Worst cities to frustrate
We can all agree that there is almost never a right place or time for your car to break down. But surely there are places where dealing with a breakdown is not as scary as in others? For example, if you're in a city with particularly low-quality mechanics, you're definitely in for worse times than in a city full of high-quality mechanics. The same goes for the average price of mechanics in each city.
There are other factors to consider in addition to these. Breaking down in the depths of a city riddled with crime will be a much more unsettling experience than breaking down somewhere relatively safe.
You also need to consider the potential costs that will incur while your vehicle is in the shop. If you need to use public transport to get to work when you don't have a car, you'll find yourself spending much more in some cities than others. We decided to compare the top XNUMX largest US cities across all of these factors (and more) to find out which ones are the worst to break down. What place do you think your city will take? Read on to find out...
Mechanic Reviews
We started by compiling an average Yelp review ranking of the most popular auto repair shops in each city. We then combined these ratings to determine the percentage of 1-star reviews and the percentage of 5-star reviews for each city. These results were then compared and normalized (using min-max normalization) to give these cities an overall score against which we could rate them.
The city with the lowest score for this factor was Louisville, Kentucky. While it doesn't have the lowest percentage of 5-star reviews (a dubious Nashville award), it makes up for it with a particularly high percentage of 1-star reviews. At the other end of the table, Los Angeles took first place. It had a negligible percentage of 1-star reviews as well as the third highest percentage of 5-star reviews.
Mechanical costs
We then turned to our previous study (“Which state is the most expensive to own a car?”) and added data from the CarMD State Repair Cost Rankings to find the average cost of repairs in each city.
We took the statewide average repair cost in each city (based on the cost it takes to check an engine light bulb) and compared them to each other. The city with the highest renovation costs was Washington. This is not so surprising - various studies have shown that the cost of living in the District of Columbia is especially high, such as the August 2019 World Population Review report. Meanwhile, Columbus, Ohio was the cheapest, nearly $60 less than D.C.
Public transport costs
Our next step was to compare each city on their respective public transport costs to illustrate how much you might have to spend in different cities while your car is in the store.
Our ranking is based on the proportion of income needed for a XNUMX-day unlimited public transit pass compared to the average commuter income in each city. Los Angeles turned out to be the most expensive city — it simultaneously managed to get the most expensive XNUMX-day pass and still have one of the lowest average commuter incomes. Washington DC handled this factor much better than the previous one. It ended with the lowest share of income spent on commuting. This result is somewhat predictable given the fact that the city has the highest average commute income. However, this was also helped by a relatively inexpensive public transport pass.
Congestion
Dealing with a breakdown will also be faster in some places than others. If you are stuck in a city with bad traffic congestion, you will probably have to wait much longer for help to arrive than in a city with less busy roads. So we looked at TomTom data to find out which cities had the highest levels of congestion in 2018.
Once again, Los Angeles was at the top of the list, which is understandable given its position as the second most populous city in the United States. Even less surprising is the fact that second place goes to New York, America's most populous city. There's a trend here... Meanwhile, Oklahoma City is the least busy city on the list.
Crime
Finally, we compared each city in terms of crime rates. Breaking down in a city where crime is common will be much more dangerous than breaking down in a city where crime is low.
The city with the highest crime rate is Las Vegas and the lowest is New York City. This last result is apt given what we found in our previous study, "The Problem of Auto Theft in America": New York City once had a particularly high crime rate, but over the past fifty years, the city has been hard at work reducing the reported number of crimes. This is even more impressive because the city has the largest population in the US, estimated at 8.4 million in 2018.
Results
After examining each factor, we compared the data points with each other to create an overall score for each city. We standardized them all using minmax normalization to get a score out of ten for each. Exact formula:
Result = (x-min(x))/(max(x)-min(x))
The scores were then added up and ordered to give us the final ranking.
According to our data, the worst city in which a car can break down is Nashville. The Tennessee capital had especially low ratings for mechanics and especially high public transportation costs. In fact, the only data point for which Nashville scored more than half of the available scores is its crime rate, for which it only ranked thirteenth.
The second and third cities with the worst breakdown rates are Portland and Las Vegas, respectively. The former had consistently poor scores across the board (although none were incredibly low), while the latter had slightly higher scores across most factors. The main exception to this is the crime rate, where, as mentioned earlier, Las Vegas had the lowest score of all thirty cities.
At the other end of the ranking, Phoenix was the best city in which a car breaks down. Although it did not score very high on mechanic or public transit costs, the city had the second best average rating for mechanics, as well as the sixth lowest congestion rate.
Philadelphia is the second best city to break. Like the Phoenix, it scored well for its average mechanical grades. However, in terms of congestion levels, it fared worse, ranking 12th among the most congested cities.
Third place belongs to New York. Despite being the 2nd busiest city, the city makes up for it with a particularly low crime rate, as well as fairly high ratings for mechanics. His overall combined result was not enough to overtake Phoenix or Philadelphia, but the difference in points was very small - New York could still overtake them both in the future.
In this study, we delved into the factors that we felt were most relevant to the subject. If you would like to see our sources as well as the full data, click here.
