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Travel Time to Work in 2017

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The average American commuter spent 25.5 minutes getting to and from work in 2017, a 0.7 percent increase over 2016. Commuters who drove alone took 25.6 minutes, carpoolers took 28.2 minutes, while transit riders required 50.4 minutes. Curiously, the only method of commuting that averaged less than the national average was walking, but at 12.8 minutes it was enough to bring the national average below that of driving alone.

Average time to work was only 21.7 minutes in 1980 and 22.4 minutes in 1990. However, it has been hovering around 25.5 minutes since the 2000 census. One of the reasons for the increase between 1990 and 2000 was that the census data entry system allowed maximum commutes of 99 minutes in 1990 and earlier surveys but 240 minutes in 2000 and later surveys. This was estimated to add 30 seconds to average travel times.

Table B08136 of the American Community Survey reports the total time spent each way by commuters by mode of commuting. Since table B08301 presents the number of commuters by mode, it should be easy to divide one into the other to get the average number of minutes. Continue reading →

Commuting and Income in 2017

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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 →

More 2016 Commuting Data

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People who earn more than $75,000 a year are more likely to ride transit than people in any other income bracket. Most of those high-income transit riders live not in big cities like New York or Chicago but in suburbs of those cities.

That information is from table B08119 from the 2016 American Community Survey. I’ve downloaded the table for the nation, states, counties, cities, and urbanized areas and posted it with calculations showing what percentage of people in each income bracket use each form of transportation. The calculations don’t show this, but you can calculate it for yourself, but about 18.5 percent of people earn more than $75,000 a year, but a full 24 percent of people riding transit earn more than that amount.

I was surprised to discover that New York City was not one of the places where people earning more than $75,000 were the most likely to take transit, so I added a column, EB, that flags those areas where the $75,000 bracket is the most likely to take transit. On a state level, this included Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia, and Wyoming. Continue reading →

2015 Commuting Data

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The share of commuters driving alone to work grew from 80.0 percent in 2014 to 80.3 percent in 2015, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. This increase came at the expense of carpoolers; the share of people taking transit, walking, and cycling remained the same.

The Census Bureau posted 2015 data early this month, giving data junkies lots of information to play with. The bureau has conducted the American Community Survey every year since 2005 based on surveys sent out to about 3.5 million households each year. This makes it far more reliable than a typical poll, which usually surveys only a few hundred people. However, the data should still be used with caution for small categories, such as the number of Latinos living in households with no cars who walk to work in Buffalo, New York.

To save you time, the Antiplanner has downloaded journey-to-work data, table B08301, for the nation, states, and counties, urbanized areas, and cities and other places. For comparison, I’ve also posted the same raw data for 2014: nation, states, and counties, urbanized areas, and cities and other places.

Continue reading →

There Are No Excessive Commutes

By | | Transportation
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It is sad to see that the notion of “excessive commutes” is still around. This is the idea that, if we all lived close to our work, we could drive less and all be happier.

The Antiplanner tried to demolish this myth fourteen years ago in The Vanishing Automobile, but now Daniel Schleith, a geographer from the University of Cincinnati, is bringing it back. Schleith calculated the “minimum commute” that would be required in the nation’s 25 largest urban areas if jobs and housing in those areas were “balanced,” and compared that with the actual average commutes in those areas. The difference between the two is the “excess commute.”

This method makes two related and equally fallacious assumptions: First, that the only purpose of transportation is to get to and from work, and second that the only factor that should be involved in choosing a home location is proximity to work. In fact, commuting makes up only less than 20 percent of our travel, and the other travel we do is only one of the many factors that might lead us to choose a home location that isn’t as close as possible to work.

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Most Americans Want a House in the Suburbs

By | | Transportation
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Most Americans are happy with their commutes and would be willing to trade off even longer commutes in order to live in more desirable housing, according to a survey by YouGov. Moreover, the detailed results indicate that these preferences are almost as strong among 18-29 year olds as among older age classes. YouGov describes itself as a “market research and data company.”

Three out of four people in YouGov’s sample of 1,000 drive to work while 14 percent take transit. Since the Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey found that 85 percent of Americans drive to work and only 5 percent take transit, it seems likely that YouGov’s sample was skewed to big cities where transit commuting is more popular. New York, San Francisco, and Washington are the only major urban areas in which more than 14 percent of commuters take transit to work.

This makes YouGov’s other survey results even more striking. The numbers suggest that anecdotes indicating that large numbers of Millennials want to use transit and live close to jobs aren’t supported by the facts. Among other things, the survey found that differences in commuting and other preferences between Democrats and Republicans are greater than between people in their 20s and people in their 50s.

Continue reading →