2014-09-08 – David Levinson, Transportist

Wendell Cox cites our work in a Huffington Post article: America’s Accessible Cities.

With frequent press attention on traffic congestion and “gridlock,” it may be surprising that work trip travel times in US cities are better than those of high income competitors in other nations …. Indeed, the University of Minnesota’s David Levinson, found that the typical employee can reach two-thirds of jobs in major US metropolitan areas within 30 minutes.

Census Bureau data indicates that the average work trip travel time in US cities of more than 5 million population was approximately 29 minutes each way. Western European cities of more than 5 million population have an average travel time of 32 minutes. Toronto, Canada’s only city of this size, has a travel time of 33 minutes. East Asian cities with more than 5 million residents (Tokyo, Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Nagoya, Seoul, Hong Kong and Singapore) have far longer average travel times — at 42 minutes. Australia’s two largest cities (Sydney and Melbourne), which are yet to reach 5 million, have an average travel times of 35 minutes.

He is referring to our Access Across America report from last year.

Time is important, of course. What you can do with that time (the quality of the experience) also matters. If you can work while traveling, the value of saving time is less than if you must focus on the driving task. This is one reason why autonomous vehicles may be such a game-changer. It may also explain in part the premium people are willing to pay for high quality transit and intercity rail service.

Recent working paper:

Schoner, J, Lindsey, G., and Levinson, D. (2014) Factors Associated with the Gender Gap in Bicycling Over Time

Bicycling has grown in popularity over the past decade, but the gap in rates of bicycling between men and women in the United States (US) persists. This paper uses regional travel behavior study data from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Region in 2000 and 2010 to measure and model the gender gap in bicycling over time.

High Bike

Findings from a series of statistical tests show that in aggregate, women bike less than men, and that growth in bicycling has been slower for women than for men over the past decade. However, stratifying the sample shows that women who live with at least one other adult bicyclist participate in bicycling at an equal rate as men. Similarly, frequency of bicycle trips among people who participate in bicycling differed by gender only slightly in 2000, and not at all in 2010. Binary logistic modeling results show that several factors, such as age and trip purpose, are associated with different bicycling outcomes for men and women, but some commonly hypothesized explanations, such as having children, were declining in effect or altogether insignificant.

These findings and conclusions are important for practice and research because understanding the nuances of the gender gap, such as the apparent gap in participation but not in frequency or the contagion effect of living with a cyclist, is essential for targeting programs effectively. This paper also identifies several travel behavior data collection limitations that complicate studying the gender gap, and offers recommendations for further study.