Juyin,

Also remember that the Census and now the ACS is collecting Journey to Work, that is how the questions are structured, collecting data that describes aspects of commuting behavior.  Household travel surveys collect travel behavior on all travel purposes.   Typically commuting is regular travel between residence and place of work.  Distance, time of day are attributes of that trip.  I have also seen commuting used to described any  regular  or repeated travel, even if not work related.

Context of the question is important.  For your management I would focus on the journey to work definition of commuter.  Distance of commute trips is more of a characteristic to define a type of JTW trip.  For example, I commute every day, using  auto.  My travel time is 10 minutes, about 4 miles.    If I take the bus, the same trip would be 20 minutes, this is due to bus route and number of stops along the way.   Also what about the employee who lives a few blocks for the worksite and walks to work.  The distance and time is not large, however it is a Commuting JTW trip.  For modeling we need utilize the characteristics of the JTW trip.  We can characterize long-distance commutes, or commutes by 30 miles or more, 50 miles or more etc.

See http://www.census.gov/hhes/commuting/

From: ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Chen, Ju-Yin (VDOT)
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2014 10:15 PM
To: ctpp-news@chrispy.net
Subject: Re: [CTPP] What defines a commuter?

Hi! Alan,

You are right. It is a typo!

I appreciate your detail explanation in this.

Thank you!

Juyin

---

From: ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net [ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] on behalf of ALANPISARSKI [ALANPISARSKI@alanpisarski.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2014 5:58 PM
To: ctpp-news@chrispy.net
Subject: Re: [CTPP] What defines a commuter?

Not sure how much more I can say.  The first CIA indicated that anyone who worked full time or part time last week would be part of that.  Given that all households in America and all persons in group quarters that are not restricted (free to move) are all eligible for response and anyone who is employed is questioned you have a total count.  If they have multiple jobs they are still counted once. Therefore workers do not equal jobs typically – we sometimes treat it that way for convenience.   The effective definition of a commuter is one who works and has a workplace to go to (or multiple workplaces).  To keep the count complete those who work at home, who like me “commute” down a flight of stairs, are counted.  This was done starting with the first surveys by census because of farmers who “worked at home”  and didn’t commute anywhere.   Note that the NHTS does not count WAH (work at home) in their work trips.  In some of the other Briefs we explain that there are at least 4 good treatments of workers and jobs in the statistical system none of which completely agree for good statistical reasons.

Further we count morning trips to work so we have travel time to work AM and TLH  for the morning.  We do not count other work (related)  trips during the work day – business meeting, truck driver, return to work after lunch, etc.    as Susan pointed out commuters equal the census term workers which is slightly smaller than employed labor force – about 1.5% smaller.

By the way I assume your example was a “for instance”  if anything suggests that 100 million of 140 workers were in non-metros it’s a typo!   AEP

From: ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Chen, Ju-Yin (VDOT)
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2014 3:56 PM
To: ctpp-news@chrispy.net
Subject: Re: [CTPP] What defines a commuter?

Hi! Susan,

Yes, I did and tried refreshing my memory by going through Q29 to Q45 on ACS questionnaire. Still don’t have a clear idea about how to define a commuter. Like when we said “ Of the 128 million commuters in 2000, almost 100 million were in nonmetropolitan areas…”, who were those commuters and how they responded to census (ACS) questionnaire to be categorized as commuters.

Hope this question makes sense to you all.

Thanks!

Juyin

From: ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Gorski, Susan (MDOT)
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2014 2:51 PM
To: ctpp-news@chrispy.net; ctpp-news@ryoko.chrispy.net
Subject: Re: [CTPP] What defines a commuter?

Not sure if you read CIA 2013 Brief 2 (http://traveltrends.transportation.org/Documents/B2_CIA_Role%20Overall%20Travel_web_2.pdf )  This gives a nice description of the complexities of commuting.

From: ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Chen, Ju-Yin (VDOT)
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2014 2:33 PM
To: ctpp-news@ryoko.chrispy.net
Subject: [CTPP] What defines a commuter?

Hi! All,

I got an interesting question from our management.

They want to know if we can define a commuter by how many work trips this particular person make during certain period of time (a day, a week or a year).

The simple definition I found online to describe a commuter is “a person who travels some distance to work on a regular basis.”

This brings up two basic questions:

1. How do we determine “some distance”?

2. How do we determine “regular basis”?

I could not find a clear definition regarding commuter in Commuting in America III though we talked about commuter population throughout the report.

Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated!

Juyin (roo-een) Chen, AICP
Travel Demand Modeling Coordinator
Virginia Department of Transportation
Transportation & Mobility Planning Division
P +1-804-225-3564

F +1-804-225-4785
http://www.virginiadot.org/vtm/