7 Visuals That Show Just How Much Space Cars Really Waste
The fact that we’ve built the entire country around and for cars is absurd for so many reasons.
While I’ve tried to hash out these problems of car-dependency with research and well-worded articles, when you visually see just how much space cars take up, that’s when it really clicks.
I posted some of these on TikTok, and the post got traction, so I thought I’d put them in a blog format (and add some more iconic visuals.)
1) The Stadium Aerial Shot
The photo I’m using here is from Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, a stadium built solely to be arrived at by cars.
The actual stadium, the part meant to bring tens of thousands of people together, is tiny compared to the sea of parking surrounding it.
When you build car-reliant stadiums, you create a kind of concrete moat around them. It’s a dead zone of asphalt that makes it unpleasant and unsafe to walk anywhere nearby. There’s nothing to do before or after the game except get in your car and leave.
Even the nearest Metro station in Chinatown is a 31-minute walk away, through a stretch of highways, fences, and heat-radiating pavement.
If Dodger Stadium were designed with transit, walking, and cycling in mind, that space could hold parks, restaurants, or homes — things that make cities vibrant. Instead, it’s a monument to the inefficiency of car-first design.
It’s also worth mentioning that it was a vibrant city neighborhood, Chavez Ravine, before the Dodgers arrived and demolished it.
2) How We Allocate Street Space by Karl Jilg
While the Dodger Stadium example zooms out, this illustration by Swedish artist Karl Jilg zooms in.
Even on the streets of many “walkable” areas, the illustration shows how much of our street space is given to cars instead of people.
Streets make up about a third or more of urban land, yet in most places, almost all of that space is devoted to moving or storing cars. Walking or biking gets squeezed into whatever is left.
This is true even in neighborhoods and cities where most people don’t drive, and the vast majority of trips are with the more space-efficient options.
When we give so much space to cars, we make streets more dangerous, more polluted, and less social. Cities could be quieter and greener if we reallocated even a fraction of that space to people instead of machines.
As Transportation Alternatives investigated, if we repurposed 25% of the space in New York dedicated to cars, we’d have enough land for 13 Central Parks.
3) “Sheet Metal” Saturn Commercial
I’m not sure how this commercial was designed to sell cars, because this early 2000s Saturn commercial shows the absurdity of car-dependency.
It’s worth watching it all the way through.
This visual is striking because it flips the perspective and shows, once again, how much space we waste to move one or two people at a time.
The commercial meant to sell more cars, but it accidentally became one of the best arguments against them.
4) Amount of Space Required to Transport 60 People
In 2001, the City of Muenster, Germany, released a now-famous photo showing how much space it takes to move the same 60 people by car, bus, and bike.
(Technically, this really shows how much space they take up parked versus moving, but the point stands.)
This is a point that advocates like me all the time: cars are the least space-efficient way to move people in cities. Even if every car were electric, it wouldn’t solve the fact that they take up too much physical space.
They take up too much space per person to be compatible with walkable city life. It’s just geometry.
Indirectly, this visual also combats arguments like “the bus lane is always empty” or “the bike lane is always empty.”
Even if a bus only goes by every five minutes, it’s probably carrying more people overall than a lane that’s bumper-to-bumper with private cars. Cyclists don’t get stuck in traffic because they don’t take up as much space, so the lane doesn’t look as “full” as the car lane, even if it means more people.
5) London’s Car-Shaped Bike Parking
When I visited London, I came across this bike rack in Stoke Newington shaped like a car outline with a simple sign: “1 car space = 10 bicycles.”
A single parking spot can hold one person’s vehicle or ten people’s bikes. The math speaks for itself.
What makes this installation special is that it’s not just a drawing or infographic. It’s out there in the real world, where regular people (not just chronically online transit enthusiasts) will see it. It physically reclaims car space for a more efficient use.
While the city could’ve just put the bike rack there, I loved that they included this message and made it shaped like a car.
6) “Owning One of These Gets You Accused of Being an Elitist”
As someone who spends (probably too much) time arguing with people on TikTok about why designing our cities around cars is a bad idea, this one gets to the heart of the culture war around cars and bike lanes.
Almost every time I advocate for more cycling infrastructure, people in my comments say that I’m trying to take somebody’s freedom to drive away.
It’s so absurd for so many reasons, many of which I explain in this article on why protected bike lanes shouldn’t be controversial.
This meme captures part of that absurdity. One person is driving a three-ton truck, while the cyclist, who takes up a fraction of the space, pollutes nothing, and causes no traffic, is the one treated as extreme.
Our culture doesn’t just waste space on cars. It defends that waste and destruction, even when it makes no sense.
The Best Visual… Experience it Yourself
Again, it is sort of a cliché urbanist talking point, but there’s a reason Americans like to go on vacation to walkable places, whether that’s Paris or Disney World.
When I was a teenager, I lived with a host family in Barcelona. It was my first time living in a walkable place.
I remember feeling amazed that I could walk across the street and somebody would make a café con leche for me. I could throw a rock to everything from the gym to seven options to get lunch. Within a few more minutes on foot (or a metro ride if I didn’t want to walk), I could get to beaches and clubs.
When we prioritize walkability and deprioritize unfettered access by private cars, streets are cleaner, more pleasant, quieter, with more space for nature and natural human interaction. The best visual is to see it for yourself.
What Did I miss? Let Me Know
What other great visuals belong here? Let me know in the comments below, and maybe I’ll add it to the article.
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