RE: [CTPP] No Car but Drives to Work Alone

Hello, Not sure I can add anything more to the "list of possibilities" that will be truly useful to the listserv readers, but it is at least worth noting exactly how the ACS question about vehicles was asked: -- How many automobiles, vans, and trucks of one-ton capacity or less are kept at home for use by members of this household? (with choices of none, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 or more). An examination of local household surveys (as well as transit rider surveys) show all sorts of variations to capture a household's "number of vehicles available," but here is just one recent example: "How many working vehicles are available to your household?" The two questions will in most cases result in the same answer, but there will always be situations where that won't be the case. What strikes me as a bit on the unusual side is that I am not aware of any sufficiently-large "follow-up" survey that documents what a person is REALLY trying to say when they note their household has no vehicles but yet they drove alone. I have a vague recollection of some local HH survey CATI scripts that have a built-in logic check that forces a follow-up question whenever a person driving alone comes from a household without any vehicles identified, but I don't recall seeing any summaries that may provide some useful statistics. Ken Cervenka Federal Transit Administration, Planning & Environment -----Original Message----- From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Robert Campbell Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 9:41 AM To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net Subject: Re: [CTPP] No Car but Drive Alone to Work I was wondering whether Cambridge, MA, might be something of an outlier for stats, because of its large student population. Perhaps the students are using "family" cars for their journey to work. It would be interesting to see if other communities, which have much smaller resident student populations, experience the same % of drivers in zero-car households. Robert L. Campbell, Senior Manager/Scheduling MTA Long Island Bus Phone 516-296-4709 FAX 516-794-8670 -----Original Message----- From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Cook, Cliff Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 9:37 AM To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net Cc: Shulman, Adam Subject: [CTPP] No Car but Drives to Work Alone Thanks to all who responded. I've summarized, paraphrased and quoted below possible reasons below and added a few comments as appropriate: 1. Other modes such as bicycling, motorcycles and motor scooters. (I think these are covered by the data in 20068 ACS table B08141 so they are not likely the source of the problem.) 2. Leased, not owned, autos treated not counted as vehicles "kept for use by members of this household" (This would be a misinterpretation of the ACS question but stranger things have happened. Other types of respondent errors could be in play here as well.) 3. Problem with data imputed by the Census Bureau for non-responders. 4. Using a company car on loan, a zip car a neighbors car, a parent's car or another car sharing service. (ZipCar is popular in Cambridge but I doubt that would cover too many people. Company cars might explain some but again seems an unlikely explanation for almost 700 commutes out of 48,600. Garaging a car not registered in Cambridge is difficult as we require a resident permit for on street parking and off street parking spaces are few and expensive. Over 60% of the housing stock is rentals, often with no dedicated parking space included in the rent.) 5. Non-standard work week such as travel to a conference. (This might be a not insignificant source. I've always been surprised by the number of local residents who JTW data shows as "commuting to work" in California.) 6. Based on the 2009 NHTS, the ACS result seems reasonable. In the 2009 NHTS (weighted results), 12% of persons in zero-vehicle households who travelled to work "last week", did so in a vehicle with one person in it. This works out to be 500k people out of 4,260k. 7. This phenomenon shows up in NHTS as well and appears to be a very real result of the fact that some share of folks used borrowed cars for travel. It may be a young adult who doesn't own a car but has one available from dad, folks renting, folks borrowing etc. In consumer expenditure surveys non-car owning households also have non trival auto related expenses for travel. It is not uncommon for non-car households to travel more PMT in SOV than on transit. In consumer expenditure surveys non-car owning households also have non trival auto related expenses for travel. Thanks to all for your help! Cliff Cook ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- Original post: I'm hoping someone can help me address this question from a colleague. He put together a table from the 2006-2008 ACS showing mode of journey to work by vehicles owned and came up with surprisingly large numbers who do not won a car yet drive alone to work. No doubt, there are a few people who fit this category but my guess is that this largely is the result of either people misunderstanding the question or some sort of coding problem. Here is an excerpt from his email ( the Cambridge here is Cambridge, Massachusetts): I'm looking at ACS data and specifically at cities and percent workers have no car available. From that I'm then looking to see how those workers get to work. The attached worksheet shows my work. What is strange is that it shows for Cambridge that 6.6% of people without a car available drove alone to work. The percent is similar to Boston. And NYC has 3.4% of workers with No vehicles available driving alone to work. So, the question is, how can someone without a vehicle drive to work alone? Do you have any ideas on this? It could be someone doesn't own a vehicle, but drives a friend's car to work. Or has no car of their own, but uses a company car to get to work. But seems like a high number for this. Can anyone shed any light on this? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- Clifford Cook Planning Information Manager Cambridge Community Development Dept. 344 Broadway Cambridge, MA. 02139 617/349-4656 FAX 617/349-4669 TTY 617/349-4621 email => ccook(a)cambridgema.gov web site => <http://www.cambridgema.gov/~CDD/> _______________________________________________ ctpp-news mailing list ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net http://www.chrispy.net/mailman/listinfo/ctpp-news