We observed that it's important to recognize that the percentages do not
represent numbers of rides, i.e. even though transit commute trips may have
declined, the NUMBER of trips may actually have increased. Our transit
commute mode percentage increased from 1.00 to 2.5 percent, while the
NUMBERS of rides between 1990 and 2000 increased from 341,598 to 499,417--a
46.2% increase.
-----Original Message-----
From: Putta, Viplava [mailto:vputta@incog.org]
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 12:20 PM
To: ctpp-news maillist
Subject: [CTPP] Journey to Work data
In looking at the journey to work data at all three levels (place,
county and MSA level) for the Tulsa MSA, in short we observed the
following -
1.
A slight increase in commute time - between 7% & 8% from 1990 (as
opposed to 16-20% increase in VMT over the same period).
2.
With regard to the mode of transportation - Carpool showed an increase
over '90 levels (1.4%) and transit commute trips declined. Several
cities we looked at for comparison purposes showed similar trend.
3.
Almost no increase in car ownership is also observed (percent households
with 0, 1 and 2 plus cars remained same from 1990 to 2000).
Possibly all of these are somewhat related - has anyone come up with
this prediction with regard to an increase in carpooling over the past
decade (any papers published or presented)? Is this a confirmed
reversal in trend from 70s to 80s and 90s?
I guess part of my question is to do with if transit's loss is carpools'
gain?
Viplav Putta
Transportation Planning Division
INCOG
We have started looking at several large cities and fast growing cities for which the Profiles have been released. We are seeing slight declines (%) in carpooling, and slight increases in driving alone (%) . Transit shares seem to be about the same.
The most important difference from 1990 to 2000 that we have noticed is the large increase in travel time. We are seeing 4 minutes increases in average travel time across the board for both the large cities and the fast growing cities. About ½ minute of this increase may be attributable to the difference in "top coding" travel time, from 99 minutes in 1990 to 200 minutes in 2000.
As data for additional States are released, we will compile our results and post to the listserv. We are planning to add Metro Area analysis in addition to examining cities.
Elaine Murakami, FHWA
In looking at the journey to work data at all three levels (place,
county and MSA level) for the Tulsa MSA, in short we observed the
following -
1.
A slight increase in commute time - between 7% & 8% from 1990 (as
opposed to 16-20% increase in VMT over the same period).
2.
With regard to the mode of transportation - Carpool showed an increase
over '90 levels (1.4%) and transit commute trips declined. Several
cities we looked at for comparison purposes showed similar trend.
3.
Almost no increase in car ownership is also observed (percent households
with 0, 1 and 2 plus cars remained same from 1990 to 2000).
Possibly all of these are somewhat related - has anyone come up with
this prediction with regard to an increase in carpooling over the past
decade (any papers published or presented)? Is this a confirmed
reversal in trend from 70s to 80s and 90s?
I guess part of my question is to do with if transit's loss is carpools'
gain?
Viplav Putta
Transportation Planning Division
INCOG
Bob,
Last week , the 2000 boundary files part of the web site posted a file
ua99_d00. It appears to be a generalized version of the urban areas. Was
this a previous version or does this represent the official 2000 Census
urban areas? It is a different file name than in your email.
Ben Williams, P.E.
Metropolitan Planning Specialist
Federal Highway Administration
Southern Resource Center
V (404) 562-3671
F (404) 562-3700
ben.williams(a)fhwa.dot.gov
Web Site
www.fhwa.dot.gov/resourcecenters/southern
>>> rlamacchia(a)geo.census.gov 05/24/02 03:43PM >>>
As many of you know, there was an error in the 1990 Urban/Rural
indicator in
the UA Census 2000 TIGER/Line files. We have recreated the files to
correct
for this error that affected 1094 counties. We will be uploading the
corrected files to our Internet site by the end of May (by the end of
next
week). Check the page at:
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tigerua/ua_tgr2k.html
==============================================================
We recently uploaded the generalized boundary files for UAs and UCs.
They
can be obtained from the following page:
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/ua2000.html
These files are generalized an not suitable for the determination of the
exact boundaries of the UAs and UCs.
==============================================================
We also will be making available from our web site a NATIONWIDE detailed
UA/UC boundary file in ArcView Shapefile (.shp) format to facilitate the
determination of Urbanized Area (UA) and Urban Cluster (UC) boundaries.
We
are aware of some users having difficulties finding up-to-date
conversion
applications to develop their own UA/UC boundaries from the UA Census
2000
TIGER/Line* files. The boundaries in these files are an exact match of
the
boundary details found in the UA Census 2000 TIGER/Line files. The
boundary
files were extracted from the Census Bureau's TIGER geographic database
for
use various internal Census Bureau projects and have been made available
here on an "as is" basis. Please note that this will be a very large
file
(over 31MB) and is nationwide in coverage. We do not have this file
available at any other geographic level. This file will be available by
the
end of next week from the following page:
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/ua/ua_2k.html
Bob LaMacchia
Geography Division
U. S. Census Bureau
As many of you know, there was an error in the 1990 Urban/Rural indicator in
the UA Census 2000 TIGER/Line files. We have recreated the files to correct
for this error that affected 1094 counties. We will be uploading the
corrected files to our Internet site by the end of May (by the end of next
week). Check the page at:
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tigerua/ua_tgr2k.html
==============================================================
We recently uploaded the generalized boundary files for UAs and UCs. They
can be obtained from the following page:
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/ua2000.html
These files are generalized an not suitable for the determination of the
exact boundaries of the UAs and UCs.
==============================================================
We also will be making available from our web site a NATIONWIDE detailed
UA/UC boundary file in ArcView Shapefile (.shp) format to facilitate the
determination of Urbanized Area (UA) and Urban Cluster (UC) boundaries. We
are aware of some users having difficulties finding up-to-date conversion
applications to develop their own UA/UC boundaries from the UA Census 2000
TIGER/Line® files. The boundaries in these files are an exact match of the
boundary details found in the UA Census 2000 TIGER/Line files. The boundary
files were extracted from the Census Bureau's TIGER geographic database for
use various internal Census Bureau projects and have been made available
here on an "as is" basis. Please note that this will be a very large file
(over 31MB) and is nationwide in coverage. We do not have this file
available at any other geographic level. This file will be available by the
end of next week from the following page:
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/ua/ua_2k.html
Bob LaMacchia
Geography Division
U. S. Census Bureau
Does anyone know if the census will continue to release files, including
the CTPP, in the SRC Allocate product format? We purchased the extended
product which allows the user to integrate census files with geography
in Arcview or MapInfo. A shape file can also be brought into Allocate
and used as custom geography; you can choose to create reports on the
shape file's polygons just as you could choose to select information
based on a census tract or place. The product makes producing a
standard or custom report easy and quick-literally in seconds. When we
used the product that came with the SF1 disk, we called SRC and found
the extended product was very cheap. I have not found a quicker or
easier method of retrieving census data, the GIS connection is a nice
bonus.
The company's websites:
http://www.freedemographics.comhttp://www.extendthereach.com
If anyone needs additional information, please call.
Kevin Ghirardi, MPO Administrator
Houma-Thibodaux Metropolitan Planning Organization
Post Office Box 1870
Gray, Louisiana 70359
ghirardi(a)scpdc.org
985-851-2900
985-851-4472 fax
TO: State Data Center listserv; Census Transportation listserv
FR: Chuck Purvis, SF Bay Area Regional Data Center
We've uploaded our SAS code to help in analysis of the new demographic profile #2, 3, and 4 data. Our very simple SAS code, and the edited California CSV files, are at:
ftp://ftp.abag.ca.gov/pub/mtc/census2000/DP2-4/SAS-codes-data/
Essentially, we edited the California CSV files to include two additional records: a variable name record, and a dummy record that gives correct dimensions to the numeric and string variables. The variable names that we use ARE THE SAME AS the Census Bureau's DP234 documentation, that is dp2001-dp2102, dp3001-dp3107, and dp4001-dp4100. (That's 309 different variables, not including the geographic identifiers!)
In these SAS jobs, these variable names are then reset to more mnemonic variable names, and then are exported into CSV files using PROC EXPORT. In addition, we subset the California places to extract Bay Area only places.
We are using SAS Version 8 on PCs.
In addition, we've created a new page examining the transportation-related data from DP234. (That's because our interests are as the MPO - transportation planning agency for our region.) Interesting trends and results!
http://www.mtc.ca.gov/datamart/census/dp234/Census-Transportation-Related.h…
Hope this helps!
Chuck Purvis, MTC Oakland
***********************************************
Charles L. Purvis, AICP
Senior Transportation Planner/Analyst
Metropolitan Transportation Commission
101 Eighth Street
Oakland, CA 94607-4700
(510) 464-7731 (office)
(510) 464-7848 (fax)
www: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/
Census WWW: http://census.mtc.ca.gov/
***********************************************
This email is not directly related to CTPP, but IS related to urbanized area definition and new urbanized areas!
Since many of you may be working with areas which are new Urbanized Areas which are NOT in areas with existing MPOs, you may want to let your colleagues know about this 3-day course offered by the National Transit Institute. There is no charge to public sector employees. The fee for others is $450.
http://www.ntionline.com/CourseInfo.asp?CourseNumber=PLN11
Elaine Murakami
FHWA Office of Metropolitan Planning
TO: CTPP-News
The Census Bureau has released the "Demographic Profile #2, 3 and 4" data products for 13 states as of 5/14/02. Data for 16 more states are due out this week, and the full set and U.S. totals will be available by the first week in June.
This is the FIRST RELEASE of regular, census "long form" data with a limited amount of journey-to-work data. Data is available ONLY for states, counties, places, congressional districts, and American Indian reservations. (In this release you won't get the number of bicycle commuters, but you will get the number of homes with incomplete plumbing or heated by solar energy!)
Follow the Census Bureau's Press Release Link for more information, at:
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2002/demoprofiles.html
MPO folks may be interested in how we've analyzed the new data for the SF Bay Area. This has been helpful to the media in terms of reporting historical changes in means of transportation to work, average commute duration, household vehicle ownership, etc. Our page is at:
http://www.mtc.ca.gov/datamart/census/dp234/Census-Transportation-Related.h…
Or, go to MTC's census datamart page at: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/datamart/census.htm and follow the links.
Here is an example of a good article from one of our suburban dailies. Typically they will balance the factual with vast & overwhelming anecdotal evidence.
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/news/transportation/3294799.htm
My recommendation to MPO/States with upcoming DP 2-3-4 data:
1. Assemble historical data of interest to your organization. Be ready to "drop in" the new 2000 data when it arrives. Provide these pre-assembled data sets (XLS workbooks appears to be the spreadsheet of choice) to your media contacts BEFORE the data is released (before the "embargo" is lifted.) (Typically work with the city desk of your newspaper. The TV stations will typically follow the lead of the city newspapers.)
2. Know how you're going to analyze the data once it arrives. You can print out the PDF reports for all of your counties and places (see link below), but you can also download the CSV files from the Census Burea's FTP site, then analyze the data in SAS, EXCEL, ArcView or whatever software you can deal with. I would recommend analyzing an existing data set, say, Nevada's, in setting up your procedures to extract your data. Be ready to map out the place-level (or county-level if you're a state DOT) data using your GIS system.
By the way, here is the link to the Census Bureau's PDF version of the profiles pages. Be sure to bookmark it - - it's the best place to get the PDFs for your counties and places!!!
http://censtats.census.gov/pub/Profiles.shtml
3. Be on hand to discuss the results / trends, with your management, your policy board, and the media. Definitely the ACS (actually, C2SS) data released this past November allows you to anticipate some of the new data and trends coming out this month.
4. Sometimes management/policy board/media have troubles with numbers. An example is San Francisco County, where the transit share is decreasing (from 33.5 to 31.1 percent of the commute) but the number of transit commuters is increasing (from 128,160 transit commuters in 1990 to 130,311 transit commuters in 2000.) I haven't seen these yet, but the uncareful journalist could write: "Transit Commuting in San Francisco is down 2.4 percent between 1990 and 2000" whereas the more accurate depiction is a drop in the SHARE of commuters taking transit, along with an INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF TRANSIT COMMUTERS. (This means that the non-transit commuting is increasing faster than the transit commuting.) The media may also confuse transit commuting (home-to-work and work-to-home trips) with transit use (all trip purposes, including journey-to-school, journey-to-shop, etc.)
5. Get your public information staff involved in issuing a press release. It will be very helpful to the media/public to assemble and analyze the data as soon as possible.
One of the interesting trends that I'm picking up is a general stability in journey-to-work modes shares, 1990 to 2000 - - at the REGIONAL level. We're showing a slight increase in our work-at-home share (3.4 to 4.0 %, 1990 to 2000) and a slight increase in transit commute share (9.5 to 9.7 %). We are showing slight decreases in drive alone (-0.2% from 68.2 to 68.0), carpooling (-0.1, from 13.0 to 12.9) and walking-to-work (-0.4% from 3.6% to 3.2%).
The majority of the INCREASE in our transit commuting is coming from suburban transit communities (that is, *not* from San Francisco/ Oakland/ Berkeley). This suburban transit commuting phenomena is interesting, and it will useful once the full national datasets are out in early June to try to see if this suburban transit growth is a national pattern or an isolated metro area pattern. (Very difficult, though, at a national level to distinguish urban from suburban.)
Hope this helps, and if others have interesting results and trends to share, please post to this listserv!
Chuck Purvis
***********************************************
Charles L. Purvis, AICP
Senior Transportation Planner/Analyst
Metropolitan Transportation Commission
101 Eighth Street
Oakland, CA 94607-4700
(510) 464-7731 (office)
(510) 464-7848 (fax)
www: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/
Census WWW: http://census.mtc.ca.gov/
***********************************************
Does anyone know if there exists some ready-made maps of the urbanized area boundaries for 1990 and for 2000? Perhaps pdf files for specific metro areas. Thanks for your help!
Andrew Pickard
Senior Transportation Engineer
Hampton Roads Planning District Commission
723 Woodlake Drive
Chesapeake, VA 23320
Phone: (757) 420-8300 Fax: (757) 523-4881
E-mail: apickard(a)hrpdc.org
Web: www.hrpdc.org