US Density blobs

Standard US anti-cycling claim: “We’re too spread out, not like those dense European countries.”

Here’s the copy-and-paste from Calca:

density(area, population) = population/area

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area
NYCMetro_area = 13,318
NYCMetro_population = 23,508,600
density(NYCMetro_area, NYCMetro_population) => 1,765.175

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands

Netherlands_area = 16,039
Netherlands_population = 16,819,595
density(Netherlands_area, Netherlands_population) => 1,048.6686

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts

Massachusetts_area = 10,555
Massachusetts_population = 6,646,144
density(Massachusetts_area, Massachusetts_population) => 629.6678

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark

Denmark_area = 16,562.1
Denmark_population = 5,602,536
density(Denmark_area, Denmark_population) => 338.2745

And if you notice, there’s a whole lot of Western Massachusetts that’s relatively empty (and also relatively hilly), but that works against the “we’re spread out” claim; if the west is sparse, then the east must be even denser.

And no, we do not have a uniform transit policy across the nation — how many subways are there in Montana or Alaska? We do what’s locally appropriate.