The share of homes owned by their occupants grew from 64.1 percent in 2019 to 65.2 percent in 2022, according to data from the American Community Survey. The share of homes that were single-family increased slightly from 68.6 percent to 68.6 percent.
The share of people living in owner-occupied homes grew from 66.4 percent in 2019 to 68.4 percent in 2022, while the share of people living in single-family homes grew from 73.6 percent in 2019 to 74.2 percent in 2022. Continue reading
The median home value of homes in the United States was $320,900 in 2022 while the median family income was $92,148 according to the 2022 American Community Survey. This means that the median home cost less than 3.5 times median family income, which is pretty affordable. Even at today’s relatively high interest rates, someone getting a mortgage that is 3.5 times their income should be able to pay it off in well under 30 years while paying less than 30 percent of their income on the mortgage.
Value-to-income ratios ranged from well over 10 in Los Angeles and several other California cities to under 1.5 in Decatur Illinois and several Illinois counties. The states with the least affordable housing are Hawaii and California followed by Washington and Oregon — all states with urban-growth boundaries and other rural land-use restrictions. The most affordable states are Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Iowa, West Virginia, and Mississippi. Continue reading
About 5.0 million Americans relied on transit to get to work in 2022, according to American Community Survey data released by the Census Bureau last week. This is more than the 3.8 million people who took transit to work in 2021, but far less than the 7.8 million to used transit in 2019. People who used transit represented 3.1 percent of the workforce, up from 2.5 percent in 2021 but down from 5.0 percent in 2019.
There was about 6 percent more commuter traffic on the roads in 2022 than 2021, but still about 7 percent less than 2019. Photo by Tomi Knuutila.
Transit’s share is strongly skewed by New York City, which housed 2.5 percent of the nation’s workers but 34.6 percent of the nation’s transit commuters in 2022. Outside of New York City, only 2.1 percent of workers relied on transit to get to work in 2022. That’s just the city: the New York urban area had 45.4 percent of the nation’s transit commuters, and outside of that area only 1.8 percent of workers relied on transit. Continue reading
The nation’s fifty largest urban areas housed 82.5 million jobs in 2020, and auto drivers could reach 98 percent of them in an hour of travel. Transit riders, by comparison, could reach only 8 percent in an hour while bicycle riders could reach 7 percent, according to the University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory.
The average resident of one of the nation’s fifty largest urban areas can reach 600,000 jobs in a 30-minute auto trip but only 85,000 jobs in a 50-minute transit trip and 92,000 jobs in a 50-minute bike ride.
I’ve previously cited the observatory’s 2019 data many times, but when writing yesterday’s post about travel speeds and productivity, I noticed that it has recently updated the data to 2020. The introduction says the data were collected before the pandemic so “the 2020 results may provide a useful baseline for evaluating the impact that COVID-19 had on access across America.” Continue reading
After reaching 70 percent of pre-pandemic numbers in June, transit ridership in July fell back to 65 percent of July 2019, according to data released last week by the Federal Transit Administration. Since July 2019 had 22 working days while July 2023 only had 20, this decline is not surprising.
Meanwhile, Americans drove 97.2 percent as many miles in July 2023 as in the same month of 2019, according to Federal Highway Administration data released last week as well. Amtrak’s monthly performance report indicates that the railroad carried 91.2 percent as many passenger-miles in July 2023 as July 2019, while the Transportation Security Administration says that 98.8 percent as many travelers passed through security in July as in 2019. Continue reading
Americans drove slightly more miles in June 2023 than they did in June 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. Highway driving first reached 100 percent of pre-pandemic levels in June of 2021 and has been hovering around 100 percent ever since. In comparison, flying didn’t reach 100 percent until January of this year, while Amtrak has been hovering around 90 percent since August 2022 and transit has never exceeded 72 percent.
For a detailed discussion of Amtrak results, see last Tuesday’s post. For a detailed discussion of transit and airline results, see last Saturday’s post.
Urban driving was only 99.0 percent of pre-pandemic levels, but rural driving more than made up for it at 105.3 percent. Total miles of driving exceeded 2019 numbers in 27 states, with the biggest gains in Idaho (117%), Missouri (114%), Alaska (114%), Colorado (113%), Wyoming (112%), and Michigan (111%). Driving is still only 76 percent of pre-COVID levels in the District of Columbia and is also woefully short in Illinois (84%), Massachusetts (91%), Maryland (92%), California (93%), Hawaii (94%), Washington (94%), and Georgia (94%). Driving in all other states was at least 95 percent of 2019 miles. Continue reading
Amtrak carried 90.5 percent as many passenger-miles in June 2023 as the same month in 2019, according to the company’s monthly performance report released yesterday. This is only the third time Amtrak exceeded 90 percent of pre-COVID levels; the first time, in November 2022, it carried 90.8 percent and the second time, in April 2023, it carried 90.9 percent.
Data for driving is not yet available but an update will be posted here when it is. See Saturday’s post for a discussion of transit and air travel.
When measured by number of riders, the Northeast Corridor performed best, carrying 93.6 percent of 2019 numbers. Long-distance trains carried 85.5 percent while state-supported day trains carried just 81.4 percent. Amtrak didn’t reveal passenger-miles by train in 2019 so a comparison using that measure by route or train type isn’t possible. Continue reading
America’s transit agencies carried 71.4 percent as many riders in June 2023 as they did in the same month of 2019, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration yesterday. This is the highest percentage of 2019 ridership since February, 2020. One reason for the gain above previous months is that June had two more business days in 2023 than it did in 2019.
Data are not yet available for highway or Amtrak travel. However, boarding numbers from the Transportation Security Administration indicate that the airlines carried 100.8 percent as many riders in June of 2023 as June of 2019. I’ll post updates for driving and Amtrak when those data are released. Continue reading
Amtrak carried 492 million passenger-miles in May 2023, which was just 86.4 percent of the 569 million passenger-miles it carried in the same month of 2019, according to Amtrak’s latest monthly performance report. Considering that Amtrak’s April passenger-miles were nearly 91 percent as many in 2023 as 2019, this is a disappointing result. Since Amtrak ridership usually usually picks up in May due to increased vacationers, this suggests that Americans aren’t enthusiastic about riding trains for discretionary travel in a post-COVID world.
For detailed comments on transit and highways, see my July 12 post.
All three types of Amtrak trains underperformed in May, with Northeast Corridor trains carrying less than 88 percent of pre-pandemic riders, long-distance trains carrying 85 percent, and state-supported day trains carrying less than 81 percent. It is worth noting that Amtrak is putting most of the money it received for expansion in the infrastructure bill into state-supported trains even though they are the worst-performing part of its network. Amtrak’s reasoning is that Congress gave it money for capital improvements but not operating costs, so it will need to persuade the states to pay for operating costs of any new routes or increased frequencies. Continue reading
Public transit carried 6.4 percent of 2021 motorized passenger travel in the New York urban area. It also carried 1.6 percent in Honolulu, 1.5 percent in San Francisco-Oakland, 1.4 percent in Seattle, 1.2 percent in Chicago, and 1.1 percent in Salt Lake City. In every other urban area it carried less than 1 percent; nationwide, transit carried just 0.7 percent of all motorized urban travel.
Chicago transit carried 1.2 percent, autos the other 98.8 percent of motorized passenger travel.
I calculated these numbers by comparing passenger-miles in the 2021 National Transit Database, which was released last fall, with daily vehicle miles of travel (DVMT) by urban area in table HM-72 of Highway Statistics, which was recently released by the Federal Highway Administration. To make the numbers comparable, I multiplied DVMT by 365 to get annual data and by 1.7 to account for vehicle occupancies, 1.7 being the result when dividing passenger-miles by vehicle-miles in Highway Statistics table VM-1. These numbers don’t include walking, bikes and e-bikes, or scooters, but they do include motorcycles. Continue reading
