Tag Archives: commuting

New tool from HUD to estimate combined commuting and housing costs

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Opponents of sprawl argue too many people buy cheaper homes further from the city without considering the added transportation costs. Here is a new tool to help address this issue:

More than 3 in 4 home buyers polled in the National Assn. of Realtors’ latest Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers said commuting costs are either “very” or “somewhat” important to their ultimate purchase decisions. After all, the combined cost of housing and transportation consumes close to half of the typical working family’s monthly budget…

The Location Affordability Portal from the Housing and Urban Development Department and Transportation Department enables users to estimate the combined housing and transportation costs for a specific region, neighborhood and even street.

LAP is actually two tools: one, a map-based Location Affordability Index, is a database that predicts annual housing and transportation costs for a particular area. The other, My Transportation Cost Calculator, enables users to customize data for their own household and potential residential locations.

LAP includes diverse household profiles — which vary by income, size and number of commuters — and shows the affordability landscape for each one across an entire region. It was designed to help renters and homeowners — plus planners, policymakers, developers and researchers — get a more complete understanding of the costs of living in a location given the differences between households, neighborhoods and regions, all of which affect affordability. The data covers 94% of the U.S. population.

Use the tool here. Some good info here. I plugged in some quick numbers of our housing and transportation costs and the yearly transportation costs were about 57% of annual housing costs. Driving, even with commutes that aren’t that far, add up quickly. Here is what the Location Affordability Index looks like for much of the Chicago region:

LocationAffordabilityPortalChicagoArea2

On this map with combined housing and transportation costs, I feel like you can quickly see places where the housing is more expensive (some places on the North Shore) and other places where transportation costs are higher (and where there may be fewer jobs – Will County, western DuPage County).

The idea here is that more people need more information about commuting costs when making housing decisions. If they had the commuting costs, they would choose differently. For how many people would this be true? I suspect some Americans would place more emphasis on a cheaper house, even if the commuting costs are higher. In other words, these aren’t equal considerations when Americans, particularly of certain incomes, have to make a choice.

Census: 600,000 megacommuters in the US

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New data from the Census shows there are around 600,000 megacommuters in the United States:

About 600,000 Americans are megacommuters who work at least 50 miles from home and take at least 90 minutes to get there, with the biggest concentration in California, the U.S. Census Bureau said on Tuesday.

The agency said the percentage of Americans who traveled at least 90 minutes to work daily has inched higher in the last two decades even as the number of people who work from home has soared by 45 percent.

The average one-way daily U.S. commute is 25.5 minutes, and one in four commuters leave their home counties for work, the Census Bureau said, based on its annual American Community Survey…

Three-quarters of megacommuters are male, and they are more likely to be married, older, make a higher salary and have a spouse who does not work. They also are likely to leave for work before 6 a.m., according to the study.

This is still a very small segment of the workforce, less than 1 percent according to the article, but still quite interesting. My first thought at seeing the megacommuter figures is that many of these workers live on the metropolitan fringe or in exurbs. This could be because they need to find a cheaper house (especially if they have a spouse who does not work?) or because they value a little more space.

The experiences of a passenger in a driverless car

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I have wondered about this: what is it like to be a passenger in a driverless car?

As we drove along Chicago’s South Lakeshore Drive, Muharemovic switched the car through three modes which can be selected based on what the driver wants and what the traffic situation entails…

Finally, there’s a Highly Automated mode that adds full-speed ACC with an automatic-resume function that uses free-space detection and side-sensing. This is the one we’re looking forward to.

In fully automated mode, Muharemovic completely removed his hands from the steering wheel and foot from the pedals. At one point he turned around for several seconds to talk to passengers in the backseat. He had a casualness that comes from getting used to the technology over thousands a miles and a steadfast faith in the systems he helped create…

A dyed-in-the-wool Detroit car guy, Muharemovic challenges anyone who fears that autonomous driving will take the fun out of motoring. “I’d like to meet someone who loves traffic jams,” he says, adding that his girlfriend has noticed that he comes home less stressed from his daily commute.

As this article suggests, it will likely take some time for drivers to feel comfortable letting the car do all the driving. But, once drivers see what their commute could be like, perhaps they would like the freedom.

Two other pieces of information I would like to have:

1. In fully automated mode, would traffic jams become shorter because traffic could be more evenly spaced? If so, this would be a double bonus: less traffic and not having to pay attention to whatever traffic there is.

2. I can only imagine what the early lawsuits might be like if one of these systems fails and an accident ensues or there is a glitch in the design. I was reminded the other day that nothing was ever found wrong with Toyota’s gas pedals yet they had to pay out millions in settlements. How much money could be on the line if an automatic system like this fails?

Sociologist on how urban sprawl contributes to stress, limits community

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A sociologist argues urban sprawl boosts stress levels and inhibits social interactions:

Urban sprawl in Alberta’s two largest cities could be contributing to high stress levels and lack of community ties reported in the province, a sociologist suggests.

Statistics Canada’s age-standardized figures show nearly a quarter of Alberta’s population aged 15 and older perceive most days as “quite a bit or extremely stressful.”

Out of the 10 Canadian provinces, Alberta was second-highest for perceived life stress — second only to Quebec — in 2011.

It also had the second-lowest percentage of the population aged 12 and over who reported their sense of belonging to the local community as being “very strong or somewhat strong” — higher only than Quebec.

Tim Haney, an urban sociology expert and assistant professor at Mount Royal University, said the way Calgary, and more recently Edmonton, are growing outward affects residents’ quality of life.

Difficulty or inconvenience commuting from place to place can impact a person’s relationships and ability develop some sense of community, he said.

This sounds like possible correlations – we would have to see more specific data before making any conclusions. But, these arguments are related to earlier theories and findings. Some of the early sociologists, people like Georg Simmel, worried about how individuals would survive in cities. Simmel didn’t think much about suburbs but perhaps his ideas about “nervous stimulation” in cities could be adapted to suburban settings where there is less regular interaction with strangers but still a lot of movement (particularly driving) amidst populated areas. Also, Robert Putnam argued in Bowling Alone that sprawl contributed to a decline in community life and civic engagement.

If all of this is true and life in sprawl does include a stress penalty, this is an interesting trade-off for Americans: buy a bigger and cheaper house within the sprawl and participate in the suburban good life but have more stress than living elsewhere.

Questions about a study of the top Chicago commuter suburbs

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The Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul just released a new study that identifies the “top [20] transit suburbs of metropolitan Chicago.” Here is the top 10, starting with the top one: LaGrange, Wilmette, Arlington Heights, Glenview, Elmhurst, Wheaton, Downers Grove, Naperville, Des Plaines, and Mount Prospect. Here is the criteria used to identify these suburbs:

The DePaul University team considered 45 measurable factors to rank the best transit suburbs based on their:

1. Station buildings and platforms;

2. Station grounds and parking;

3. Walkable downtown amenities adjacent to the station; and

4. Degree of community connectivity to public transportation, as measured by the use of commuter rail services.

A couple of things strike me as interesting:

1. These tend to be wealthier suburbs but not the wealthiest. On one hand, this seems strange as living in a nicer place doesn’t necessarily translate into nicer mass transit facilities (particularly if more people can afford to drive). On the other hand, having a thriving, walkable downtown nearby is probably linked to having the money to make that happen.

2. There are several other important factors that influence which suburbs made the list:

Communities in the northern and northwestern parts of the region tended to outperform those in the southern parts, with much of the differences due to their published Walk Scores. Similarly, communities on the outer periphery of the region tend to have lower scores due to the tendency for the density of development to decline as one moves farther from downtown Chicago. As a result, both Walk Scores and connectivity to transit tended to be lower in far-out suburbs than closer-in ones.

It might be more interesting here to pick out suburbs that buck these trends and have truly put a premium on attractive transportation options. For example, can a suburb 35 miles out of Chicago put together a mass transit facilities that truly draw new residents or does the distance simply matter too much?

3. I’m not sure why they didn’t include “city suburbs.” Here is the explanation from the full report (p.11 of the PDF):

All suburbs with stations on metropolitan Chicago’s commuter-rail system, whether they are located in Illinois or Indiana, are considered for analysis except those classified as city suburbs, such as Evanston, Forest Park, and Oak Park, which have CTA rapid transit service to their downtown districts. Gary, Hammond, and Whiting, Indiana, also are generally considered cities or city suburbs rather than conventional suburbs, because all of these communities have distinct urban qualities. To assure meaningful and fair comparisons, these communities were not included in the study.

Hammond is not a “conventional suburb”? CTA service isn’t a plus over Metra commuter rail service?

4. The included suburbs had to meet three criteria (p.11 of the PDF):

1) commuter-rail service available seven days a week, with at least 14 inbound departures on weekdays, including some express trains;
2) at least 150 people who walk or bike to the train daily; and
3) a Walk Score of at least 65 on a 100-point scale at its primary downtown station (putting it near the middle of the category, described as “somewhat walkable”).

This is fairly strict criteria so not that many Chicago suburbs qualified for the study (p.11 of the PDF):

Twenty-five communities, all on the Metra system, met these three criteria (Figure 2). All were adjacent to downtown districts that support a transit-oriented lifestyle and tend to have a transit culture that many find appealing. Numerous communities, such as Buffalo Grove, Lockport, and Orland Park, were not eligible because they do not currently meet the first criteria, relating to train frequency. Some smaller suburbs, such as Flossmoor, Kenilworth and Glencoe, while heavily oriented toward transit, lack diversified downtown amenities and the services of larger stations, and therefore did not have published Walk Scores above the minimum threshold of 65.

I can imagine what might happen: all suburbs in the top 20 are going to proclaim that they are a top 20 commuter suburb! But it was only out 25…

5. There are some other intriguing methodological bits here. Stations earned points for having coffee available or displaying railroad heritage. Parking lot lighting was measured this way (p.24 of the PDF):

The illumination of the parking lot was evaluated using a standard light meter. Readings were collected during the late-evening hours between June 23 and July 5, 2012 at three locations in the main parking lots:
1) locations directly under light poles (which tend to be the best illuminated parts of the lots);
2) locations midway between the light poles (which tend to be among the most poorly illuminated parts of the lot); and
3) tangential locations, 20 and 25 feet perpendicular to the alignment of light poles and directly adjacent to the poles (in some cases, these areas having lighting provided from lamps on adjacent streets).

At least three readings were collected for category 1 and at least two readings were collected for categories two and three.

There is no widely accepted standard on parking lot lighting that balances aesthetics and security. Research suggests, however, that lighting of 35 or more lumens is preferable, but at a minimum, 10 lumens is necessary for proper pedestrian activity and safety. Scores of parking lot illuminate were based on a relative scale, as noted below. In effect, the scales grades on a “curve”, resulting in a relatively equal distribution of high and low scores for each category. In several instances, Category 3 readings were not possible due to the configuration of the parking lot. In these instances, final scores were determined by averaging the Category 1 and 2 scores.

I don’t see any evidence that commuters themselves were asked about the amenities though there was some direct observation. Why not also get information directly from those who consistently use the facilities?

Overall, I’m not sure how useful this study really is. I can see how it might be utilized by some interested parties including people in real estate and planners but I don’t know that it really captures enough of the full commuting experience available to suburbanites in the Chicago suburbs.

“A region’s workforce is not defined by its immediate suburbs”

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The Chicago Tribune has a story about “super-commuters” who make the trip between Chicago and St. Louis. While the story seems more intent on putting a face on this growing phenomenon (although the numbers are still relatively low), there is a very interesting quote from a researcher about how we should view jobs and regional economies:

Regardless, said Mitchell Moss, the NYU professor who authored the study, the trend speaks to both the increased flexibility of modern-day workers — “the office” can be almost anyplace — and the challenges facing two-income families in a weak job market: Why uproot your family when your spouse can’t get a job in the new city?

The trend illustrates how the economies of places like St. Louis are increasingly hitched to their neighbors.

“It tells you that there is an inter-regional economic relationship, which is growing between places like St. Louis and Chicago,” Moss said. “A region’s workforce is not defined by its immediate suburbs.”

I’ve written several times about the need for more regional cooperation in the Chicago region between city and suburbs (see this post regarding Mayor Daley and this post about Mayor Emanuel). With limited cooperation, communities can end up fighting over corporations and jobs, whether tax money from a particular municipality should be spent elsewhere, and how best to address regional-level issues like transportation or affordable housing.

What exactly would it mean for Chicago and St. Louis to cooperate? One area could be transportation: I assume both Chicago and St. Louis were on-board for plans to construct a high-speed rail line between the cities. Environmental issues could be another area. For example, both cities rely on interconnected water sources and shipping so common issues could arise (but remember there is a regional fight about Asian carp). But what about business issues? Could they set aside their separate issues to encourage economic development that might benefit both cities? Are there really economic opportunities they could both benefit from in spite of the distance between them?

The “gravity law” vs. the “radiation model” in predicting intercity mobility

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Here is an overview of two ways to model intercity mobility: the “gravity law” and the “radiation model” which was just recently proposed in Nature:

The reigning model of intercity mobility, used to predict patterns of movement from commuting to the spread of infectious disease, is called the “gravity law.” It was developed in the early 1940s by a Harvard lecturer named George Zipf and is, of course, based on Newton’s law, which says gravitational force increases when the mass of two objects is great and the distance between them is minimal.

In that same spirit, Zipf’s “gravity law” of mobility assumed that movement between two cities would be most frequent when their populations were large and their separation small. In reality, however, the “gravity law” doesn’t do a great job estimating the intercity movement it was intended to predict. While Zipf’s law frowns on the notion that people travel frequently between distant cities, recent research on so-called “super-commuters,” outlined by our own Richard Florida, shows that a considerable subset of urban populations is actually willing to commute quite far…

The “radiation model,” as the new idea is called, makes several assumptions the gravity model does not. For starters, it downplays the distance between two cities and emphasizes not only the cities themselves but the density of the areas surrounding them. That enables the model to estimate the number of jobs in a region more accurately. It also accounts a bit more for actual human behavior: while the radiation model presumes that people choose a job based on a balance of proximity and benefits, it recognizes that they’re willing to make long commutes if few jobs in their region satisfy their requirements.

As a result, the radiation model out-predicts the “gravity law” in direct competition. As an example, the researchers looked at mobility between two pairs of counties in Utah and Alabama. Both counties of origin had similar populations, as did both destination counties, and both pairs are more or less equidistant from one another. Actual Census data shows that 44 people make the commute in Utah, while six do in Alabama.

This sounds very interesting and required advances in data collection on this topic as well as modeling social networks and demographics. The main finding seems to be this: distance is not the only factor that matters in looking at trips between cities. As the case of the super-commuters suggests, people will live one place and work in another place far away in the right circumstances. Perhaps we should have already known this because of the relative importance of different cities: world-class cities or cultural centers or centers for certain industries (New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, respectively) would draw people from longer distances compared to “average” big cities (St. Louis? Denver?). Or, if we put this in world systems theory terms, certain cities sit at the center of American urban life and businesses and industries tend to concentrate within them while other cities are in more peripheral positions.

I would be interested to know whether the “radiation model” can suggest whether the number of super commuters will increase in the long-term and how this is affected by the strength of the overall economy and housing market.

Transit-oriented development in the Boston area

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Transit-oriented development has been popular for years now and here is an update on this development strategy in the Boston area:

“We see a huge demand around Greater Boston. We’re working in communities from Winchester to Lawrence that are all working to develop vibrant urban villages around public transportation,” Leroux said. “An overwhelming number of people want to live in these types of places, and communities that don’t create them are less competitive for residents and jobs.”

Filling the need in Somerville, where the residential landscape consists mainly of three-decker homes, is Maxwell’s Green, which will feature 184 rental units with amenities to rival many downtown Boston luxury apartment buildings.

Near completion and ready for occupancy this September, the $52.5 million development sits on 5.5 acres and is located minutes from the Red Line stop at Davis Square and adjacent to the much- anticipated MBTA Green Line Extension’s Lowell Street station…

SouthField, one of the largest transit-oriented developments in Greater Boston, is on track for South Weymouth at the former naval air station.

The first phase of the project is already complete, with residents occupying both apartments and townhouses. The total cost of the project, including the homes already built, is targeted at about $2.5 billion, which includes 2,800 homes and 2 million square feet of commercial space.

The “urban village” concept has been around now for several decades. They are thought to be particularly attractive for young professionals who want to live in the suburbs or further away from the city core (partly because of cheaper prices), don’t yet want to buy a home (condos being easier to maintain), want mass transit access, and also want to be in more lively areas with some cultural and dining options.

These types of development are very popular in the Chicago suburbs are well, particularly along the railroad lines that radiate out from Chicago’s center. Many suburbs have sought to build multi-use developments (condos plus offices or small retail establishments) near their commuter train stations. While this means that the residents can access mass transit, it also provides more pedestrians and hopefully customers for the downtown. A number of suburbs have pursued these developments as part of a downtown revitalization strategy.

I would be interested to see how studies about how much these developments reduce traffic and congestion. Particularly in a suburban setting, a couple might be able to go down to one car (or none?) if both use mass transit a lot. However, while mass transit access to the city center might be great, there is often a lack of mass transit options across between suburbs.

I also wonder how much transit-oriented development succeeds because it is seen as trendy.

More “super-commuters” in America

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A new report says the number of “super-commuters” increased across the United States from 2002 to 2009:

New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation reports from 2002 to 2009 the number of super-commuters grew in eight of the 10 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. They grew in the Philadelphia area by more than 50 percent during that period.

The growth of super-commuters has occurred not just on the East Coast, but in cities such as Seattle and Houston, which had the greatest increase. The typical super-commuter is under 29 and more likely to be in the middle class.

The super-commuter is defined as someone who works in the central county of a given metropolitan area, but lives beyond the boundaries of that metropolitan area…

Many super-commuters are willing to take a plane to get to work or drive long distances because they can’t sell homes that have lost value and move. They often travel to another city on Monday, then return to their homes and families at the end of the work week.

Americans tend to go to where the jobs are. Here are several thoughts about this:

1. It would be nice to have an overall number of super-commuters in the United States. The full report gives figures by city and some of these are interesting: 59,000 for Manhattan, 233,000 for Los Angeles, 99,000 in Chicago, 251,000 in Houston, and 175,700 in Houston. On the whole, it doesn’t look like we are talking about a large number of Americans though the rise in this practice is noteworthy.

2. Is this more of a function of the size of the actual metropolitan area (New York has a broader metro region) or about the ease of transportation into a city or a mismatch between the number of jobs and affordable/reasonable housing?

3. This definition of a super-commuter is limited. For example, if a worker from Champaign, Illinois commuted to a job in Oak Brook, located in DuPage County, it wouldn’t count as a super-commute. This seems problematic since the job distribution in metropolitan regions is quite more diffuse today than in the past. If this definition was expanded to include all long trips from one metropolitan region to another, the numbers would be even more noteworthy.

4. One of the maps (Figure 7) from the full report reminded me of the idea of the megalopolis:

This is a reminder that urban and transportation planning needs to be broader in scale.

5. Are these “super-commuting corridors” long-term realities? If the economy improved, would these numbers drop or because of technology plus the realities of the globalized, post-industrial economy, are these corridors only going to continue to grow?

A reduced Federal tax break for commuters?

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Many would argue that the United States has clearly privileged the suburbs in its fiscal policies including helping to make mortgages more available and providing money for highway funding. At the same time, buried within Washington’s recent debate over tax cuts is a little tax break for commuters:

The amount of income that commuters who use mass transit will be eligible to shelter from taxes to pay their fares drops on Jan. 1 to $125 a month from the current $230 a month, while the tax-free parking benefit for drivers will increase from $230 to $240 a month, officials said today.

The steep reduction in the transit provision is due to Congress’ failure to renew the higher limit in the Commuter Benefits Equity Act, officials said, adding that they are hopeful lawmakers will approve a higher limit sometime in 2012…

The cut in benefits will have a similar effect as a fare increase because riders whose employers participate in the transit benefits program will be able to shield a maximum of $1,500 in income from taxes in 2012, down from $2,760 this year.

It interesting that these changes would boost the break for parking/driving to work while lowering the benefits for mass transit (perhaps temporarily). I bet this law has a fascinating history.

If the public is not particularly interested in tax breaks for large corporations, are they in favor of tax benefits for commuting? Does the approval for this depend on whether someone claims the tax break?

Thinking about the larger topic, it would be interesting to see how much the average driver benefits or pays for driving and mass transit. How much of a typical tax burden goes for transportation? How much does the average driver or mass-transit commuter get in return for the tax money that they pay in? Of course, we could have a much longer discussion about what the government should promote in its policies but I assume this is not at the top of the discussion pile in Washington.