Austinites’ commuting habits offer surprises
Wanna know how Americans, and Austinites, get to work?
The U.S. Census Bureau asked that question, and the answers are fun to chew over.
In last week’s column, I favored you with the deep thoughts on commuting from some experts at the Texas Tribune Festival — and I threw in some of my shallower reflections as well, just for balance. Anyway, more or less at the same time, the American Community Survey, an arm of the census, was releasing its annual data — which in 2016 was based on detailed live and online interviews with about 2.2 million Americans.
That long-form survey on a variety of topics, including transportation habits, encompassed about 141,000 Texans, or about 5 percent of the population. In other words, a pretty comprehensive sampling, and the Census Bureau does it year after year. I looked at each year back to 2006, both for the Austin metro area and nationally, to see if there were discernible trends in how we get to and from work. So what do the data tell us? First of all, about 73 percent of Austin-area residents drive alone to and from work, about 3 percent less than the national average but, surprisingly, about 3 percent more than in the Los Angeles area. Just for further comparison: In New York City, 22 percent managed to drive to work alone. In bikeand transit-friendly Portland, Ore., 58 percent drive to work alone.
The percentage of solo drivers in Austin has been pretty consistent since 2006, with just under 3 out of 4 people soldiering by themselves to work year after year.
Carpooling, both in Austin and nationally, has been trending down, perhaps because of persistently lower gas prices since 2008. Those getting to and from work with at least one buddy (or their spouse) fell from almost 13 percent in Austin in 2006 to 9.6 percent last year. Nationally, the slide was subtler, from 10.7 percent down to 9 percent.
What about public transit, which gets so much attention (and public money) here and elsewhere?
The national average for using public transit to commute in 2016 was 5.1 percent, a figure that has bobbed around the 5 percent level through the past 11 years. That figure is, of course, influenced upward by much heavier use in some larger cities (57 percent in New York, 36 percent in Washington, 33 percent in Boston and 28 percent in Chicago) and downward in the country’s
smaller and new cities and its rural expanse.
In Austin, as Capital Metro ridership figures have indicated, the percentage use of public transit has been falling and is below the national average.
Transit use here spiked to 5.6 percent in 2008 (remember $4-a-gallon gas?) but has steadily dropped since then. In 2016, just 3.6 percent took a bus, train or van to work here, according to the survey, down from 4.3 percent as recently as 2014. Capital Metro is concerned about this, as are most U.S. transit agencies, and is the midst of a makeover of its bus system to simplify routes and emphasize more frequent service rather than broader coverage.
As board Chairman Wade Cooper said in an August board meeting, the agency has seen steadily increasing costs combined with ebbing ridership, “and the public’s not going to stand for that forever.”
What about cycling? Austin over the past decade has poured a lot of money and dedicated considerable street rights of way to bike lanes, and it has built more off-street trails. More is on the way through the $720 million transportation bond plan approved in 2016. Is all of that making a difference in commuting behavior?
Yes, it would seem, but the increase is far from dramatic.
In 2006, according to the survey, 0.91 percent of commuting trips in Greater Austin were made on a bicycle. In 2011, that abruptly jumped to 1.88 percent, a figure cycling advocates trumpeted as a sign that Austin was headed toward a Portland-like cycling scene. But over the next four years, that percentage went down every year, reaching 1.27 percent in 2015.
In 2016, it bumped back up to 1.53 percent. That amounts to 15 commuting trips by bike out of every 1,000 people going to or from work. Make of that what you will. People in Austin, and elsewhere, of course, bike for other reasons as well, including recreation, exercise and training for competition, and that matters.
Portland, just for reference, was at 6.33 percent commuting by bike last year, and Seattle was at 3.53 percent. Austin, however, is a cycling giant among Texas cities: Houston was at 0.45 percent, while Dallas came in at a scant 0.16 percent and San Antonio at 0.14 percent.
Nationally, the bike-towork average in 2016 was 0.57 percent.
Then there’s walking to work. I had seen similar figures for Austin before, but it still surprises: 2 percent in 2016, almost 11,000 people. Think about that. One out of every 50 workers in the Austin area, at least according to the American Community Survey, walks out of the front door in the morning and strolls to his or her place of employment.
This doesn’t include working at home, which is a different category in the survey. That group was 8.2 percent in Austin in 2016, up from 5.1 percent in 2006. To each one of those 44,485 people, I say thank you for staying off MoPac or Interstate 35 in the morning. And think about taking a shower before noon.
Back to walking to work. That 2016 cohort included Austin Mayor Steve Adler, who lives in the W Austin downtown and can simply cross West Second Street (at the light, presumably) to get to City Hall. But for the rest of us, work most of the time would seem to be well beyond walking distance. But OK, that’s what the survey says.
The commute-by-foot number was 2.72 percent nationally last year.
Another 2,000 people in Austin used a motorcycle to commute, and 843 took a taxi. That last one might include ride hailing, but the survey doesn’t specify.
Finally, there’s the “other means” category. The census survey doesn’t say what those might be. In Austin, more than 5,100 people last year said they used one of those mysterious other means to get to and from work.
Pogo sticks? Really long Slip ’N’ Slides? Teleportation? Skipping? Dunno.