Nobody could have predicted how the last few years would change our world: a vast remaking of society, crammed into the lifespan of a hamster. Beginning in 2020, Americans experienced a sudden and drastic change in our behaviors. Many of us stopped going to school. Others gave up restaurants. By 2021, dashed expectations of a “Hot Vax Summer” left us with more questions than answers. When would we, as a country, resume some semblance of normal life?

Now we have at least part of the answer. In 2022, the United States was on the move again.

That conclusion is drawn from a detailed look at Lyft’s rideshare data over the past year. (Technically, from October 1, 2021, to October 1, 2022.) Drop-offs at education destinations (think schools and universities) are up 47%. Churches, temples, and other religious institutions: up 38%. Civic institutions: up 33%. Entertainment and recreation drop-offs saw a big jump last year — a 52% leap between June and October 2021 — and climbed another 11% between October 2021 and October 2022.

Other notable increases include transportation, which is up 31% year-over-year. A big part of that came from the continuing recovery of post-COVID work and vacation travel. Airport drop-offs are up 34%, and lodging is up 24%.

These findings track with what other organizations are reporting. According to a September 2022 Axios-Ipsos poll, “More Americans now say they already have returned to their normal, pre-COVID life (46%) than at any point during the pandemic.” That probably correlates with what you’ve seen and felt in your own life.

But that familiar big picture hides some compelling details. For instance, even as the pandemic has entered a less severe phase, healthcare drop-offs have jumped — up 35% over the past year. This could be due to a number of factors, not all of them COVID-related. According to a July 2022 McKinsey report, “The chronic disease burden has been rising for years and will continue as the number of older people grows.” So it makes sense that the trend line would point upward — and that it would be supercharged amid the return-to-normal-activity surge. 

Even the seasonal peaks reflected in Lyft’s ride data fit an established pattern, mapping closely with typical seasonal variations in doctor visits. Across all specialties and age groups, doctors are generally busiest in March, January, and August, according to healthcare booking service ZocDoc. 

You may have thought that, post-Covid, our worlds have shrunk — that we are more likely to stay closer to home. Lyft’s data, at least, contradicts that idea. Indeed, we aren’t just traveling more — we are traveling farther. Just for example, rides to education destinations were 42% longer in October 2022 than in October 2021, and healthcare rides were 40% longer. 

This could correspond to some sweeping changes in where people moved over the past few years. Mortgage rates remained historically low through 2021 and into the beginning of 2022, which encouraged many people to buy new homes. Many of those who moved left urban life behind for more space, both indoors and out, but they didn’t necessarily change jobs or leave their metropolitan areas completely. This could explain the longer rides to businesses, doctors, schools, and other categories.

It could also explain the 28% rise in mass transit drop-offs. According to Lyft’s data, last year New York’s suburbs saw the largest jump in ride activity in the entire country: a 47% increase in Westchester County and 39% in Long Island’s Nassau County. And an unusually large share of those rides were to train and bus stations — around 4%, making them among the transit-happiest areas in the U.S. by far. (Which makes sense, as so many suburbanites use mass transit to commute to work.) 

In general, the more likely a city’s residents are to take public transit, the shorter the average Lyft ride to work is likely to be. Among major cities in the U.S., New York and Seattle boasted the shortest commute lengths, and more than 1.5% of all Lyft rides there went to mass transit locations. By contrast, mass transit drop-offs accounted for less than 0.5% of Lyft rides in many of the cities with the longest commutes — like Detroit, Orlando, and Atlanta. With that in mind, perhaps it’s not surprising that as mass transit usage exploded, the length of the average Lyft commute shrank by about 20%.

So, over the course of 2022, we traveled more frequently, we traveled farther … and we also traveled (slightly) more slowly. By October 2022, a Lyft ride averaged 25.1 mph, down just a touch from 25.3 a year earlier. But compare that with before the pandemic, when speeds in major metros averaged around 24 to 24.5 mph. When the lockdowns hit, the number shot up to 28 mph, presumably because there were fewer cars on the road. (Many will remember the eerily quiet streets.) So while speeds have crept down since then, they are still 0.5 to 1 mph faster than pre-pandemic levels. When you consider that this data takes into account millions of Lyft rides, that’s a significant increase.

But there’s a lot of variation within those numbers. Some cities fell back to their pre-Covid average speeds almost immediately. New York, by far the slowest city in the country, was crawling along at 15 mph back in October 2020. Boston and Las Vegas are back to their grindingly slow normals as well — 20 mph and 22 mph, respectively. Other cities, however, never came back to pre-Covid levels. Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., are still zipping along at 2 to 3 mph faster than their pre-Covid average.

Fast or slow, city dwellers are returning to their old habits. And you can tell a lot about a city by which destinations its riders are most likely to frequent. For instance, of all the major cities in the United States, which would you guess is the hardest partying? If you said Austin, you win the honor of having shouted the correct answer at a website. In that city, 5.5% of Lyft rides went to bars and nightclubs. 

On the other end of the spectrum, that healthcare bump was particularly hearty in the Northeast. In Boston, 3.6% of rides ended up at a healthcare facility, followed by Buffalo (3.4%), New York City (3.4%), and Philadelphia (3.3%). (This may be a nod to those cities’ high density of internationally renowned hospitals.) Denver residents just beat out Pittsburgh for the title of “Most Likely to Take a Lyft to a Sporting Event” (1.4% of all rides). Almost a full percent of Tucsonans’ (that’s a real word) rides ended up at a spa. Orlando cements its tourist-magnet status: 11% of Lyft rides ended up at hotels. And a whopping 15% of rides in Nashville are to that city’s famous restaurants.

Speaking of eating out — we’re doing it earlier. On average, Lyft riders ate dinner five minutes earlier in October 2022 than they did in October 2021. But some cities have shifted much more dramatically. Lexington, Sioux Falls, Chattanooga, and Anchorage are all eating out more than 15 minutes earlier than they did last year. Even famously late-eating New York has moved up dinner time by 3 minutes.

Did we mention that airport drop-offs jumped by a third? Well, as anyone who braved a crammed airport can tell you, it’s a fact worth repeating. Here’s one way to illustrate how quickly we’ve bounced back. The day before Thanksgiving is traditionally one of the busiest travel days of the year. But throw a dartboard at a calendar in March or April 2022, and you’re likely to hit a day that had more airport drop-offs than November 24, 2021.

It’s great that so many people are eager to travel — unless you’re trying to avoid those holiday crowds. Fortunately, rideshare data offers some clues about how to beat them. Around Thanksgiving time, consider booking trips on the Saturday before the big feast and returning home on Black Friday. Those two days were the sleepiest, both in 2021 and 2022. (Could be the tryptophan.) During the Christmas season of 2021, the best days to snag an airport ride were Saturday, December 18 and Tuesday, December 21. The worst day (by far) was Friday, December 17. As for the summer, airport drop-offs and pickups saw a noticeable dip between July 2 and July 9. This could be because Independence Day is a road-tripping holiday. AAA estimated that, despite high gas prices, 42.0 million drivers packing their families into their haulers in search of hot dogs and fireworks.

(As for which airports we were going to, Los Angeles was the most popular for Lyft drop-offs and pickups, followed closely by Las Vegas, New York’s LaGuardia, and San Francisco.)

Even though Covid is still with us, our country is finding its new normal. You see it in schools and at grocery stores. You see it in the theater and your office. But most of all, you see it on the street. The United States is the country that brought motorized transportation to everyone, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the roads are one of the most unignorable indications that the world — or this part of it, anyway — has learned to navigate the new reality. We might never get fully back to our pre-pandemic ways, but one thing is for certain: We are on the move again.