Map of transit usage in Southern California. Star is L.A. Eco-Village. Source: Metro
I came across this transit-usage data-map at an article entitled A closer look at transit ridership around LA County at Metro’s inhouse blog. The map shows the levels of transit ridership in Southern California neighborhoods. I’ve added the star to show where Los Angeles Eco-Village is located. Note that the data is from the 2000 census – and it’s commute trips, not all trips.
Key to transit ridership map. Source: Metro
On the right is the key to what the colors mean. It’s difficult to see exactly, but it looks like L.A. Eco-Village’s block is in the 18-25% range… which is above the overall county average (7.3%) but not as high as I expected, given that LAEV is located among so many bus and rail lines. I would have guessed about 50%, but maybe that indicates who I hang out with or what the census undercounts. Maybe more walking and bicycling statistics would round out the picture. (I seem to remember that year 2000 census respondents can only select one mode – frustrating for me at the time when I was biking and using transit… and nearly all transit trips include a walk component.) I am curious to see what the overall mix is – and what it looks like in the 2010 data to be released soon.
Here’s some of what Metro had to say in framing these data maps:
Across Los Angeles County, 7.3 percent of people over the age of 16 ride mass transit to commute to work. That is certainly below many older cities and counties with more miles of fixed rail than Los Angeles. These cities include Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York — where in the New York-White Plains metro area 44 percent of commuters use mass transit. But the percentage in L.A. County is still above the national average of five percent who use transit to get to work. And it’s similar to the percentages in some metro areas that are about the same size as massive L.A. County.
… the proportion of residents who ride mass transit to work varies wildly across the Los Angeles Metropolitan Statistical Area, as defined by the Census Bureau. Noticeably, the densest parts of L.A. also contain high proportions of transit commuters. Here are some examples from randomly chosen Census Block groups around L.A.: UCLA, 41%; Hollywood, 39%; Downtown, 59%; Koreatown, 64%; MacArthur Park, 67%; the area southeast of the 10 and 110, 85%.
Read Metro’s article here, which includes instructions for downloading the data.
Los Angeles Eco-Village 