More than one-third of Americans who use mass transit to commute live in the New York metropolitan area – and our share is going up, a study has found.
Thirty-eight percent of mass-transit riders live here, up from 37 percent in 1990, according to the Transportation Research Board.
New Yorkers are also bucking the national trend toward driving alone to work.
Better than 75 percent of all American commuters drive alone. That’s an extra 13 million solo drivers since 1990. But only 56.3 percent of New Yorkers drive alone.
The report also found that the number of commuters who take more than an hour to get to work grew by almost 50 percent during the 1990s.
In 1990, New York was the only state in which more than 10 percent of commuters took that much time. But New Jersey, Maryland and Illinois joined the unhappy club by 2000.
The national average was 25.5 minutes to get to work, according to the most recent data, for 2000. That’s up from 21.7 minutes in 1980.
As the baby-boomer generation heads toward retirement age, other trends are apparent. For example, walking to work is out, but getting up early is in.
Less than 3 percent of Americans commuted by walking in 2000, compared with 5.6 percent in 1980.
Meanwhile, only 2.4 percent of us left for work before 5 a.m. in 1990, but that grew to 11 percent by 2000.
Some of the best commuters at fighting gridlock are the newest Americans, said study author Alan Pisarski.
Immigrants account for less than 14 percent of all workers, but they represent 40 percent of those in large carpools.
“Unlike most native-born Americans or immigrants who have been in the U.S. more than five years, many new immigrants either carpool, bike, walk or use public transportation for their daily commute,” Pisarski said.
Americans are increasingly owning fleets of cars. Nearly half of the 30 million vehicles added to households in the 1990s were for homes that already had two or more vehicles.
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Going to work
* One out of five American homes without a car is in the New York area.
* 56 percent of local commuters drive alone, compared with a national average over 75 percent.
* More than four times as many Americans leave for work before 5 a.m. today than did in 1990.