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Despite a decade
of rising traffic congestion, the average commute in Portland takes about
as long as in San Francisco or Los Angeles 20 years ago.
Average Commute is 24 Minutes
New 2000 U.S.A. census figures show Portland-area residents
typically commute 24 minutes to work - a three-minute increase since 1990
but still a shorter journey than in 30 of the nation's 50 top metropolitan
areas, including Denver (26 minutes), Seattle (28 minutes) and Atlanta (31
minutes).
Experts say the fact that the numbers don't look worse
reflects a natural coping mechanism: Frustrated by traffic, commuters have
moved closer to their jobs.
2000 Census Data
The 2000 Census figures are part of the most detailed portrait
ever of how people get to work in greater Portland - a region consisting
of Multnomah, Clackamas, Washington, Yamhill, Columbia, Marion and Polk
counties in Oregon, and Clark County in Washington.
In addition to basic information on race and gender asked
of all U.S. residents in April 2000, a 53-question-long form was sent to
one in six households. Workers 16 or older were asked their employers' addresses,
how they got to work and what time they began their journey. No questions
were asked about other trips, such as for shopping or school.
Their answers reveal that:
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Portland stood out among a handful of regions where
automobiles declined in importance. Bus commuting grew 41 percent, while
the numbers of bicycle riders and people working at home each grew 54
percent - well ahead of the 27 percent growth in people driving alone.
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Despite that, the region remains as car-dependent
as Puget Sound and Southern California. Roughly 73 percent of Portland-area
residents drove alone by car or motorcycle - the same
as in Los Angeles and one percentage point more than in Seattle.
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Walking lost popularity. Metro areas walkers grew
by a sluggish 13 percent, with big declines in small towns and outlying
areas. The most popular place to walk was Yamhill County where 6.3 percent
of commuters hit the sidewalk. The least popular was Clark County with
1.4 percent.
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Most Portland residents work in Portland; most suburbanites
do not. Consider the major suburbs of Tualatin, Wilsonville and West
Linn, where 20 percent to 30 percent of commuters head downtown. By
contrast, 74 percent of Portlanders work within the city.
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Less than a third of Clark County residents cross
the Columbia River to work in Oregon each day. About 2 percent of Multnomah,
Clackamas and Washington counties residents went in the other direction.
In Washington County, an economic engine for the region
in the 1990s with 61 percent job growth, the population ballooned 43 percent.
Yet residents of the Silicon Forest also had the smallest rise in commuting
time.
A key reason: Just 25 percent of Washington County residents
work in Portland. The vast majority - more than two-thirds
- work in Washington County.
A boom in apartment construction helped. As new rental
units outpaced new homes in Hillsboro, rents stayed affordable for tech
workers seeking to avoid U.S. 26.
Most Clackamas County residents still leave the county
for work each day. In Oregon City, Milwaukie and Molalla, a growing percentage
of residents left their city limits for work, and their commute times rose
16 percent, 21 percent and 47 percent, respectively.
By contrast, commuters in Tualatin, Tigard and Hillsboro
increasingly stayed within their own city limits, and average commute times
in those cities rose 3 percent, 7 percent and 9 percent, respectively.
Texas Transportation Institute
The
Texas Transportation Institute publishes their mobility study annually.
The Urban Mobility report provides data on the performance of the transportation
system in over 85 urban areas through research performed in cooperation
with state transportation departments to include Oregon.
The
2007 report
measures a number of items to include an Annual Delay per Traveler, a
Travel Time Index, and Total Gallons of “Wasted” Fuel.
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In the nation's 85 largest metro areas, average
hours of delay per traveler grew by 22 percent to 44 hours in the
same decade.
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In 2005 alone, it caused urban Americans to
collectively travel 4.2 billion hours more and buy 2.9 billion
gallons of gas to do so. It costs $78.2 billion for gasoline
expenditure and commuters' time.
Findings for Portland:
Portland-area motorists were delayed 38 hours in
2005 because of rush-hour congestion − about 14 percent less
than the 44 hours a year average for the nation's top 85 metro
areas.
Portland-area drivers, with 38 hours a year in
delay, ranked No. 33 out of 85 metro areas. By population, the
region is ranked number 25. Seattle, with 45 hours of congestion
ranked number 19.
The study compares rush-hour travel time with
travel time in off-peak hours. Portland's index of 1.29 means a trip
that would take 20 minutes at noon would take 25.8 minutes in rush
hour. On that measure, Portland ranked No. 21
Streets and highways move traffic 29 percent
slower during rush hour than they do in non-peak times, a rate that
almost exactly matches the average for the 85 biggest regions.
"Rush hour" has expanded in Portland from 4.8
hours a day in 1982 to 7.6 hours a day in 2005.
Buses, MAX trains and streetcars saved the region
6.7 million hours of rush-hour delay -- placing Portland 13th in the
nation in savings because of public transportation use. Take away
our mass transit, and the region's congestion delay would be 21
percent longer.
Light Rail Open to Debate
Activists, regional planners and legislators have sparred
for a decade about how to address the most visible effect of population
growth: traffic congestion. And each camp can find ammunition in the census.
It shows west side light rail between downtown Portland
and Hillsboro, which opened four years ago, helped boost the number of rail
commuters from about 2,600 in 1990 to 9,100 in April 2000, before the downtown
streetcar and airport MAX opened. In neighborhoods lining the tracks, MAX
drew 5 percent to 10 percent of commuters.
Critics of the nearly $1 billion west side line say that's
a trickle compared to the 800,000 people who drove alone - or the
54,000 who, according to the census, rode the bus. It's also a small portion
of all rides on MAX, which average 68,000 per weekday.
"Rail is irrelevant to most people in the region," said
John Charles, environmental policy director at the free-market-oriented
Cascade Policy Institute
in Portland.
But Metro officials say the census greatly undercounts
MAX commuters because it asks workers how they "usually" get to work. That
leaves out occasional riders. Metro surveys and computer models put one-way
commuter trips at 44,000 a day, which would suggest individual commuters
number 22,000.
Biking to Work
The Rose City has been judged the most bicycle-friendly
place in North America, according to Bicycling magazine in one award and
the League of American Bicyclists in another. Portland wins accolades
for its extensive bikeways (259 miles of bikeways) and willingness to include
cyclists in its master planning. Corvallis, Ashland and Beaverton have been
honored as well.
September 2006 The average daily summertime
bicycle trips across Portland's four busiest cycling bridges have increased
by 18 percent over last year. And for the first time that four-bridge total
has passed 12,000 daily trips.
The new figures, considered preliminary, come from the
city's annual summer count on the Hawthorne, Burnside, Steel and Broadway
bridges. The city's Office of Transportation, which conducted the count,
says the upswing probably represents the effects of rising fuel prices and
bicycle-friendly measures in recent years.
The Hawthorne continues to lead with almost double the
average daily summertime bicycle traffic of the next-leading bridge, the
Broadway. The Hawthorne's average daily count this summer is 5,557 trips
compared with the Broadway at 2,856. The four-bridge average daily total
is 12,046, up from last year's 10,192.
The counting process: For all but the Burnside Bridge,
the city placed automatic traffic counters on the sidewalk bridge paths
and left them for up to several days. On the Burnside Bridge alone, which
has a roadway bike lane that doesn't lend itself to an automatic bikes-only
count, the city stationed a person to tabulate bicycle trips from 4 to 6
p.m. on a weekday.
Portland Ranks First in Nation for Biking to
Work
A larger share of Portlanders commute by bicycle than in
any other large city in America, eight times the national average, according
to the director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Louis Kincannon.
In June, 2007, the census director was in Portland where
he released an analysis of 2005 commuting data. The survey found that 3.5
percent of Portland workers commuted by bike in 2005. Ranking second was
Minneapolis at 2.4 percent, then Seattle, at 2.3 percent. The national average
for cities with more than 65,000 population was 0.4 percent.
Portland looks better than the national average on other
transportation measures as well. Nationwide, despite rising fuel costs,
commuters continued to favor driving to work in 2005. The survey found
that 77 percent of Americans drove to work alone, compared with 62.4 percent
of Portlanders. In Portland, 13.3 percent of commuters took public transportation,
twice the national average, but less than Seattle at 17 percent.
Resources
City of Portland Transportation Describes the options
for transportation in Portland.
Demographia Compares Seattle to Portland. Demographia
guiding principle is "What government does for one it should do for
all; What government does not do for all it should do for none."
Our Community
Portrait Describes "the community to the community" by examining
new Census 2000 data along with existing trends and providing data and
analysis to the community.
Portland State University Population Research Center Research
on census in the School of Urban Studies and Planning.
Texas
Transportation Institute An arm of the Texas highway department
that rates traffic nationally each year for major metro areas.
US Census Bureau Link to 2000 census data.
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According to
the US Census 2000, the region's average journey to work has stretched to
24 minutes in 2000 - less than you might expect with 26 percent population
growth since 1990.
Metro Counties Average Commute Time in Minutes
Clackamas - 26.2
Columbia - 29.3
Multnomah - 23.8
Washington - 23.7
Yamhill - 24.8
Clark - 24.7
Marion - 23.5
Polk - 23.4
About 76 percent of rush-hour travel is
congested, up from 49 percent in 1990.
The worst spots:
- Interstate Bridge between Portland and Vancouver
- Sunset Highway (US 26)
- Interstate 5 heading out of downtown
Bikers peddling into downtown on the Hawthorne
Bridge in the morning on their way to work. Portlanders made 10,192
daily bike trips across Portland bridges in 2005 according to the City of
Portland Department of Transportation.
The Texas Transportation
Institute 2007 report on congestion said that the Portland-Vancouver
area ranked 33rd in the nation out of 85 metro areas.
Just 25 percent of Washington County (west
side) residents work in Portland.
The vast majority - more than two-thirds - work in Washington County.
This is the reply that Jensine Larsen, founder
of the Portland-based international women's magazine,
World Pulse,
gave when asked if she was going to move to New York. It appeared
in the December 21, 2005 issue of the Willamette Week.
We're not going anywhere. Portland
is a hotbed of publishing, and it will be a global mecca. Portland's
going to be a model for the world. Creativity is highly valued in Portland
and there is a sense of do-it-yourself, start your own business - a lot
of social entrepreneurs. There's a strong feminine pulse here.
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