Transportation to Work, Means Of
The principal means of travel or type of conveyance usually used during the reference week in traveling from home to work at the address give" in the place-of-work question. (The reference week was the calendar week prior to the date on which the respondent or enumerator completed the questionnaire, further discussed under Labor Force Status.) If more than one means of transportation was used, the respondent was instructed to report the one usually used for most of the distance. These data were obtained from the full sample for persons at work last week (i.e., including both civilian employed and Armed Forces at work) and are tabulated for persons 1B years old and over.
Major categories which appear in abbreviated tabulations include:
Cars (including station wagons and company cars), trucks (including pickup trucks and small panel trucks); and vans with passenger seats and side and/or rear windows.
Includes persons who usually drove alone as well as persons who were driven to work by someone who then drove back home or to a nonwork destination.
Persons who share driving (e.g., person in carpools who took turns driving on different days), drive others only, or ride as a passenger only (includes persons who were usually driven to work by another worker, not necessarily someone who worked at the same place PS the respondent). Persons in a carp001 were also asked how many people usually rode to work in the car, truck, or van (see Vehicle Occupancy).
Buses or streetcars, railroads (including commuter trains), subway or elevated (rapid transit operating on its own right-of-way underground, on the surface, or elevated), and taxicab.
Motorcycles, bicycles, write-in responses (e.g., ferryboat, airplane), and persons who "walked only," i.e., who walked to work and used no other means of transportation.
Persons working on a farm where he or she lived, or in an office or shop in the person's house.
Note that a respondent who was on a business trip during the reference week may report a means of transportation to work that does not seem reasonable for the place of residence, e.g., a resident of Montana reporting going to work last week by subway. There was no coding of write-in responses within the "other means" category.
Data on means of transportation to work have been collected since 1960. In 1970, the question referred to the means of transportation to work on the last day of the previous week rather than the usual means during the week. The categories for trucks, vans, motorcycles, and bicycles are new for 1980. Rather than using a separate question on carpooling, the 1970 means-of-transportation-to-work question specified "driver, private auto" and "passenger, private auto."
See also: "Place of Work;" "Travel Time to Work;" "Vehicle Occupancy to Work".
