Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Commuting

Employees in downtown LA who received free parking drove solo to work at much higher rates than those who did not. Graphic: Donald Shoup/UCLA

Soon DC Employers May Pay People to Not Drive to Work

By Angie Schmitt | Mar 21, 2017 | No Comments

With a "parking cash out" policy, employers who provide employees with parking benefits also give the equivalent value in cash to workers who don't car commute. Now a version of that idea has been introduced in the DC Council by members Charles Allen, Mary Cheh, and Brianne Nadeau.

Seattle Added 45,000 Jobs and Hardly Any Car Commuters

By Angie Schmitt | Feb 10, 2017 | No Comments

Transforming from a car city to a transit city is no easy task. Just ask Denver and Los Angeles, which have spent billions to build rail systems but struggled to reduce solo car commuting rates. But Seattle shows it can be done: The share of downtown commuters who drive alone dropped from 35 percent in 2010 to 30 percent last year.

In Rochester, nearly a third of bus commuters have to spend at least an hour to get to work. Photo: Pete Nabozny via Reconnect Rochester

How Job Sprawl Robs People of Time, Money, and Economic Opportunity

By Angie Schmitt | Dec 19, 2016 | No Comments

What’s the cost of a long commute? If you’re struggling to make ends meet, spending hours each day just to get to work not only costs you time, it can also be a major barrier to economic mobility.

What the Equality of Opportunity Project Actually Says About Commuting

By Sarah Jo Peterson | Oct 10, 2016 | No Comments

With their powerful results, the studies coming out of the Equality of Opportunity Project, led by Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, have become an important touchstone for journalists and transportation policy advisers. In their 2014 [PDF] and 2015 [PDF] studies, Chetty and Hendren show that place matters for low-income families. When low-income families have the […]

Where Car Commuting Is Shrinking — And Where It’s Not

By Angie Schmitt | Sep 16, 2016 | No Comments

Where are Americans making the shift away from driving to work? Crunching newly-released Census data, Yonah Freemark looked at how commute travel is changing in different cities and regions. In general, car commuting in major metro areas declined between 2005 and 2015, but the shift was greater than a couple of percentage points in only a few […]

Car-Free Day Doesn’t Mean Much Without New Policies to Reduce Traffic

By Ben Fried | Apr 28, 2016 | 16 Comments

New York City is America’s car-free capital, home to eight and half million people, most of whom get around without owning a car. When so many of us already live car-free, what more can come out of an event like last Friday’s Car-Free Day? There are basically two ways an awareness-raising event like Car-Free Day can go. It can […]

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