NY-NJ-CT-PA Regional Commute Atlas: A Web App

Regional Commute Atlas: NY-NJ-CT-PA Commuters Working in Manhattan and Other Key Business Districts

This poster shows the “regional commute atlas” project I did during my summer internship at the Port Authority of NY & NJ. Please view the poster here.

Abstract

Over the summer in 2019, the Port Authority’s Regional Development and Planning Department created the Regional Commute Atlas, which is an interactive map visualizing each of over 2 million commuters working in Manhattan and other key business districts by the mode of transportation they chose on a typical day and by their trip origin. Inspired by the Racial Dot Map created by Dustin Cable, the Regional Commute Atlas adopted the dot density mapping approach, representing one commuter in a census track level geography by one dot with six color-coded transportation modes such as car, commuter rail, subway, bus, ferry, and bike/ped. Data displayed in the map are Part 3, Residence-to-Workplace Flow tables from 2006-2010 5-year CTPP and 2012-2016 5-year CTPP covering the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area.

The visualized CTPP data has served as the powerful and informative resource to the conceptual planning process for the replacement of the Port Authority Bus Terminal located in Midtown Manhattan. The data as visualized in the map effectively demonstrated the geography of commuting from west of Hudson River to Manhattan in two important aspects: 1) west of Hudson area has multiple travel corridors with different mode orientations, and its mode choice varies considerably by trip origin, and 2) there is a unique bus dependence in trans-Hudson transit market.

For the purpose of supporting the transportation infrastructure planning, the Port Authority initially created a conventional map using 2006-2010 5-year CTPP, which was featured on Citylab.com under the title of Mapping How People Commute to Manhattan. As the 2012-2016 5-year CTPP became available, the Port Authority incorporated the new dataset and extended the map’s geographic coverage from four states (NY, NJ, CT, PA) to subareas of Manhattan and other key business districts in a more user-friendly interactive mapping platform that allowed the display of changing commute patterns and the geographic catchment area of each district.

Port Authority tackled a number of technical challenges in developing this tool, including increasing the geographic accuracy and realism of dot placement, ensuring a realistic visual impression of the dominant transit modes, and achieving efficient loading times despite the large datasets. These efforts addressed initial concerns about the completeness of the 2012-2016 CTPP tract-level flow data by limiting the use of the dataset to visualization tools and geographic and modal distributions (rather than absolute flow volumes). The poster will include title, mapping team members, background context and uses of the map, snapshots and summary descriptions on the map products, data, mapping platform and methodology, and lessons learned.