How Chicagoans Get To Work... (cost, malls, authority)

[marothisu]

Of course "most" people don't work in the Loop. Only a n00b would think that. Now, if you were talking about "white collar office jobs" then you could say that a larger percentage of those types of jobs exist in the Loop versus other parts of town.

The daytime population of the Loop is probably 500,000-750,000. Not all of them are going to jobs, and not all of them who are going to work in the Loop live in Chicago either. Don't know what Chet is going on about - I don't think most people on here are dumb enough to think that most jobs in town are in the Loop. It's only for a specific type.

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by ParkerP

There is something to that. Jobs are spread out all over Chicago. Also, myself, along with a LOT more of my neighbors live in the city and work in the suburbs.

There has long been a shift from the suburbs being a purely "residential" aspect of the metro region into a more economically balanced model that includes several distinct employment centers (genrally acknowledged to be in southern Lake Co, along the junction of 90 & 290, and the I-88 corridor from Oak Brook through Naperville....) but none of these have sufficient density to truly support any traditional mass transit at a scale that would be economically viable.

Suburban Subcenters and Employment Density in Metropolitan Chicago

In a way, every time the crowd here argues for someone whose job is in the 'burbs to live in Wicker Park or Logan Square they are advocating for a more congested future...

[marothisu]

Okay, I got the data from the Census (it's a ***** for the record) and did some magic and got it into a map. This is only for public transit % so far. Redder colors means a lower public transit %, and greener colors mean a higher public transit %. if you click on each shape, it will tell you the percentage, census tract name, and total number of commuters.

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/...pli=1#map:id=4

[marothisu]

Okay, I have created another heat map based on Drove Alone %. The gradient scale is flipped this time (sorry Chet). The greener something is, the lesser the percentage, and the redder something is, the higher the percentage (of people who drive to work alone as their primary mode of transportation). Brownish is of course in the middle at around 50%.

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/...jg0pc#map:id=5

[chet everett]

No real surprises in either map. It might be interesting if there was a way to include other dimensions, like the absolute / relative number of residents that hold jobs in some of those census tracts, as I suspect there is a lot of "noise" introduced to the coloration by census tracts that are rather lacking in residents that work. It further might be interesting to somehow include data on absolute density as well as income becuase there seems to be some patterns of affluence and density that correlate with driving vs transit too...

[marothisu]

Do you mean to weight each tract but the actual volume that they may be "producing?" That is a good idea I think. Some census tract may be real red at 85% driving but might actually only have a sample size of 200 commuters while other tracts may be 3000. It could probably give a picture of outgoing traffic, though certainly not the complete picture in many areas. It would be interesting if they would have asked the primary hour which each person leaves too.

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Do you mean to weight each tract but the actual volume that they may be "producing?" That is a good idea I think. Some census tract may be real red at 85% driving but might actually only have a sample size of 200 commuters while other tracts may be 3000. It could probably give a picture of outgoing traffic, though certainly not the complete picture in many areas. It would be interesting if they would have asked the primary hour which each person leaves too.

They have done all kind of car counts and mailed surveys to track those kinds of things. The bottomline is that despite the desires of some folks, even in the adminstration of IDOT & Toll Authority, to increase ride share / transit aggregation points most commuters do have schedules that, whether by choice or necessity, make single vehicles the prefered option...

Take a day like today -- if you have to be work but they have a delayed opening that might push you out of the normal window for a lot of transit options. If you are in some kind van pool / ride share that would get screwed up. Add in factors like some late hours work for a presentation or a need to deal with childcare issues and pretty soon the "exceptions" start really explain why getting more shared modes of commuting / suburban transit is so futile.

The other side of things is, of course, cost -- for every mile of railroad tracks & equipment spent in transportation dollars you get so much more normal roadway built that it is not even funny. Toss in the fact that even though sprawl is not a good thing there are always paving guys, strip malls builders and tract home developers that will donate to politicians for widening roads out in the hinterlands while far fewer large transit projects will have as many obvious "poltical champions"....

Despite the biases some ascribe to me I really do enjoy prefer taking Metra into the Loop over all but the shortest vehicle drives and if there was a way to redo all the hinderances there are to even more connections between the various transit options I think there could a lot of good BUT it would be such a risky / super long payback that it is all but impossible to see happening in the region.

[Freefall18]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Okay, I have created another heat map based on Drove Alone %. The gradient scale is flipped this time (sorry Chet). The greener something is, the lesser the percentage, and the redder something is, the higher the percentage (of people who drive to work alone as their primary mode of transportation). Brownish is of course in the middle at around 50%.

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/...jg0pc#map:id=5

Nice work. Can you make the white box a little bigger when you click on a tract? The numbers often bleed through at the bottom. Also, a few of the tracts are showing 0 people.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Freefall18

Nice work. Can you make the white box a little bigger when you click on a tract? The numbers often bleed through at the bottom. Also, a few of the tracts are showing 0 people.

Thanks. Check again, I overrode a style on the page so the height is more. Those tracts that show 0 people literally have 0 people in their tract. Not an error.


I just created another map. This one has to do with commute diversity. There are 6 categories of commute here, so this is the average percentage away from that divided evenly, or 16.6667%. The higher the number (red), the less options people use, and the lower of course the more options (green). The highest possible score is 27.7777 while the lowest possible is 0. Within this, the tract with the lowest percent difference is in Fuller Park near the Garfield red line stop and a little north. 2nd lowest is in Pilsen near Dvorak Park. Both are around 5.7. The tract with the highest index is in Norwood Park with a score of 26 around Jaycee Park, followed by a tract in O'Hare that's just east of the airport (score of around 23). You'll notice that none of these have that many commuters.

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/...jg0pc#map:id=7

[panderson1988]

Originally Posted by Freefall18

Transitized published an interactive map that I found pretty interesting:
http://www.transitized.com/commute/

I think the reason the number of people driving alone in the western and northern Chicago is it's basically the old version of the suburbs, and the train system is sporadic out there. Also people who live in those areas have a tendency to work in the suburbs, not in the loop. So their only option is usually driving. I know I've been focusing on jobs in the loop so I can take the train to work as I'm sick of driving in the area to work.