As anyone who drives in Milwaukee can tell you, driving in Milwaukee kind of sucks. There are pesky bicyclists and scooter-riders clogging up the right passing lanes. There are inconsiderate pedestrians walking across the street. Wanna park downtown during Bastille Days? You can’t! And don’t get us started on that streetcar that absolutely no one rides because one day we saw it and there was hardly anyone on it.
Anyway, a new study from professional study-generator WalletHub confirms our outrage: Milwaukee is a crappy place to drive in. The city ranks 87 out of 100 in a list of 2019’s Best & Worst Cities to Drive in. That’s two places better than Chicago (#89) and two places worse than Cleveland (#85). The best city to drive in? Raleigh, North Carolina. The worst? Detroit.
How did WalletHub come up with its numbers? GLAD YOU ASKED.
In order to determine the best and worst cities for drivers, WalletHub compared a sample of the 100 most populated U.S. cities across four key dimensions: 1) Cost of Ownership & Maintenance, 2) Traffic & Infrastructure, 3) Safety and 4) Access to Vehicles & Maintenance. Our sample considers only the city proper in each case and excludes cities in the surrounding metro area.
We evaluated those dimensions using 30 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for drivers. Data for metrics marked with an asterisk (*) were available at the state level only. For metrics marked with two asterisks (**), the square root of the population was used to calculate the population size in order to avoid overcompensating for minor differences across cities.
Finally, we determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.
Milwaukee ranked 72 in Cost of Ownership & Maintenance, 84 in Traffic & Infrastructure, 77 in Safety, and 52 in Access to Vehicles & Maintenance. Read the whole study HERE while you’re stuck in your remarkably brief commute.
Also, ride the bus.