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Commuting

San Francisco’s Downtown Commute Patterns, Animated

5:31 PM PST on November 11, 2013

Note: Use the top left drop-down menu to select "Bay Area" and get a view of San Francisco.

A new interactive map provides a glimpse into how San Francisco workers and residents commute -- where they go, which modes of transport they use, and how much money they make. The map, created by UC Berkeley planning Ph.D. student Fletcher Foti, uses travel survey data to display transportation patterns using colored dots that designate respondents' transport mode and the rough location of their home. Foti created maps of the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York regions.

The map helps illustrate some of the findings in the SF County Transportation Authority's congestion pricing study, which reported that 97 percent of driving in downtown SF is done by people with household incomes of more than $50,000 per year. Using the map to sort commuters by annual household income, very few blue dots (car commuters) can be seen in SoMa and the Financial District below the $75,000 bracket. There are a whole lot of red and yellow dots -- walking and transit trips -- commuting into downtown among all income brackets, but it's apparent that among households earning less than $75,000, most avoid car commuting.

There's a lot more to be gleaned from this map. A couple of other observations that jump out to me are that much of the car commuting in SF is between neighborhoods that lack convenient transit and bike routes. Meanwhile, some commuters appear to drive very short distances that could be done by Muni, bicycling, or walking if those options were more enticing.

Catch any other observations on commute patterns in SF or the rest of the Bay Area? Share them in the comments.

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