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.