Tidbit Tuesday | Median Age of Philadelphia Commuters by Transportation Mode Choice

On Tuesdays, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation & Utilities (MOTU) posts a map or graphic that tells a story about transportation or utilities in the City of Brotherly Love.

This week we took American Community Survey data (2013 1-year estimate) and graphed the median age of the commuters who use each mode.  Please note that all ages are rounded to the nearest whole number.  As you can see below, driving alone and carpooling tends to skew older and walking and biking (or taking another mode) tend to skew younger.

Note: We know that it is a little strange the bikes and taxis are grouped together, unfortunately this is how it is grouped for this question category on the American Community Survey.

Tidbit Tuesday | Philadelphia 2nd in Non-Car Commuter Percentages of Top 10 Most Populous Cities in America

On Tuesdays, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation & Utilities (MOTU) posts a map or graphic that tells a story about transportation or utilities in the City of Brotherly Love.

This week we took a look at American Community Survey 2012 1-year estimate data of the top 10 most populous cities in America (you can pull the data yourself from American Factfinder here).  We decided to graph the car vs. non-car breakdowns between these top cities.  Philadelphia has the second highest non-car commuter percentages of these selected cities behind New York City (just barely edging out Chicago).  Do any of these surprise you?

Tidbit Tuesday | Percentage of each Philadelphia commuter mode that leaves for work between 7am-8am & 8am-9am

On Tuesdays, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation & Utilities (MOTU) posts a map or graphic that tells a story about transportation or utilities in the City of Brotherly Love.

This week we took American Community Survey data (2008 – 2012 5-year estimate) and graphed how different modes in Philadelphia leave for work at different times.  Please note that all percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number.  As can be seen in the graph below, 27% of those who commute by driving alone or by carpooling leave between 7am and 8am.  28% of those who walk to work leave between 8am – 9am.  What time do you leave for work?

Tidbit Tuesday | How do Philadelphians of different income brackets commute to work?

On Tuesdays, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation & Utilities (MOTU) posts a map or graphic that tells a story about transportation or utilities in the City of Brotherly Love.

This week we took American Community Survey data (2008 – 2012 5-year estimate) and graphed how Philadelphians within different income brackets report getting to work.  You can find this information on the US Census’ American FactFinder here.

Here at MOTU, we saw a few interesting patterns in the data.  According to the data, those Philadelphians who get to work by driving alone appears to increase by income bracket until the top bracket, where it decreases by 4 percentage points.  In addition, we see a decrease and increase in those who walk to work.  From the data, it appears that those who make between $35K – $49.9K are the least likely to walk to work, while those who make below $15K/yr and above $75K/yr are the most likely to walk to work.  What other patterns do you see?

In case you are curious, here is the distribution of salaries for Philadelphia’s working residents:

Salary	Number of Workers	Percent of Total Workers
$1 – $9.9K	85,427	14%
$10K – $14.9K	46,989	8%
$15K – $24.9K	93,270	16%
$25K – $34.9K	97,658	16%
$35K – $49.9K	110,670	18%
$50K – $64.9K	73,853	12%
$65K – $74.9K	28,086	5%
$75K+	65,378	11%
Total:	601,331	n/a

Tidbit Tuesday | How Philadelphians Commute to Work

On Tuesdays, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation & Utilities (MOTU) posts a map or graphic that tells a story about transportation or utilities in the City of Brotherly Love.

Over the last year, we have published a number of interesting graphics about how Philadelphians travel.  That being said, we have yet to do the basic mode-split…until today!  We pulled American Community Survey data (2012 1-yr estimate) for the City of Philadelphia to see how Philadelphians commute to work.

As you can see, approximately half of all Philadelphians who work commute by driving alone.  Next up, more than a quarter commute by taking public transportation to work.  Tied for third most popular mode of travel is carpooling at 9%.  Next up, we have approximately 3% of all Philadelphia workers work at home.  After that, 2% of all Philadelphia resident commuters bike to work (2.3% to be exact).  Finally, about 1% of commuters take another form of transportation (examples include taxicab, scooter, motorcycle, among others).  Note, all values in the above graphic have been rounded to the nearest whole number.

How do you get to work?

Tidbit Tuesday | A 3-D look of where public transit commuters live in Philadelphia

On Tuesdays, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation & Utilities (MOTU) posts a map or graphic that tells a story about transportation or utilities in the City of Brotherly Love.

Just about a year ago, MOTU mapped where Philadelphians are most likely to live if they commute to work by public transportation (you can find this map here).  We updated this map with the most recent release of American Community Survey 5-year estimates AND we decided to also map it in 3-D!  The 3-D model shows relative heights of Philly’s block groups based on the percent of residents who commute by public transportation.

According to the 2008-2012 ACS, 26% of Philadelphia residents who worked commuted by public transportation.  While this is the total for the entire city, there are smaller subsections that have higher and lower public transportation commute rate, as can be seen in the above maps.  All data for these maps was pulled from the US Census’ American Factfinder.

You may be asking yourselves, why include a 3-D map in addition to the 2-D map?  In addition to looking interesting, the colors we show each have a range attached.  For example, even though 90% is greater than 82%, it will have the same color green.  This is where the height comes in — the height of the blockgroup shows relative percentage within the range specified by color.

Tidbit Tuesday | How long does it take Philadelphia’s metro area to get to work compared to other metro areas in the Northeast?

Every Tuesday, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation & Utilities (MOTU) posts a map or graphic that tells a story about transportation or utilities in the City of Brotherly Love.

This week we are looking at Philadelphia metro area’s commute time in comparison to other metro areas (otherwise known as metropolitan statistical areas, or MSA’s) in the northeast.  All data is pulled from the 2009-2012 American Community Survey (you can access the data here).

It appears that among the below metro areas that the Philadelphia metro area has the highest percentage of “Less than 30 min” commutes.  54% of Philadelphia area workers are estimated to have commutes of less than 30 minutes, 32% of workers are estimated to have commutes between 30 and 59 minutes, 7% of workers of workers are estimated to have commutes between 60 and 89 minutes, 3% of workers are estimated to commute more than 90 minutes, and 4% of workers work from home.

Wondering what a metro area, metropolitan statistical area, or MSA is?  A metro area is a statistical geographic area defined by the US Census Bureau as having “at least one urbanized area of 50,000 or more population, plus adjacent territory that has a high degree of social and economic integration with the core as measured by commuting ties” (more information can be found here).  It is important to note that while metro areas are based on high degrees of social and economic integration, they can differ in geographic and population size and population density.

Tidbit Tuesday | How Philadelphia’s different age groups commute to work

Every Tuesday, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation & Utilities (MOTU) posts a map or graphic that tells a story about transportation or utilities in the City of Brotherly Love.

This week we are looking at how Philadelphians in different age brackets get to work.  Of all Philadelphia workers, 50% drove alone, 9% carpooled, 26% took public transit, 12% commuted by “other” (taxicab, motorcycle, bicycle, walking, etc), and 3% worked from home.  It is interesting to see how similar/different the various age groups are from this overall trend.

This data comes from the US Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey.  It is important to note that the age brackets reported by the US Census Bureau are not at equal intervals and the above age brackets reflect those reported by the US Census Bureau.

Tidbit Tuesday | How Philadelphians commute to work, broken out by race/ethnicity

Every Tuesday, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation & Utilities (MOTU) posts a map or graphic that tells a story about transportation or utilities in the City of Brotherly Love.

This week we are looking at how Philadelphians commute to work, broken out by race/ethnicity.

This data comes from the 2012 American Community Survey.  Due to statistical variability, only those race/ethnicity groups which make up more than 5% of Philadelphia’s worker population (as defined by the US Census) were included in the above graphic.

 

Tidbit Tuesday | How do men and women in Philadelphia get to work? Part 2

Every Tuesday, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation & Utilities (MOTU) posts a map or graphic that tells a story about transportation or utilities in the City of Brotherly Love.

Last week we combed through some 2012 American Community Survey data (the ACS’ website is currently down due to the government shutdown, we actually pulled the data a month ago) to see if men and women use different modes to commute to work at different rates and featured a post about the rate at which men and women travel to work by driving alone, carpooling, or taking public transit.  This week is a follow-up graphic in which we illustrated how men and women bike to work, walk to work, or work at home at different rates. Note, the below graphic’s scale is based on a 10% maximum.