Car drivers in the New York metropolitan area have more exclusive room to roam than do their counterparts in any other area of the country. That’s because, as the cartogram above shows, our metropolitan area contains the nation’s most extensive limited-access expressway system (shown in purple) — roads that are restricted to passenger cars only.
No trucks, buses, or commercial and service vehicles allowed.
As a result, the extent of New York’s passenger-car-only expressways far outstrip the networks of car-only roads in any other metro area, almost all of which have none, according to policy wonk (and frequent Streetsblog commenter) Larry Littlefield, who commissioned the cartogram from the Pittsburgh-based firm 4CGeoworks. Metro Washington, D.C., has an expressway network limited to passenger cars — but it’s not even close to the extent of ours.