Did Commuting Patterns Change in the First Decade of the Millenium?

Only a Little.

by Panos Prevedouros

A New Geography article summarized the commuting data and results revealed by the 2010 Census. The winner was Telecommuting and the loser was Carpooling.
Despite higher prices and huge media hype over shifts to public transit, the big surprise was the continued growth over the last decade in driving alone to work.In summary,there has been no major change in commuting, even with the huge gas price increases. As the shift to personal mobility continues, the largest increases will like take place in telecommuting, which is the most energy-efficient form of transportation. Gains in transit have been minimal and should be expected to stay at around 5% on the mainland and around 7% in Honolulu.
Clearly these numbers indicate that a city like Honolulu with 950,000 people investing on a $6,000,000,000 heavy rail system is nothing short of ridiculous.

Panos Prevedouros’ blog, which is from where this has been reposted (with permission), can be found at :http://fixoahu.blogspot.com/

Panos D. Prevedouros, Ph.D. is a professor of traffic and transportation engineering at the Department of Civil Engineering, Univ. of Hawaii-Manoa since 1990. Panos graduated from the Aristotle Univ. of Greece in 1984, and with Masters and PhD degrees in 1990 from Northwestern Univ. (Evanston, IL), a leading academic institution in engineering and transportation. He chairs the Freeway Simulation Subcommittee of the Transportation Research Board. He was president of the Hawaii Highway Users Alliance from 2006 to 2008. Panos co-authored a Transportation Engineering textbook and over 100 reports and technical papers. He received the 2005 Van Wagoner Award of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. He co-organized the 1st International Symposium on Freeway Operations (ISFO) in Athens, Greece, and the 2nd ISFO in Honolulu in June 2009. Dr. Prevedouros served in the Transit Advisory Task Force in 2006 and in the Technology Selection Expert Panel in 2008 of the City Council of Honolulu. He run for mayor of Honolulu in the 2008 elections and finished 3rd in the primary elections with 18% of the vote from a field of nine candidates.