New 5-year estimates from the American Community Survey are out, which give everyone the first update of Census tract-level data since the 2000 Census.  If you haven’t explored the New York Times Mapping America tool for some of the broader trends (race, income, housing and education), make sure to check it out.

I pulled out some journey to work data (mode and travel time) for the seven county Twin Cities area since the New York Times didn’t include any transportation information and I was curious.  I’ll be sharing some interesting things I find over the next week.  You can download my raw data set here.

The first thing I looked at was simply the change in mode share for travel to work for the metro as a whole.  Mode share increased for working at home (which could be telecommuting) and bicycling.  Mode share for telecommuting rose almost 3/4 of a percent, while bicycling was up a little less than 1/2 of a percent.  However, if you look at change in total commuters for each mode, the number of cycling commuters increased over 90% since 2000, while the number of telecommuters increased 25%.  Driving alone, carpooling and walking all lost mode share, noticeably, carpooling was down over 1 percentage point.  Transit stayed nearly static.

Next time I’ll dive a little deeper into these changes in bike and telecommuting mode share and map how changes are happening across the metro.