New York State 2009 NHTS Comparison Report

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) initiated an effort in 1969 to collect detailed data on personal travel, with the most recent surveys being the 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) and the 2001 and 2009 National Household Travel Surveys (NHTS). The primary objective of these surveys is to collect trip-based data on the nature and characteristics of personal travel so that the relationships between the characteristics of personal travel and the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the traveler and his/her household can be established. In addition to the number of sample households that the national NPTS/NHTS survey allotted to New York State, NYDOT procured an additional sample of households in the 1995, 2001, and 2009 surveys. The comparisons drawn in this report compare the results from these NYS sampled households to the results from households drawn for the rest of the nation. Many of the differences between NYC counties and others in the state result from the striking differences in private vehicle ownership levels, with less than one in two NYC drivers and only 64% of NYC households owning a vehicle in 2009: versus 9 out of 10 drivers owning a vehicle, and between 1.5 and 2 vehicles owned per household, on the average, in the state's other metro areas. And this situation has changed very little over the past fourteen years covered by the three latest NPTS/NHTS surveys. While households in metro areas outside NYC do not own a vehicle largely due to income constraints, many households in NYC/Manhattan do not own a vehicle by choice. However, the statistics suggest that the mobility of zero-vehicle households in NYC/Manhattan is by no means deterred by the lack of a vehicle. While the private vehicle tripmaking rate of NYC residents was between one half and one third that in the state's other metro areas, and their daily VMT about half that of other metro areas, most of their daily travel needs were met by walking or by public transit. As a result, their daily trip-making rates remain consistent with those of vehicle-owning households when all modes of travel are considered. This again indicates that owning a vehicle or being a driver in NYC was less important for meeting a household's mobility needs than anywhere else in NYS. The high levels of public transit usage within NYC replace a great deal of automobile use, and this plus greater use of walk trips results in significantly lower travel generated carbon dioxide emissions per household in NYC than elsewhere in the state. In contrast, the comparatively limited level of public transit ridership in the state's smaller and medium sized metro areas places a much greater reliance on the privately owned vehicle, be it an automobile or the increasingly popular SUV.