澳门六合彩历史记录

America on the Move: How Urban Travel Has Changed Over a Decade

City, Urban Travel, Automobiles, Bikes, Pedestrians, West Palm Beach

America鈥檚 urban travel trends show important variations in travel behaviors across income, home ownership, ethnicity, gender, age, and life-cycle stages.


By gisele galoustian | 3/1/2023

A new 澳门六合彩历史记录 study on America鈥檚 urban travel trends shows important variations in travel behaviors across income, home ownership, ethnicity, gender, age, and life-cycle stages. The sixth in a series of studies compared changes in travel modes, trip frequency, trip distance and vehicle ownership among a range of socioeconomic groups using nationwide travel survey data since 1977.聽

The most notable trend, published in the journal , reveals that although private automobiles continue to be the dominant travel mode in American cities, the share of car trips has slightly and steadily decreased since its peak in 2001. In contrast, the share of transit, non-motorized, and taxicab (including ride-hailing) trips has steadily increased.聽

The lowest income group (household income less than $25,000), who were more likely to be minorities and without cars, were heavily reliant on transit 鈥 especially buses 鈥 to fulfill their mobility needs. Their daily trip frequencies and daily miles traveled were considerably lower than those of higher income groups. Mobility challenges in this income group were more severe in small and mid-size cities, where the supply of transit is more limited than large cities.

鈥淓xamining differences in travel patterns can help policy makers to better evaluate the effects of existing transportation services and infrastructure developments, to identify the sub-groups that deserve special attention for future transport plans, and to design more sustainable and equitable transport policies at local, state and federal levels,鈥 said , Ph.D., co-author, professor and director, in 澳门六合彩历史记录鈥檚 .

Among the study findings:聽

  • Non-Hispanic whites are the most auto-oriented ethnicity group, with 81.5聽percent of their trips by automobile, followed by Hispanics with 80.2聽percent of their trips by automobile.
  • Hispanics are higher in carpooling (48聽percent of their total trips), compared to non-Hispanic whites (41.3聽percent).
  • Blacks were the highest in bus transit trips (5.8聽percent), and Asians were the highest in rail transit trips (2.2聽percent). Asians also had the highest share of non-motorized trips (17.7聽percent); Hispanics had the lowest share of non-motorized trips (13.1聽percent).
  • Females had slightly higher shares of automobile trips than males (80.6聽percent vs. 78.7聽percent); specifically, females had a higher share of carpools than males (45.2聽percent vs. 39.6聽percent), and males had a higher share of solo driving than females (39.1聽percent vs. 35.4聽percent). Males have higher shares of bicycle trips than females (1.6聽percent vs. 0.7聽percent).
  • Non-motorized trips for whites and blacks are comparable (about 14聽percent), however, whites had a much higher share of cycling trips than blacks (1.3聽percent vs. 0.5聽percent, respectively).
  • Although the share of taxicab trips was comparable across different racial profiles, it was lowest among whites, at 0.5聽percent.
  • For homeowners, from 2009 to 2017, solo driving trips decreased from 42.3聽percent to 40.1聽percent, and carpooling trips increased from 43.8聽percent to 44.7聽percent. Renters exhibited the opposite trend: solo driving trips increased from 30.5聽percent to 32.1聽percent, and carpooling trips decreased from 41.6聽percent to 38.8聽percent.
  • The average miles traveled per day for the lowest income group was 36聽percent lower (14.3 miles vs. 19.5 miles) than the second-lowest income group ($25,000 -$49,999).
  • The highest income group made 31.4聽percent of the total peak-hour transit trips but only 22.1聽percent of the non-peak-hour transit trips; the lowest income group made only 28.7聽percent of the peak-hour transit trips but 43聽percent of the total non-peak-hour transit trips.
  • Most older adults heavily relied on driving and are not regular transit patrons, ride-hailing users, or cyclists.

Renne and Xize Yang, Ph.D., co-author, National University of Singapore, suggest many different factors may be contributing to this general trend of 鈥減eak and decline.鈥 These include robust transit and non-motorized infrastructures in urban neighborhoods and college towns, higher gasoline prices, and the rise of online retailers such as Amazon and Uber Eats as well as shared mobility such as ride-hailing, bike and scooter sharing.聽

In addition, working from home and flexible working schedules have been gaining popularity. The share of Americans working from home increased from 3.3聽percent in 2000 to 4.3聽percent in 2009, and 5.2聽percent in 2017. The researchers suggest post-covid American cities will see further increases in the share of working-from-home arrangements.

Our study suggests that certain factors make automobile use particularly dominant in America. These include some combination of households earning more than $25,000, owning a home, owning two or more vehicles, and having children result in a strong propensity to use an automobile for the vast majority of trips," said Renne.

Researchers used the 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), which is the most recent nationally representative travel survey in the U.S. It was first released in 2018 and then updated in 2019 and 2020. They compared these variations in the 2017 NHTS with its predecessors, the Nationwide Personal Transportation Surveys (NPTS) in 1969, 1977, 1983, 1990 and 1995; and the NHTS in 2001 and 2009 based on earlier studies in this series.

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