The Philadelphia story: Age, race, gender and changing travel trends

Abstract

We examine changes in travel behavior in the Philadelphia region between 2000 and 2012. We use two household regional travel surveys over a decade apart, the 2000 and 2012 surveys, from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC). Previous research, at the national scale, has highlighted changes among the Millennial cohort. We use these two regional datasets to examine the changing travel behavior among Millennials and to put these changes in context by comparing them with changes among other social groups of interest: women and minorities.We find that the travel behavior of young people did not change substantially between 2000 and 2012. Where there are changes, these pale in comparison to the changes among women and black residents. And finally, we find that the built environment factors appear to influence travel more in 2012 than in 2000. Taken together, our findings fit an overarching narrative about urban gentrification and the suburbanization of poverty, rather than a story of Millennials’ changing travel behavior.