Won't You Carpool with Me? June 19, 2007 Most Americans still commute to work by driving alone, study finds
By Stacy Straczynski
If you drive to work and are looking for a fellow employee to carpool with, you might be out of luck. It turns out that most American employees still drive to work alone, says a new survey from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The study of national commuter data from 2005 found that many commuters (87.7 percent) chose to drive to the office that year despite rising fuel costs. And the survey also found that 77 percent of those commuters did so alone. Only 4.7 percent of commuters used public transportation as an alternative means of travel in 2005, and almost half of those are concentrated in 10 of America's 50 top cities—including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City. These cities also had the higher rates of public transportation users in general.
The study also found that:
* 10.7 percent of commuters carpool to work, and a little over 77 percent of "carpoolers" ride with only one passenger. The cities with some of the highest carpool rates include Phoenix (16.2 percent) and Sacramento, Calif. (15.7 percent).
* Portland, Ore., has the highest percentage of bicycle commuters among the large cities. Approximately 3.5 percent pedal to work which is almost eight times the national average (0.4 percent).
* The third top commuter option was none at all. Approximately 3.6 percent of Americans worked from home in 2005. Cities with the highest rates of home-based workers included Portland, Ore., (5.3 percent) and San Francisco (6.3 percent).
* Boston had the highest percentage among the large cities of employees who walked to work (13 percent). Approximately 2.5 percent of American employees walked to work.
"This is a prime example of the value of an ongoing survey such as the American Community Survey," said Census Bureau Director Louis Kincannon. "With each succeeding year, we'll be able to see how people respond to changing circumstances, such as rising gas prices," Kincannon says.
For more information on this survey and for more detailed results, go to www.census.gov.
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