Gas prices have skyrocketed across the U.S. as a result of the Iran war, but the surge is causing more economic pain in some cities than others.

And it’s not necessarily in the places where gas prices have risen the most, like Chicago or Los Angeles. Instead, it’s in smaller, more spread-out cities, like Nashville or Indianapolis, according to an analysis of local gas prices through April 9 from data aggregator GasBuddy and figures on driver mileage from the Federal Highway Administration.

Many of the hardest hit cities are in the Sun Belt and parts of the South. Drivers in the Nashville metro area, for example, have paid an average of nearly $70 more per month in fuel costs since March 1, at least $13 more than any other city. Nashville has not only experienced one of the largest increases in gas prices, but its residents also tend to drive the most of any major metro area.

Over in Raleigh, North Carolina, gas prices rose less than in Nashville — $1.25 per gallon compared to $1.48 — but also less than in at least two dozen other cities. Even so, the typical resident drives 34 miles per day, pushing up costs for the average person by about $50 per month, the fourth most of any major metro area.

Drivers in Indianapolis, Orlando and Louisville, Kentucky have also faced among the highest increases.

Meanwhile, monthly driving costs in denser cities such as New York, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon have not spiked as much. New Yorkers have paid an average of about $20 more per month in driving costs, primarily because so many rely on public transit instead of driving.

“Cities are designed around the transportation options they have, and the transportation choices people make result from city design,” said Urban Institute researcher Yonah Freemark. “Together they either reinforce car dependence or allow people to get out of it.”

The repercussions of that divide are particularly apparent right now. The 10 metro areas with the smallest impact from rising gas prices have about double the number of people per square mile as the 10 cities where costs have increased the most.

Yet some cities don’t cleanly fit this pattern. Pittsburgh’s population density is very similar to Nashville’s and neither city prides itself on its public transit usage. Yet Pittsburgh’s driving costs increased by less than a third as much, primarily because people in Nashville drive more than twice as far on average.

Chicago has seen average costs go up more than Los Angeles despite its more robust public transit, in large part because a disproportionate share of miles driven are on city streets, as opposed to more efficient highway driving. Los Angeles residents spend a lot of time in their cars, but mostly in traffic, reducing the amount of fuel they actually consume.

The 50 largest metropolitan areas cover 155 million people, or nearly half of the U.S. population. Another 82 million people live in hundreds of smaller cities that have a population of 50,000 or more and tend to drive less than residents of the biggest metro areas, according to the Federal Highway Administration data.

That data, however, doesn’t cover the roughly 30% of the country that lives in rural areas. Those residents generally have limited access to public transportation and must rely on cars to purchase groceries and other essentials.

In the short run, there isn’t much that people in more car-dependent sprawl cities can do to lower their gas bills beyond the standard advice the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency include in every year’s fuel economy guide. The most meaningful change the guide recommends is to avoid rapid acceleration or braking, which can save 10% to 40% in fuel usage in stop-and-go traffic.

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—With assistance from Marie Patino.

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