Traditional cities have fewer carbon emissions because they don’t require vast amounts of driving. Fewer than a third of New Yorkers drive to work, while 86 percent of American commuters drive. Twenty-nine percent of all the public-transportation commuters in America live in New York’s five boroughs. Gotham has, by a wide margin, the least gas usage per capita of all American metropolitan areas. Department of Energy data confirms that New York State’s per capita energy consumption is next to last in the country, which largely reflects public transit use in New York City.
