This may be of interest to some on this list.
U.S. Census Bureau News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2014
Beta Release of Workforce Statistics Analysis Tool
The U.S. Census Bureau is unveiling a new Web-based analysis tool that provides access to the full Quarterly Workforce Indicators dataset. The tool - named QWI Explorer - includes measures on employment, job creation and destruction, hires and wages from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program. QWI Explorer allows users to compare, rank and aggregate indicators across time, geography and/or firm and worker characteristics. Potential analyses include a look over time at wages by worker sex and age across counties, ranking job creation rates of young firms across NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) groups, and comparing hiring levels by worker race and education levels across a selection of metropolitan areas. More information about this new tool is available here [ http://lehd.ces.census.gov/applications/help/qwi_explorer.html?eml=gd&utm_m…] and a video tutorial is available here [http://lehd.ces.census.gov/applications/help/qwi_explorer.html?eml=gd&utm_m…]. Visit QWI Explorer [http://qwiexplorer.ces.census.gov?eml=gd&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdel…]
to use the tool.
http://lehd.ces.census.gov/applications/help/qwi_explorer.html?eml=gd&utm_m…
Ed Christopher
This may be of interest to those on this list. Even if you can not make
the conference it may be worthwhile to check out the ACS Data Users
webpage and participate in the online community.
----------------
Register now for the inaugural American Community Survey (ACS) Data
Users Conference, to be held May 29-30, 2014, at the Holiday Inn
Capitol, in Washington, D.C. A limited number of hotel rooms have been
reserved at a special conference rate of $224 so please *book by April
14* to ensure your reservation. The ACS Data Users Conference is being
organized by Sabre Systems and the Population Reference Bureau in
partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau. Space at the conference is
limited and registration is on a first come/first served basis. The
final deadline for registration is Thursday, May 22, 2014. For more
information and to register for the conference, visit:
www.acsdatausers.org/Events.aspx <http://www.acsdatausers.org/Events.aspx>.
http://www.acsdatausers.org/
--
Ed Christopher
Hello,
I would like to offer two additional "checks" that could be done, but with the caveat that while the following is not perfect by any means (and in some cases could be potentially misleading, if the subsequent analysis is faulty), they could lead to a better understanding of the Big Picture accuracy/usefulness of CTPP flows in specific situations.
The first is to prepare dot density maps. Here is an example:
-- Identify all tracts (or all TAZs) that compose the CBD for a moderate-to-large city.
-- Create a database that identifies the total number of workers living in a tract (or TAZ) who have their place of work recorded as being in the CBD (i.e., in one of the tracts or TAZs that compose the CBD).
-- Prepare a dot density map and visually examine the results to see if they make sense.
I would think such a visual analysis could help identify Big Picture situations where the ACS geocoding effort may have consistently identified the wrong workplace location for a large number of records.
But what if nothing stands out as particularly odd to those with considerable familiarity about the region? It doesn't seem to be done very often, but for those with access to an employer database for a specific work location (i.e., a database with lots of location-specific workers), in which each worker's home location is known (at least their zip code, or maybe even just their place of residence), it could be interesting to prepare and compare two different dot density maps: one based on the employer database, the other based on the CTPP. There will most likely be LOTs and LOTs of small differences in the spatial distribution of home locations (plus for that matter, limitations associated with use of a five-year accumulation of ACS records that are compared against a "current" database of employee's homes), but that is expected from any analysis based on small samples. The comparative visual checks of interest would be to see if there are any big differences that result in a "say what?" kind of reaction, e.g., if the employer database shows that 25% of all workers have residences located in the quadrant northeast of the workplace, but the CTPP flows indicate a distribution of 10% or 40%, that is worth some additional exploration. It would also be interesting to prepare a dot density map based on LEHD flows, to see how that compares.
This email is already getting into too many nuances that makes this appear a lot more complicated than it really needs to be, but other sources that might be interesting to explore include the flow data available for purchase from private vendors and use of license plate surveys to identify the "home zip code locations" for cars parked in downtown lots/garages.
Another check is perhaps a bit too much on the "exploratory research" side for most people's tastes, but it would be interesting to use a traffic assignment model to "assign" the TAZ-to-TAZ CTPP flows (for auto trips) to a metropolitan area road network, and compare the assigned volumes to AM peak period TOD counts. The reason to compare to AM peak counts, rather than daily counts, is that most home to work trips take place in the AM peak period, plus most trips in the AM peak period trips are commute trips. Certainly not a perfect test, but if the assigned CTPP link volumes are wayyy off from the AM peak counts, that could raise some eyebrows.
Best wishes,
Ken Cervenka
FTA Office of Planning and Environment
From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Murakami, Elaine (FHWA)
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2014 4:52 PM
To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net
Subject: Re: [CTPP] tract level data
Great timing! Glad to hear that you are looking at the CTPP Part 3 data at the tract level.
Recently, Liang Long and I have been looking at some flow pairs at the tract level, but you all (out there in the real world) have local knowledge to best evaluate the results.
Wendall Cox of Demographia recently identified a problem in Los Angeles, which is the Port of Los Angeles, next to the Port of Long Beach, showing very large worker flows using transit for a pair that is about 25 miles distance. We have asked Yong Ping Zhang at SCAG to help us figure out what might be going on.
Also, we have heard from the Baltimore Metropolitan Council that there appear to be miscoded workplaces between Baltimore City and Baltimore County, for which they have initiated discussions with the Census Bureau on some training for ACS field interviewers. Also, it may be that more responses using the Internet for ACS will ameliorate some of these errors.
My advice:
As a first step, pull the Part 2 (workplace data) at the tract level and find all your tracts with very high worker counts. For some regions, this might be census tracts with more than 10,000 workers. In other metro areas, this might be tracts with more than 5000 workers.
Look at the means of transportation for these tracts and see if they are reasonable using your own professional judgement. You can compare the results to the CTPP 2000, which will be easier in areas where the tract boundaries have been stable.
After you have determined that the Part 2 data appear reasonable, THEN look at the Part 3 flows. Yes, the Margins of Error at the tract level will be high as the sample size of the ACS is small, about 50% the sample size of the Census 2000 long form, even after 5 years of accumulated ACS records. You will notice that often the MOE is a value between 110 - 130, no matter what the estimate is. This is probably because the estimate is based on 1,2 or 3 unweighted records. While the CTPP does not include the unweighted number of workers at workplace location, there is a residence-based table A101106 of the unweighted sample count of PERSONS, which will give you a sense of how small the sample of WORKERS might be when workers are distributed to all the workplace locations.
You should also look at TAD to TAD flows. We asked the local transportation agencies to define TADs (about the size of 4 or 5 census tracts) because this is reduce the MOEs.
If you see a big problem in your Part 2 data, please contact us-either Penelope Weinberger at AASHTO pweinberger(a)aashto.org<mailto:pweinberger@aashto.org> ,
Liang Long at Cambridge Systematics llong(a)camsys.com<mailto:llong@camsys.com> , or me.
Currently, Cambridge Systematics is conducting a CTPP Usability study for AASHTO's CTPP program, so everyone's feedback is welcome.
Elaine Murakami
FHWA Office of Planning
206-220-4460 (in Seattle)
From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net<mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net> [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Harun Rashid
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2014 11:09 AM
To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net<mailto:ctpp-news@chrispy.net>
Subject: [CTPP] tract level data
CTPPers, have any of you done flow analyses at tract level? With each CTPP release, we conduct that for small planning areas. For this, we need tract-tract flows with numbers from A302100 table. In identifying commuter flows to downtown urban core of the region (Charleston MSA, South Carolina), we found very large MOEs for each tract-tract pair. Of a total of 940 tract-tract pairs identified to have flows to the study area, 622 have MOEs larger than estimates!
I am checking to see if anyone else experienced the same issue, and how this is being handled. I was thinking of using some sort of filters, e.g. considering only the pairs that have estimates larger than MOEs. Any suggestions will be appreciated. TIA.
Harun
Harun Rashid, AICP
Senior GIS Planner
BCD Council of Governments
1362 McMillan Avenue, Suite 100
North Charleston, SC 29405
T: 843.529.0400
F: 843.529.0305
www.bcdcog.org<http://www.bcdcog.org>
CTPPers, have any of you done flow analyses at tract level? With each CTPP release, we conduct that for small planning areas. For this, we need tract-tract flows with numbers from A302100 table. In identifying commuter flows to downtown urban core of the region (Charleston MSA, South Carolina), we found very large MOEs for each tract-tract pair. Of a total of 940 tract-tract pairs identified to have flows to the study area, 622 have MOEs larger than estimates!
I am checking to see if anyone else experienced the same issue, and how this is being handled. I was thinking of using some sort of filters, e.g. considering only the pairs that have estimates larger than MOEs. Any suggestions will be appreciated. TIA.
Harun
Harun Rashid, AICP
Senior GIS Planner
BCD Council of Governments
1362 McMillan Avenue, Suite 100
North Charleston, SC 29405
T: 843.529.0400
F: 843.529.0305
www.bcdcog.org
All:
Caliper Corporation is pleased to announce the availability of the Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP) data for Parts 1, 2 and 3 on its User Center for download. Caliper has processed the most recent estimates of the CTPP data for the most commonly utilized tables from the latest American Community Survey (ACS) and is making the three part series available to all TransCAD users with current support agreements. For Parts 1 and 2 the data is in the TransCAD Fixed Format Binary table format, while the Part 3 data is in TransCAD matrix format. The data extents are nationwide, including the TAZ to TAZ journey-to-work flows, a matrix of 217,282 rows and columns with 58 sub-matrices. For the journey-to-work matrices of flows for the Means 7 tabulation, margins of error for each Origin-Destination pair are included as separate matrix files. Users can easily make subsets of the data to suit their needs for their regions using the standard tool set in TransCAD.
Users can access the Caliper User Center from our website by clicking on the following URL:
http://www.caliper.com/UserCenter/
Please contact tc_support(a)caliper.com for any questions pertaining to the data or for help logging into the User Center. Please be advised that the download is approximately 2.6 GB in size.
Peter
----------------------------------------------------------------
Peter H. Van Demark
Director of GIS Products and Training Phone: 617-527-4700
Caliper Corporation Fax: 617-527-5113
1172 Beacon Street, Suite 300 E-mail: peter(a)caliper.com
Newton MA 02461-9926 Web site: http://www.caliper.com
I wanted to make sure folks on this listserv are aware of our "37 Billion Mile Data Challenge" which should be of interest to researchers, modelers, and transportation planners across the country. Individuals, academics, teams, and companies are all welcomed and encouraged to participate. Visit www.37billionmilechallenge.org<http://www.37billionmilechallenge.org> for complete details.
MAPC just launched a 6-week data challenge to help unearth the lessons to be found in an unprecedented new dataset about vehicle ownership and usage. The Massachusetts Vehicle Census contains anonymized information about the make, model, age, estimated mileage, fuel efficiency, and zip code of every passenger and commercial vehicle registered in the state from 2008 to 2011 AND a spatial dataset of 250 meter grid cells with statistics on number of vehicles, vehicles per household, mileage per vehicle, and greenhouse gas emissions. Few researchers have ever had access to this type of information and we are opening the doors to everyone who wants to try their hand at making a beautiful visualization, an insightful analysis, or a useful tool out of this big data. In particular, we're looking for submissions that will help guide the actions that the state and its communities are taking to build a more sustainable transportation system. Judges include the Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation and the public, who will be able to vote for their favorites online. Winners will walk away with cash prizes and recognition from the Commonwealth. Visit www.37billionmilechallenge.org<http://www.37billionmilechallenge.org/> to learn more or follow along on twitter @37billionmiles. Challenge closes on April 19.
___________________________________
Timothy G. Reardon
Assistant Director of Data Services
Metropolitan Area Planning Council
60 Temple Place | Boston, MA 02111
617-933-0718
treardon(a)mapc.org<mailto:treardon@mapc.org>
[cid:image001.jpg@01CF41EE.1E8E2E10]
________________________________
Please be advised that the Massachusetts Secretary of State considers e-mail to be a public record, and therefore subject to the Massachusetts Public Records Law, M.G.L. c. 66 ? 10.
Just got this from the Census Project folks.
------------------------------
Late yesterday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
announced that it cancelled its scheduled markup of the Poe bill to make
the American Community Survey voluntary.
This is a tremendous victory for the many individual stakeholders working
with the Census Project who either directly contacted individual members
of Congress between Friday morning of last week and late yesterday to
express opposition to the legislation, or who signed the co-signature
letter
(http://thecensusproject.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2d1784c40f46dfe51…)
to Congress. The letter itself
(http://thecensusproject.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2d1784c40f46dfe51…)
has been revised in light of developments and was still sent to the
committee to put us on record as opposed to the bill.
Thanks to everybody for their help. Together we secured an important victory!
--
Ed Christopher
Hi, All
We have developed the census tract to census tract flows from the new CTPP
2006-2010. The file includes all tract pairs which present flows from the
CTPP 2006-2010 including Puerto Rico. This file only include one measure:
total worker counts and its associated margins of error. FIPS codes are
also provided for residence and workplace State, County and Census Tract.
Tutorial which provides a guide on how to query the database is also
available.
The file can be accessed from:
ftp://ftp.camsys.com/clientsupport/CTPPdata/2006-2010%20tract%20Flows/
Username: 8305CTPP
Password: 1900NJA
Please note that user name and password are case sensitive.
Please let me know if you have any issues accessing the file.
Thanks,
Liang Long
Cambridge Systematics, Inc.
4800 Hampden Lane
Suite 800
Bethesda, MD 20814
tel 301 347 0100
fax 301 347 0101
FHWA 202-366-6971
e-mail llong(a)camsys.com
www.camsys.com
I got this from our friends at the Census Project.
The U.S. House of Representatives is at it again! Next Wednesday, March
12, the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform will hold a
meeting to mark up Congressman Ted Poe’s (R-TX) bill to make the
American Community Survey (ACS) voluntary. If the ACS is made voluntary,
participation rates would drop dramatically and the value of the survey
would substantially decline.
Census Project Co-Director Terri Ann Lowenthal explains the issue in a
new blog post today
(http://censusprojectblog.org/2014/03/07/from-the-ashes-the-poe-bill-rises-a…).
Additional information about the ACS is contained in a series of fact
sheets developed by the Census Project
(http://www.thecensusproject.org/factsheets.htm), and in a March 2012
letter to Congress
(http://www.thecensusproject.org/letters/2012-03-06_Census_Project_voluntary…),
from when the House made a similar move.
The Census Project only learned of the committee’s intentions last
night. We realize it’s a quick turnaround, but we hope your organization
can co-sign a letter to congressional leadership
(http://www.thecensusproject.org/letters/2014-03-acsbill/CensusProjectACSltr…)
by 4:00 p.m. (Eastern) on Monday, March 10. We will then send this
important letter to Congress and issue a press release on Tuesday in
advance of the committee hearing on Wednesday.
If your organization can co-sign the letter
(http://www.thecensusproject.org/letters/2014-03-acsbill/CensusProjectACSltr…),
please contact Jason Shevrin at jason.shevrin(a)gmail.com by 4:00 p.m. on
Monday
The Census Project
http://www.thecensusproject.org/
--
Ed Christopher