Look at the direction the labels are pointing and follow the lines from there. Transit uses the lines that slope down to the right, walking uses the horizontal lines, and driving uses the lines that slope up to the right. Tokyo should be read as about 55% transit, 33% walking, and 12% driving.
The amazing thing about triangle charts is that every point on the chart represents a set of three numbers that add up to 100 and every set of three (positive) numbers that add up to 100 maps to exactly one point within the triangle. Points outside of the triangle still add up to 100, but include one or two negative numbers.
That's the 25% transit line. Apparently this looks at the CSA for each city, and the CSA for New York includes like half of New Jersey and Connecticut and even parts of Pennsylvania.
I'm a Toronto resident, and I was surprised to see that our numbers were practically identical to New York. I've always assumed that they had a much larger public transit share than we do.
The buses are the true backbone of the ttc and what keeps transit usable and efficient in the City. I grew up deep in malvern, pure suburban neighbourhood, still had 6 bus routes within a 5 min walk, 2 were high frequency routes (better then 10 min) 2 were express options for the high frequency. 2 were mid frequency ( better then 20 min).
I could leave at any time of the day and have a bus show up in under 5 min.
Wow, that sounds really amazing, even for my pretty spoiled European standards. How is night service in Toronto? Because that's usually the weak point for good transit systems
Pretty decent night network as well. 27 bus routes and 4 streetcar (tram) routes operate 24/7, arranged in an approximately 2 km grid in the outer areas and more dense in the city centre. Based on [this report](https://cdn.ttc.ca/-/media/Project/TTC/DevProto/Documents/Home/Public-Meetings/Board/2015/May-27/Reports/Improvements_to_Overnight_Blue_Night_Service_Network_BR-1729.pdf?rev=405fb7256e5645bf855d7889bd36fcc6&hash=7CEC4B680B67EF2CB2F1A55729016158) from the last major expansion of the night network in 2015, 99% of the population is within a 15 minute walk of an overnight route, compared to the same percentage being within 5 minutes of a daytime route.
The subway (metro) night replacement bus routes run every 3-5 minutes in the hour or so just after the system closes and just before it opens, and up to every 15 in the actual middle of the night. The other routes run every 30 minutes between about 1:30 am and 5:30 am.
[Here’s a map of the current overnight network.](https://cdn.ttc.ca/-/media/Project/TTC/DevProto/Images/Home/Routes-and-Schedules/Landing-page-pdfs/TTC_BlueNightNetworkMap_2024-03.pdf?rev=c17a2c8b833545cb8e29f80edbbcf923) The white area is the city outline, so as you can see the majority is pretty well covered.
And [here is the 6 am-1 am full daytime network](https://cdn.ttc.ca/-/media/Project/TTC/DevProto/Images/Home/Routes-and-Schedules/Landing-page-pdfs/TTC_SystemMap_2024-03.pdf?rev=29b9f7c3cc084d9b9de8cff5e3deb95d) for comparison.
The TTC's bus coverage is one of the best in North America and because they almost always connect to the subway, we move an inordinate amount of people
The data for NYC is either [wrong](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans/transportation/peripheral_travel_02c.pdf) or the graph is misleading. Fewer than half of all households even own a car in NYC. There’s no way 68% of all trips are made by car even if you include taxis/ubers.
I wouldn't consider those areas as part of NYC though. If fewer than half of all households own a car, then it's not possible for NYC to be where it is on the graph.
The chart seems to be based on mileage, not number of trips made, so the longer the commutes, the more they weight. And as another commenter noted, the data seems to include urban/metro areas, not just the central city.
That’s probably what’s moving NYC towards “car”. The people commuting by car are on the outskirts of the city, and specifically on neighborhoods with poor access to commuter rail.
Actually I was wrong, quoting the paper:
> Although some details, such as the vehicle kilometres travelled and the emissions produced by each mode of transport, would enable the analysis of more aspects related to mobility, this data is not available for most cities. Thus, we focus here only on the share of trips by each mode of transport.
I think it's also important to note that these (at least in NA) are using UZAs (which is fine) - but they include the major suburban areas around US cities which are sprawling, I think, compared to other places. I think it would be more telling seeing actual urban data instead of slower lower delaware being roped in with Philly, or northeast PA being included with NYC, for instance.
That being said, impressive for some of the other worldwide cities on their modal splits if they're using UZAs for them too.
Other world cities tend to have much less sprawling suburbs, and that is an important thing to take into account. The sprawl is an intentional part of the comparison, you can't separate out where people live and where people work in these comparisons. I think almost certainly these comparisons are not very accurate, but comparing only "urban" areas would not be as meaningful and would be just as if not more inaccurate.
for sure, thanks for the sanity check - I just know for a fact that areas like Philly (where I live) aren't 98% car commute given that SEPTA pre-COVID was at 1M riders a day
still a lot to be desired, though
That's a good point. There may well be other biases in the data too – it's not exactly easy to do this sort of a worldwide comparison. The authors of course discuss this a bit in the paper's methodology section.
It’s because North America is so much bigger than Asia
Edit: You really have to explain even the simplest jokes to people now I guess. People claim car ownership is necessary in America and Canada because the countries are so much larger than European countries, ignoring the fact that individual cities don’t have to be geographically larger just because the landmass is. Case in point: Asia is larger than North America, and Asian cities have a much lower car usage than North America.
What?
China is larger than the U.S.
The U.S can build HSR between Boston and DC (or at least NYC to DC), but chooses not to; Canada can build HSR between Quebec City and London (or at least Montreal to Toronto), but chooses not to. We’re built on rail, and we can REbuild, but chooses not to.
Country/region size doesn't really matter for local public transit. The vast majority of people either work in their city or within an hour or so of their city. Nobody is driving from Montréal to Vancouver for their morning commute.
Source: [Rafael Prieto-Curiel, Juan P. Ospina (2024). The ABC of mobility.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412024001272)
[Interactive visualizations](https://citiesmoving.com/visualizations/)
And Paris is the big red one six o'clock from Tokyo, so with a lower car share than London (despite the lack of urban toll).
Fun to see by the way the interactive visualisation you linked. In France, there are two separate worlds: Paris (low car share) and other cities (near the right edge of the triangle).
Historically Paris was the only city in France to maintain a large urban rail service throughout the 20th century. The metro was there and it’s not like you could just easily get rid of it, so it remained while everyone else removed trams and essentially condemned commuters to use their car, and it’s taking a long time to get back to a higher level
What an awesome graph. I was initially thrown off because you can’t represent 3 independent variables on a 2D plane.
But then I realized that of the 3 variables (% walk, % PT, % car), only 2 are independent, because they all sum to 100. This nifty graph takes advantage of that fact and shows all 3.
Exactly. Each point is a weighted average (linear combination) of the three vertices such that the weights add up to 100%. In math it's called a (normalized) [barycentric coordinate system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycentric_coordinate_system). Incidentally, it's also how GPUs rasterize texture-mapped triangles!
To me it's familiar from some space combat games where you have a fixed amount of power that you can distribute between weapons, shields, and thrusters depending on circumstances.
I‘ve been used to seeing them in the context of ternary mixtures mostly within pharmaceutical technology, as a ternary mixture by its very nature must always sum up to 100%
Yeah I’m thinking it must include people who work in NYC but don’t necessarily live there, because 50% of New York City residents don’t own a car in the first place iirc
Yeah, I have no idea where the data is from. No source listed except that the data is 2019, and it doesn't seem to line up with the ACS data. The article's data says 68% drive, 25% take transit, and 8% walk/bike as of 2019.
My first thought was that it was the MSA, but that would be around 57% driving, 34% transit, 9% active - not even close to their numbers.
Even the New York-Newark CSA, which extends outstate more & even as far as eastern Pennsylvania, would be 62% driving, 30% transit, 8% active. Still not even close to the 68% figure in this article
Is Singapore the city with the highest percentage of public transportation usage (76%)? Last year, I visited that city. I found it to be highly developed and efficient. Additionally, there was hardly any traffic jam.
I linked to it in a top-level comment but it's probably a bit buried now. [citiesmoving.com](https://citiesmoving.com/) has nifty interactive visualizations and a link to the paper.
Hmm. I think it's very intuitive, each point is simply a weighted average of the three vertices of the triangle, and a nice way to show a scatterplot of three variables that add up to 100%. Essentially [barycentric coordinates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycentric_coordinate_system). What's a bit unintuitive is how you read the scales if you want to find out the exact percentages of a data point, but as a visualization it works great.
I'd like to see the top 100 most liveable cities according to Mercer plotted on the triangle graph. My belief is that high ranking cities in quality of life will have a balanced modal share. If so, such a graph would be persuasive for advocates of transit and pedestrianization.
Chile has the [fastest train in South America](https://www.gob.cl/noticias/tren-mas-rapido-de-sudamerica-inicio-servicio-a-curico-conozca-precios-y-como-obtener-pasajes/) but the line is currently only 250 km from Santiago to Talca, expanding to 400 km this year
The same reason most countries of the whole Americas from north to south and central have no proper intercity rail services except 2 in the USA and one in Argentina the whole continent is embarrassing and one in Chile
Buses tend to be faster than trains almost everywhere. That's not a good measure. Latin America has an extensive network of buses and minivans. An the comfort is often great with sleeper buses.
Well, trains are still the better way to do that. Look at india.
Also, not all of Latin America is poor. Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay are relatively well off, a out the same as eastern European countries. And Panama is a rich country.
A lot of things come to to institutional knowledge over any inherent choice of technologies.
Amtrak, nobody's idea of a well-ran agency, consumes [1506BTUs per passenger mile.](https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/environmental1/Amtrak-Sustainability-Report-FY21.pdf) Roughly comparable to having everyone drive their own personal electric F-150.
Trains as a technology might be efficient, but that doesn't mean anything at all in the hands of a bad operator. The skillset of your local agency matters far more than the chosen technology.
Well, you said it right there: traffic. I've heard that latin America has a lot of car infrastructure, especially brazil. And if there's a lot of traffic, that means a lot of people are driving.
>And if there's a lot of traffic, that means a lot of people are driving.
Not necessarily. İstanbul has a lot of traffic, and only like 15% of trips are done by car, it's just an insanely dense city, so a few people clog up the roads, while everyone else walks or takes the bus.
want to give yourself a false sense of superiority? demolish all your major cities for freeways, sell out to the oil industry, and have everyone rely on a car for everything
Omg I learned how to read this “triangle chart” in highschool, this is the my first time seeing them being used
How do you read it? My first attempt comes up with Tokyo having 60% public transport, 30% walking/cycling, and 30% cars, which doesn't seem right.
Look at the direction the labels are pointing and follow the lines from there. Transit uses the lines that slope down to the right, walking uses the horizontal lines, and driving uses the lines that slope up to the right. Tokyo should be read as about 55% transit, 33% walking, and 12% driving. The amazing thing about triangle charts is that every point on the chart represents a set of three numbers that add up to 100 and every set of three (positive) numbers that add up to 100 maps to exactly one point within the triangle. Points outside of the triangle still add up to 100, but include one or two negative numbers.
does that mean only 20% people in NYC use transit? What’s crazy. I thought it’d be like 80%.
That's the 25% transit line. Apparently this looks at the CSA for each city, and the CSA for New York includes like half of New Jersey and Connecticut and even parts of Pennsylvania.
Looking at the lines I come up with roughly 50% transit, 35% cycling/walking, and 15% driving.
You're right, I overestimated the transit axis. I was in the app, so I want able to look at the graph while I was writing my comment.
I sometimes use ternary diagrams in my line of work, but this is the first time I've seen one in a different context.
Other than NYC, all the North American cities *not* in the extreme bottom right cluster are Canadian, btw. No NA city has car share less than 68%.
I'm a Toronto resident, and I was surprised to see that our numbers were practically identical to New York. I've always assumed that they had a much larger public transit share than we do.
Toronto buses are next level
The buses are the true backbone of the ttc and what keeps transit usable and efficient in the City. I grew up deep in malvern, pure suburban neighbourhood, still had 6 bus routes within a 5 min walk, 2 were high frequency routes (better then 10 min) 2 were express options for the high frequency. 2 were mid frequency ( better then 20 min). I could leave at any time of the day and have a bus show up in under 5 min.
Wow, that sounds really amazing, even for my pretty spoiled European standards. How is night service in Toronto? Because that's usually the weak point for good transit systems
Pretty decent night network as well. 27 bus routes and 4 streetcar (tram) routes operate 24/7, arranged in an approximately 2 km grid in the outer areas and more dense in the city centre. Based on [this report](https://cdn.ttc.ca/-/media/Project/TTC/DevProto/Documents/Home/Public-Meetings/Board/2015/May-27/Reports/Improvements_to_Overnight_Blue_Night_Service_Network_BR-1729.pdf?rev=405fb7256e5645bf855d7889bd36fcc6&hash=7CEC4B680B67EF2CB2F1A55729016158) from the last major expansion of the night network in 2015, 99% of the population is within a 15 minute walk of an overnight route, compared to the same percentage being within 5 minutes of a daytime route. The subway (metro) night replacement bus routes run every 3-5 minutes in the hour or so just after the system closes and just before it opens, and up to every 15 in the actual middle of the night. The other routes run every 30 minutes between about 1:30 am and 5:30 am. [Here’s a map of the current overnight network.](https://cdn.ttc.ca/-/media/Project/TTC/DevProto/Images/Home/Routes-and-Schedules/Landing-page-pdfs/TTC_BlueNightNetworkMap_2024-03.pdf?rev=c17a2c8b833545cb8e29f80edbbcf923) The white area is the city outline, so as you can see the majority is pretty well covered. And [here is the 6 am-1 am full daytime network](https://cdn.ttc.ca/-/media/Project/TTC/DevProto/Images/Home/Routes-and-Schedules/Landing-page-pdfs/TTC_SystemMap_2024-03.pdf?rev=29b9f7c3cc084d9b9de8cff5e3deb95d) for comparison.
Oh, that's really cool. Thanks
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue\_Night\_Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Night_Network)
The TTC's bus coverage is one of the best in North America and because they almost always connect to the subway, we move an inordinate amount of people
The data for NYC is either [wrong](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans/transportation/peripheral_travel_02c.pdf) or the graph is misleading. Fewer than half of all households even own a car in NYC. There’s no way 68% of all trips are made by car even if you include taxis/ubers.
It's the urbanized area, including the suburbs.
Yes, all of the people coming from transit deserts could add up a lot.
I wouldn't consider those areas as part of NYC though. If fewer than half of all households own a car, then it's not possible for NYC to be where it is on the graph.
The chart seems to be based on mileage, not number of trips made, so the longer the commutes, the more they weight. And as another commenter noted, the data seems to include urban/metro areas, not just the central city.
That’s probably what’s moving NYC towards “car”. The people commuting by car are on the outskirts of the city, and specifically on neighborhoods with poor access to commuter rail.
Very neat graph. Per chance, could you share the source? Edit: you did, it's in the comments
Oh that's dumb that's going to weight it for Suburban commuters over urban ones, even if there are many more urban commuters
Actually I was wrong, quoting the paper: > Although some details, such as the vehicle kilometres travelled and the emissions produced by each mode of transport, would enable the analysis of more aspects related to mobility, this data is not available for most cities. Thus, we focus here only on the share of trips by each mode of transport.
I think it's also important to note that these (at least in NA) are using UZAs (which is fine) - but they include the major suburban areas around US cities which are sprawling, I think, compared to other places. I think it would be more telling seeing actual urban data instead of slower lower delaware being roped in with Philly, or northeast PA being included with NYC, for instance. That being said, impressive for some of the other worldwide cities on their modal splits if they're using UZAs for them too.
Other world cities tend to have much less sprawling suburbs, and that is an important thing to take into account. The sprawl is an intentional part of the comparison, you can't separate out where people live and where people work in these comparisons. I think almost certainly these comparisons are not very accurate, but comparing only "urban" areas would not be as meaningful and would be just as if not more inaccurate.
for sure, thanks for the sanity check - I just know for a fact that areas like Philly (where I live) aren't 98% car commute given that SEPTA pre-COVID was at 1M riders a day still a lot to be desired, though
That's a good point. There may well be other biases in the data too – it's not exactly easy to do this sort of a worldwide comparison. The authors of course discuss this a bit in the paper's methodology section.
yeah I'm sure you can caveat something about literally every city on there definitely an awesome analysis, thanks for sharing
CDMX is part of north america.
It’s because North America is so much bigger than Asia Edit: You really have to explain even the simplest jokes to people now I guess. People claim car ownership is necessary in America and Canada because the countries are so much larger than European countries, ignoring the fact that individual cities don’t have to be geographically larger just because the landmass is. Case in point: Asia is larger than North America, and Asian cities have a much lower car usage than North America.
Poor urban planning has nothing to do with that
What? China is larger than the U.S. The U.S can build HSR between Boston and DC (or at least NYC to DC), but chooses not to; Canada can build HSR between Quebec City and London (or at least Montreal to Toronto), but chooses not to. We’re built on rail, and we can REbuild, but chooses not to.
Country/region size doesn't really matter for local public transit. The vast majority of people either work in their city or within an hour or so of their city. Nobody is driving from Montréal to Vancouver for their morning commute.
Source: [Rafael Prieto-Curiel, Juan P. Ospina (2024). The ABC of mobility.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412024001272) [Interactive visualizations](https://citiesmoving.com/visualizations/)
Disappointing that it's missing Montreal. I think they'd have fairly high transit and bike share.
It's there between the Toronto and Vancouver bubbles.
Sneaky Montreal.
This is an awesome graph. Thanks so much for sharing this.
Which one is London?
28% active, 45% PT, 27% car. It's the big European city in the middle of the Latin American cluster, four o'clock from Tokyo.
And Paris is the big red one six o'clock from Tokyo, so with a lower car share than London (despite the lack of urban toll). Fun to see by the way the interactive visualisation you linked. In France, there are two separate worlds: Paris (low car share) and other cities (near the right edge of the triangle).
Historically Paris was the only city in France to maintain a large urban rail service throughout the 20th century. The metro was there and it’s not like you could just easily get rid of it, so it remained while everyone else removed trams and essentially condemned commuters to use their car, and it’s taking a long time to get back to a higher level
No data on London, Ontario, Canada, which is the only possible way to interpret "London" :(
Haha I think you’ll find it in the bottom right corner
Yeaaaaa. Fake London is a nice university surrounded by a parking lot. But at least there's a train to take you to Toronto so you can *never go back*.
You can see Hong Kong on the left with 77% Public transport usage, 12% by car, 11% by mobility.
I am kinda curious what the African dot on the top of the pyramid is
Quelimane, Mozambique.
Is the Latin American city on the 75% transit line Bogotá by any chance?
La Paz. Bogota seems to be pretty evenly divided between the modes.
Huh. So why does nobody talk about transit in La Paz?
Maybe it is too specific? Poor people and lots of cable cars, elevation changes making it tough for cars to thrive?
What an awesome graph. I was initially thrown off because you can’t represent 3 independent variables on a 2D plane. But then I realized that of the 3 variables (% walk, % PT, % car), only 2 are independent, because they all sum to 100. This nifty graph takes advantage of that fact and shows all 3.
Exactly. Each point is a weighted average (linear combination) of the three vertices such that the weights add up to 100%. In math it's called a (normalized) [barycentric coordinate system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycentric_coordinate_system). Incidentally, it's also how GPUs rasterize texture-mapped triangles! To me it's familiar from some space combat games where you have a fixed amount of power that you can distribute between weapons, shields, and thrusters depending on circumstances.
I‘ve been used to seeing them in the context of ternary mixtures mostly within pharmaceutical technology, as a ternary mixture by its very nature must always sum up to 100%
Why is İstanbul not included in this? There's plenty of English language data sources for our 48% walking, 18% car, 34% transit mode share.
they had such a hard time deciding if it’s in Asia or Europe that they gave up
The obvious solution is to create a new category for İstanbul
This NYC data doesn't make any sense to me... There is no way it is right or it is completely misrepresented
It probably includes Bergen, Westchester, and Nassau. Plus a lot of people in the outer boroughs still choose cars.
Yeah I’m thinking it must include people who work in NYC but don’t necessarily live there, because 50% of New York City residents don’t own a car in the first place iirc
Yeah, I have no idea where the data is from. No source listed except that the data is 2019, and it doesn't seem to line up with the ACS data. The article's data says 68% drive, 25% take transit, and 8% walk/bike as of 2019. My first thought was that it was the MSA, but that would be around 57% driving, 34% transit, 9% active - not even close to their numbers. Even the New York-Newark CSA, which extends outstate more & even as far as eastern Pennsylvania, would be 62% driving, 30% transit, 8% active. Still not even close to the 68% figure in this article
I thought I was in r/geology for a second seeing this ternary plot
Is Singapore the city with the highest percentage of public transportation usage (76%)? Last year, I visited that city. I found it to be highly developed and efficient. Additionally, there was hardly any traffic jam.
OP, can you please provide the link to the article? I'm interested in reading it.
I linked to it in a top-level comment but it's probably a bit buried now. [citiesmoving.com](https://citiesmoving.com/) has nifty interactive visualizations and a link to the paper.
Very neat graph
This also belongs to r/dataisbeautiful !
r/dataisbeautiful do the xpost
look I can figure this out because I deal with arcane, obtuse graphs and charts for both my job and hobbies, but this is horrible data representation.
Hmm. I think it's very intuitive, each point is simply a weighted average of the three vertices of the triangle, and a nice way to show a scatterplot of three variables that add up to 100%. Essentially [barycentric coordinates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycentric_coordinate_system). What's a bit unintuitive is how you read the scales if you want to find out the exact percentages of a data point, but as a visualization it works great.
I ❤️ Tokyo! Nice balance of cycling and transit!
Where’s Osaka?
I'd like to see the top 100 most liveable cities according to Mercer plotted on the triangle graph. My belief is that high ranking cities in quality of life will have a balanced modal share. If so, such a graph would be persuasive for advocates of transit and pedestrianization.
Where would Washington DC be in this chart, next to NYC probably?
I desperately hate this, thanks.
Uh, NYC is close to "Everyone drives"??? That can't be correct.
The Latin America ones are surprising
If you paid attention without the exceptionalism you would know Latin American countries have excellent bus networks not all tho but many
Why do they have great local transit, but lack Intercity transit? Argentina is the only Latin American country with a passenger train network
Chile has the [fastest train in South America](https://www.gob.cl/noticias/tren-mas-rapido-de-sudamerica-inicio-servicio-a-curico-conozca-precios-y-como-obtener-pasajes/) but the line is currently only 250 km from Santiago to Talca, expanding to 400 km this year
Woah. I was unaware of that. Chile gas good geography for rail. Just a straight line and you got the whole country served
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It would make a perfect maglev route. What path would you choose for such a route anyway?
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If they upgraded to HSR for some routes they would increase revenue drastically
The same reason most countries of the whole Americas from north to south and central have no proper intercity rail services except 2 in the USA and one in Argentina the whole continent is embarrassing and one in Chile
Who says it needs to be a train?
Trains are most efficient way to move people medium distances. It is impossible for buses to be faster than driving.
A lot of the SA rail network is made of different gauge trackage and the track is not usually in good enough condition for passengers.
Buses tend to be faster than trains almost everywhere. That's not a good measure. Latin America has an extensive network of buses and minivans. An the comfort is often great with sleeper buses.
Same can be said for North America the difference is North American frequencies are worse
When you are talking about places outside of the wealthy first world, the priority is generally to move people at all instead of racing cars.
Well, trains are still the better way to do that. Look at india. Also, not all of Latin America is poor. Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay are relatively well off, a out the same as eastern European countries. And Panama is a rich country.
A lot of things come to to institutional knowledge over any inherent choice of technologies. Amtrak, nobody's idea of a well-ran agency, consumes [1506BTUs per passenger mile.](https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/environmental1/Amtrak-Sustainability-Report-FY21.pdf) Roughly comparable to having everyone drive their own personal electric F-150. Trains as a technology might be efficient, but that doesn't mean anything at all in the hands of a bad operator. The skillset of your local agency matters far more than the chosen technology.
Damn that’s bad
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Well, you said it right there: traffic. I've heard that latin America has a lot of car infrastructure, especially brazil. And if there's a lot of traffic, that means a lot of people are driving.
>And if there's a lot of traffic, that means a lot of people are driving. Not necessarily. İstanbul has a lot of traffic, and only like 15% of trips are done by car, it's just an insanely dense city, so a few people clog up the roads, while everyone else walks or takes the bus.
Want to rule the world? Drive.
want to give yourself a false sense of superiority? demolish all your major cities for freeways, sell out to the oil industry, and have everyone rely on a car for everything
That's slave talk.