In the United States, only 15% of daily trips are taken for commuting. Still, 91% of people commute to work using personal vehicles, with associated trips concentrated around the same time of the day (morning and afternoon peaks). The impact of commuting on peak travel demand, congestion and emissions makes its analysis a critical component of transportation planning. Planners, practitioners, and policymakers often look to commute patterns and perceptions data to assess the performance of existing transportation systems and services and make necessary decisions regarding transportation project selection and infrastructure investment.
This provides the impetus for one of Mobility Lab’s key recurring research reports – the Arlington-analysis of the regional State of the Commute (SOC). It builds on survey data collected by MWCOG for 11 jurisdictions of the Washington metropolitan region but focuses on respondents who report living (n=790) or working (n=642) in Arlington County, VA. The 2019 survey is the seventh SOC survey, with previous surveys conducted triennially since 2001.
The 2019 SOC – Arlington analysis report includes a detailed analysis of eight main topics with comparisons with previous iterations of this research and other jurisdictions in the region:
- Commute pattern
- Commute changes, commute ease, and commute satisfaction
- Telework
- Availability of and attitudes toward transportation options
- Transportation satisfaction
- Awareness of commute advertising and commute assistance resources
- Employer-provided commuter assistance services
- Technology-based applications and driverless cars
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So, what picture does this research paint for Arlington County Commutes in 2019?
The results show that Arlington respondents are driving alone less compared to previous years, teleworking more compared to previous years and to the region, are more satisfied with their commute than regional averages, have access to and use a variety of transportation services, and are familiar with and interested in using driverless cars. We elaborate on these key findings below.
Arlington residents and workers are driving alone less than previous years and relying more on, and switching to, alternative modes.
As a percentage of weekly trips, 41% of residents and 47% of workers reported commuting by drive alone in 2019 versus 44% and 55% respectively in 2016. Of those using alternative modes in 2019, 23% started to use their alternative mode less than one year ago and about 43% of Arlington workers and 29% of residents who used their current alternative mode for three years or less said they previously drove alone.
Arlington residents teleworked more than regional residents with 40% reporting teleworking fully, up from 22% in 2007. Still, more telework potential is available.
The analysis also showed that some Arlington respondents teleworked at statistically higher rates than others. These include:
- Middle working age group (between 35 and 44) respondents,
- Non-Hispanic white respondents,
- Higher income respondents,
- Respondents who used an alternative mode to commute,
- Respondents with longer commutes,
- Respondents who worked for larger employers and,
- Respondents who worked for non-profit firms.
Among Arlington residents, 61% of non-teleworkers had jobs that were telework-appropriate, a rate echoed in responses from respondents who only worked in Arlington.
Arlington residents are more satisfied with their commute than regional commuters and this is more accentuated for alternative modes than drive alone and carpooling.
Two-thirds of Arlington residents and more than 90% of active transportation commuters rated their commutes as either “satisfied” (35%) or “very satisfied” (29%). Also, bus and Metrorail riders were more satisfied than the average for the County, with about 74% of bus riders and 68% of Metrorail riders rating their commute as either “satisfied” or “very satisfied”.
Respondents in Arlington have access to and use a variety of transportation services such as HOV/Express lanes, transportation advertisement and worksite commute assistance. Data shows that these facilities can promote behavioral change.
Arlington residents were more likely to have heard, seen, or read advertising than were commuters regionwide, and recall specific messages. Moreover, Arlington workers enjoyed statistically greater access to worksite commute assistance services than did nearly all other jurisdictions: 73% of respondents who lived in Arlington and 77% of respondents who worked in Arlington said their employers offered one or more commute assistance services. The most offered service across the region was subsidies for transit and vanpool, offered to a considerably higher share of Arlington workers (59%) compared to regionwide respondents (45%).
Impact on behavioral change. Fourteen percent of respondents who heard transportation ads tried or started using a new alternative mode for commuting. Moreover, less than half (45%) of Arlington workers with access to commuter services drove alone to work, compared with 63% of Arlington workers whose employers did not provide these services. Also, only 42% of Arlington workers who did not have free parking drove alone, compared with 68% of respondents who did have free parking. The combination of parking charges and commute benefits/services appeared to be particularly influential. When parking was free and commute services were not offered, 79% of respondents drove alone to work. When parking was not free and commute services were offered, on top of parking charges, the “drive alone” mode share was just 38%, showing the powerful influence of these two strategies combined in influencing commute mode choice.
Arlington residents are familiar with the concept of driverless cars and more interested than regional commuters in their use under different scenarios, reflecting a high level of willingness to experiment with new modes.
Ninety-five percent of those who lived in Arlington and 91% of those who worked in Arlington said they were “very familiar” or “somewhat familiar” with driverless cars. When asked about interest in use under 5 different scenarios (see graph below), Arlington residents expressed statistically higher interest than regional respondents in each of the five use-case scenarios.
With this question being newly added to the survey, it will be interesting to see going forward, how perceptions and willingness to use driverless cars change as the concept materializes better and people become more familiar or exposed to driverless cars.
Finally, this summary provides a high-level overview of the results but cannot do justice to the breadth of information in the report. Much of the interesting and important nuances were left for readers to dig deeper into in the report. Some themes include free parking offerings in Arlington and its relation to commute mode, the role of transportation in the choice of new housing, the societal and personal benefits commuters see in alternative modes, the reasons behind switching to alternative modes and many more.
So, where do we go from here?
All in all, like previous iterations of this research, the results herein can help inform transportation planning and policy in Arlington County and provide an idea of the impact of transportation services on travel behavior within the context of a County with a relatively high level of travel mode optionality and Transportation Demand Management (TDM) practices. The results are especially important this year as they can provide a nice benchmark and baseline for commuting trends and perceptions in the pre-COVID-19 era. Going forward, it will be interesting to compare how several of the dimensions of commuting currently being impacted by COVID-19, including teleworking, transit satisfaction and others evolve relative to the 2019 survey.
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BTS, NHTS 2017: commutes make up less than 20% of all trips taken.
BTS, NHTS 2017: commutes make up less than 20% of all trips taken.
For the purposes of this survey, teleworkers were defined as “wage and salary employees who at least occasionally work at home or at a telework or satellite center during an entire workday, instead of traveling to their regular work place”.