9.1%
Occupied housing units with no vehicle available. 44,362 of 485,932 units (±0.4 percentage points).
Access & costs
Who cannot drive, and what crashes already cost
The economic case is not “jobs we hope a company will announce.” It is the cost of crashes we already pay, the households with no car, and the transit gaps RIPTA is asked to fill. Where we lack a Rhode Island study, we say so.
Households without a car
90.9%
Occupied units with at least one vehicle. Vehicle access is high statewide and still leaves tens of thousands of households without a car.
U.S. Census Bureau, 2024 American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table DP04 for Rhode Island (FIPS 44). Open the table.
Official ACS tables also cover disability (S1810, DP02) and age 65+ (DP05). We link them on the Data & sources page. From this environment the Census API required a key, so we do not quote those percentages without a verified extract. Seniors, people with disabilities, and no-car households are the groups robotaxi advocates usually name. The Census tables are how to size those groups without guessing.
Transit already carries people who need a ride
RIPTA’s FY 2024 facts: 13,097,025 unlinked trips. That includes 12,662,251 on fixed-route buses and 288,736 on RIde (senior / ADA / disability). RIPTA also runs Flex in 10 communities and ADA paratransit statewide.
A robotaxi is not a substitute for a bus network. It is a possible fill-in for nights, first/last mile, and people RIPTA cannot serve at the hour they need. RIPTA’s own page: Facts & Figures.
National crash costs (no RI official dollar figure)
NHTSA’s latest comprehensive cost report is still calendar year 2019 (published 2023). U.S. crashes that year killed about 36,500 people, injured 4.5 million, and damaged 23 million vehicles. Economic costs were $340 billion (lost productivity $106 billion, medical $31 billion, property damage $115 billion, congestion $36 billion). With quality-of-life losses, NHTSA’s comprehensive social cost was about $1.4 trillion.
These are United States totals for 2019, the latest year in NHTSA’s crash-cost report. NHTSA did not publish a Rhode Island breakout in that report. We do not scale the national figure down by population, because crash costs are not uniform across states.
Blincoe et al., DOT HS 813 403. PDF.
Tourism and the local economy
Newport and Providence depend on visitors who may not want to drive, park, or drink-and-drive. That is a plausible use case for robotaxis. We did not find an official study that estimates robotaxi tourism dollars for Rhode Island, so we do not print a made-up number. The crash, access, and transit figures above are the evidence we have.
Left out on purpose
- We did not find an official NHTSA or RIDOT dollar estimate of the cost of Rhode Island crashes for a recent year. Third-party groups publish state cost figures; we leave those out until we can cite an official table.
- We did not find a Rhode Island-specific study of robotaxi jobs, tourism, or investment. National or other-state job studies are not evidence of what would happen here.
- ACS tables on disability (S1810, DP02) and age (DP05) exist for Rhode Island. The Census API required a key from this environment, so we link those official tables rather than quote unverified percentages.