Map: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Pennsylvania

Here's the car-free commute map for Pennsylvania. This shows the percentage of residents in each census tract who get to work on foot, bike, or transit -- anything that doesn't involve a car.

As I wrote yesterday, I'll be creating a map for each state and uploading census tract boundary files so that others who are interested can make their own maps showing whatever they'd like. If you'd like your state's map up earlier rather than later, just let me know.

Here's a link to the full-sized map.

For those interested in embedding the map on their own site, you'll want to go here, click the tab that says "Pennsylvania," pull down the tab that says "Publish," and copy from there. The embedded map will show whatever you're looking at when you hit "Publish" -- in my case I was viewing Pittsburgh, for example -- so keep that in mind if you want to highlight a specific area.

Map: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Oregon

Here's the car-free commute map for Oregon. This shows the percentage of residents in each census tract who get to work on foot, bike, or transit -- anything that doesn't involve a car.

As I create more of these, it's becoming clear that for states like Oregon, "a map of the least car-dependent neighborhoods in Oregon" has about the same meaning as "a map of the least car-dependent neighborhoods in Portland."

As I wrote yesterday, I'll be creating a map for each state and uploading census tract boundary files so that others who are interested can make their own maps showing whatever they'd like. If you'd like your state's map up earlier rather than later, just let me know.

Here's a link to the full-sized map.

For those interested in embedding the map on their own site, you'll want to go here, click the tab that says "Oregon," pull down the tab that says "Publish," and copy from there. The embedded map will show whatever you're looking at when you hit "Publish" -- in my case I was viewing Portland, for example -- so keep that in mind if you want to highlight a specific area.

Map: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in California

Today's entry in car-free commute maps is California. This shows the percentage of residents in each census tract who get to work on foot, bike, or transit -- anything that doesn't involve a car.

As I wrote yesterday, I'll be creating a map for each state and uploading census tract boundary files so that others who are interested can make their own maps showing whatever they'd like. I also uploaded the boundaries for Oregon, Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois yesterday. If you'd like your state's map up earlier rather than later, just let me know.

Here's a link to the full-sized map.

For those interested in embedding the map on their own site, you'll want to go here, click the tab that says "California," pull down the tab that says "Publish," and copy from there. The embedded map will show whatever you're looking at when you hit "Publish" -- in my case I was viewing Oakland, for example -- so keep that in mind if you want to highlight a specific area.

Map: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Washington State

Last week I made a map showing the non-car commuter mode share for every census tract in Los Angeles County. This week, I've got the same for all of Washington state (which actually has a significantly lower population than LA County).

I intend to get all of the states done eventually, then I'll hopefully be able to combine them all into a single map and table. Part of the reason I'm doing this is to make Google Fusion/Maps a more useful tool for others interested in mapping; right now there don't appear to be census tract boundary maps uploaded into the system for most locales, and without those any mapping at the tract level isn't really possible. This'll probably take a few weeks of work off and on, so if any readers are anxious to get the numbers for their states, just let me know and you can jump to the head of the queue.

Here's the map for Washington:

And here's a link to the full-sized map.

No big surprises in terms of the commute mode share -- Seattle is the only area in the state where more than half of residents commute without a car, though some areas come close and the ferry dock areas of Bainbridge Island and Bremerton both have high non-car mode shares. Seattle is a very centralized city, as opposed to the poly-centric nature of Los Angeles, and that's reflected in a single concentrated area of car-free commuting centered on Downtown and adjacent neighborhoods. The expansion of Link light rail may shift this to more of a car-free corridor rather than a car-free core.

For those interested in embedding the map on their own site, you'll want to go here, click the tab that says "Washington," pull down the tab that says "Publish," and copy from there. The embedded map will show whatever you're looking at when you hit "Publish" -- in my case I was viewing Chicago, for example -- so keep that in mind if you want to highlight a specific area.

Map: LA County Residents, How Many People Get to Work Without a Car in Your Neighborhood?

I've made a couple new maps for all my map nerd friends.

The first one I really like. It's got the commute mode share of walking, bicycling, and transit all grouped together so we can see what neighborhoods are the least (and most) car-dependent:

Here's the link to a full-sized map.

For those interested in embedding the map on their own site, you'll want to go here, click the tab that says "LA County," pull down the tab that says "Publish," and copy from there. The embedded map will show whatever you're looking at when you hit "Publish" -- in my case I was viewing Los Angeles, for example -- so keep that in mind if you want to highlight a specific area.

The most car-free neighborhood of them all (census tract 2089.02) can be found right on top of Westlake/MacArthur Park station, where nearly 80 percent of residents use public transit for their commute. Long Beach also has an impressive concentration of non-car uses, as does the area around North Hollywood and Van Nuys.

Downtown LA is essentially surrounded by census tracts where the majority of residents get to work by foot, bike, bus, or train, but the core is curiously hollowed out by this metric: the most central, transit-accessible part of Downtown -- the area from Pershing Square to Staples Center -- has a non-car mode share of under 30 percent. Apparently most of the people living in this part of Downtown aren't also working in the area, and despite the wealth of transportation options available to them, they're still choosing to use their cars to get to work wherever they're going. Hopefully that starts to change in the coming years.

The other map is of the commuter mode share for walkers, below:

And the full-sized map.

Here we see a definite mode shift toward walking in Downtown, which isn't surprising given its recent ranking as the Most Walkable Neighborhood in Los Angeles. Long Beach again does pretty well, along with Hollywood, Glendale, Pasadena, and the area around UCLA.

Both of these maps also show a clear relationship between Downtown and USC, so let me reiterate one more time that you should really visit this petition and support the MyFigueroa project to better connect these two important communities. They're already leading the county in transit use, bicycling, and walking, and it's time to give them the infrastructure that makes those choices safer and more convenient.

UPDATE:

 A commenter asked me to include a map of the absolute number of non-car commuters per census tract, rather than a population-weighted percentage. That map is below:

And once again, the full-sized map.

Map: Bicycle Mode Share For Every Census Tract in LA County

Like I wrote yesterday, I'm learning a bit about how to use Google Fusion to make maps. I wanted to learn more about how to work with boundaries, census tracts in particular, so I made this map which shows the bicycle mode share of every census tract community in Los Angeles county. As with the crowding map it's a work in progress, but let me know if you'd like any additional information or can think of ways to improve its readability or usefulness.

My initial intent was to find if this gave any indication of where we might want to prioritize investments in the bicycle network -- basically if there were already existing corridors of high bicycle use. Some clearly exist, like that from USC to Downtown (Support MyFigueroa!), around North Hollywood, and, more surprisingly, up in the Valley around Cahoga Park (which I admit to knowing nothing about). Likewise, Santa Monica's large bicycle mode share is no surprise while Whittier's was a little unexpected.

Anyway, check it out for yourself!:

And here's a link to a full-sized map of LA county's bicycle mode share.

How Crowded Are the Homes in Your ZIP Code?

UPDATE:

 The LA Times made their own map right about the same time as mine (though I maintain that mine was completed first!). The data isn't exactly the same though, which I think can be explained by my conservative use of the margin of error for each ZIP code.

ORIGINAL: 

After reading this LA Times article about overcrowded housing from yesterday, I decided to play around with Google Fusion to see if I could make a map that illustrated the degree of overcrowding across the country. What I came up with is a map that shows every* ZIP code in the US with over 1,000 households, color-coded to show how prevalent crowded households are in that ZIP code. (A definition of "crowded" can be found below.)

The ZIP codes are broken down into the following groups:

• Less than or equal to the national average share of crowded housing, 3.2 percent
• Between 3.3 and 6.4 percent of households—double the national average—are living in a crowded home
• Between 6.5 and 12.8 percent of households—four times the national average—are crowded
• Between 12.9 and 25.6 percent of households—eight times the national average—are crowded
• More than 25.6 percent of households are crowded

Zoom in on your city of choice to check out the areas where residents are most likely to be living in uncomfortably crowded conditions:

If you want to view the map in a full page, click here.

When I read the above LA Times article, I found the following passage incredible, and it's what inspired me to look into this further:

Cano and her family live in one of the most crowded neighborhoods in the country. Nearly 45% of the homes there are considered "crowded" — having more than one person per room, excluding bathrooms, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data spanning 2008 to 2012. Almost one home in six is severely crowded, with more than two people per room.  

Southern California is an epicenter for crowded housing: Out of the most heavily crowded 1% of census tracts across the country, more than half are in Los Angeles and Orange counties, a Times statistical analysis found. They are sprinkled throughout areas such as Westlake and Huntington Park around Los Angeles, and Santa Ana and Anaheim in Orange County.

If you check out the map around LA and Orange counties, you'll indeed see a large number of red and black ZIP code areas.

I don't have a particular agenda in creating this map, but I hope people will find it useful or interesting in some way. If you can think of any ways it can be improved (or know something about Google Fusion boundary tables), I'd love to hear from you. I'm looking for a more complete ZIP code boundary table if anyone knows of one, and the populations included in the table appear to be from 2001, so an update to that data would help as well. Here's a link to the Google Fusion table I used for ZIP code boundaries.

A little bit about the methodology and definitions:

The American Community Survey has a somewhat interesting definition of "room," so almost anything but a closet or a bathroom counts: dining rooms, kitchens (as long as they're not too small or part of another living space), living rooms, and bedrooms all count. My studio, since it has a separate kitchen, would probably be considered a 0.5 person-per-room occupancy. A household with two adults and three kids that included a kitchen, dining room, living room, and two bedrooms would be given a 1.0 person-per-room occupancy rating.

To calculate the share of households that were crowded, I used data from the 5-year 2008-2012 American Community Survey. I looked at the Occupancy Characteristics (ID: S2501) for every 5-digit ZIP code tabulation area and summed up the estimated share of households with occupancy ratings of 1.01-1.5 and 1.5+. To be as conservative as possible, I then subtracted the margin of error for both of these estimates, so the values you see above are the lowest possible values within the statistical threshold used by the ACS (I'm guessing a 95% confidence level). In many, probably most cases, the actual rate of crowding will be higher than you see in the map and associated table.

I limited this to only ZIP code areas with more than 1,000 households because the margin of error on smaller areas was very high, making the data essentially useless. I chose ZIP codes because census tracts were too small to have dependable margins of error, and cities and metro areas were too large to be meaningful.

*The Google Fusion table I used to represent the boundaries of each ZIP code area was not 100% complete, but most areas were included.