Our TRB Urban Data Committee is still working on the "Commuting to Downtown" study. The goal is to produce a time-series database on commute mode shares, employment, employment density, population trends, and overall development trends in downtown areas of large cities (300,000+ population) in the United States. Data from the 1970 through 2000 decennial censuses can be used in developing this database, though data from the 1970, perhaps even the 1980 Census, may be hard to come by. The Committee is planning a conference session for the January 2005 annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, DC. I'm envisioning a small panel of 3-to-5 committee members and study contributors to present results for the various downtown databases that have been assembled. The project is described on the RECENTLY UPDATED urban data committee web page, at: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/trb/urban/ . We now have prototype maps and analyses for the three large cities in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Story is interesting in showing the trends in downtown population, as well as downtown employment. Both subjects (population & employment trends) are of interest. In terms of format for these initial analyses, PDF format appears to be the most efficient, though spreadsheets, word documents, etc., are OK. We're really interested in large cities with population greater than 300,000. If you're lucky enough to be the MPO with any of these large cities, please feel free to volunteer! Drop me an e-mail. (Also, several folk have been interested in working on the New York downtown analysis. Please contact Kuo-Ann Chiao of NYMTC, *especially* if you have access to the pre-2000 Census data....) To help things along with the 1980 UTPP, we have extracted the 1980 UTPP, Part 3, Table 5 data, at tract-of-work or zone-of-work for available regions, including: New York, Boston, Delaware State, Kansas City, St. Louis, St. Paul, Atlanta, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Seattle, and Chicago. (These extracts are based on the original 1980 UTPP datafiles provided by the State DOTs and MPOs that are archived by USDOT, and MTC's new SAS code.) The data file is here:http://www.mtc.ca.gov/trb/urban/commute/ filename: tab305_extract.zip. If you need help in analyzing your original data files, please contact me or Nanda Srinivasan at FHWA. E-mail me (not the CTPP-News listserv) at: cpurvis at mtc.ca.gov You may also be interest in the HOUSEHOLD TRAVEL SURVEYS ON THE WWW project sponsored by the urban data committee, at: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/trb/urban/hhsurvey.html cheers, Chuck Purvis, MTC ************************************************************** Charles L. Purvis, AICP Principal 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://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/ **************************************************************