Apparently Detroit Has the Nation's Best Drivers...

[313WX]

The Metropolitan Atlanta area has 5,710,795 people, Metro Detroit has 4,292,060. Atlanta is more than slightly bigger, and spread out. Every place seems like it's a hour or more away from the central city. More people, more traffic.

It is a very huge misconception that Metro Atlanta is much bigger than Metro Detroit.

The issue is the flawed way that MSAs / CSAs are defined. Not only is Detroit dinged for its odd commuting patterns [[since comparably fewer people from the suburbs commute to the city versus Atlanta), but Canada is also excluded from our official MSA.

Atlanta's metro area as defined by the Census is almost double the size in area than Detroit's. If Detroit's MSA was defined the same way, Ann Arbor, Flint, Monroe, Sarnia, Chatham-Kent and Windsor would all be included and the population would actually be around 5.7 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit%E2%80%93Windsor