2012 U.S. Census: Single Driver Car Commuting Nearing All-Time Record – Carpooling and Public Transit Commuting are Down.
COST Commentary:
Most of the recent flurry of reports suggesting changing trends and projecting reduced single vehicle driving are essentially dispelled by the recently released Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey estimates. The seizing of short term trends by factions to support their preferred projections of long term changes is a regular occurrence and almost never substantiated.
Two COST postings regarding myth trends in reduced driving:
Baby Boomers Return to the City is a Myth.
Millennial Generation choices are not fundamental changes in America’s future driving and living.
As reported in the U.S. News article below, commuting trends were interrupted slightly by the recession, but, have returned to their former status and the “Drive Alone” commuting mode percentage is approaching its all-time high of 76% (counting “Worked at Home” people) in 2005. Austin’s ‘Drive Alone’ percentage is the same as the national average of 76%. Nationwide, ‘Drive Alone’ is 79.8% of those actually leaving home for work. In Austin, 81.2% of those leaving home for the work commute are single drivers.
This increasing “drive alone’ trend is further described is a recent article by Wendell Cox on newgeography.com: DRIVING ALONE DOMINATES 2007-2012 COMMUTING TREND
‘Worked at Home’ remains the fastest growing commute mode; its nationwide 4.4% has more than doubled since 1980. Excluding New York, ‘Worked at Home’ percentage has surpassed public transit commuting throughout the rest of the nation. U.S. public transit, total work commuting of 5%, is significantly influenced by the fact that 55 percent of all U.S. transit work trips are to six core cities: New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston and Washington, and 60 percent of those commutes are to downtown. Austin’s public transit use of 2.3% for work commuting is more consistent with the nation outside these six, older cities. Austin’s 2.3% commute use results in an overall transit use of less than 1% of the region’s passenger miles traveled.
In the Austin region, ‘Worked at Home’ has reached 6.4 % which is 45% higher than the total nation and is 2.8 times the use of Austin public transit for commuting. This means ‘Worked at Home’ has taken many times the number of commute vehicles off Austin’s roadways than has the spending of billions of tax dollars on public transit. The ‘Worked at Home’ group has a much greater impact on reducing ‘single driver’ vehicles because a large portion of this group has a vehicle, whereas, a large portion of public transit riders do not have access to a vehicle and cannot be single drivers. This work at home trend could, perhaps, benefit from public policy/investment which has proven ineffective relative to public transit.
Along with Austin’s very small transit use and many continuing years of decline in the overall use of public transit, these 2012 commuter mode data highlight the question: What cost-effective benefits do the citizens of Austin achieve by elected leaders continuing to massively and disproportionately allocate tax dollars to the small, transit portion of overall transportation which serves a declining number of so few citizens?
The current transit public policy will result in higher taxes for citizens and redirects a major portion of finite transportation dollars from citizens’ preferences, as the vast majority have demonstrated by their choices and actions. This results in degrading overall mobility with increasing congestion and reducing citizens’ quality of life. Perhaps more importantly, this reallocation of funds to exorbitantly expensive, ineffective rail transit degrades transit service for those who have no alternative by reducing bus service and increasing fares. This is not consistent with our commitment to social equity. In the longer run, this policy of creating greater downtown inconvenience will likely degrade central Austin as an attractive place for citizens to live, enjoy and work.
Other commute modes are largely unchanged nationwide, or have dropped in use: Carpooling has dropped more than 50% since 1980 to 9.7% of commuting in 2012. Public transit commuting has dropped just over 20% since 1980 to 5% of commuting in 2012. Austin carpooling of 11% is slightly above the national percentage in 2012 even though Austin has not encouraged carpooling with HOV or managed lanes.
Commuter’s find car-pooling and public transit modes are not as convenient and effective as private vehicles. It is this convenience in meeting individual needs which drives overall trends and not the often stated “love of the automobile.” Convenience, not love, is reflected in the use of modern “conveniences” including refrigerators, micro-waves, cell phones and many others.
One “bottom line” is: Austin could spend billions of dollars and if it achieved a, probably impossible, doubling, or even tripling, of transit ridership, it would have little impact on overall transportation. This level of increase in public transit has never been achieved in modern times. Meanwhile, this would starve the funding for the transportation system serving 96+% of the citizens’ trips.
Austin is near the national average for similar cities and very close to the average public transit commute percentage for both Dallas and Houston; even though Austin has spent substantially less than Dallas and Houston have spent for their high cost rail systems. After spending many billions of dollars to encourage transit ridership, the sum of Dallas and Houston transit ridership is much less today than it was a dozen years ago.
I have inserted the Austin region census data in the article below, italicized in parenthesis ( ). Also, shown in brackets [ ] are the actual census numbers which have been rounded by the articles author and clarifications for the reader’s benefit.
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Americans Increasingly Go Solo or Work From Home; Carpooling Now Below 10%
By Neil Shah, Updated Nov. 4, 2013 6:51 p.m. ET, Wall Street Jolurnal, US News
American commuters prefer to go it alone—mostly by driving to the office, but increasingly by working from home.
Last year, about 76% [Actual 76.3%] (Austin region is %76%) of workers 16 years and older drove to work alone—just shy of the all-time peak of 77% in 2005, according to data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Driving alone dipped slightly during the recession, but it has been ticking back up as the economy revives.
Meanwhile, just about every other way of getting to work has either languished or declined. Carpooling has tanked—falling from about 20% in 1980, when gasoline prices were soaring from the oil shock of the late 1970s, to under 10% [Actual 9.7%] (Austin region is 11%) in 2012. Public transportation accounted for just over 6% of daily commutes in 1980 and is now 5% (Austin region is 2.3%). A category the Census calls “other means”—which includes biking—stands at 2% [1.8%] (Austin region is 2.2%), largely unchanged over the past decade. [“Worked at home” is 4.4 %, discussed below, and “Walking” at 2.8 % are the remaining segments.]
These commuting trends come despite efforts to get people to use public transportation or other alternatives. And a variety of forces are coming together to ensure that Americans continue to seek out lonely commutes—and the numbers could grow.
Tim Anson, 35 years old, an architect in Birmingham, Ala., is one of America’s solo commuters. He drives about 25 minutes to work—roughly the national average—from his home near downtown to an office park in a suburb south of the city.
He says he has no viable or appealing alternative. “Biking would be practically impossible,” he said. While he recently helped a colleague with car trouble get to work, he generally thinks carpooling means less freedom. “If you’re carpooling with someone, you find yourself on someone else’s schedule,” he said.
The only area of commuting that has seen clear growth is working from home—which has doubled to 4% [actual 4.4%] (Austin region is 6.6%), up from 2% in 1980. Technological advances are making it easier to work from home, sparking a debate among business executives, especially in tech centers, over the benefits of telecommuting. Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Marissa Mayer created a stir earlier this year when she ended the firm’s work-from-home arrangements.
“It used to be, 30 years ago, to work from home, you had to take something like a 20% wage cut, all else equal. Now that wage cut has vanished,” said Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University.
James DeMichele, 33, a software developer in Austin, Texas, has worked from home for four years, and stays in touch with the office via Skype. He misses the “social aspect” of being in an office and says it’s useful to be face to face with colleagues when planning projects. But at other times, “being at home is really useful in terms of being productive,” he said.
And there’s another advantage: Mr. DeMichele and his wife had a daughter earlier this year. “Having the flexibility of being able to watch after her is really good, too,” Mr. DeMichele said.
The share of Americans driving to work has always been high—climbing steadily from roughly 64% in 1960, when the Census began tracking commuting—and various demographic forces could ensure that it stays high or even rises further.
More older Americans are working past retirement, which can mean more car commutes or work-from-home arrangements. And car use among lower-income Americans and minorities has generally been rising, according to Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit demographic research group. For instance, the share of black U.S. workers driving to jobs hit 71% in 2010, up from 66% in 2000, census data show.
At the same time, work and home are, for many people, getting farther apart geographically. That trend makes cars, which offer more flexibility, more attractive to commuters. Plus, around 45% of American households have no access to public transportation.
To be sure, national and even state trends can mask changes in cities. Alabama’s share of solo drivers has risen from 83% in 2008 to over 85% in 2012—the highest in the country. Meanwhile, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., have seen decreases in their shares of workers driving alone, and increases in the use of mass transit, biking and working from home, census data show.
America’s commuting patterns are a politically sensitive issue due to rising concerns about the nation’s obesity rates and the environment. Mass transit, carpooling, biking and walking have been touted by advocates as ways to build civic camaraderie, make Americans healthier and preserve the environment.
But others say the nation’s love affair with cars—and the growing trend of home workers—simply reflects the changing way Americans work and live, from the rise of two-worker households in recent decades to the fact that attractive jobs, homes and schools are often farther away from each other rather than clustered together in old-style urban neighborhoods.
Many people “relish the time to be alone,” said Alan Pisarski, a transportation consultant and author of “Commuting in America,” a series of commuting studies for the Transportation Research Board, part of the National Research Council.
Workers, especially younger ones, increasingly mix their commuting modes—driving alone one day, but then taking the bus or biking the next, said Peter Varga, chairman of the American Public Transportation Association.
Tracy Sunderland, a professor in Boise, Idaho, recently got a bicycle and uses it to get to work sometimes. “I ride it to work when I can—not as much as I should,” she said. “Sometimes I’m prepping for class right until I have to be there.” More often, the 48-year-old relies on her 1997 Nissan Pathfinder, since the city’s buses run infrequently. Driving, she said, is generally more convenient. “Like a lot of Western cities, Boise sprawls.”