Commuter Travel Patterns – Public Transportation
This indicator reports the percentage of population using public transportation as their primary means of commuting to work. Public transportation includes buses or trolley buses, streetcars or trolley cars, subway or elevated rails, and ferryboats.
Source
Source Description
The American Community Survey (ACS) is a nationwide survey designed to provide communities with reliable and timely social, economic, housing, and demographic data every year. The ACS has an annual sample size of about 3.5 million addresses, with survey information collected nearly every day of the year. Data are pooled across a calendar year to produce estimates for that year. As a result, ACS estimates reflect data that have been collected over a period of time rather than for a single point in time as in the decennial census, which is conducted every 10 years and provides population counts as of April 1. The Census Bureau combines 5 consecutive years of ACS data to produce estimates for geographic areas with fewer than 65,000 residents. These 5-year estimates represent data collected over a period of 60 months. Because the ACS is based on a sample, rather than all housing units and people, ACS estimates have a degree of uncertainty associated with them, called sampling error. In general, the larger the sample, the smaller the level of sampling error. Data users should be careful in drawing conclusions about small differences between two ACS estimates because they may not be statistically different.
For more information about this source, including data collection methodology and definitions, refer to the American Community Survey data user’s website.
Methodology
Population counts for demographic groups and total area population data are acquired from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Data represent estimates for the 5-year period 2019-2023. Mapped data are summarized to 2023 census tract boundaries. Data are tabulated for workers 16 years old and over (members of the Armed Forces and civilians) who were at work during the reference week. Means of transportation to work refers to the principal mode of travel or type of conveyance that the worker usually used to get from home to work during the reference week. People who used different means of transportation on different days of the week were asked to specify the one they used most often, that is, the greatest number of days. People who used more than one means of transportation to get to work each day were asked to report the one used for the longest distance during the work trip. Travel time to work refers to the total number of minutes that it usually took the worker to get from home to work during the reference week. Area statistics are measured as a percentage of the total working population using the following formula:
For more information on the specific data elements reported in the American Community Survey, please see the complete American Community Survey 2023 Subject Definitions.
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