1、Brief 2. The Role of Commuting in Overall Travel May 2013 Commuting in a merica 2013 The National Report on Commuting Patterns and TrendsAbout the AASHTO Census Transportation Planning Products Program Established by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and
2、 the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S.DOT), the AASHTO Census Transportation Planning Products Program (CTPP) compiles census data on demographic characteristics, home and work locations, and journey-to-work travel flows to assist with a variety of state, regional, and local transportation pol
3、icy and planning efforts. CTPP also supports corridor and project studies, environmental analyses, and emergency operations management. In 1990, 2000, and again in 2006, AASHTO partnered with all of the states on pooled fund projects to sup- port the development of special census products and data t
4、abulations for transportation. These census transpor- tation data packages have proved invaluable in understanding characteristics about where people live and work, their journey-to-work commuting patterns, and the modes they use for getting to work. In 2012, the CTPP was established as an ongoing t
5、echnical service program of AASHTO. CTPP provides a number of primary services: Special Data Tabulation from the U.S. Census BureauCTPP oversees the specification, purchase, and delivery of this special tabulation designed by and for transportation planners Outreach and TrainingThe CTPP team provide
6、s training on data and data issues in many formats, from live briefings and presentations to hands-on full day courses. The team has also created a number of electronic sources of training, from e-learning to recorded webinars to downloadable presentations. Technical SupportCTPP provides limited dir
7、ect technical support for solving data issues; the pro- gram also maintains a robust listserv where many issues are discussed, dissected, and resolved by the CTPP community ResearchCTPP staff and board members routinely generate problem statements to solicit research on data issues; additionally, CT
8、PP has funded its own research efforts. Total research generated or funded by the current CTPP since 2006 is in excess of $1 million. Staff Penelope Weinberger, CTPP Program Manager Matt Hardy, Program Director, Policy and Planning Janet Oakley, Director of Policy and Government Relations Project Te
9、am Steven E. Polzin, Co-author, Center for Urban Transportation Research, University of South Florida Alan E. Pisarski, Co-author, Consultant, Falls Church, Virginia Bruce Spear, Data Expert, Cambridge Systematics, Inc. Liang Long, Data Expert, Cambridge Systematics, Inc. Contact Penelope Weinberger
10、, e-mail: pweinbergeraashto.org, phone: 202-624-3556; or CTPPinfoaashto.org 2013 by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. All rights reserved. Duplication is a violation of applicable law. Pub Code: CA01-4 ISBN: 978-1-56051-562-3 2013 by the American Association of
11、State Highway and Transportation Officials. All rights reserved. Duplication is a violation of applicable law.Commuting in America 2013: The National Report on Commuting Patterns and Trends This brief is the second in a series of briefs that constitute a body of knowledge describing commuting in Ame
12、rica. This body of work, sponsored by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and carried out in conjunction with a National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) project that provided sup- porting data, builds on three prior Commuting in America report
13、s that were issued over the past three decades. Unlike the prior reports that were single volumes, this effort consists of a series of briefs, each of which addresses a critical aspect of commuting in America. These briefs, taken together, comprise a comprehensive summary of American commuting. The
14、briefs are disseminated through the AASHTO website. Accompanying data tables and an executive summary complete the body of information known as Commuting in America 2013 (CIA 2013). This brief, The Role of Commuting in Overall Travel, sets work commuting in context with other aspects of travel, spec
15、ifically other purposes for travel. Americas transportation infrastructure and services address the needs of individuals for all their travel purposes and also serve the travel needs of commerce and government. Commuters vehicles share the roadways with vehicles carrying persons who are traveling fo
16、r school, shopping, personal business, social and recreational activities, and other purposes, and they also share the road with vehicles transporting freight and providing various services, from goods delivery to emergency response to service workers visiting customers. Visitors and tourists from o
17、ther communities and countries also share the transportation facilities. Similarly, transit services transport work commuters but also travelers pursuing other activities. Throughout history, as the human condition has evolved to include far greater specialization of labor com- pared to the days of
18、a more insular rural or agrarian society, commuting to work has become a principal motivation for travel. With the growth of manufacturing in the last century and in recent decades strong growth in service employment, persons increasingly travel from their home to a place of employment where these s
19、pecialized activities are carried out. The evolution of manufacturing, with its tremendous economies of scale, resulted in consolidation of employment sites and growing commuting. As urban- ization continued, residential neighborhoods developed in outlying areas; first driven by the desire to escape
20、 the pollution, land cost, and congestion of the urban center Brief 2. The Role of Commuting in Overall Travel Commuting to work constitutes approximately 16% of all person trips and 19% of all person miles of travel. For roadway travel, commuting constitutes 28% of household vehicle miles of travel
21、 and, for transit systems, 39% of all transit passenger miles of travel. 2013 by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. All rights reserved. Duplication is a violation of applicable law.4 Commuting in America 2013: The National Report on Commuting Patterns and Trends
22、 and later fueled by the American culture of seek- ing more space and larger homes. Similarly, agglom- eration economies fostered commuting to centralized office and service locations to efficiently conduct other business and commerce activities. In recent decades, more ubiquitous transpor- tation a
23、nd communication networks and changing economic conditions con- tributed to the dispersion of employment activities across broader urban and rural geographies. While work has remained a critical motivation for travel, over the past several decades the economic growth enabled by a productive working
24、population has contributed to rapid growth in travel for other purposes. Social activities, education, health care, shopping, personal business, vacation, and oth- er activities have been in- creasingly carried out away from home and require travel. Thus, both the share of travel for commuting and t
25、he nature of that travel have evolved and continue to do so. Defining Work Travel Whats In and Whats Out In Commuting in America, work travel, sometimes referred to in technical literature as the “journey to work, ” consists of the travel from a residence to and from a work place. In U.S. statistics
26、, it does not include trips to school by students, as is the case in some countries. It also does not include workers going to a business meeting or trips by a worker to provide services to customers or any of the workday travel by those who travel as an essential part of their jobs, such as taxi, b
27、us, or truck drivers. Although those who work at home technically are not making a journey, they constitute a rapidly-growing segment of workers and are included in statistical treatments of work trav- el for completeness and comprehensiveness. Much of the data that warrants consideration at the nat
28、ional level is developed by the Bureau of the Census through the decennial census program long form and, since 2000, through the American Com- munity Survey (ACS). The great benefit of this survey approach is its focus on the “worker. ” The term “work- er, ” as used in the Census surveys, differs sl
29、ightly from the definition of those who are employedit excludes those who are still employed but have been laid off, are on vacation, or otherwise are not at work during the reference week, the week before the survey. The data on place of work were derived from an- swers to ACS Question 30, which wa
30、s asked of people who indicated in Question 29 that they worked at some time during the reference week. Data were tab- ulated for workers ages 16 years and overmembers 2011 Subject Definitions, American Community Survey. 2013 by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
31、 All rights reserved. Duplication is a violation of applicable law.5 Brief 2. The Role of Commuting in Overall Travel Understanding the evolution in commuting is important to understand- ing transportation needs because work travel remains a significant share of the total amount of travel. The impor
32、tance of this share is disproportionate due to (1) its critical influence on peak transportation infrastruc- ture and service needs, and (2) the important role that access from home to work plays in influencing land- use development patterns. Shares of Work Activity versus All Travel The journey to
33、and from work is only one of a large number of purposes that generate daily travel activity. It is a crucial part of passen- ger travel, but far from the entire picture of the use of the transportation system by travelers. Therefore, it is important to embed person travel and commuting anal- yses in
34、 an overall context, so that the material presented in the Commuting in Amer- ica briefs can be properly understood. In 1956, the landmark metropolitan transportation study that ushered in the of the Armed Forces and civilians who were at work during the reference week. Data on place of work refer t
35、o the geographic location at which workers carried out their occupational activities during the reference week. In the ACS, the exact address (number, street name, and city, town, or post office) of the place of work was asked, as was whether the place of work was inside or outside the limits of tha
36、t city or town, and the county, state, or foreign country, and ZIP Code of the place. The ACS addresses only travel that is journey-to- work travel, specifically the morning trip to work. The National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), therefore, is used for much of this discussion because of its cov-
37、erage of travel by the U.S. population for all purposes. While fundamentally the same in its definition of a worker, the NHTS also includes as workers those who may have been temporarily absent from work on the travel date. The NHTS method of obtaining work travel varies in that it poses questions a
38、bout peoples actual travel activities “yesterday” or on a pre-select- ed travel date rather than asking about “usual” travel during a reference week. It obtains the specifics of the work-related travel activity in far greater detail than the ACS for the day of travel, including all modes used, stops
39、 along the way, characteristics of the vehicle used, etc. Importantly, it includes the work trips of those workers with multiple jobs as well as the work travel by persons whose principal activity is not that of worker, such as a student who works 10 hours a week. Place-of-work data may show a few w
40、orkers who made unlikely daily work trips (e.g., workers who lived in New Y ork and worked in California). This result is attributable to people who worked during the reference week at a location that was different from their usual place of work. 2013 by the American Association of State Highway and
41、 Transportation Officials. All rights reserved. Duplication is a violation of applicable law.6 Commuting in America 2013: The National Report on Commuting Patterns and Trends modern era of transportation studies, the Chicago Area Transit Study (CATS) 1 , identified that work trips were approximately
42、 40 percent of vehicle trips. More recently, nationwide total travel is just below four trips per day per capita and, despite substantial growth, work travel has declined in share to 15.6 percent of overall travel and 27.8 percent of vehicle miles of travel as other travel purposes have grown faster
43、. Thus, it is important to appreciate that commuting exists in a continuum of trans- portation activities. While we have the most data on commuting and it is a stable highly identifiable trip that often dominates public discussion about transportation, it is crucial to recognize that it is just part
44、 of the demands that are made on our transportation systems. Figure 2-1 presented a basic taxonomy of travel, identifying all the major components starting with three categories of household-based travel, then including government- and business-related travel. Complexities and Work Trip Commuting Wo
45、rk travel used to be a relatively simple activity to describe. The factory whistle blew (for some) and they went to work; the factory whistle blew and they went home. There are not a lot of factory whistles blowing anymore, and only a very small share of workers fall into that category. Most are eng
46、aged in service-oriented occupations in smaller units of activity. The geographic destinations have dispersed as has the temporal pattern of trip departure times. Work hours typically start later than in the former factory worker world, and they are more variableand, importantly, more flexible. Both
47、 the hours worked during a week and the schedules may vary. Other aspects of commuting are changing in ways that affect other parts of travel and the transportation system serving it. One of these is the tendency for many commuters to make some of their work trips as part of a trip chaindropping off
48、 children, picking up necessities, and conducting household errands on the way to and from work. This is largely a product of the immense time pressures on workers, especially working women. Such a pattern increases the efficiency of overall travel but also has the effect of increasing the number of
49、 non-work-related trips occurring in the peak period. It can also militate against the use of carpooling or transit modes. For auto users, it does have the benefit of fuel and pollution savings from reduced travel and “cold starts, ” as well as time savings, compared to making individual trips from home. Trip chaining was first encountered in the 1970s and early 1980s as a result of the surge in multi-worker households requiring other activities to be coordinated with work travel, as workers planned their itineraries to meet household needs
