
it's a little brighter today than usual, but it's kind
of like an Olive garden. We should just podcast from
an Olive garden. You know they got unlimited bread stone

(05:49):
and bring up the same thing. Well, yeah, I mean
the tour of Italy and uh and we'll talk about
you know, automotive Easter eggs or something. But you appreciate this.
To me and my friends, Um, we were broken college. Uh,
we would end up going to all of garden with
the understanding. We're like, well, they've got unlimited breadsticks and

(06:10):
someone would say are they any good? Would say no,
but they're always going to be there. Oh no, I'm
a big fan. You're a big fans. Well, you know, okay,
I guess it's just we reached the point of diminishing returns. Man.
We would go there and like order soda and unlimited
breadsticks and that was that's it. That was dinner. One guy.

(06:33):
One guy had the stones to ask for to go box.
Really yeah, they did it to move, Oh they did.
Yeah that's nice college town that happened, right, So moving
past breadsticks and breading glasses. I mean, I mean this
hopefully will help me out with some of the these numbers,
because there's a lot of numbers here. Um, and we're
going to talk about, well the best and first of all,

(06:55):
it's a wallet hub study and this is the best
and worst cities to drive in, so very current and
that's not all we're really going to talk about. We'll
talk about some of the um, the finer points of
this too. I mean, there's a there's an overall rank,
and there's some methodology. Yeah, the methodology is really interesting. Um.
You know how they came about this and and it's
actually it's a pretty good study. I mean, lots of sources,

(07:17):
which we'll talk about, um, but the way they broke
these down into uh, these multiple categories um is really fascinating,
and the value that they placed on each and and
how they kept it fair. Um. And we'll talk about
some of the more unusual things like you know, the
cities that have the most car washes per capita. UM.
We'll talk about the cities that have highest you know,

(07:39):
average gas prices or UM car theft rate, parking rates,
you know, stuff like that. It's this all plays into
the bigger numbers that we're gonna talk about for the
best and worst of driving, because it's an overall rank. Yes,
so maybe we start with some general statistics. Uh. Also,
by the way, I'm in I'm in the market for

(08:00):
a pair of glasses. You know, I'm so cheap man,
I've got I'm still using the pair of glasses I
had in seventh grade. That's bad for your eyes, man,
I alwyes, haven't changed that. Well, Okay, I just went
yesterday to get you know, contacts and glasses and all that,
and that's where they suggested these stupid reading glasses that
I'm gonna be wearing today. Um, you know, the ten
dollar ones from the drug store. But I went yesterday

(08:23):
and sure enough, my vision is slipping, so you know, yeah,
they had adjusted a little bit. You're not gonna do
like a monocle. No, but I mean you can't hang
onto glasses for you know what. Okay twenty years Hey,
I did not say I was a clever person, but yeah,
I've got to I've gotta bite the bull against the glasses,
just in yourself. Ben, Yeah, there we go. It's the ticket. Yeah. Now,

(08:46):
these cities they're investing in Some of them are investing
in infrastructure that makes them better. Some of them are
not doing that, which makes them worse. Right, that is
a common factor here. And if you are listening to
this episode and it is no longer, if you're you know,
if you're listening to this sometime in the future in space,
in space, space space, space, Uh, then have no worries.

(09:09):
Check back in with the study. These kind of annual
studies come out. I mean, these studies come from multiple
places every year. We just thought this one was a
particularly insightful one and it was robust enough that I'll
go ahead and say it. These lists do change, but
there are there are some predictable winners and losers, you

(09:34):
know what I mean. So, so okay, here's some general stats.
Why why is this important? If you've if you've never
been to the US, sorry, kind of crack it up
because Scott's doing business with his glasses these things throughout.
Sorry about that, you know, because they if I look

(09:55):
up at you, you're totally out of focus. That's fine,
that's fine, man, I'll take that blurry bigfoot status. Let's
go hold as hell bigfoot stats. Yeah, you know, like
that old Mitch Hedberg up, what if Bigfoot is just blurry? Alright? So, uh,
why is this important? The United States is huge and

(10:17):
this is a car culture in the majority of this country.
You need to have access to your own transport just
to live just a good day to day. Yeah. Not
every big city has you know, outstanding public transportation, right,
light rail, that type of thing. Not every single one does,
and there reasons behind that. We've talked about some of

(10:38):
those reasons on this podcast. There's even some conspiracies as
to why some cities don't have you know, light rail
or decent public transportation. That think goes way back to
maybe a high speed stuff. That was Yeah, that was
an interesting streetcar conspiracy. I think it was right with
uh was it GM as GM and some big oil

(10:59):
companies y Yeah, yeah, Yeah. The quick and dirty on
that one is that the the conspiracy theory is that GM,
in collusion with several oil concerns, uh purchased a bunch
of street cars, purchase a street car companies bought them
out with the intention of destroying these electric trolleys and

(11:21):
driving that business model into the ground so that people
had to purchase gas powered cars, destroying hundreds of trolleys.
You can see them stacked in uh in some photos
you know of the uh uh well, I guess it's
like Junkyard photos. Yeah, they're stacked the top each other
like that. It's crazy good photos, but uh, you know,

(11:42):
amazing photos, but it's it's super bad for those cities.
Uh you know. Of course Detroit is one of those.
And you'll you'll hear people go back and forth on
this and say that, well the street cars were on
the way out anyway, or it's not. There's nothing really nefarious.
This is just how business works. Um to say, Francisco, right,
so that's San Francisco. And then also, uh tell that

(12:04):
to the court who found GM guilty. Yeah, yeah, they
actually did, and they find them like it wasn't it
like a dollar They'll find them one dollar. Yeah, it
was a it was a crazy amount, low amount, slap
on the wrist, right, So regardless, we know that cars
are for the majority of the US and necessity, you
know what I mean. And there are some places sure

(12:25):
where owning a car is so cost prohibitive that most
people just can't do it, like New York, right, very expensive,
or it's just too difficult to own a car because
of you know, the parking situation, or you know, um again,
maybe insurance rates are so high in the area that
you know, it's just cost prohibitive to do it, or
we have to pay for parking spot. Maybe not six
hundred thousand dollars like we saw in Hong Kong, but

(12:49):
are a couple of weeks ago, but um, it's still
a high amount. So you know, there are a lot
of reasons why maybe you know, a car isn't for
every city dweller. But but man, I mean this list
isn't all major major cities as well. I mean there
are some smaller cities on this list too. Um, So
rounding out the one hundred, I guess I don't know
how did you classify a major city? Is it is

(13:11):
it a a million people? Is it and maybe that's it.
Maybe there's a cut off or something. I don't know.
I would define a major city by whether I've heard
of it. Typically, I know it's a terrible, terrible Okay,
we've probably heard of most of these. They'll sell or
they'll if you haven't heard them before, they'll sound plausible.

(13:32):
They are indeed real places. Yeah, I mean in wallet
Hub kind of sorted the South for US already, of course,
because these are you know, a comparison to the one
hundred largest cities in the United States. There we go,
all right. So, out of all the daily trips that
people take every day in this grand country of ours,
eighty seven percent of those take place in personal vehicles.

(13:55):
It's a huge number, that is. Uh So, even with
the growth of public transit, and you know, there are
a lot of initiatives going around in various parts of
the US towards expanding public transit, even there, most people
still try to travel by car because it's comfort reliable,
you know, the old Sainting scott. If you want something
done right, you gotta do it yourself. That one. I

(14:17):
do know that when you do, you got them backwards.
But yeah, that one I do know. So drivers annually
spend around two hundred hours on the road, plus another
forty one hours an entire work week just in gridlock.
That's the equivalent of a six week vacation for full
time worker. And if you add in the cost of

(14:40):
wasted time and fuel while the hubs calculating that, this
comes out to be about a hundred and twenty four
billion dollars annually. Wow, so how does it hit you individually?
That would be about seventeen hundred dollars per household. And
that figure, I guess doesn't even include the additional five
hundred and fifteen dollar expense for maintenance and repairs, the

(15:00):
that every average American spends on their vehicle. And that's
just that's just on average, Yeah, every year on maintenance.
There's another related stat we want to give you here.
Out of a hundred and forty economically developed nations, America's
road quality ranks number fourteen. Yeah, that's a even According

(15:23):
to the American Society Civil Engineers, we get a D
grade D grade just scuting bigrade. And you would think
we've got a fantastic interstate system. I guess maybe, but
I guess you know, the way it's kept up isn't
all that fantastic. But man, that's that's pretty dismal number really,
I mean getting a D grade and we're number fourteen
out of hundred and forty of the developed nations. UM. Wow, okay,

(15:47):
So we talked about where they kind where these numbers
are really coming from. It's the one hundred largest cities
of the United States. And UM the way that, UM,
well you should we talk about the methodology at this
point or how about the sources for then the methodology
and the sources that they're getting this data from. UH
come from places like the U. S. Census Bureau. UH,

(16:07):
the FBI has us some input into this because I
think there's some security issues that we talked about, our
safety issues. UM. Counsel for Community and Economic Research. UH,
the nh T s A is in on this of course. UH,
the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. It's a place
called enrics I n r I x U. There's also
the National Centers for Environmental Information Triple A S on this. UH.

(16:31):
I'll see the Road Information Program f h A, which
is the Federal Highway Administration all the hits Yeah, ways
mobile is on the in on this. So there's an
app I thought that was really interesting. Actually it's smart, yeah,
because ways is of course U. It's a souped up
GPS that will calculate in real time its opinion of
the fastest route for you to take from any point

(16:54):
A to any point It only makes I mean, they
do nothing but collect data all year long, so you know,
why not use Some of it is um, all state
insurance companies in here, Quinn Street Insurance Agency, YELP, Parkopedia,
True Car, and of course wallet hub research. So those
are the sources. It's a long list of sources. And
then the methodology. I find the methodology pretty fascinating because

(17:14):
the way they break all this down and we'll get
to uh, you know where the city's following these different
categories in a moment here. But the methodology is pretty interesting.
So in order to determine the best and worst cities
for drivers, walt Hub analysts compared a sample the one
hundred most popular or populated US cities across four key dimensions.
Now that these are will break these down in just
a moment because there's some interesting stuff within these two.

(17:37):
But number one was cost of ownership and maintenance. Number
two is traffic and infrastructure. Like we mentioned before. Number
three is safety. That's probably where FBI and some of
the insurance as um. And then number four is access
to vehicles and maintenance. Uh so we're talking about like
you know, repair shops and things like that, all right,
so you know if you don't have a shop, a

(17:57):
local shop and stuff to get you know, something that
work done. And that comes up here. There's some cities
that have appallingly note low numbers of of maintenance areas
or shops that you can go to. It's very important
to say also about these cities is they do not
count cities that would be in the surrounding metro area.
So you know, like a suburb that's pretty much its

(18:18):
own city outside of the city proper, just like in
the city proper. Over those four dimensions, they have a
grand total of twenty five relevant metrics. Relevant metrics, that's right,
so within each one. Now, each metric then is graded
on a one point scale, with a score of one
hundred representing the most favorable conditions for drivers. That's the

(18:41):
best scores a hundred. Now metrics, well, we'll talk about
different types of metrics here. Now summer are available only
at a state level, and that's very few here as
we go through. But UM other metrics that you know,
we'll talk about UM they take the square root of
the population and then use that to calculate the population
size in order to avoid over opput stating for minor
differences across cities. So you can see that they're being

(19:03):
very careful about keeping everything level here, everything pretty even
as much as they can anyways, you know, based on
the data that they have. UM. So the last thing
before we start talking about some of these these categories
are these UM these you know, the key dimensions that
they talk about. Each city's weighted average across all metrics
is used to calculate its total score, and then they

(19:24):
use the resulting scores to rank and order the cities
you know that we'll talk about in a moment. You know,
the one through one. I guess the reverse from hundred
through one, right, all right, So let's talk about cost
of ownership and maintenance a little bit. Now. The total
point value for this uh this division or this uh
this dimension I guess of the study UM is thirty points.
So within that thirty points or to get to that

(19:45):
thirty points, there are things there I guess subcategories within here,
so we'll talk about those, And that's like the cost
of a new car and the average gas price. There's
also the average annual car insurance premium that people pay
in that in that city. Um, there's auto maintenance cast
there's also a total extra vehicle operating costs per driver.
That's that's weight into this. This can be a little

(20:06):
confusing when they say total extra vehicle operating costs per driver.
I originally thought they meant like, if there's a a
two person household and they have three cars, you know,
and they've got maybe a pickup truck that is the
weekend hauler, or they use to get rid of stuff
after yardwork. But that's not the case. That is not
the case. That's not the case. This is a little

(20:27):
bit of a tricky name because additional vehicle operating cost
is actually their their category for infrastructure for the result
of driving on roads in need of repair, lost time
and fuel due to congestion related delays a k A.
Traffic jam, and the cost of traffic crashes in which

(20:48):
roadway features likely were a contributing factor. So you know,
when there's a weird, really tough merge lane or something
or when you see there daily, Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
and also a potholes, right, I mean that causes a
lot of tire damage and rim damage and yeah so
and of course suspension where you know, get there. It's

(21:09):
worn a lot faster in those type of areas too,
So yeah, I can understand what they're talking about. It's
it's again poor infrastructure that leads to additional uh what
they call it v oc vehicle operating costs. Yeah, not
volatile chemicals. And oh yeah, you're right. And then there's
the last one, right, there's uh, there's average parking rate.

(21:31):
Just reading that makes me feel like I'm irritated and hassled.
So so parking rate comes into this, and well, you know,
we've actually got some numbers on parking rate. Where's the
the cheapest place to parking? Where is the most expensive
place to part? Be thinking about that for a few
minutes until we get to it, because we'll tell you.
Um And the next one is traffic and infrastructure, and
this one also has a total point value of uh

(21:52):
three thirty. Now traffic is coming up again, so it's
this is more about congestion. I guess this isn't the
cost of war on your vehicle. This is just the
the frustration. I guess, the the average hours spent in
traffic that type of thing. So actually the first one
is annual hours spent in congestion per auto commuter. And
the next one is number of days with precipitation. So

(22:13):
that could be tricky because you know, different regions, different
types of precipitation. Number of cold days or essentially number
of days below thirty two degrees fair enough, I'll makes sense, Okay,
so you have to deal with you know, snow and
ice or sleet or whatever. Um. Then there's the average
commute time by car in minutes, which is you know,
another one, average commute time, but that's a turkey one too,

(22:35):
but um, I guess within a city it'll be smaller
than you know, if you're talking about people coming from
the suburbs into the city. Um. The next one is
quality of roads, which we've already talked about quality of bridges. Okay,
that's a that's a good one, um, especially here in Atlanta.
We had that bridge issue that was caused by a fire.
That was a fire issue. Though that's man man made

(22:56):
or man caused, I guess. Um. Then we also have
roadway as per one thousand persons, which is a interesting metric. H.
Then there's also ways driver's satisfaction ratings, so this one
plays heavily into this into this traffic and infrastructure satisfaction rating,
all right. And then there's safety, which is again a
total of thirty points, so we're getting up to ninety

(23:17):
points here at this point. Uh. In safety, there's accident
likelihood in city versus national average. Then there's traffic fatality
rate per one hundred thousand population, which is a gruesome
step of very important, it really is. And then there's
a rate of car ffs. Often in big cities you'll
find a lot of car ffs. Rate of larceny that's
another one. Uh, strict Oh, here's I can't believe this one.

(23:40):
Strictness of d u I punishment state by states, right,
I guess, So I mean they're gonna they're gonna rate
for us here the strictest and most lenient states on
d u I. And then there's another one called punitiveness
of high risk driver insurance. And I think you know
what I think that comes into. I think that comes
into um the you know, when you get put into

(24:01):
like an insurance pool. Yeah, I think that's what they're
talking about. It says they it states with the highest
and lowest insurance premium penalties for high risk drivers. And
I think when you're a high risk driver, you have
to take from that supposed pool insurance. Maybe we'll talk
about that in a future episode. Yeah, I think I
think so maybe. And then the last one in the
safety category is driving laws rating. Yeah, so this would

(24:23):
be an evaluation of the effectiveness of the driving laws
in an area, the amount of time to understood and
probably the amount of time that followed naturally complicated rules
and rules that people don't really know we're on the books,
but they know break them every day. That kind of
right can you take? Or right on red would be

(24:46):
an example kind the city or um, you know, there's
again again. I can't get over it, Scott. This country
is huge. They're weird laws everywhere. Oh, there certainly are.
And then we've got one last category at says the
vehicles and maintenance. This is the smallest dimension, as they
call it. It's worth ten points. We're talking about car

(25:07):
dealerships per capita. Uh to your earlier points, Scott, auto
repair shops per capita, car washes per capita, and gas stations.
The car washes thing is still interesting. Yeah, I like
to talk about that. So where where do we go
from here? Well, you know, we can actually go right
to the car wash dada if you'd like. But I
think you know what I think we should do is

(25:28):
I think, you know, before we reveal the actual best
cities for driving and the worst cities for driving, because
that's like the the overall number that all of this
other stuff builds to create, right, I mean, it makes
that that's the the ultimate goal in this in this uh,
the survey or the study rather to find out which
is best and which is worse. But they do have
like best and worst cities ranked with um like different

(25:51):
things like parking rate and car thefs and you know
all the stuff that we just talked about. So there's
a few of them here that I can give you.
I can give you, um let's say five right now.
I don't know, man, I'm pretty into cliffhangers. Do you
do you wanna? Do you want to do it? After
a word from our sponsor, that's probably the best time
to do it. And we're back. What's it? What's the

(26:17):
old line? You just always say you pay for the
whole seat, but you only need the edge. I stole
that from I guess it was like Monster truck cut
you know, rallies or whatever, and you know things like
that that would be at the Silver Dome occasionally, or
anything that really applies to you maybe like demolition, Derby's
or stuff like that. All right, Well, I tried to
get you to tell me this stuff off air while
we were on or on an ad break, and you refuse,

(26:40):
tight lipped about about the best versus worst for some
of these you know, subcategories. I guess because it's pretty
pretty interesting really. So if you live in Greensboro, North Carolina, Um,
those residents spend the fewest annual hours in traffic congestion
per auto commuter, which is right around four point two. So, uh,
four point that's crazy. They spend four point two hours

(27:03):
in traffic annually, that's it. Yeah, all year, four point two.
I spend that in two days, actually a day and
a half. Um, well, that's that's also because you and
I both have the dubious pleasure of living in the
city that ranks very poorly in this regard. We'll find
we'll find out where we rank in this later. Um

(27:23):
but but okay, so that four point two number is
the of course, the best you know for for traffic congestion.
I guess right, the worst city for traffic congestion. I
don't even know if we need a drum roll for
this one, but it's Los Angeles. I mean, I think
everybody knew that. Who I mean, who didn't see that? Yeah,
they spend get this, compared to Greensboro's you know, four
point two hours, Los Angeles commuters spend one hundred and

(27:46):
four point one hours in traffic annually to get to
their job. Now, again, that's just commuting, and that's twenty
four point eight times higher than the North Carolina number,
twenty four times higher. So you gotta be uh well
to put up with a lot if you're gonna live
in Los Angeles and you're gonna commute to work or
school or wherever. I think in general, you have to
be ready to put up with a lot of stuff

(28:07):
if you I think you're right, I really do, all right.
So let's move on to um car thefts. If you
live in Gilbert, Arizona, that's the place with the fewest
car that's per one thousand residents and and the rating
is zero point five five, which is twenty seven points
seven times fewer than in Oakland, California, California. Again, Oakland, California,

(28:30):
that's the city with the most car that's per one
thousand residents, and that comes in at fifteen point to three.
They are just there's a cottage industry just stealing and
chopping up Honda civics. Well, you know that's exactly what
they're doing. Joy rides come in there somewhere. I bet oh,
I bet you you're right. Yeah, Well, will we always
see the car chases from you know, I've been Can

(28:51):
we take the pause just for a second. I want
to um talk about something that I've been doing recently,
just my own free time. I've been watching carts videos again,
police car chase videos, the ones that are televised, because
some of them are so dramatic. Recently, I mean, there's
been a lot of things happening. I mean we're talking
about some recent ones to there. Of course, the classics,

(29:11):
you know, the ones that we've seen over and over
again and they appear on you know, the ten best
lists and all that, and or worst or however you
want to rank it. But there's some pretty incredible current
or new car chases out there, and of course you
know the uh, the West Coast, um, you know channels
and not just them, but they happen to have a
lot of them out there. I mean sometimes they're there's
sometimes when I'm watching this and we'll say this is

(29:31):
our second one of the day, and they're all excited
about it because for about an hour they do nothing
but narrate what's happening because they're watching it from a
helicopter view point of view. Um, but it's fascinating to
watch and they're trying to, you know, guess what's going
to happen. You know, when the person is gonna stop
and try to run, or if they're gonna try to
do that. It's just it's it's really really interesting to watch.
And um, I don't know, I've just been getting back

(29:54):
into it again. It's spent literally hours watching car chases recently.
So maybe there might be a new episod it on
that coming up. I don't know if there's any new
techniques or anything I should do it, but but we
haven't really discussed it. And you know, since we were
high speed stuff and I think there there's some value
to bringing up some of these older topics that you know,
we maybe covered for ten fifteen minutes or twenty minutes

(30:14):
maybe in a high Speed Stuff episode, and we can
do it a lot more in depth and with you
know some uh I guess you know new knowledge. Do
you think? All right, here's here's my million dollar idea
for this episode. Okay, okay, I still, by the way,
totally believe in the in the stuffed the stuffed fry concept, right, Um,

(30:39):
I'm not backing down from that one, but I'm saying, also,
if there was some way to pull it off, do
you think people would pay to do simulated car chases? Absolutely? Do?
I mean for both in both roles? Yeah, I think
I think if you were you know, the the the chaser,
the people would want to do that. And I think
people would also want to be you know, the brook

(31:00):
the thief, the car the car thief. Um, it would
be incredible at adrenaline, wouldn't it. The adrenaline roughie you
get from something like that. Now, what if you could
do it in real cars on some massive piece of property?
You know, what if you had what if you had
two acres and they built like a small city. They
you know, had a helicopter flying overhead. I guess it

(31:20):
could be a drone, you know, something small. Um, but
you were actually trying to you know, outwit, outrun the police.
I mean, it never never happens. You know, they don't
get away, no, no, And although some places do not,
some places have very very severe constraints and restrictions on
what law enforcement can actually do in that situation. And

(31:41):
I've watched that on you know, these these this past week.
I've watched that where you know, they just let the
helicopter take over and they just follow the person right
to their home and then they come in and arrest
the person. I mean, it's it's that easy. Which is
so simple? Would you do that? Alex did Jewice simulated
car chase? Yeah, he's not in yet, he is not.
I think he has before. Okay, well we'll have to

(32:05):
talk about that. How about Well of course you would
do it, right? Oh yeah, I get Yeah, which role
or a thief? I think I would like to I
would like to do the law enforcement role. Yeah, I'd
like to catch someone. I'd like to do both. I'd
like I'd like to try both. Of course, the ending
for the thief is not ever good, you know. Ever,

(32:26):
we've got to we've got to sort this out. But
I think there's a good idea. All right. I'm sorry,
I've I've really derailed this here on the main topic.
But but I think we're yeah, I think we're onto
something here, or you're onto something here. No, no, we're
all part of this. All right. Well, here's here's a
city that shows up in these chases often, Las Vegas,
you know, the outskirts of Las Vegas in particular, but

(32:47):
we're talking about Las Vegas proper here. Las Vegas has
the most auto repair shops per square root of the
population at one point four one, which is eight point
eight times more than in this city, Boston. So if
you're in Boston, you've got the fewest auto repair shops
available per square root of the population. The number is

(33:09):
zero point one six, so they're very very low on
the on the scale there. You also have the fewest
car washes per capita in Boston. Right, that's your your
car is gonna be tougher to fix and tougher to clean,
oh man, unless you do it by yourself at your house.

(33:29):
But Boston is a crowded city. Boston is a very
crowded city and it's uh for the U S. It's
very old city too, so all this a lot of
infrastructure has been retrofitted. You boy, you know what, not
this next one, but the but the one after this
is Boston comes up against hang on for that, but
not in this one. This one is. This one's about Tulsa, Oklahoma,
which has the lowest average gas price. So that's a

(33:51):
good one to have, right, A dollar eighty five per
gallon At the time of this writing, I think this
was what probably early July UM dollar eighty five per gallon,
which is one point seven times lower than in boys,
San Francisco. San Francisco, California. Once again, that's the city
with the highest rate at three dollars and twenty cents

(34:12):
per gallon. That's the average gas price average. And for
the top five cities with the highest gas prices, of
those top five, four are in California. Well I think
we could have guessed that, yeah, man, but still four
out of the top five. That's that's crazy. You know.
I don't know. This is pure conjecture on my part,
but when we first started looking into this, I was
surprised that it wasn't you know, Hawaii or Alaska or

(34:35):
police a little more isolated, and I guess a lot
of it in California just goes down to taxation. Well
they don't. They don't even drive in Hawaii? Do they
just surf everywhere? I think? I think so, yeah, skateboards,
you know they can, they can. You know, there's just
surfboards of wheels. I mean, you know, if never mind,
I probably shouldn't go down this road. But but yeah,

(34:58):
you know what, Actually, Honolulu will come up later in
are in our best and worst? I wonder where it ranks. Okay,
all right, so we're getting back to one where where
Boston makes another appearance. This is one of the best
verses worst for the best. Winston Salem, North Carolina has
the lowest average parking rate, and the parking rate is

(35:18):
two dollars and fifty nine cents per two hours, which is,
get this, nine point one times lower than in Boston,
the city with the highest parking rate, which is twenty
three dollars and fifty four cents for two hours. Can
you believe that a parking rate? Now that sounds to
me like, um, you know, I parked I've parked in

(35:38):
a lot of big cities like Chicago. In places like that,
we have to, you know, like drive up on top
of buildings to park, and you just have no parking.
And I remember paying a pretty hefty rate. But for
two hours, twenty three dollars and fifty four cents is
the average parking rate. That's that's insane. That's pretty average.
It's almost like that's like you're going to a ballgame,
you know. Yeah, I mean the kind of the kind

(36:01):
of rate we're talking about it. But but again, if
you wanted the best average parking rate, go to Winston Salem,
North Carolina. That only two dollars and fifty nine cents
for two hours. You know, that makes it sound like
you could just stop in the road, stop in the road,
throw some change at the first person you see. That's
almost like that's like parking meter rates. But but even

(36:21):
if you're parking in a lot, you know, that's that's
a decent rate. Yeah, that's really good. And and also
obviously that's just going to rise. Not to be too cynical,
oh yeah, well yeah that's true. All right, but I
think I've given you, uh, you know, the the a
few of the best versus worst categories that you know,
once I found most interesting anyways, the ones they pulled out.
And there's one more I want to add in here, Scott.

(36:42):
It's something that I didn't understand the importance of originally.
We're talking about days with precipitation without precipitates. Oh yeah,
that does matter because you know, a rate of accidents
go up, likelihood of the traffic jam goes up when
when it rains, when it storms. So where are do
you never have to worry about this? Pretty much? Nevada,

(37:07):
in parts of California, all over the southwest. Yeah. Of
the top six places with the least amount of precipitation,
Nevada is three of them. In California is the other three,
Las Vegas, Henderson, and North Las Vegas. Yeah, those are
all tied for first. Uh, those those three and then
Long Beach comes in at number four, and then again

(37:28):
a tie for fifth place would be Anaheim, California and
Santa Ana, California. So the top six again all in
Nevada and California, So very little precept there. But guess
where you know what, Actually, I'm I'm a little bit
surprised by the by the bottom of this list, the
you know, the cities with the most days of precipitation.
I would have thought that that, you know, Seattle or

(37:51):
Portland would have been the biggest one. You know that
the number one hundred, I guess on the list, you know,
the bottom of the one hundred. Yeah, this is a
this was a plot twist for me. Yeah, Buffalo, New York.
And I guess it kind of makes sense because they
get a ton of snow, they get all that lake effect.
I suppose they get lake effect rain as well, so
it just rains, it snows all the time. I would
guess it does. But um, going backwards, I guess a

(38:12):
tie for number is Cleveland, Ohio, which probably the same
thing lake effect again, and Seattle is in again a
tie for you know, number ninety eight with Cleveland, and
then Pittsburgh and Portland are tied for number ninety six
on the list, so you know, again, I assumed Portland
and Seattle would be, you know it, tied for the
worst you know, the one hundred spot, but that's not

(38:34):
the case. So we talked about these categories. We've hopefully
given some insight on the methodology used to create this
database and we are going to dive into the list
itself after a brief word from our sponsors, and we're back. Scott.

(39:03):
I have an idea. Okay, this is an extensive list.
It's gonna take a long time if we go through everything.
We're not going to do that. I don't know if
we get to it. But but folks you at home
can read along with us this on this excellent wallet
hub study, or you can check out the link on
your own time. Please don't look at this if you're
driving right now. That's good advice. Yeah, but if you're

(39:25):
at home, check it. It's wallet hub. You can go
to wallet hub dot com. And then again it's the
the best and worst cities to drive in. And this
chart here, I mean it's a massive chart. That's the thing.
We know. We can't read through it, but it's sortable
so we can. We can quickly kind of thumb through
this and figure out which one which cities rank you know, best,
which is one? And worst? Which is one and in

(39:47):
each of those four dimensions. And before we give you
the absolute best and the absolute worst, I'd like to
comment on the ones that are overall in the middle,
because I thought that was surprising. Okay, the ones in
the middle. I think that's a great way because this
is all about averages, right, It's a great way to
look at averages. So first, let's just go by if

(40:08):
we're talking about the cost of ownership and maintenance rank Scott.
Do you want to do worst first? Do you want
to do bad news first? Let's do bad news first?
So what are like the three worst places? That's three
worst places for cost ownership are San Francisco, California. That's
the number one, and counting backwards is Los Angeles. Then Oakland,
California comes in at Fremont, California, seven, Anaheim, California is six,

(40:33):
and in Seattle, Washington is five. And then it goes
back to San Jose, California, which isn't number and then Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania comes in at number ninety three, and then Honolulu,
Well there we go. See Honolulu, we talked, they come
in at two, and then Long Beach, California is at
San Diego, California is number nineties. So that's the top ten.

(40:56):
California is running the game here. Yeah, that's eleven. Isn't
a bad way? Yeah, that's all right? So those are
those are the bottom of the um the cost of
ownership maintenance section, and here the best the top ten.
If you are in Virginia Beach, Virginia, congratulations. And if
you're in Buffalo, New York, it is probably raining or

(41:19):
snowing as you hear this, but congratulations to you as well.
You are in the top ten when it comes to
ownership and maintenance rates. I'm just fast forward here a
little bit. Lexington Fayette in Kentucky. Corpus Christi, Texas is
uh fantastic in this regard. Durham, North Carolina, Winston Salem, Raleigh, Greensboro.

(41:40):
So of the top five four or in North Carolina,
number one, the best city for you to live in
in terms of cost of ownership and maintenance is Norfolk, Virginia,
which I did not see coming. I didn't see that
coming either, all right, So you know, I don't know
if we should do this for all four because we're

(42:00):
gonna end up reading, uh, you know, eight hundred eight
hundred cities. So I guess maybe let's give the just
number one and number one hundred for each each one
after this? How So for traffic and infrastructure, uh, the
worst city, the worst ranking city on the list here. Boston,
Massachusetts comes in at at number one hundred. Yeah, you

(42:20):
remember the Big dig Man. Did you ever drive through
you know, you know what I've been through there. I
don't think that I was near that, because I think
I would have remembered that. But we we just stopped
there for one evening, like as a pass through, stopping
for dinner. And it was crazy driving. I remember his
rush hour and probably the worst time to be there,
it was. I mean, I don't know if I've ever
been in a city where cars have been so close

(42:42):
together and you know, not in the lane, but but
it seemed like it was. They were splitting lanes almost
with cars. It was crazy because some of the roads
are you know, some of the roads were built before
automobiles were a thing. May p, I gotta, I gotta.
I had a small car and uh and there were
cars that were literally inches from both sides of my
car for several blocks in a row. And it was
it was insane. And if if that sounds like too

(43:04):
much of a hassle, unwind a little bit, Unwind a
little bit. In Lovely Corpus Christi, Texas, which is number
one on this list, Number one for traffic and infrastructure.
So get yourself to Texas and you have to so
uh for safety alright, so safety rank, remember all the
stuff we talked about in safety Alright, Number one hundred

(43:25):
on this list. St. Louis, Missouri. I don't think I
expected that. No, No, St. Louis is a pretty cool town.
One on the list. I mean, that's the lowest you
can get, right, so safety. There's another plot twist, right,
what's number one? Gilbert, Arizona. Okay, that's that's the one
that I maybe have not ever heard of. And we

(43:46):
said they were gonna be towns on here that we
are cities that we hadn't really heard of. But it's
one of the top one hundred largest cities in the
United States. Alright, So the last section here and then
I promise you we'll get to the driving cities. But
the last categories access to vehicles and maintenance, and we
we already uh mentioned some of this, I think. But
the worst one is Laredo, Texas. Yeah, I don't know

(44:09):
why I would have Again, I just wouldn't have picked
that asn't as the you know, the worst on the list,
um and the way number one on the list Miami, Florida.
Access to vehicles and maintenance. They must have a lot
of maintenance facilities there. Um, lots of vehicles, that's for sure.
Lots of area. Yeah, alright, Ben, So now we're past,

(44:30):
uh you know some of the minutia, I guess. So
you know all four of the categories and where everybody
everybody ranks. Uh you said you wanted to talk about
a few of these, uh the middle rankers, Like yeah, yeah,
absolutely right, all about the averages. I'm one thing that
might surprise people is, Okay, if we look at the
dead center of the list, one Dallas, Texas, Houston, Texas,

(44:54):
in Cincinnati, Ohio. So they're what what does that mean?
They're okay places to live in drive. Yeah, it's strange
because two of them are in Texas, and then the
Ohio is just an outlier. I guess it's not really
an outlier either, is it Cincinnati, Ohio? It's a it's
it's lower part of of Ohio. Pretty big town. Yeah. Um,

(45:16):
they get snow there, I know they do. Um, I
don't know. Yeah, it's right on it's right on the river,
right and on the High River. I think this just shows, um,
how well constructed. It was on the on the part
of the researchers here that all of these factors are
accounted for. I just want to so give everybody those

(45:37):
three cities, so we have kind of a baseline, right,
So you want to do h you want to do
bad news first again, Yeah, let's do that. So it's
a bad news first. And if you want to, let's
have at the bottom five. How about that. That sounds great.
So counting back from number, let's do that number. Boston, Massachusetts.
Now that's the name that's come up several times. I

(45:58):
feel like at this point, man, we just all Boston
residents are Boston fans listening to the show. We didn't
purposely pick this episode to just dog on your favorite town. No,
it just happens to rank is one of the worst
cities for driving, that's all. And I bet that people
in Boston would agree. I bet I was gonna say it.
I bet, you know. I bet. Those an unnecessarily disclaimer

(46:19):
on my part, because apparently, if you're listening to this
show and you live in Boston, you're stuck in traffic
right now. You might be listening while you're trying to
get through that terrible congestion, but a lot of people
are doing that right now. But it's still not as
bad as Seattle, Washington, which is on the list. And
then number ninety seven would be Washington, d C. Now
that's a town you and I have talked about in

(46:41):
the past as being just insane traffic insane. Yeah, um,
this is this is a bit of a surprise. Yeah, Detroit, Michigan. Yeah,
and uh, both you and our producer Alex have spent
time in Detroit. So before we went on air, I asked,
I asked you guys, like, what's the deal. I have
to say, Here's here's what I think about this. Now,
my my, I'm not this is my own scientific reasoning

(47:04):
as to why this is on this list. But I
would bet that I bet it ranks pretty low. And safety,
I would bet that also the infrastructure is kind of
poor because it's a it's a city where, um, it
was declining in population and they were not maintaining the roads.
And we're talking about Detroit City proper. So for safety, yeah, here, safety,
they're like ninety four on the list. And for traffic

(47:25):
and infrastructure, Uh, they come in and I think it's
also ninety four. Hang on, it's ninety one. Um, they're
really low on three out of the four different categories.
The only one where they're in the top even forty
is in access to vehicles and maintenance. It's Detroit. Yeah
there rank thirty two on that, but um, all the
others are up around like the ninety ranks. So it

(47:47):
does make sense that Detroit ranks is number ninety eight.
Is one of the worst cities for driving. After that,
probably no big surprise. Oakland, California comes in at nine.
Your car is gonna get stolen, but you'll be able
to get it back because there are no car repair
shops according to the data. According to the data, what
about car washess, I wonder where they fall in? The

(48:11):
road is full of holes. Gas is a million dollars
a leader. But that's not the worst, No, even worse
than Oakland, California. Did you just say a million dollars
a leader? Yeah? I think you did. I'm not like
a math surgeon or whatever. Alright, so yeah, so yeah,
that's not the worst, and that's number California. I may

(48:32):
have been exaggerating a little bit about the gas prices, sure,
I admit it, but I'm still you know, I'm approximating.
And even worse than Oakland, California is San Francisco, California
comes in and I guess it would be the worst
city for driving. It's actually number one hundred on this list,

(48:52):
so it's it's the lowest ranking, and I don't think
that's a huge surprise probably to anybody. Yeah, it's a
very crowded place they always went. I mean, it seems
like you can't mention San Francisco without mentioning, you know,
the crowding situation, how difficult it is to get around there.
So Los Angeles is kind of you know, falls into
that as well. But surprisingly Los Angeles in this list
is nine one ninety one on the list, So it's

(49:15):
a it's a full you know, ten points higher, I
guess in the less than um, you know than the worst.
Traffic is bad. It's gonna be expensive, you're not going
to have a fun time commuting, and it's not going
to be safe. Yeah, and it's tough to find a
car wash, I guess. I guess, so I guess. So
you know, Honnolulu, we mentioned Honnolulu. Honolulu comes in at

(49:37):
number ninety four on this list, so it's very near
the bottom of the list for um for for you know, well,
as it's probably one of the worst cities to drive in,
I would not have expected that. You think it'd be
a relatively easy commute, you would think, but I would
bet that they probably deal with um. Of course, they
got a lot of um, you know, vacation or traffic,
you know, touristic kind of thing happening. There, probably tour

(49:59):
busses to were, you know, tours everywhere. And it's a
beautiful city to man, it really is. It's I mean,
it's it's definitely congested. It's just having a tech boom.
That's another big part. You know, there's a there's a
huge population moving in right uh or there was recently,
so that that kind of stuff can have a lingering effect.

(50:21):
But as we said towards the beginning of the episode,
we'll book ind this with some good stuff. So so
maybe we can maybe we can get hit a closing
note on on a positive angle of the top five
places to live, the top five places to be a
driver and an auto owner. So the best cities for

(50:43):
driving going from number five to number one. Number five
is El Paso, Texas. Congratulations, you guys, I feel Now
that's good. That's good. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's great.
I mean, okay, I'll be honest, I'm working to be
a had sport because having seen this list, and if
you like, if you see this list and you live

(51:05):
in the United States, the largest city near you may
well be on it. Right, that's true. And so I knew,
I knew Atlanta was bad, but I didn't know it
was this bad. So I will admit I am a
bit envious of everybody in heck the top thirty. And well,
I should we tell them where Atlanta falls because we

(51:26):
complain about Atlanta traffic all the time. It's a recreationally,
it really is. Okay, Atlanta, Georgia is number seventy on
this list. San Diego is better. Well, I you know
what number seventy I I just can't. I can't believe
it's it's that um high on the list. We're slightly better,
slightly better than Anchorage, Alaska. Now, now I would have

(51:52):
thought we would have fallen into the bottom ten as
far as the worst cities to drive in because of
the congestion, the traffic everything. All right, you know what,
let's get back to our number. So let's keep the
depositive here. So so we we told you that number
five was El Paso, Texas. Uh, number four is Mesa, Arizona,
and number three Greensboro, North Carolina. I don't think that's
a surprise. We know it's been showing up still the

(52:15):
virtues of Greensboro, North Carolina several times. A lot of
that great traffic is probably due to us, due to
our work. Uh. The dark horse candidate of the day is,
of course, Gilbert, Arizona comes in at number two. Apparently
this is just a wonderful town to drive it, I
guess so. And then you know, as we said, you know,

(52:35):
in a couple of a couple of the other categories,
because Corpus Christi, Texas comes in at number one, and
I think we mentioned earlier you should just kick back
and relax and get yourself to Corpus Christie. Yeah, and
beautiful Corpus Christi, Texas, where the parking is cheap, the
gas flows like gatorade, helping out well. They were number
one in traffic and infrastructure, they were number seven and

(52:57):
cost of ownership and maintenance. They were number nine in
the safety rank. But they fell really really low. They
re number seventy two in access to vehicles and maintenance.
So they had three really high scores in this UH
in this list and then one really low one. But
it's kind of like the opposite of Detroit. They felt,
you know, like the they're like polar opposites. I guess
in the way that the rankings were so interesting list,

(53:20):
it really is. And when you start to kind of
pour through the numbers, I know, sometimes it's difficult to
convey you know, a chart like this, you know, through
the podcast, I realized that's a little bit frustrating. But
if you're able to get to a computer, get to
a phone or whatever and search this wallet hub study
again the best and worst cities to drive in, it's
it's really something worth looking at and kind of analyzing
because the methodology that they used, that the way that

(53:43):
they tried to be fair among all these you know,
the one hundred largest cities. UM, it seems like they
really did their homework and got some good information, some
good solid information, had a large UH pool to draw from,
you know, with all the sources that we talked about. UM,
I think it's just it's good. Seems like a good
study to me. It really does and it seems accurate.
It really does seem accurrate. Now, I of course, I

(54:04):
think everybody that lives in a crowded city will say, now,
my city's gotta be way higher on the list as
far as worst city to drive as you feel like
that's the case, like when you're in that traffic, you're
just you're sure that that's the worst city to drive in.
But there's so many other factors you have to consider
the play into that. You know, the maintenance and all
that stuff. The of course, you know, the bridge construction, um,

(54:27):
just general road maintenance, washes, yeah, you know, whatever. Safety
of course that's one. Parking rate and fuel cost and
all that stuff. So uh, there's just there's a lot
of factors that that play into this. And again I
think it's a it's a good list. I'm taking off
the reading glasses now and I can see you clearly
now stop making disrespectful faces at you know. Okay, So

(54:50):
I appreciate. So yeah, yeah, I do what I can.
So the good news is that this list will probably
change as different cities on a case by case basis
finished large construction projects institute, um, maybe maybe different forms

(55:11):
of transit. The bad news also is that this list
will probably change because on a on a huge high
level view, the infrastructure of the US is in trouble. Um.
We talked about it a little bit on our show
in the past, but less than a year ago, a

(55:34):
piece of the Inner State here in Atlanta just collapsed. Yeah,
well cause I mean as a tremendous fire underneath the bridge.
It was what some piping that they were storing under there.
We we talked about it for for a significant amount
of time because it was a big deal. Yeah, it
was a big deal. The good news is you wouldn't

(55:54):
believe how fast they repaired that thing. They were initially
they were saying it was going to be several months
or month, and the months of months, and it was
like a couple of weeks, and well it felt like that.
I think I think it ended up being like a
two month project. But that is ridiculously fast when you
consider what they were doing. And they said that they
broke all kinds of construction records, and and you would think, Okay,

(56:15):
you don't want them really to break a speed record
when they're when they're building a bridge, you know where
hundreds of thousands of cars pass over I think daily.
I think I think that's the number. It's a it's
a high, high number. It's it's a main artery into
downtown Atlanta that a lot of people take, you know,
from not just here, not just the northern suburbs, but
from all down the East coast. They all kind of

(56:36):
feed into this one area. Um, people coming back up
from Florida go through that area. It's it's really it's
a critical artery for this city. And the records that
they were breaking is because they were working twenty four
hours a day. Um, they had you know, multiple ship
I think it was three shifts of people that were
working constantly and then included supervisors and everything. Everything was

(56:56):
on the level. It was all done, you know, inspected correctly.
But they were they were doing things like using concrete
that could cure like three times faster than the concrete
that they had used in the past. Um, they were
also paid a lot for it. To Scott, they did,
and they were also incentivized. And the incentive was and
this I found this really interesting, is that and actually

(57:18):
quite good. Um they when they when they offer those incentives,
you know, then they say that if you get it
done by this date, will give you an additional three
or four million dollars, I can't remember what it was.
You would think that that's you know, of course, the
contractor that the person who owns the company is going
to just be almost like a slave driver, like you've
got to get that done fast, fast, fast, because and
you think it's all going to go to that person

(57:40):
or that company, that's not the case. It's split between
all of the workers, the the laborers that everybody's cracking
the web. Everybody gains by getting it done faster. And
they know that, and with that incentive, of course they're
not going to have a problem working, you know, the
late shift for for two months to get this done
because it means a huge pay day for them at

(58:00):
the end. And I actually felt pretty good about that
knowing and finally learning that from this incident, because I've
heard of those incentives in the past for construction, and
I always thought it was just to kind of line
the pockets of the guy that owns the company, some
kind of fat cat needle. Yeah, not true, not true.
It doesn't work that way. And we're bringing up the
bridge just as a specific example of a much larger

(58:21):
looming issue. And I don't know about you, Scott, but
I'd like to hear from everybody else. So, uh, folks,
we're gonna open a dangerous door here, buddy. Okay, let's
do it. Folks. Let us know about the traffic in
your town. Oh boy, I'm not gonna open that door. Yeah,
let us let us seriously know. If you have a

(58:43):
second check out check out this list. See if your
cities on it. Um tell us what what you like
don't like. And I also want to hear about the
infrastructure in your neck of the woods. How about this,
let's see that. Let's this. This could be like a
therapy thing for people, really, if they would like to.
If they like to, they can you know, they can
call or not call. Don't call, you can you can email?

(59:04):
When I live in you can't call. It's a podcast. This,
this isn't This isn't a live episode. The next caller
please call her caller. Okay, the line's dead. I was
going to do it nice, Okay, alright, no, but no,
like send us an email, Yes, send us an email.
That's a that's a modern way to do things. Ben
not even a fact. Don't even try. I don't even

(59:25):
bother with the facts. Just send us an email and
uh and and you can gripe about the traffic in
your city if you want to. I don't know if
i'll reply, but I'll read it. I promise i'll read.
I read every bit of email that comes in. We
read every email. And you are much better at writing
back to people. I try to write back as as
much as I can, but it's it's been lagging recently.
We get a lot of email now, which is a
great thing. And if people write in about you know,

(59:48):
traffic gripes and concerns and problems, which we love to read,
actually I really do. And you know, if there's some standouts,
you know, who knows, maybe they'll show up on a
on an episode soon. But again, it could be kind
of therapeutic to do this, I think for people, Yeah,
let us know about let us know about some of
the weirdest traffic works in your neck of the woods.
I'm also curious to hear about what what are like

(01:00:11):
the legendary bad roads. I think every city has some
legendarily bad roads that people avoid. Everybody says they avoid
them because they're this tremendous hassle, but for some reason
they're still always packed, even though everybody you know swears
they don't use it. Well, it's probably like a lot
of toll road stories. You know, you gotta take a
toll road you get to somewhere they have to be.

(01:00:32):
That's always frustrating. And also, if you would like to
hear more car stuff before we return next week, you
are in luck. You can find every episode that Scott
and I have ever done on our website, car Stuff
Show dot com. And if this entire time, I've been thinking, Yeah,
I want to email you guys, because I have something
very important. My fellow listeners need to know about the

(01:00:54):
traffic and Poughkeepsie. Well, they can't do that on a
phone call. Can't do it on a phone call? Oh shoot,
I mean you could just randomly dial a number and
tell somebody about it. I keep forgetting Well, okay, you
know what, how about this man? Maybe this is the
year we try to get a phone. But until then,

(01:01:15):
you can write to us directly. We are car stuff
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, This is how stuff works
dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an
email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. M

(01:01:36):
hm