ATI The Alliance for Traffic Improvement |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Seeking cost effective ways to reduce traffic congestion on Oahu |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Population density. One of the statements that “Population density is equally important than pure
population as a determinant of the potential for rail transit ridership. As
reported in the 2000 census, the population density for the entire If you examine the data they are
using you find that while they correct about the number, it is not one
you can use. For example, if you look at the first table below, you will note
that
There is another way to judge available Census density data,
other than metro area and that is “Central city
only.” When we do that the results appear to be in line with what one
would expect as in the table below:
An interesting way to look at this “Central city only” data is to assemble it for the top 49 metro areas, and then add Honolulu[i] and then sort these areas in descending order of population density. Click here for the result. Any group of ten contiguous metro areas in the list shows a
remarkable diversity in the use of public transportation for commuting. For
example, The average of these ten metro areas is less than the next higher ten metro areas in the table which have a range of 2.0 to 24.9 percent. The ten metro areas below the Honolulu Ten in the table have a range of 0.8 percent to 5.7 percent. And so on. This teaches us that while there is, on average, a correlation between aggregations of central city densities and public transportation use, it is not useful as a predictive tool for any one area. Footnotes: [i] The journey-to-work data for the six cities
larger than |