How Decatur Gets To Work
Decatur Metro | May 23, 2010From the 2010 Decatur Citizen Survey…
During a typical week, how many days do you commute to work (for the longest distance of your commute) in each of the ways listed below?
[Percentage represents "Percent of days mode used"]
- Motorized vehicle (e.g. car, truck, van, motorcycle, etc…) by myself – 65%
- Motorized vehicle (e.g. car, truck, van, motorcycle, etc…) with other children or adults – 8%
- Bus, rail, subway or other public transportation – 6%
- Walk – 6%
- Bicycle – 2%
- Work at home – 12%
- Other – 0%
In 2008, the % of commuters driving alone was also 65%, while public transportation came in at 8%, and bicycling registered at 1%. As for children driving other children to work 
(I believe it should be phrased “with children or other adults”), it’s grown 2% in two years.
All to say, nothing’s really changed in two years.
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46 miles, each way, by myself… 4 days a week!
I hate it!
I have trouble with surveys like this. How is driving to MARTA classified? I wish I always walked to MARTA but the weather, my energy levels, and the kids’ schedules don’t always cooperate.
Would love to take Marta to work which is only 6 miles away but I’d have to leave my house an hour earlier just to get there at the same time as driving.
1) Do you think that carpooling doesn’t work because the American car has been marketed as something like a home – tricked out and personalized? Or, does carpooling not work because of the idiosyncratic nature of people’s days? (which of course is odd given that people complain of monotony and unchanging 8-6 days). Its seems that with the amazing technology of today someone could easily set up a rideshare site for Oakhurst (or other neighborhood).
2) Also – that seems like an odd way to present the results because the way the results are presented doesn’t match the question. It would be more informative if we knew something about what percent of drivers ONLY drive themselves EVERYDAY or, better, what percent of drivers used several different modes of transport. These are probably the group of folks that can be leveraged to increased ‘non traditional’ modes of transport.
It’s out there. Register for RideShare. Downtown commuters benefit. There are other TMAs, as well…here’s some info:
The Downtown Transportation Management Association (TMA) focuses on transportation issues, with the ultimate goal of reducing traffic congestion, facilitating mobility, addressing parking demand, and improving the region’s air quality. The Downtown TMA currently works with companies and property owners in Downtown to address these transportation issues by developing and implementing commuter programs which include carpools, vanpools, transit, teleworking, biking, walking, parking management and other services. Company benefits include reduced federal payroll taxes, improved parking conditions, increased productivity and retention, larger employee base, and less stress! Check us out at http://www.atlantadowntown.com. Central Atlanta Progress, Inc., a private not-for-profit company that represents Downtown Atlanta businesses, is the parent organization that helps fund and directs the activities of the Downtown TMA. The TMA is also funded by grants administered through the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Clean Air Campaign.
50+ years of generous publicly funded accomodation to single passenger automobile travel and the impact that has had on suburban infrastructure design makes hopping in your own car very convenient and habit forming.
Projected oil scarcity and environmental catastrophes will expose the true costs of this arrangement to our society (rather soon too). Mass realization will grow that depending on your personal car to do everything useful in your life never ever represented “Freedom®” as marketed but quite the opposite. This will increase the demand for communities that are able to offer more choices of transportation independent of the personal automobile. Forward thinking leaders would do well to promote investment in compact urban design where appropriate, close attention to water and food supply, and accomodation of more choices for personal mobility, transport of goods and services within their community. The cities that are doing this now are going to be more prosperous and desirable, heck they already are.
50+ years of generous publicly funded accomodation to single passenger automobile travel and the impact that has had on suburban infrastructure design makes hopping in your own car very convenient and habit forming.
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Perhaps so — and I stress perhaps — but I thought we were talking about Decatur here. You know, the community that is acutely focused on sustainability, walkability, bike paths, bike parking, MARTA and mass transit support, etc. To me, the simplest explanation of these results is that a significant majority of City residents simply dooes’t live up to those principles, at least when it comes to getting to work.
And that, I think, is a major part of the kind of feel-good environmentalism that animates the general lament about car commuiting in the first place. Broadly speaking, Al Gore wants us to change the way we live, but he has no intention of doing that himself. He’ll live in a 15,000 sq ft mansion and fly on chartered jets, thank you. Similarly, many Decaturies feel good about themselves because they advocate for more MARTA funding, bike paths, bike racks, etc. But endure the effort of actually cycling to work? No thanks, apparently. Only 2% bother to do that. (Which only confirms my own observations — I rarely see other cyclists as I pedal myself to work each day.) Actually ride MARTA? Well, no thanks again. Our cars are marginally more convenient, so we’ll just take those.
Finally, do you realize that the ominous warnings of impending peak oil are repeated ad naseum, yet never seem to pan out? Everyone was sure that 2008’s $150 per barrel crude was the long-awaited tipping point, but then prices crashed again. Right now, oil is plunging again despite the massive losses of the BP oil spill. Some of the largest oil stocks are at or near 52 week lows, meaning the market apparently doesn’t see the coming shortage. Which is not to say oil prices will never rise to unaffordable levels. But it is to say that no one can predict if, when, and why that might happen. Trying to do so — much less make policy based on such a prediction — is a proven folly.
So because we can’t accurately predict peak oil, we should listen to the verdict of the free market? The free market that doesn’t even take depleting resources into its equation?
To me, the scenario where NO ONE can predict peak oil (or whatever) is even more concerning than one where we can. Because really the only known is that eventually we will run out. As if a crushing debt isn’t enough to dump on future generations….
The market most certain does take depleting resources into the equation. Inventories, consumption patterns, new discoveries, and more are very closely watched and often have immediate effects on the prices of futures for natural gas, oil, etc. Part of the reason oil got to 150 per barrel in 2008 was precisely because the market thought production was topping out and demand was increasing greatly, especially in emerging markets.
The point is that no one can even remotely predict supply or demand, which is why oil came crashing back down to 40 per barrel by 2009. Take natural gas as another example. Everyone thought that too was a very finite resource, we were starting to reach the limits of production, and prices soared. Then we hit major new strikes in the marcellus shale and in Australia. Now natural gas futures are hovering around $4, when they were over $12 not too long ago. We have so much natural gas we can hardly store it all. Technological innovations made oceans of gas accessible that we thought we could never exploit.
Thus, “the only known is that eventually we will run out” is not a known at all, unless you happen to know where all of the oil is, and whether we’ll be able to reach it. No one knows either.
Nor dioes anyone know how we will consume energy in the future. What if within 20 years thin film solar is so cheap we can cover every roof with it for the same price as shingles? That alone would reduce fossil fuel consumption tremendously.
At any rate, if we want to slash oil use right now, the answer is easy: a $4 per gallon tax on gas. SUVs would be nearly worthless overnight, Prius sales would skyrocket, and MARTA would be overlfowing. The very fact that neither party is seriously pursuing this is all the evidence you need that the kind of reform you want isn’t coming anytime soon.
It sounds like you’re either arguing that infinite growth is possible in a finite environment or that it’s far enough off (thanks to things like the innovations you reference) that we don’t need to worry ourselves with such scenarios.
If it’s the latter, it sure sounds like the opposite of your feelings about the U.S. deficit.
No, I’m saying that predictions about what resources are finite, and when they might become very scare or run out, are impossible to make. And I am especially optimistic about our potential for innovation. So when some look at oil consumption and say, we can never sustain this, I always think, why do you assume we will need to? People have predicted limits to growth forever. Malthus (and Erlich) was wrong about food as the limitation. So we just change over to oil and gas. Why assume they’re all of a sudden correct?
Don’t get me wrong — I am all for using less oil, for many reasons. And I do that in my personal life. They could (and should) tax gas to the hilt, it would make little difference to me. That harkens back to my original point: so many Decaturites want everyone else to use less oil, but they sure seem to insist on driving their own car to work everyday, based on those poll results.
Both DEM and DM are hittin’ some good points here. Even if we could say categorically that oil simply won’t run out before emerging technologies render it unnecessary, there are still a variety of good reasons why over-reliance on it is risky, most notably its accessibility. Endless oil doesn’t mean much if the folks who control it use it against you. We should use less, and we should incentivize the quest for alternatives.
That said, the prospect of reduction in use is not immune to the realities of human behavior. Green marketers discovered this in the early 90s when they banked on a body of consumer research that said people would pay a bit more for things if those things were good for / not bad for the environment. In the abstract, that’s how people like to think of themselves but, on the supermarket aisle, it doesn’t play out that way. People shop deals. It wasn’t until marketers figured out that you need to match the benefits (cost and otherwise) of other products, then use green as your trump card, that they started getting real traction.
Using less oil can’t just be the “good” or “right” thing to do. It needs to be the more logical choice on all levels… more convenient, equally or more affordable, better quality of life, safer, healthier, etc. Some of this can be accomplished by the type of taxing DEM refers to, some with greater investment in alternate forms of transit, some with demographic changes and new interpretations of what constitutes the “good life.”
The question is, does the political will exist — from the federal to the local level — to prioritize oil use reduction and incentivize/encourage/facilitate the type of individual initiatives and decisions that will ultimately make it happen?
DM….sorry….but I think you just got “owned”. In the best possible way, of course.
I don’t have an hour to follow up on DEM’s post, but it is clear that the only thing we should know, is what we don’t know.
Al the huffing and puffing reminds me of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
“But endure the effort of actually cycling to work? No thanks, apparently. Only 2% bother to do that. (Which only confirms my own observations — I rarely see other cyclists as I pedal myself to work each day.) Actually ride MARTA? Well, no thanks again. Our cars are marginally more convenient, so we’ll just take those. ”
Yes, they’re more convenient, precisely due to the longstanding public investment in supporting automotive-only infrastructure and pointed lack of public investment in other modes. The “free market” had very little to do the rise in popularity of automotive travel which dominated after intensive public works investment to support the new industry. And I’m not saying that was bad. We’ve had a good sixty year run on this single mode and I expect another 10 years of automotiveness if only from our “psycology of investment” syndrome. That’s a pretty long run for a public policy developed in Eisenhower’s administration. But developing the built environment is expensive, time-consuming, requires public investment and it requires a long lead time. That’s why it is the purview of policy makers and not the vagarities of the marketplace. The era of arranging our lives to depend on a personal automobile trip to do everything meaningful in our day is dwindling and about time too.
There are other costs besides the diversion of precious oil to personal transportation. There are the ~40 thousand Americans killed each year by cars, The acres of impermeable asphalt covering and choking our soil and interfering with our ability to move about our local spaces or develop human-scaled land uses. Even the lowered cost of relocation sometimes touted as “freedom” has resulted in a discardable landscape where no one will stay to build and nurture a community as it’s easier to just move on to former farm down the road converted into a cheap housing estate where they need a car to get food, work or just see other people.
I don’t advocate tearing down an existing mode of transport but further investment in an automotive-only amenities is ill advised. There’s just no future in it.
Hey, DEM, maybe we should form a club. I might be the other 1% of Decatur that enjoys cycling to work.
Wow, I’m actually really surprised by these results. I would’ve thought that public transportation ranked much higher! Living in a multi-family unit downtown and working in Midtown Atlanta, I rely solely on public transportation for my commute. However, Page 11 of the document suggests that 27% of the respondents were unemployed (and 61% female, likely pointing to a portion of respondents being stay-at-home moms), so perhaps for those individuals, there is no daily need for public transport anyway. Plus, no mention of ZipCar use for occasional trips in the survey, which would’ve been interesting.
You make a good point that the denominator may not be appropriate for the numerator. The denominator should be those who work, not all respondents. The choices of response did not include “Do not work” for those who are unemployed or retired. But what DID those folks respond? I would have thought they might respond “work at home” or “other”. A better question design might have been to first ask “Are you employed?” then, “If yes, during a typical week, how many days do you use the following mechanisms to get to your workplace (for the longest distance of your commute) in each of the ways listed below?
Let’s see, I drive to work by myself a couple days a week; work from home one to two days a week; every so often I’ll take MARTA to work and run home (5.5 miles if I come straight home; 7.5 if I take the scenic route and 3 and a cab ride if I run to a bar instead). I have to admit, none of my choices are made out of concern for the environment; if they do benefit the environment, it’s just a happy side effect of my selfish desire to do what is most convenient to me.
I’m not that surprised. Decatur has a relatively higher number of households with children than many other intown communities, and I know from personal experience that this requires a lot more use of the car than we’d always prefer. A lot of times I have to drive to work, rather than bike or jog, because I have to drop off or pick up the kids for tennis, swim team, piano or whatever .
And another thing – just because we drive rather than walk/bike/transit doesn’t mean we aren’t more eco-sensible than our coworkers from Suwannee or Lawrenceville. My round trip commute is half a gallon of gas. I put less than 5k miles a year on my vehicle. A gas tax hike, which I totally agree with DEM on, wouldn’t really impact me.
“A gas tax hike, which I totally agree with DEM on, wouldn’t really impact me.” Sorry to say but it would impact on you because everything you buy would increase in price.