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Category Archives: Useful Data

Motor Vehicle Ownership in 2017

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The number of households that lacked access to a motor vehicle declined in 2017 as did the number with only one vehicle. Meanwhile, the number with two or more rapidly grew. In fact, the more vehicles, the faster the growth: the number with two vehicles grew by 1.4 percent; the number with three grew by 2.8 percent; the number with four grew by 4.5 percent; and the number with five or more grew by an astounding 7.2 percent.


The shares of households with no cars and with three or more cars have practically reversed themselves since 1960.

The number with no vehicles declined by only 0.7 percent. But transit ridership is partly dependent on people who lack access to motor vehicles. Since transit carries less than 2 percent of passenger travel in all but a handful of urban areas, a small increase in auto ownership can translate to a large decrease in transit riders. Continue reading →

Commuting and Income in 2017

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The median income of American workers in 2017 was $36,903, while the average income was around $46,000. Average incomes are always going to be higher than medians because a few people with very high incomes will pull the average up without affecting the median. Since the lowest income people can earn is generally around zero but the highest is might be a thousand times greater than the $75,000 top-income class, the few people with vey high incomes aren’t balanced by people with very low incomes.

This point is important because in a post two months ago the Antiplanner erroneously blurred the distinction between median and average incomes. The post showed that the average incomes of transit riders were higher than the average of all workers, then concluded that “well over half of all transit riders earn” more than the national median income in 2016. That turns out not to be true: it appears that the average incomes of transit commuters began to exceed the national average in about 2008, but the median income of transit commuters did not exceed the national median until 2017.

At least, that’s what I calculate from table B08119 of the American Community Survey. This table shows how many people use various methods of commuting in each of eight income classes, ranging from below $10,000 to above $75,000. The Census Bureau doesn’t actually calculate average incomes, so I made the calculation by assuming that the average income of, say the $15,000 to $25,000 class was $20,000. For the under $10,000 class I used $7,500 and for the above $75,000 class I used $90,000. Continue reading →

Transit Commuting by Age

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Remember how Millennials and other young people were giving up cars and riding transit instead? It turns out, not so much. In fact, the latest word is that Millennials are the ones who are killing transit, or at least the DC Metro.

This is based on a study by a company called Teralytics. While the study itself isn’t available on line, charts published in the above-linked article indicate that Metro Rail usage by people in the 18-29-year age class dropped 21 percent between April 2016 and April 2018, while declines were successively smaller in successively older age classes, with the 60-year-plus class ridership declining by only 5 percent. Teralytics gathered this data from the movements of cell phones connected to one of the “big four” wireless carriers that serves more than a quarter of the DC population (no privacy concerns here, I’m sure!).

Since the Antiplanner is downloading 2017 American Community Survey data, I wondered if those data could confirm this conclusion. Table B08101 reports means of transportation to work by age classes. I downloaded this table for the usual states, counties, cities, and urban areas for every year from 2005 through 2017. It turns out that, if I squint at the data the right way, it seems to support Teralytics’ conclusion. But when I take a broader view, it isn’t quite so certain. Continue reading →

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 →