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Category Archives: Useful Data

Commuting in 2017

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The total number of American workers who usually commute by transit declined from 7.649 million in 2016 to 7.637 million in 2017. This continues a downward trend from 2015, when there were 7.761 million transit commuters. Meanwhile, the number of people who drove alone to work grew by nearly 2 million, from 114.77 million in 2016 to 116.74 million in 2017.

These figures are from table B08301 of the 2017 American Community Survey, which the Census Bureau posted on line yesterday. The table also reveals that the number of people who carpool grew from 13.58 million to 13.60 million, while the number who take taxis (which probably includes ride hailing) grew from 226,687 to 303,441. The number of people who walked and bicycled to work both declined.

Transit commuting has fallen so low that more people work at home now than take transit to work. Work-at-homes reported for 2017 total to 7.99 million, up from 7.59 million in 2016. Continue reading →

July Transit Ridership Up 0.2 Percent

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The beleaguered transit industry got a tiny bit of good news with the Federal Transit Administration’s release last Friday of July, 2018 ridership data: nationwide ridership was 0.2 percent greater than in July 2017. Ridership grew in 18 of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas, up from just 6 in June.

July 2018 had one more work day than July 2017, which helps explain the improvement in some of those urban areas. This was the first year-over-year improvement since October, 2017, which also had one more work day than October 2016.

However, the biggest reason for the nationwide increase was the 8.0 percent growth in New York City subway ridership and 6.6 percent growth in New York City bus ridership. July 2017 was the beginning of New York’s “summer of hell” as deteriorating conditions forced the partial closure of Penn Station, the city’s main transit hub, from July 10 to September 1. Many commuters who found alternate sources of transportation during that shutdown apparently returned to transit when the station fully re-opened. Continue reading →

Transit Update

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The Antiplanner has corrected a few very minor errors and added some new calculations to the June 2018 ridership spreadsheet. If you downloaded the spreadsheet I posted Wednesday, you probably should redownload it now.

The new calculations include fiscal year ridership totals for 2012 through 2016. Nationally, ridership peaked in 2014, and has declined in every fiscal year since then. Although the nationwide decline since 2014 was just 7.5 percent, declines in many urban areas were much larger: 29% in Memphis; 27% in Charlotte; 26% in Miami; 25% in Albuquerque; 24% in Cleveland; 22% in St. Louis; 21% in Milwaukee, Sacramento, and Virginia Beach; 20% in Los Angeles.

Transit began falling in some of these urban areas, such as Sacramento and Memphis, much earlier than 2014. With the additional fiscal year data, you can track this decline back to 2012. The calendar year data go back to 2002. Continue reading →

Transit Death Spiral Continues: June Report

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Nationwide transit ridership was 3.1 percent less in June 2018 than it had been in June 2017. Ridership fell for all major modes of transit, including commuter rail (-2.6%), heavy rail (-2.5%), light rail (-3.3%), and buses (-3.8%). These numbers are from the Federal Transit Administration’s June update to the National Transit Database, which was posted on line yesterday.

June 2018 had one fewer work day than June 2017, which may account for part of the ridership decline. But ridership in the first six months of 2018 was 3.0 percent less than the same months of 2017, and again ridership declined for all major modes of transit.

As usual, the Antiplanner has posted an enhanced spreadsheet that has all of the raw data from the FTA spreadsheet but includes annual totals from 2002 through 2018 in columns GZ through HP, modal totals in rows 2125 through 2131, transit agency totals in rows 2140 through 3139, and urban area totals for the nation’s 200 largest urban areas in rows 3141 through 3340. The same enhancements are included on the “VRM” or vehicle-revenue miles worksheet. Continue reading →

Tracking Housing Affordability

By | | Housing, Useful Data
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Zillow reports that “home values grew the most in markets with the strictest land-use regulations.” That’s not exactly news to Antiplanner readers, but it’s nice to hear others confirm it.

Unfortunately, Zillow bases its measure of who has strict land-use regulations on the Wharton Land-Use Regulation Index. This is the best index available but it still has a few problems. First, it is more than ten years old. Second, it only measures the strictness of city zoning, not the strictness of rural zoning near the cities (i.e., growth management). Third, it doesn’t measure how easy it is to get variances or zone changes.

As an example of the problems, Zillow concludes from the Wharton index that Houston and Dallas have “medium strict” regulations, while the least-strict rules are found in places such as Indianapolis and Kansas City. Of course, Houston has no zoning, though it does regulate heights and setbacks. The unincorporated areas around both Dallas and Houston also have no zoning and don’t regulate anything except development in riparian areas. Continue reading →

Visualizing Land Use

By | | Regional planning, Useful Data
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The National Resources Inventory samples the nation’s lands to estimate how much is dedicated to farms, forests, cities, and other uses. Formerly called the natural resources inventory, it is conducted about every fives years by the Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, which itself was formerly called the Soils Conservation Service.

The Antiplanner previously reported on the results of the 2012 inventory, including a special spreadsheet showing urbanized lands that wasn’t included in the published documents. Now, for those people who prefer looking at maps over looking at spreadsheets, Bloomberg has published a series of maps attempting to show the relative amounts of forests, pasturelands, croplands, urban areas, and other land uses in the contiguous 48 states.

For the most part, the maps and explanations are fair and balanced. But there are some elements that can be misleading. First, the second map paints the nation with six vertical stripes, each representing a major land use: pasture/range, forest, cropland, special use, miscellaneous, and urban. Because urban is the eastern-most stripe, it ends up covering eight states — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont — as well as parts of New York and Pennsylvania. Continue reading →

Transit Death Watch
May Transit Ridership Down 3.3 Percent

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Nationwide transit ridership in May 2018 was 3.3 percent less than in the same month of 2017. May transit ridership fell in 36 of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas. Ridership in the first five months of 2018 was lower than the same months of 2017 in 41 of the 50 largest urban areas. Buses, light rail, heavy rail, and streetcars all lost riders. Commuter rail lost riders in most regions, but gains in New York and Philadelphia outnumbered losses in other urban areas.

These numbers are from the Federal Transit Administration’s monthly data report. As usual, the Antiplanner has posted an enhanced spreadsheet that has annual totals in columns GY through HO, mode totals for major modes in rows 2123 through 2129, agency totals in rows 2120 through 3129, and urban area totals for the nation’s 200 largest urban areas in rows 3131 through 3330.

Of the urban areas that saw ridership increase, ridership grew by 1.2 percent in Houston, 2.2 percent in Seattle, 2.4 percent in Denver, 1.2 percent in Portland, 5.0 percent in Indianapolis, 7.8 percent in Providence, 7.2 percent in Nashville, and an incredible 63.1 percent in Raleigh. Most of the growth in Raleigh was students carried by North Carolina State University’s bus system. Continue reading →

Transit Death Watch: 2.3% Decline in April

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Nationwide transit ridership in April 2018 was 2.3 percent lower than the same month in 2017, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. Commuter-rail ridership grew by 3.5 percent, but light-rail, heavy-rail, hybrid rail, streetcar, and bus ridership all declined. The biggest decline was light rail at 5.5 percent.

April’s drop was smaller than the 5.9 percent year-over-year decline experienced in March because April 2018 had one more work day (21 vs. 20) than April 2017, while March 2018 had one less work day. As a result, 16 of the fifty largest urban areas saw transit ridership grow in April 2018, compared with just four in March. Considering that most transit ridership takes place on work days, anything less than a 5 percent growth is not something to be proud of. Only Pittsburgh, Providence, Nashville, and Raleigh saw ridership grow by more than 5 percent.

The most catastrophic losses were in Boston (24.4%), Cleveland (14.4%), and Milwaukee (10.8%). Ridership fell by more than 5 percent in Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Atlanta, Tampa-St. Petersburg, St. Louis, Orlando, Charlotte, and Richmond. These losses follow steady declines since 2014 and, in some urban areas, as far back as 2009. Continue reading →

The Housing Bubble Continues to Inflate

By | | Housing, Useful Data
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Housing prices in Washington state grew by nearly 10 percent in the last year, more than in any other state in the country. Other states with rapid price growth include Arizona (7.1%), California (6.3%), Colorado (8.0%), Florida (7.3%), Idaho (8.6%), Nevada (9.3%), Oregon (6.8%), Texas (6.3%), and Utah (8.0%). These numbers compare average prices from April 2017 through March 2018 with averages from April 2016 through March 2017 from the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s home price index dataset, specifically the state quarterly all-transactions index.

After adjusting for inflation, prices in Colorado, DC, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington are higher today than they were at the peak of the mid-2000s housing bubble, but price increases show no real sign of slowing down. Inflation-adjusted prices grew faster in the last year than they did the year before in 36 out of 50 states (as well as DC), and they declined in only one state, North Dakota. Continue reading →

Transit’s Share of Motorized Passenger Miles

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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In 2016, transit carried less than 12 percent of motorized travel in the New York urban area, 7 percent in San Francisco-Oakland, 4 percent in Honolulu, between 3 and 4 percent in Chicago, Seattle, and Washington, between 2 and 3 percent in Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, and Portland, and between 1 and 2 percent in Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Diego, and San Jose. Just about everywhere else was under 1 percent.

I calculated these numbers using table HM72 of the 2016 Highway Statistics, which the Federal Highway Administration published last month, and the 2016 National Transit Database, which the Federal Transit Administration published last October. I calculated these numbers for the 200 largest urbanized areas and included them in my summary 2016 Transit Database spreadsheet. I also corrected a few other problems with that spreadsheet (some transit agencies were assigned to the wrong urban areas), so if you downloaded it before, you should do so again even if you aren’t interested in total motorized passenger miles.

In calculating total motorized passenger miles, I used total vehicles miles multiplied by the average vehicle occupancy of 1.67. I then added transit passenger miles. There is a slight overlap as bus vehicle miles would have been included in highway vehicle miles, but it is not significant. The results are in columns AL through AQ of rows 3851 through 4050. Continue reading →