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Commuter Nation: How America gets to work
Commuters ride the R train from Brooklyn into Manhattan during rush hour. New York State tops the nation in public transportation ridership, according to Census data.
America is a nation of drivers, particularly when it comes to how we get to work.
Across the country, the vast majority of us commute by car, and most of the time we’re alone, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau. But in some pockets of the U.S. there's a growing population of commuters taking public transportation, carpooling, walking, and even riding a bike.
Click through to see how your state commutes. Explore the interactive map.
To get a better look at how Americans get to work, we sifted through data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Surveys to create an interactive map. Using data from the 2010 survey (view data), we identified the number of people in each state who drive alone, carpool, and take public transportation. From the 2008 survey (view data), we identified the number of people in each state who walk or ride a bike.
Then we added up the total number of people represented in both surveys to determine the "total commuter population" for each state; There is a margin of error we didn't account for, maybe some people who still commute by horse-and-buggy, and the surveys are from different years, but you get the idea. A quick calculation gave us the share of commuters in each category by state.
I drive alone
In 43 states, more than three-quarters of the commuter population drive alone to work. Only New York was significantly lower -- with almost half of Empire State commuters saying they get work in other ways. The least carpool-friendly states by percent are Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina.
Share the road
Hawaii and Alaska lead the nation in carpool commuting. About 14 percent of their commuter populations share a ride to work. Most states reported somewhere between 8 percent and 11 percent in this commuter category.
More of us take the bus
Not surprisingly, states with major metropolitan populations and large public transit systems have the highest use of public transit: New York leads by a wide margin with about 28 percent of its commuter population taking a train, subway or bus. Massachusetts and Illinois came in at a distant second and third with about 9 percent of their respective commuter populations taking public transportation.
Meanwhile Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, and Mississippi are among 17 states with less than 1 percent of their commuter population on public transit.
Foot-powered commuters are few
In our data set, bicycling and walking remain the least-popular methods for commuting to work. No state reported more than 5 percent of their commuter population on bikes. Thanks to its bike-friendly city of Portland, the state of Oregon topped the list - but still its bike population is only about 4.63 percent of the total. The majority of states didn’t break 1 percent in this category (Full disclosure, this is how I get to work).
Those who walk to work, meanwhile, are more common than bike-to-work commuters in almost every state, but still represent only a small slice of each state's commuter population. New York had the second-highest number of walking commuters, along with the other top states – Alaska (#1), Vermont (#3) and Montana (#4).
Explore the complete data in our interactive map, and tell us how you get to work. Post a comment or find us on Facebook or Twitter.
Thanks for this. It's interesting to see that Alaska and Hawaii lead the country in carpooling (so much for the lower 48) and that South Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama are the worst. Is there any speculation about why this might be the case? Alaska and Hawaii would seem to be pretty different from each other, whereas SC, TN and AL have some similarities. It would be interesting to investigate the causes. We're looking for new areas to expand our carpooling service (http://us.amovens.com/en) and I wonder if it makes more sense to try to penetrate those states where there is low carpool participation, or target places where carpooling is already pretty popular....
It seems silly to get up in the morning, go to our home computer, check email, the news and whatever home business we are involved in, then sit an expensive dangerous and dirty car for half an hour so we can sit in front of another computer and do work, then spend another half hour in that same expensive dangerous and dirty car to go home and sit in front of our own computer again.
http://ayunksyah.blogspot.com/2012/09/sepeda-motor-bebek-injeksi-kencang...
I've commuted by bus, train, bike, foot, and car. Biking was great, 'til the knees gave it up and I moved to a hilly area with crooked roads without much space for the "shared road." US transportation folks assume that their typical bicyclist is a highly fit 25 yr old male without a sense of self-preservation or a need to slow down for hills. As such, there is literally not enough space for the slower bikes who prefer to be far away from cars traveling over 20 mph, often even in areas with so-called bike lanes.
I tried carpooling once, but it failed. My partner's schedule wasn't predictable.
The car also allows us to reach work locations beyond the range of public transit, which is essentially non-existent in rural areas. We can't take public transit when there isn't any. Sounds like those who walk to work in rural states mentioned above probably work/live at essentially the same site, i.e. apartment over a store or house on a farm. Ideal, but not available for most of us. We'll bemoan the loss of time and cost of commuting.
Oh, and moving to walking range? I tried that once. The cost of a liveable (i.e. larger than closet) space with a full kitchen and bathroom was going to be 65% of my monthly income NOT including utilities. Hence the move to another state.
I am stunned that in the 21st century we are still using a 19th century technology – the gasoline engine – to get us to work. It seems silly to get up in the morning, go to our home computer, check email, the news and whatever home business we are involved in, then sit an expensive dangerous and dirty car for half an hour so we can sit in front of another computer and do work, then spend another half hour in that same expensive dangerous and dirty car to go home and sit in front of our own computer again. The kind of infrastructure we need to be thinking about is nationwide high-speed wifi, and putting all our educated unemployed to work. Instead, we think about rebuilding a 20th, century infrastructure built to serve the needs of a non-existent industrial economy based on 19th century technology.
Vic Napier
www.JoblessEconomy.net
