TRANSPORT
DATABOOK

Commute mode share data: 2020–2024 American Community Survey 5-year estimates, US Census Bureau. Tract boundaries: US Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2020. Rail transit lines and stations: © OpenRailwayMap contributors, based on OpenStreetMap data. The rail overlay shows track currently in passenger service only: all subway, light rail, and tram lines, plus main and branch heavy-rail track carrying at least one mapped passenger route (which excludes freight-only corridors, yard leads, and industrial spurs). Because heavy-rail passenger service is inferred from OpenStreetMap route relations, an unmapped route may leave a passenger line hidden. Stations appear once zoomed in past the metro scale. Mode share is the share of workers 16+ years who usually commute by the selected mode. Population density is total tract population divided by the tract’s land area, in people per square mile; land area excludes water, so a tract fronting a lake or river is not diluted by it. Job counts are total primary jobs by workplace from the US Census Bureau LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES, 2023), and job density is those jobs over the same land area. “Pop + Jobs” is activity density: residents plus jobs per square mile, which credits both where people live and where they work. Job data are unavailable for a small number of water and special-purpose tracts, which appear gray under the job and combined measures. Connecticut is a special case: the LODES file still keys its tracts to the state’s eight abolished counties, while the commute and boundary data use the nine planning regions that replaced them in 2022. Because the six-digit tract codes themselves are unchanged and unique statewide, job counts are matched to Connecticut tracts on tract code rather than full GEOID. The “density sufficient for” overlays outline in pink every tract meeting the minimum residential or employment density associated with each service type — 7.5 people or 10 jobs per acre for bus, 38 people or 40 jobs per acre for light rail, and 50 people or 100 jobs per acre for rapid transit — drawn from the Federal Transit Administration’s Report No. 0056. That report expresses its residential thresholds in dwelling units per acre; the population figures here assume 1.5 people per housing unit. Thresholds are converted at 640 acres per square mile, and describe density alone rather than the many other factors that shape whether a given service is warranted. Gray tracts indicate no data available.