commuting

A Summary of 2011 Commuting Data Released Today

Wendell Cox — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 13:40:25 -0400

The Census Bureau's American Community Survey released its annual one-year snapshot of demographic data in the United States. As usual, this included journey to work (commuting data), which is summarized in the table below.

American Community Survey Commuting Data
2011, 2010 & 2000
ESTIMATES of Total Commuters	2000	2010	2011
Drive Alone	97.10	104.86	105.64
Car/Van Pool	15.63	13.27	13.39
Transit	5.87	6.77	6.96
Bicycle	0.49	0.73	0.78
Walk	3.76	3.80	3.89
Motorcyle, Taxi & Other	1.24	1.60	1.63
Work at Home	4.18	5.92	5.99
Total	128.28	136.94	138.27
In Millions

MARKET SHARE
Drive Alone	75.70%	76.57%	76.40%
Car/Van Pool	12.19%	9.69%	9.68%
Transit	4.57%	4.94%	5.03%
Bicycle	0.38%	0.53%	0.56%
Walk	2.93%	2.77%	2.81%
Motorcyle, Taxi & Other	0.97%	1.17%	1.18%
Work at Home	3.26%	4.33%	4.34%
Total	100.00%	100.00%	100.00%

Sources: 2000, 2010 Census & 2011 American Community Survey

Trends Since 2010

As estimated employment improved from 137.9 million in 2010 to 138.3 from 2010 to 2011, there was an increase of 800,000 in the number of commuters driving alone, which, as usual, represented the vast majority of commuting (105.6 million daily one way trips), at 76.40 percent. This was not enough, however, to avoid a small (0.17 percentage point) decline in market share.

Car pooling experienced a rare increase of 120,000 commuters, which translated into a 0.1 percentage point loss in market share, to 9.68 percent. Transit increased 190,000 commuters, and had a 0.09 percentage point increase in market share, to 5.03 percent. This brought transit's market share to above its 2008 share of 5.01 percent and near its 1990 market share of 5.11 percent.

Working at home increased by 70,000, with a modest 0.1 percentage point increase from 2010.

Trends Since 2000

Even with declining falling household incomes and rising gasoline prices, single-occupant commuting continued to rise between 2000 and 2011. Solo drivers increased nearly 8 million, more than the total transit commuting in 2011. Car pooling continued its long-term decline, falling 2.2 million. Transit did well (as would be expected with unfavorable economic conditions and unprecedented gasoline price increases), as we noted last year, having added 1.1 million commuters. This was spread thinly around the country, though with a 70 percent concentration in New York and Washington, DC. Over the period, working at home experienced an increase of 1.8 million, the largest increase outside solo driving.

Media Attention

For the most part the commuting data was ignored by the media --- and for good reason. The one year changes were predictably modest. However, the exception was USA Today, with a top of the webpage "Fewer Americans Driving Solo" headline. In fact, as noted above, the short term and long term trends reflected an increase in solo driving. Moreover, reading the story it would be easy to get the impression that a sea change had occurred in how people get to work. To its credit, however, USA Today appropriately labeled the likely reasons for the mountains it made into molehills --- the economy and gasoline prices.

Infographics: The Decongestion of Manhattan, New York Walking Commutes

Aaron M. Renn — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:53:21 -0400

Jim Russell pointed me at an interesting article about densification vs. de-densification over at the Urbanization Project at NYU Stern. It contains this very interesting map of the change in census tract densities in Manhattan over the century between 1910 and 2010:

Walking Related Commutes

Streetsblog, in an article covering the annual NYC DOT scorecard, included this graphic of the percentage of commutes that include walking as a core component (e.g, transit) in various parts of New York:

This post originally appeared at The Urbanophile.

Sydney's Long and Lengthening Commute Times

Wendell Cox — Sun, 20 May 2012 22:03:27 -0400

The New South Wales Department of Transport Housing and Transportation Survey reports that the average one way work trip in the Sydney metropolitan area (statistical division) reached 34.3 minutes in 2010. As a result, Sydney now has the longest reported commute time in the New World (United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), except for the New York City metropolitan area (34.6 minutes).

Longer Commutes than in Dallas-Fort Worth or Los Angeles: Sydney's average work trip travel time has increased approximately 10 percent since 2002. The 34.3 minute one way travel time is approximately 30 percent higher than that of larger Dallas-Fort Worth, which about half as dense. Part of the reason for the longer commute time in Sydney is its far greater transit dependence. Approximately 24 percent of work trip travel is on transit (which is slower for most trips). This compares to approximately 2 percent of travel in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Even Los Angeles, with its reputation for "gridlock" has a shorter average commute time, at 28.1 minutes. This is made possible by the extensive Los Angeles freeway system, greater use of automobiles and more dispersed employment patterns (despite the higher density of Los Angeles relative to Sydney). The average Sydney commuter spends nearly an hour longer traveling to work each week than the average Los Angeles commuter.

Even Longer Commutes Ahead? Sydney's densification policies (urban consolidation policies) seem likely to lengthen commute times even more in the future, given the association between higher densities and greater traffic congestion.

OECD Cites Shorter US Work Trip Travel Times

Wendell Cox — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:50:43 -0400

Catherine Rampell of The New York Times describes a new Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report concluding that Americans have among the shortest work trip travel times in the developed world (Link to chart in The New York Times).

Out of 23 OECD nations, only three have shorter one way work trip travel times than in the United States. These are Sweden, Denmark and Ireland. These are nations without the larger metropolitan regions that characterize the United States and some other nations. For example, the largest metropolitan area in these three nations, Stockholm, with barely rate among the top 30 in the United States.

The OECD report confirms similar earlier data, such as from Eurostat on the relative ease of commuting in the United States.

The US average of 28 minutes to and from work was 10 minutes less than the OECD average and 9 minutes less than Canada. South Korea, with the highest urban densities in the high income world, had an average one-way commute time approximately double that of the United States.

Among the nations in the survey, the United States has the lowest urban population densities. This reality is at odds with the contentions of some analysts who have associated longer travel times and greater traffic congestion with lower urban population densities.

But shorter commute times are about more than density. This is illustrated by comparing the Los Angeles and Toronto urban areas. The two urban areas have almost identical population densities, at 7068 and 7040 persons per square mile respectively (2,729 and 2,718 per square kilometer). The density of the core areas is similar with proportions of land areas at above 10,000 persons per square mile (4,000 per square kilometer). The most important differences are that in Los Angeles, the transit commuting share is one third that of Toronto, and automobile commuting is more prevalent. Employment in Los Angeles is much more dispersed, with less than 5% of jobs being in the downtown area (central business district), compared to approximately 15% in Toronto.

Each of these factors might be thought to contribute to longer commuter times for those in Los Angeles. However, one way commute times in Los Angeles are nearly one-third less than in Toronto. The latest data indicates that the work trip averages 28 minutes in Los Angeles and 40 minutes in Toronto.

This illustrates important dynamics of commuting and mobility. The keys to shorter commutes in the US are adequate roads, personal mobility (the US has the highest share of travel by automobile) and decentralization (lower density) of both jobs and housing.

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Addendum:

Commenting on the same report, the Washington Post's Brad Plumer stumbled into fantasyland:

The Department of Transportation found that, in 2009, commutes by private car took, on average, 23 minutes. Public transportation, by contrast, took an average of 53 minutes. You could read that as an argument that more people should drive so that their commutes are shorter or as an argument that we need to bolster public transportation.

The idea of bolstering transit to equal car travel times is empty romanticism. Today, only 7 percent of metropolitan area workers can reach their jobs in 45 minutes by transit, according to the Brookings Institution (see Transit: The 4 Percent Solution). To cut transit travel times in half, and making it available to all of the metropolitan area is unrealistic.

This is Not the Way to Fix Toronto's Transit

Wendell Cox — Fri, 13 May 2011 23:07:22 -0400

Results and not ideology should guide transportation policy.

Large city officials have been lobbying for a major program of federal transit subsidies for years. The push will likely intensify after the federal election.

A principal resource in this campaign will likely be the Toronto Board of Trade’s third annual Scorecard on Prosperity, which finds Toronto’s transportation system to be among the worst in the world, ranking 19th out of 23 metropolitan areas. Other metropolitan areas also ranked poorly, such as Montreal at 12th, Calgary at 13th and Vancouver at 21st.

However, a deeper look yields difficulties with the Board of Trade report.

Automobiles dominate travel in all but two of the metropolitan areas (Hong Kong and Tokyo). Yet, only two of 11 indicators involve automobiles. Eight relate to non-automobile modes such as transit (one deals with freight). The Board of Trade comparisons are skewed because they give disproportionate weight to modes that are relatively minor in metropolitan mobility.

However, the greatest difficulty with the Scorecard is the implied belief greater reliance on transit is preferable. In fact, transit is slower than cars for the majority of trips. Travel time needs to decrease to encourage metropolitan economic growth, as research at the University of Paris indicates. There is probably no more important transportation indicator regarding the economy.

A Globe and Mail article rightly expresses particular concern that Toronto’s round-trip average work trip time ranks last at 80 minutes per day. However, at least two of the metropolitan areas had longer work trip travel times. The average work trip travel time in the Tokyo metropolitan area was 96 minutes in 2003 (the latest data available), according to the Japan Statistics Bureau. The Board of Trade failed to find a number for Hong Kong, which the government reported at 92 minutes in 2002. Yet, these travel time laggards rank first and second in the Board of Trade rankings.

It should be a source of embarrassment that Dallas-Fort Worth, a bane of urban planners and with less than half the Toronto density, should have a work trip travel time one-third less and one-fifth less, respectively, than Calgary and Vancouver, the highest ranked Canadian metropolitan areas.

It’s worse than that. Among all of the large American metropolitan areas, in or out of The Scorecard on Prosperity, all but New York have better work trip travel times.

Except in the romantic minds of planners, little of the present car travel demand can be replaced by transit. Further, in virtually all of the metropolitan areas ranking above Toronto, the trajectory has been toward cars, so that the present figures are less favourable to transit than they would have been a decade or two ago.

For transport to make the greatest possible contribution to economic growth and job creation, the transport system must provide quick mobility throughout the entire labour market (metropolitan area). Transit-favouring ideology will not do.

The problem is evident. The $8 billion just committed by Mayor Rob Ford and Premier Dalton McGuinty to build an Eglinton subway should be used to reduce travel times as much as possible.

A huge expenditure on a single street will not do that.

So long as ideology trumps reality, Toronto’s calcified traffic will put it at a competitive disadvantage. The focus should be on results — the time it takes to get to work, rather than on means — whether the trip is by car or transit.

Wendell Cox writes here as a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and is a regular contributor to NewGeography.com. This piece also appeared in the Toronto Sun.

Commuter Rail Brings Slower Transit in Austin

Wendell Cox — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:16:55 -0400

Commuter rail is often sold to the public as a faster means of travel than buses. This can be true if the drive to the park and ride lot is short and your destination is within walking distance of a station. However, it is apparently not true in Austin.

The Austin American-Statesman reports that bus riders showed up at a Capital Metro hearing this week to oppose cancellation of two express bus routes that parallel the new commuter rail line. Their complaint? Taking the train takes longer.

As has become typical for new urban rail projects, Austin's commuter rail line is carrying considerably fewer riders than projected. During its first month of service, daily ridership averaged 900 (450 each way), less than one-half the projected 2,000. This is less than 1/100th of Capital Metro's daily bus ridership.

Striking a Balance

Matthew Leiphon — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 18:26:04 -0400

As noted by Wendell Cox, commuting and congestion have a large economic cost. Time spent behind the wheel, slowed by traffic, is time that could otherwise be put to more productive economic pursuits. Commuting and congestion also have social costs. Every minute lost trapped in snarled traffic is time that might have been spent with family, friends, relaxing, or getting involved in community building activities. Commuting can also lead to elevated stress levels, with studies showing finding that “greater exposure to congestion is related to elevated psycho-physiological stress among automobile commuters.”

One proposed solution to the challenges presented by commuting and congestion is an enhanced embrace of telecommuting. Proponents argue that businesses looking to increase productivity, burnish their “green” credibility and reduce fuel use, and allow workers to strike a better balance between life and work should offer employees the option to work from home. Whatever the motivation, it does appear that there has been a rise in the adoption of telecommuting. According to varying estimates, somewhere between 20 and 35 million individuals telecommute occasionally. Numbers appear to be on the rise, with projections showing up to 63 million workers will be making use of some form of telecommuting by 2016.

As businesses increase their adoption of telecommuting, they may also want to provide workers with increased schedule flexibility. A recent study conducted by BYU finds that workers given the option to make use of telecommuting and flex-scheduling had a much higher “breaking point” at which family life and work begin to interfere with one another. According to the study, “for office workers on a regular schedule, the breaking point was 38 hours per week. Given a flexible schedule and the option to telecommute, employees were able to clock 57 hours per week before experiencing such conflict.” As the study points out, this added flexibility allows workers to potentially make use of the equivalent of an “Extra Day or Two” in each work week, adding to productivity. According to the lead researcher, E. Jeffery Hill, the use of flexible scheduling can also contribute to greater worker satisfaction and morale. In challenging economic times the promise of increased worker productivity, improved worker happiness, and potential cost savings realized through reduced office space and facilities should be an attractive spur to increased corporate adoption of telecommuting.

Urban Economies: The Cost of Wasted Time

Wendell Cox — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:56:30 -0400

Much has been written in recent years about the costs of congestion, with ground breaking research by academics such as Prud'homme & Chang-Wong and Hartgen & Fields showing that the more jobs that can be accessed in a particular period of time, the greater the economic output of a metropolitan area. Greater access to jobs not only improves economic growth, but it also opens greater opportunities for people and households to fulfill their aspirations for a better quality of living.

Congestion costs are principally the cost of wasted time, which the most recent Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) Annual Mobility Report places at $15.47 per hour. It is important to understand that much of this cost is not because the car is not moving. It is rather because time that could be used more productively is being consumed.

Steve Polzin of the University of South Florida has raised a related issue that has been virtually absent from urban planning discussions in a Planetizen blog entitled "The Cost of Slow Travel." Noting that transit travel time is considerably slower than auto travel times, Polzin broadly estimates that slower travel on transit costs the nation $44 billion, which is two-thirds the $66 billion. Polzin does not suggest that this is a final, "take to the bank" lost productivity number, but does suggest attention to the issue.

Such thinking is long overdue. Wasted time is wasted time. Most wasted time occurs with respect to travel during peak periods, when most people are commuting to or from work. The $66 billion in wasted time by automobile translates into $550 per commuter per year in the United States (Based upon 2007 commuting data from the American Community Survey). The cost of wasted time for transit is 12 times as high, at $6,500 per commuter, using Polzin's estimate. Of course, as Polzin is quick to point out, these are not final figures. However, they are a starting point for important (and perhaps "inconvenient") economic research that has been largely kept off the agenda up until now.

How the new Apple iPad (and other mobile tech) changes the commuting equation

Tory Gattis — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:53:24 -0500

Apple's much anticipated iPad tablet computer was announced today, albeit to some mixed reviews. While the iPad itself may or may not succeed, the overall technology trend line is clear: increasingly rich mobile access to the Internet and email. Oddly, this Business Week columnist thinks the iPad may lead to more telecommuting, when what it really favors is tipping the balance for commuters from driving to transit, where the usually "dead" commuting time can become really productive. Most people are already spending more than two hours a day on email and the Internet - why not put those hours at the beginning and end of the day while commuting so you can spend less time in the office and more time with your family?

A decade ago, the workplace was much more call and voice-mail driven, which matched up just fine with long driving commutes and cell phones. But the shift has moved strongly towards email and other data-driven communications (texting, Twitter, Facebook, collaboration applications, etc.). Most messages have multiple recipients and can expect to have a string of replies - something voice mail simply can't handle. People are trying to do this data-driven communication while driving, with very bad effects that are leading rapidly to a comprehensive legal ban.

As more people realize the productivity advantage of a transit commute, I think there could be a substantial shift. But it might not be quite what you'd expect. Mobile productivity favors one long ride in a comfortable seat - no transfers, no standing 'strap-hanging' (like on a subway or full light rail or local bus), and minimal walking (which is not only incompatible with mobile productivity, but also has weather risk and is especially hard on women in heels). That argues for express buses over trains. I recently met with a friend that lives in Manhattan but works in Connecticut. Does he take the subway and then ride the train? Nope - a luxury shuttle bus with wi-fi picks him (and the other Manhattan employees) up right near his apartment and drops him at the front door of work. Point-to-point express buses are the future of commuting. All you need are a couple dozen people that need to get from the same neighborhood to the same job cluster on roughly a similar schedule to justify a daily round trip - and they can all be productive the whole way, whether through individual 3G data connections on their devices or wi-fi on the bus (by far the cheapest option).

While the climate-concerned may cheer increased transit use, an ironic side effect may actually be increased sprawl. When commuting is truly unproductive time, as driving is, people really hesitate for it to be more than an hour a day, which puts a pretty hard limit on how far home can be from work. But if you can be productive on a bus doing work you'd have to do anyway, you might consider two or more hours a day commuting (as my Manhattan friend does) and look at exurban communities you wouldn't have even considered before, especially if they have more affordable or newer houses with better amenities and public schools.

This is the commute of the future, and cities that offer it conveniently, affordably, and comprehensively (all neighborhoods to all job centers) through some combination of public transit, private buses, and HOT lanes will continue to grow and thrive in the coming decades, while those that don't, won't.

This piece is a cross-post from HoustonStrategies.com

Falling Off Bicycles in Portland

Wendell Cox — Sat, 16 May 2009 10:44:19 -0400

It has become customary for the fawning print media to lazily repeat whatever information is provided them by the urbanist lobby. The result is all manner of puff pieces that report as reality what is nothing more than hopes, or even delusions.

The latest puff piece is about Portland and is in today’s Wall Street Journal. The article indicates that 8 percent of Portlanders commute to work by bicycle, based upon data from a bicycle advocacy group. That number is more than five times the figure reported by the United States Bureau of the Census, (which is not a bicycle advocacy group). In 2007 (latest data available), 1.5 percent of Portland metropolitan area workers commuted by bicycle according to the Bureau of the Census.

It is, of course, possible that there is confusion about the definition of Portland. Domestic migration is the principal subject and it is clear from the data cited that the article is citing metropolitan area data, rather than municipal (city of Portland) data.

However, even if we allow that the editors might have erroneously substituted municipal for metropolitan data and that the advocacy group bicycle market share of 8 percent applies to the city of Portland; it would still be off by at least 100 percent. The Bureau of the Census data indicates that 3.9 of workers rode bicycles to work in 2007 in the city of Portland.

Of course, it is always possible that three quarters of metropolitan Portland’s bicycle commuters have fallen off their bikes or that, if the editors were confused as to the difference between metropolitan and municipal, that half have fallen off.