Streetsblog New York City

Jake's girlfriend and her co-worker at Sam Schwartz Engineering were so excited that he won Streetsblog's "Commuter Idyll" challenge that they created this "infographic" of his commutes.

When we saw that Washington’s news-traffic-weather radio station, WTOP, was holding a ”Commuter Idle” contest for the worst commute in the DC area — and rewarding it with $1,000 in gas money — we couldn’t resist. We went looking for the best “Commuter Idyll” — the trips to work that made people happy, got them fresh air, helped them fit exercise into their day, gave them some extra time to sleep or read, and brought them to work more clear-headed and ready to tackle the day. And Streetsblog readers had lots of great stories to share of ditching long car commutes for transit, biking, or walking. We shared some of them yesterday.

Meanwhile, check out the painful stories of soul-sucking commutes of WTOP’s 10 finalists. Some are out of the house by 4:00 a.m., drive 80 miles each way, are stuck in their car for six hours a day. Imagine all the better ways they could use that time and money!

Our “Commuter Idyll” winner — Jake Williams of Chicago — had a hellish commute too. He made big changes to get control over his time, his health, and his happiness. Here’s Jake’s story.

Upon graduating from college at UCLA, I moved back home to Chicago to start my working career as an engineer. I had commuted to internships before, one in Kenosha, WI and one in Melrose Park, IL, so I was already exposed and accustomed to the solo commute by automobile. I was looking for work anywhere in the metro area, and when I was offered a job in Lincolnshire, a suburb of Chicago 26 miles from my apartment, I was not fazed. Little did I know that the next four years would at times literally “drive” me crazy.

The guts of Jake's old ride.

The commute affected my whole life and actually made me dread going to and from work. I tried waking up early in the morning, and while it was nice seeing the sunrise, it was not a sustainable schedule. I worked longer hours, and although the morning commute was somewhat more tolerable, the commute home was about as awful. I tried breaking up the afternoon commute by heading straight to the gym and then going home. The result was that I was gone 14 hours a day and exhausted, constantly.

I would become angry and irritable. I needed a “cool-off” period when I got home. I stalked the roads religiously on traffic sites and on the various radio stations, but knowing never changed what was coming. I realized that the commute had completely conquered me when I left work one snowy winter day and got so frustrated with the stagnation on the road that I turned around and went back to work, for hours.

So, when times got rough and I was laid off from work, the strange, overwhelming feeling was of relief. Ironically, I was supposed to be laid off a day earlier, but I had to call off work because my car had broken down. I was disenchanted with my career choice and lifestyle choice, and I realized after a couple of months that I had the power to change all of that. I decided that I had one of many new goals: to walk to work.

Read more…

Some of you have some fabulous commutes. Rather than watch the stress-filled minutes and hours tick by stuck in traffic, you go outside, get exercise, and connect with your community.

Think car-free parenting is a drag? Babies like smiling at other passengers on the bus way more than they like being restrained in a rear-facing car seat. Photo: Mommy Bluebird

I’ve had the pleasure of reading many of your commuter tales over the last few days, since we launched our Commuter Idyll contest. It’s our response to WTOP’s “Commuter Idle” contest for the worst commute in the DC area, with its prize of $1,000 in gas money. We’d rather focus on the positive: the wonderful daily transportation routines you can have when you get out of your car.

We did have one overall favorite, which we’ll post tomorrow, but there were so many that deserve mention. Here are some ancillary awards:

Most Family-Friendly

Katie from the DC suburbs won my heart with her story of taking her 10-month-old son to daycare on the bus. “He loves the bus, and despite the fact that he can’t talk yet, he manages to make lots of friends,” she writes. “As soon as he sees the bus coming down the road, he starts squealing and kicking his legs, and once we get on, he just charms everyone on the bus by smiling and chattering away at all of them.”

“The other day, someone started snapping out a beat, and my little guy was just dancing along,” she said. “I seriously thought maybe someone was about to break into song, like we were in a musical or something.” Sure beats strapping him in to a car seat in the back where you can’t even see him.

Plus, waiting at the stop gives them some nice outdoor time. After dropping her son off at daycare, Katie continues on to work on the bus or walks – a healthy 30 minutes of exercise.

Runner-Up: Most Family-Friendly

Parents of young children will also appreciate this story from reader “TalF.” He had been driving his commute from Riverdale, New York, to his job in New Jersey, but that could take anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours. The transit connections weren’t great either. Then last summer, he started cycling 45 minutes down the Hudson River Greenway to the 39th Street ferry, where it was 10 minutes across the river to New Jersey. He even biked the commute through the winter.

“So far it has been great!” TalF wrote. “I’ve lost weight and, paradoxically, feel like I have more energy for dealing with a newborn at night.”

Best of all, he and his wife have been able to sell one of their cars, saving them a bundle they can now spend on their little bundle.

Best Use of Rational Transportation Economics

We’ve got to hand it to Pancake for making his decisions based on rational economics. The Center for Neighborhood Technology has pioneered the H+T model for evaluating household expenses – Housing + Transportation, that is. Pancake says he pays more to live in the city because the cost of owning a car or taking public transportation into the city every day can erase the savings of marginally cheaper housing in the suburbs. He walks or bike-shares to his job that’s just over a mile from home. “Some days, I even come home for lunch for a nap,” Pancake writes. “That availability alone makes my form of transportation (my legs) well worth the extra money expelled in rent.”

Read more…

Before I became your editor here at Streetsblog Capitol Hill, I was a reporter for WTOP, the DC area’s “most-listened-to” radio station. Its traffic reports “on the 8s” helped feed my ire toward auto-centrism – they wasted one out of every 10 minutes of airtime on an unintelligible litany of route numbers and exits. Meanwhile, I only got 35 seconds for actual news stories.

Did you give this up for a healthy bike ride or relaxing transit commute? We want to hear about it in our new "Commuter Idyll" contest. Photo: Allstate blog

WTOP assumes that most of its listeners are tuning in from inside their cars, and for that reason, the station focuses heavily on commuter issues. About 80 percent of their audience lives in the suburbs, so WTOP has a soft spot for people with long, solo car commutes from unwalkable places who get all road-ragey in rush hour traffic — crawling along no matter how good the traffic report is.

As part of its solidarity with extreme drivers, WTOP is launching its second season of what it calls “Commuter Idle” (I think that’s a pun on American Idol), in which listeners compete for the worst commute. They tell their horror stories of traffic jams and delays, and guess what the winner gets? Aside from radio fame and a limo ride to work, the unfortunate soul with the worst commute gets gas money. A thousand dollars to pour into their hellish daily slog.

Ah yes, that's better. Photo: Stylelist

Here at Streetsblog, we don’t “idle-ize” horrific car commutes. While one can sympathize with people who end up with long treks to work, especially if their financial circumstances and the sprawl of their region conspired to eliminate other options, “extreme commutes” are nothing to glorify.

So we’re taking this opportunity to launch what we’re calling “Commuter Idyll.” We’d like to hear from people who’ve made changes in their lives recently to make their commutes more enjoyable and less time-consuming.

Did you give up the drive for a refreshing, invigorating bike ride? Did you start taking the train so you can relax or read a paperback on your way to work? Did you move closer to the office – or get a new job closer to home – so you didn’t have to cover impossible distances?

Leave your story in the comments. Give as much detail as you want. Instead of gas money (who needs it?), we’ll mail you a copy of the anthology, “On Bicycles: 50 Ways the New Bike Culture Can Change Your Life,” to which Streetsblog Chicago editor John Greenfield contributed a chapter.

You could be Streetsblog’s first Commuter Idyll contest winner!

Commuters on the Manhattan Bridge last week. Photo: @BrooklynSpoke

Though subway service edged closer toward normalcy in time for today’s morning rush, New Yorkers still faced crowded trains and buses. (Gothamist has photos of commuters lined up for blocks.)

To make matters worse, the lifting of last week’s two-day HOV restrictions means that bus riders are, per usual, taking a back seat to motorists driving solo into Manhattan.

Meanwhile, we (and others) observed heavy cyclist traffic on the Manhattan Bridge and other crossings this morning, as folks continue to opt for the bike.

What was your commute like today?

NYC residents who work for the government are more likely than private sector employees to drive alone to work. Source: 2011 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S0802

The Census has released a new set of data that helps shed some light on how New Yorkers get to work. Nationally, the percentage of workers driving to work alone edged down, while transit made a tiny gain. New York City saw the same pattern, with carpooling also showing a slight drop.

Unlike the national figures, New York’s numbers fall just outside the margin of error, demonstrating a small but measurable change. The data comes from the American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates for 2011.

While the New York Times focused on the fact that drivers have shorter average commute times than transit riders (which the Times admitted was nothing new), digging deeper into the data shows some revealing information about how NYC commuters get to work.

NYC residents who commute to work by car are more likely to own their own home than other NYC residents. Source: 2011 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Table S0802

A big distinction between workers who drive alone and those who take transit is the type of housing they occupy. There are approximately two working NYC residents who rent their apartments for every one who lives in an owner-occupied unit. However, 57 percent of workers who drive alone own their own home, while 73 percent of transit commuters lived in a rental apartment. This increased likelihood of homeowners to drive to work alone could be due to the fact that areas in the city with less transit access also tend to have higher homeownership rates.

When you break down the data some more, an obvious distinction arises for government workers in New York City. Government employees make up 22 percent of commuters driving alone, but only 11 percent of transit commuters. Perhaps there is some link between the outsize rate of government employees driving alone to work and rampant illegal parking and placard abuse across the city.

This post has been updated.

In every community district along the proposed Nostrand Avenue bus rapid transit corridor, fewer Brooklynites are driving to work compared to the beginning of the last decade...

Brooklyn commuters — already some of the biggest transit riders in the country — are opting for transit at ever higher rates. New numbers from the Center for the Study of Brooklyn at Brooklyn College, first highlighted by City Limits’ Brooklyn Bureau, crunch Census data to reveal the evolving commuting patterns in the borough’s 18 community board districts. (To see the citywide breakdown of these numbers by state legislative district, check out Streetsblog’s prior coverage.)

Given the weight that community boards exert over street designs like new bus lanes or bike lanes, the figures are a valuable resource as Brooklyn neighborhoods consider projects to improve surface transit and street safety.

Take plans for Select Bus Service along Nostrand Avenue, set to launch this year. Though the improved bus service will speed up the commute for the B44′s 41,000 daily riders with dedicated bus lanes, off-board fare payment, and bus bulbs, at least one community board along the route has voted against the proposal. “Why would you even take the bus?” one Community Board 15 member asked.

At debates like those, marshaling facts about the district that the community board is supposed to represent can be valuable. Of all the community boards along Nostrand, CB 15 represents the fewest transit riders, the Brooklyn College data shows. But even there, more commuters take transit than drive, and the gap is growing. Between 2007 and 2009, 47.8 percent of CB 15 residents rode transit to work; during the same period, only 38.7 percent drove. In 2000, 46.1 percent took transit while 44.3 percent took their car.

The story is the same up and down Nostrand Avenue. In every community district, driving is down (below 17 percent of commuters in both Greenpoint/Williamsburg and Crown Heights). In all but one, transit is on the rise, and in every district, more commuters use transit than any other mode.

When the Nostrand SBS launches this summer, there’s sure to be a fresh round of griping about lost parking spaces and less space for private car travel. When that happens, this Census data should serve as a valuable reality check.

...while transit use is up everywhere except community district 9.

Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson reported a smooth ride to work.

Despite severe weekend flooding, city transit was for the most part up and running by the morning rush. Meanwhile, cyclists are tweeting on bike route conditions.

Did you make it to work today? How did you get there? We’d also like to hear commute stories from anyone who worked or volunteered during the storm.

Please, talk amongst yourselves.

Addendum: Central Park is the domain of pedestrians and cyclists until further notice (h/t @mikepstein).

Weather.com: Be afraid.

As it turned out, Tuesday’s earthquake didn’t have much of an impact on New York commuters. Washington, DC, however, was a different story. WAMU (via Transportation Nation) reported “some of the worst traffic jams since 9/11.” Meanwhile, dcist noted a surge in bike-share use:

Capital Bikeshare tweeted this morning that it recorded 5,847 rides yesterday, an increase of 1,090 from the day before. Of those rides, 1,246 came between 2 and 4 p.m., compared to the 812 during that same timeframe on Monday. If you think about it, Capital Bikeshare’s 1,121 bikes distributed at the 116 stations throughout the District and Arlington are now an integral part of any plan for mobility or evacuation in case of an emergency in the city.

Terry Bellamy, the director of the District’s Department of Transportation, admitted to the Washington Business Journal’s Mike Neibauer that, despite a lesser traffic nightmare than during winter snowstorms, the region just can’t handle the massive traffic exodus that invariably follows an emergency. If you’re in a car, you’re probably screwed.

Now comes Hurricane Irene. Though the storm could of course weaken or shift away from the city, Mayor Bloomberg announced this morning that agencies are “preparing for the worst.” Across the Hudson, Mayor Dawn Zimmer is urging Hoboken residents to leave town (or at least move their cars). The MTA, for its part, is reportedly battening down the hatches and bringing in extra personnel. Irene updates are lighting up the Streetsblog Twitter feed; evacuation maps and “go bag” chatter are the order of the day.

All of which means… what? How, if at all, are the week’s terrestrial and aerial turbulence affecting your mobility? Opinions on urbanity? Bottled water supplies? Let us know in the comments.

A Brookings report ranks the New York region 13th in transit accessibility. Can that be right?

Does the New York City region really rank only 13th in the nation in providing transit access to jobs? Has it truly been bested by a top five of Honolulu, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Tucson and Fresno? That’s what a new report from the Brookings Institution claims, but don’t worry New Yorkers, there are very good reasons to second-guess that conclusion.

The report, which Streetsblog Capitol Hill’s Tanya Snyder recapped earlier today, is an impressive piece of research. Brookings built the largest database in its long history and developed some pretty sophisticated tools to analyze it. Some of the data points that Tanya pulled out in her piece add tremendously to our understanding of the connection between transit and land use across the country. That said, when it comes to ranking the top cities, the findings are a little too counterintuitive to be true.

Notably, there appears to be a weak connection between the cities with the best transit access to jobs, as ranked by Brookings, and the cities where commuters actually use transit. New York City came in 13th in the first ranking despite being far and away the top in the latter.

According to Census data gathered by Brookings itself, 30.5 percent of New York region commuters take transit to work. Compare that to Honolulu, where only 7.5 percent of commuters ride transit, or the four runners-up at 3.1 percent, 3.0 percent, 2.5 percent and 1.3 percent. It’s not even close.

In other words, whatever Brookings is measuring in this report doesn’t seem to be particularly important for the men and women who actually decide whether to hop on a bus or in the car each morning. Whether it’s poor off-peak transit service, easy parking at home and at work, or even just transit-skeptical local cultures, something is making it so that access to jobs by transit doesn’t translate into actually making use of it.

Read more…

Fewer New Yorkers are driving to work than they did a decade ago, according to Census data Streetsblog reported on last December. But that same data shows that the citywide car ownership rate increased by 1.7 percentage points over the same period.

Among all NYC households, 46 percent own cars, according to Census data gathered between 2005 and 2009, compared to 44.3 percent in 2000. Factoring in Census data on the number of cars each household owns, that adds up to about 120,000 more cars in New York City.

We put together a spreadsheet (which you can download here) comparing new Census data on car ownership to information from the 2000 Census. (The main dataset in the spreadsheet is the percentage of car-free households in each legislative district, so negative changes are actually increases in the car ownership rate.)

The growth in car ownership was spread across the state, with increases in 126 out of 150 Assembly districts. Altogether, the statewide car ownership rate rose by about 1.4 percentage points, slightly less than in New York City.

The Bronx saw the most notable upticks in car ownership. Four of the five Assembly districts with the largest increases in car ownership rates were in that borough: AD 85 (Marcus Crespo, Soundview), AD 86 (Nelson Castro, Fordham), AD 77 (Vanessa Gibson, Morris Heights), and AD 84 (Carmen Arroyo, Mott Haven). All of those districts started from a relatively low baseline of car ownership. In AD 85, which saw the biggest jump, for instance, car ownership rose from 29.1 percent to 35.8 percent.

Read more…