How has motor vehicle ownership changed in Australian cities for different age groups?

Sun 18 July, 2021

Motor vehicle ownership has a strong relationship with private transport mode share, and has recently seen declines in some Australian cities (e.g. Melbourne). In addition, we know that younger adults more recently have been deferring the acquisition of a driver’s licence (see: Update on Australian transport trends (December 2020)), so have they also been deferring motor vehicle ownership? For which age ranges has motor vehicle ownership increased and decreased? How might this have influenced journey to work mode shares? And how do changes in motor vehicle ownership relate to changes in driver’s licence ownership?

This post aims to answer those questions for Australia’s six largest cities, primarily using 2011 and 2016 census data, but also using household travel survey data for Melbourne.

But first…

A quick update on motor vehicle ownership trends in Australia

As I was writing this post, ABS released data for their Census of Motor Vehicle use – January 2021 (sadly the last motor vehicle census run by the ABS). I’ve matched this up with the latest available population data, and found a small but significant uptick in motor vehicle ownership rates in all Australian states in 2021 following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic:

Image

I suspect this uptick will be at least partly due to a massive reduction in immigrants into Australia – who I’ve recently found to have much lower rates of motor vehicle ownership for the first few years they live in Australia (see Why were recent immigrants to Melbourne more likely to use public transport to get to work?) and also probably low motor vehicle ownership – see How and why does driver’s licence ownership vary across Sydney?).

It could also reflect a mode shift from public to private transport, as people seek to avoid the perceived risk of COVID-19 infection on public transport.

But there’s another likely explanation of this uptick and it relates to ages, so keep reading.

What does household travel survey data tell us about motor vehicle ownership by age in Melbourne?

My preferred measure is the ratio of household motor vehicles to adults of driving age (notionally 18 to 84).

Using Melbourne household travel survey data (VISTA), I can calculate the average ratio by age group pretty easily, and the following chart also breaks this down for parents, children, and other people (living in households without parent-children relationships):

With 2-year age bands there is a limited span of age ranges for some categories due to the small survey sample sizes (I’m only showing data points with 400+ people). So here is a similar chart using 4-year age bands, which washes out some detail but provides values for wider age ranges:

You can see some pretty clear patterns. Motor vehicle ownership was high for households with children (peaking for ages 12-13), parents – particularly in their late 40s, and those aged in their 50s and early 60s in households without children. Average motor vehicle ownership was lowest for young adults living away from their parents, and for those in older age groups.

Unfortunately the VISTA dataset isn’t really big enough to enable significant analysis of changes over time – the sample sizes for age bands get too thin when you split the data over years or even groups of years. I’d like to understand changes over time, so…

What can census data tell us about motor vehicle ownership by age?

Unfortunately it’s not possible to calculate the ratio of household motor vehicles to adults using Census (of Housing and Population) data (at least when using ABS Census TableBuilder).

The numerator is pretty easy for the 2011 and 2016 censuses which classify private dwellings as having zero, 1, 2, 3, 4, …, 28, 29, or “30 or more” motor vehicles. Only a very small number of households report 30+ motor vehicles. Unfortunately the 2006 census’s top reporting category is “4 or more” motor vehicles which means you cannot calculate the motor vehicle ratio for many households.

My preferred denominator – the number of adults of driving age – is not available in ABS’s Census TableBuilder. The closest I can get is the “number of persons usually resident” for dwellings – and private dwelling are classified as having 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, or “8 or more” usual residents in the 2006, 2011 and 20216 censuses. Obviously I cannot calculate the ratio of motor vehicles to usual residents if there were “8 or more” usual residents.

(For the census data nerds out there: I tried to get a good guess of adults by using family composition, but it can only distinguish parents (who may or may not be of driving age), children under 15, and dependent students aged 15-24. And worse still, that doesn’t work for multi-family households, and you cannot filter for single family households as well as distinguish family types.)

So I’m stuck with household motor vehicles per person usually resident. And an obvious drawback is that motor vehicle ownership will be lower for adults living in households with children, compared to those without children.

Here’s the distribution of motor vehicle : household size ratios for Greater Melbourne for 2011 and 2016 (I’ve left out 2006 because too many households cannot be calculated). There are a lot of different ratio values, but only about a dozen common ratios, several of which I have labelled on the chart.

Sure enough, there were much lower ownership ratios for children’s households, and adult ages where children were more likely to be resident (generally mid-20s to around 60). Higher ratios peaked for people in their early 60s and then steadily declined into older ages, with most people in their 90s living in dwellings with no motor vehicles (if they are not living in non-private dwellings). For adults in their 60s, one car per person was the most common ratio.

I can also calculate the average motor vehicle ownership ratio for each age as an aggregate statistic (excluding 3-4% of households where I don’t know the precise number of residents and motor vehicles). Here’s how that looks for 2011 and 2016:

As mentioned, I cannot calculate this ratio for households where I don’t know the precise number of both motor vehicles and usual residents (or where I don’t know the number of usual residents, but do know there were zero motor vehicles). Across Australia’s five biggest cities that’s 4.1% of population in the 2016 census, 3.4% in 2011, and 10.4% in 2006 (but much higher proportions of younger adults). They sound like small numbers, but aren’t that small when you consider the shifts in ownership between censuses.

But there is another way to classify households with fewer unknowns – whether they have:

  • no motor vehicles;
  • fewer usual residents than motor vehicles; or
  • at least one motor vehicle per usual resident.

The benefit of this approach is that you can classify almost half of the households where you cannot calculate an exact ratio:

  • If a household had 30+ motor vehicles (very rare) but fewer than 8 usual residents, then it had at least one vehicle per person.
  • If a household had 4+ motor vehicles (quite common in 2006 census) and 4 or fewer usual residents, then it had at least one vehicle per person.
  • If a household had 8+ usual residents (about 1.3% of population in 2016), but 7 or fewer motor vehicles (93.5% of the 1.3%), then it had less than one vehicle per person.

Across Australia’s biggest five cities I can now classify all but 2.5% of the 2016 population, 2.3% of the 2011 population and 6.1% of the 2006 population.

The next chart shows the distribution of this categorisation for Melbourne (using Melbourne Statistic Division for 2006, and “Greater Melbourne” for 2011 and 2016). I’ve put the remaining people living in uncategorisable households (“unknown”) in between 0 and <1 motor vehicles per person, as it is likely households who did not answer the question about household motor vehicles probably had few or no motor vehicles (refer to the appendix at the end of this post for more discussion).

I have also removed people who did not provide an answer to the usual residents question (hoping they are not overly biased – they are probably households who didn’t respond to the census), and non-private dwellings (where motor vehicle ownership is not recorded).

The patterns are similar to the previous chart, with a double hump pattern of 1+ motor vehicles per person. There are some changes over time, which I’ll discuss shortly.

Unfortunately the unknown band is still pretty wide in 2006 – in fact I still cannot categorise around 15% of 20 year olds in 2006 (many must have lived in households with 4+ motor vehicles), so it doesn’t really support good time series evaluation between 2006 and 2011.

So how has motor vehicle ownership by age changed over time in Melbourne?

Many of the previous charts were animated over 2-3 censuses but there’s a lot of take in with different lines moving in different directions for different age groups. To help to get better sense of those changes, what follows are a set a static charts, and then some discussion summarising the patterns.

Firstly, the change in average motor vehicles per usual resident for each age year (but only for households where the exact number of motor vehicles and usual residents is known):

Secondly, here’s a static chart that shows the proportion of population living in households known to have 1+ motor vehicles per person for both 2011 and 2016 for Melbourne, and the difference between 2011 and 2016 (I’ve excluded 2006 as there were too more unknowns). I haven’t removed uncategorisable households from the calculations, on the assumption they bias towards lower motor vehicle ownership (as discussed above).

This chart shows very little change for children under 18, but also very few such households had 1+ motor vehicle per occupant in 2011 or 2016 so it’s not a very useful metric. Lower ownership ratios are much more common for households with children, so here’s a chart showing the proportion of the population living in dwellings with at least 0.5 motor vehicles per person, and the change between 2011 and 2016: (I used equivalent rules to classify households with 8+ usual residents or 30+ motor vehicles, where possible)

And finally, here’s a chart showing the proportion of the population living in dwellings reported to have no motor vehicles (probably an underestimate as I think many “not stated” responses are likely to be zero motor vehicles).

Each of these charts paints a similar picture. Here’s a summary by age ranges:

Age rangeMotor vehicle ownership trend
0-17Slight increase
18-26Certainly a decline, including around 1-2% more people living in dwellings with no motor vehicles.
27-45Small decline of around 2-3% living in households with 1+ or 0.5+ motor vehicles per person. But there was no significant increase in households with no motor vehicles, and average motor vehicles per person was relatively stable.
46-64Very small decline (around 1%) of people living in households with 1+ and 0.5+ motor vehicles per person, but little change in households without motor vehicles.
65+Significant increase in metrics of motor vehicle ownership, and a significant decline in dwellings without any motor vehicles.

So while overall motor vehicle ownership in Melbourne declined between 2011 and 2016, it was mostly in working aged adults, partly offset by family households and older adults increasing their rates of motor vehicle ownership.

And going back to the uptick in motor vehicle ownership in January 2021… recent immigrants to Australia have skewed towards young adults (particularly through skilled migrant visas). The massive reductions in immigrants in 2021 will mean the population contains proportionately fewer young adults – who generally have low car ownership, particularly recent immigrants. This slightly but significantly smaller number of young adults will no longer be fully offsetting those over 70 who are increasingly retaining motor vehicles longer into their life.

What about other Australian cities?

As above, I’ll present a series of charts showing the various metrics then summarise the trends.

Firstly, a chart showing the average ratio of motor vehicles per resident by age for all cities between 2011 and 2016 – for private dwellings where the exact number of vehicles and usual occupants is known:

To help see those changes, here is a static chart showing the change in average motor vehicles per person by age (I’ve used three-year age bands as the data otherwise gets a bit too noisy):

Here’s an animated chart showing the percentage of people living in private dwellings with 1+ motor vehicle per person:

There’s a lot going on in that animation (and the data gets a bit noisy for Canberra due to the relatively small population), so next is a chart showing the difference in population living with 1+ motor vehicles per usual resident:

As before, the threshold of 1 motor vehicle per person is not useful for examining the households of children, so here’s a similar change chart for the 0.5 motor vehicles per person threshold:

These difference charts mostly form duck-shaped curves with a slight increases for children, a mixture of increases and decreases for working aged adults, and a large increase for older adults (particularly for those in their 70s).

For young adults (18-30), motor vehicle ownership mostly declined in Melbourne and Canberra, but for Perth and Adelaide there was a large increase in ownership for those aged 21-39.

There was less change in ownership for those aged 40-54. On the metrics of proportion of population with 1+ and 0.5+ motor vehicles per resident there was a small decline in all cities, but for average motor vehicles per person, some cities declined and some increased. So perhaps the amount of variation in motor vehicle ownership narrowed in this age range.

Melbourne was mostly at the bottom of the pack, with Brisbane, Adelaide or Perth mostly on top.

To continue this analysis, I want to know whether these changes in motor vehicle ownership might be impacted mode share, but first we need to look at…

How did journey to work mode shares change by age?

Here are public transport mode shares of journeys to work by age for Australia’s six biggest cities, 2006 to 2016:

Public transport mode shares were much higher for younger adults in all cities in all censuses. Most cities rose between 2006 and 2011, but then different cities went in different directions between 2011 and 2016.

Here’s the mode shift between 2006 and 2011:

Most cities and ages had a mode shift towards public transport, particularly for those aged around 30, but less so for young adults.

Here’s the mode shift between 2011 and 2016:

Between 2011 and 2016 there was a mode shift to public transport in most cities for people in their 30s and 40s, but for younger adults there was a decline in public transport mode share in most cities, with only Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra seeing growth.

However we are talking about motor vehicle ownership, and declining motor vehicle ownership may be because of mode shifts to walking, cycling, and/or public transport. So it is worth also looking at private transport mode shares (journeys involving private motorised modes but not public transport modes).

To help see the differences, here is the mode shift for private transport 2006 to 2011:

There’s a similar curve for all cities, but different cities are higher or lower on the chart. There was a shift towards private transport for young workers, a shift away in most cities for those in their 20s and 30s, and smaller shifts for those in their 40s and 50s

And from 2011 to 2016:

Again similar curves across the cities, with younger adults again more likely to shift towards private transport in most cities, a big shift away from private transport for those in their 30s and early 40s in Sydney and Melbourne, and smaller shifts for those in their 50s and 60s.

What’s really interesting here is that the mode share and mode shift curves are similar shapes across most cities (except the much smaller city of Canberra). There are some age-related patterns of travel behaviour change consistent across Australia’s five biggest cities.

How did changes in motor vehicle ownership compare to changes in private transport mode share?

If motor vehicle ownership increases you might expect an increase in private transport mode shares, and likewise you might expect a decrease in ownership to relate to a decline in private transport mode shares.

Indeed when you look at cities as a whole, there is generally a strong relationship between these measures, although different cities moved in different directions between 2011 and 2016.

In this post I’m interested in shifts for people in different age groups. The following chart shows the changes in motor vehicle ownership and private transport mode shares for each city and age group: (note different axis scales are used in each row of charts)

However I’m particularly interested in the change in these factors, rather than where they landed in each of 2011 and 2016. So the following chart plots the change in motor vehicles per 100 persons and the change in private transport mode share of journeys to work between 2011 and 2016 for five-year age bands (noting that of course every living person got five years older between the censuses).

That’s a busy chart but let me take you though it.

There’s one mostly empty quadrant on this chart (top-left): for no city / age band combinations did motor vehicle ownership decline but private transport mode share increase, which isn’t really surprising.

But in city / age band combinations where motor vehicle ownership did increase there there wasn’t always an increase in private transport mode shares – quite often there was actually a decline. So increasing motor vehicle ownership doesn’t necessarily translate into higher private transport mode shares – for journeys to work at least. Perhaps increasing affordability of motor vehicles means more people own them, but don’t necessarily switch to using them to get to work.

The largest declines in private transport mode share occurred in city/age band combinations that actually saw a slight increase in motor vehicle ownership.

The cloud is quite spread out – which to me suggests that motor vehicle ownership is probably not a major explanation for changes in mode share between 2011 and 2016 – there must be many other factors at play to explain changes in mode shares across cities. Indeed, see my post What might explain journey to work mode shifts in Australia’s largest cities? (2006-2016) for more discussion on these likely factors.

What is the relationship between motor vehicle ownership and driver’s licence ownership?

As I’ve previously covered on this blog (eg see: Update on Australian transport trends (December 2020)), data is available on the number of licenced drivers by different age groups, but only at the state level.

I’d prefer not to be using state level data as city and country areas might wash each other out, but I’d don’t have a lot of choice because of data availability. (Licencing data is available at postcode resolution in New South Wales (see How and why does driver’s licence ownership vary across Sydney?), but unfortunately you cannot disaggregate by both geography and age.)

Here’s another (busy) chart showing the relationship between licence and motor vehicle ownership by age band and city, across 2011 and 2016:

The main thing to take away here is that most of the points are within a diagonal cloud from bottom-left to top-right – as you might expect: there is less value having a driver’s licence if you don’t own a car, and little point owning a car if you don’t have a licence to drive it. The exceptions to the diagonal cloud are mostly age bands 30-39 and 40-49, where the average motor vehicle ownership rates are lower because many of these people often have children in their households, and I cannot remove children from the calculation using census data.

But I can control for the issue of children by going back to city geography by using household travel survey data for Melbourne (VISTA, 2012-2018). The following chart shows the relationship between average motor vehicle and driver’s licence ownership for adults by different age brackets.

The data points again generally form a diagonal cloud as you’d expect. Higher motor vehicle ownership generally correlates with higher licence ownership.

The change in ownership rates by age are interesting. Children under 10, on average, lived in households where adults have very high levels of motor vehicle and licence ownership. Licence ownership was slightly lower for adults in households with children aged 10-17 (although this could just be “noise” from the survey sample). Young adults (18-22) then on average lived in households with relatively low motor vehicle and licence ownership. As you move into older age brackets licence ownership increased, followed by increases in motor vehicle ownership, with both peaking again around ages 40-69 (although not as high as households with children). Those aged 70-79 and 80+ then had significantly lower rates of licence and vehicle ownership, as you might expect as people age and become less able to drive. These patterns are fairly consistent with the census data scatter plot, except for the key parenting age bands of 30-39 and 40-49 where the census data analysis cannot calculate ownership per adult (just per person).

How has licence and motor vehicle ownership been changing for different age groups?

Across Australia, licence ownership has been increasing in recent years for older adults (particularly those over 70), and declining in those aged under 30 in states such as Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania (for more detail see Update on Australian transport trends (December 2020)).

The following chart shows state-level changes in motor vehicle ownership and licence ownership between 2011 and 2016 by age bands: (note different scales on each axis)

This chart also shows something of a direct relationship between changes in motor vehicle and licence ownership, with people aged 70+ having the largest increases in both measures (except for Victorians aged 80+ who saw a decline in licence ownership). Younger age bands often had a decline in licence ownership, even if motor vehicle ownership in their households increased slightly (on average). For those aged in their 40s, there was generally an increase in licence ownership but only small changes in motor vehicle ownership – including slight declines in most states.

Teenagers in the ACT were an outlier, where there was a significant decline in licence ownership between 2011 and 2016 that someone with local knowledge might be able to explain.

Overall the relationship between changes licence ownership and changes in motor vehicle ownership is not super strong. Increasing licence ownership does not automatically translate into increasing motor vehicle ownership. There must be more factors at play.

I hope you’ve found this post interesting.

Appendix: What about households where census data is missing?

The non-response rate to the question about household motor vehicles was around 8.4% in 2016 (up from 6.5% in 2011) and most of these were for people who did not respond to the census at all. Non-response was fairly consistent across age groups as the next chart shows. Quite a few people had a response to the question about number of usual occupants, but did not respond to the question about motor vehicles. Poking around census data, these people often:

  • didn’t answer other questions;
  • were less likely to be in the labour force;
  • were generally on lower incomes;
  • were more likely to be renting;
  • were less likely to have a mortgage; and
  • were more likely to live in a flat, apartment or unit, and less likely to live in a standalone/separate house.

So my guess is that they were less likely to have high motor vehicle ownership.

The number of “not applicable” responses increased significantly into older age groups, and I expect most of these will be people in non-private dwellings (e.g. aged care). I have removed people with “not applicable” responses for usual occupants and household motor vehicles as they are likely to be non-private dwellings.

The chart gets a bit noisy for ages above 100 as very few such people live in private dwellings.

2 Comments | Australian Cities, Brisbane, Car ownership, drivers license, Melbourne, Mode share, Mode shift, Sydney | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

Why are young adults more likely to use public transport? (an exploration of mode shares by age – part 3)

Wed 18 November, 2020

I’ve been exploring data to explain why younger adults are more likely to use public transport (PT) than older adults in Melbourne. This third post in a series looks at the relationship between public transport mode share and parenthood, the year in which people were born, whether people were born in Australia or overseas, and how recently immigrants arrived in Australia.

I’m using VISTA household travel survey data (all travel) and ABS Census data (journey to work only). For more detail about the data, see the first post in the series.

Parenthood

Are younger adults more likely to use public transport because they don’t (yet) have dependent children?

Consistent with previous analysis on this blog, there is a relationship between PT mode share and whether people are parents within family households. Here’s the data for general travel from VISTA 2012-18:

Parents were much less likely to use public transport than non-parents of the same age, with mums between 35 and 55 having a lower mode share (on average) than dads in the same age range.

The census tells us whether a worker did unpaid child care for a child of their own in the two weeks prior to the census, which I am using to distinguish parents and non-parents.

The following chart shows the proportion of working men and women who were parents, animated over censuses 2006 to 2016.

Parenting peaked around age 40 for male and female workers, and the proportion of workers who were parenting went up between 2006 and 2016.

So how do public transport mode shares vary by age if we separate out parents and non-parents? The following chart answers this, and also separates workers by whether or not they worked in the City of Melbourne local government area (a known major factor influencing mode shares), animating results over 2006, 2011, and 2016:

Note there is a different Y-axis scale for City of Melbourne and elsewhere.

There are a few really interesting take-aways here:

  • Parenting workers mostly had lower public transport mode shares than non-parenting workers of the same age, except for:
    • dads over 30 who worked in the City of Melbourne,
    • mums in their early 30s who worked in the City of Melbourne in 2016, and
    • mums and dads in their 50s who worked outside the City of Melbourne (who had low PT mode shares around 4-5%, similar to non-parenting workers of the same age)
  • Public transport mode shares increased over time for almost all age bands, work locations, and for parenting and non-parenting workers.
  • Public transport mode shares for journeys to work in the City of Melbourne mostly declined with increasing age between 20 and 50, regardless of parenting responsibilities. Other age-related factors must be at play.
  • For people who worked outside the City of Melbourne, the mode share profile across age changed significantly over time for young adults. In 2006 there was a steady decline with age, but in 2011 PT mode shares were generally flat for those in their 20s, and in 2016 PT mode shares peaked for women in their late 20s (and also had a quite new pattern for dads in their 20s).
  • For parenting workers who work outside the City of Melbourne there was actually a slightly higher PT mode share for those over the age of 50. Parents over 50 might have older children who are more independent and therefore less reliant on their parents for transport. This might make it easier for the parents to use public transport. However this trend did not hold for dads in 2016.
  • PT mode shares for non-parenting women increased slightly beyond age 55 for all work locations. This will include women who were never parents, as well mums with non-dependent children so might again reflect a small return to public transport once children become independent. It may also be influenced by discounted PT “Seniors” fares available to people over 60 who are not working 35+ hours per week.

Lower public transport mode shares for parents is not surprising – they may be more time-poor and need more transport flexibility to link trips – eg dropping kids at childcare on the way to work can be more difficult with public transport (although it doesn’t seem to impact men travelling to the city centre nearly as much as women – I suspect because women are more likely to be working part time and doing childcare drop-offs and pick-ups). Parents may decide that time saving and convenience moving children is more important to them than lower transport costs from using PT.

However, addition of parenting responsibilities does not fully explain why public transport mode share generally declined with increasing age, particularly for non-parenting workers.

But I’m curious about the changing profile of mode share by age over time. Could it be influenced by…

Birth year / generations

Does public transport mode share vary by age and/or does it vary by when people were born, with different mode choices by different generations? To answer this I’m going to look at mode shares by both age and birth year.

For this analysis, I want to compare mode shares of birth year cohorts over time. The exact composition of these cohorts will change over time as there are deaths, new immigrants, and people who move overseas. I can only easily control for immigrants using census data – so for this section of my analysis I’m going to remove people not born in Australia (I will return to look at mode shares of immigrants shortly). Of course some people born in Australia who worked in Melbourne in 2016 may have spent a significant time living outside Australia before a census so this isn’t perfect.

Firstly, here’s a chart of journey to work PT mode shares by age, work location, and parenting status across 2006, 2011, and 2016 for people born in Australia:

Technical note: I’ve excluded data points where there was a small number of commuters, or a small number of public transport journeys where calculations are impacted by ABS randomisation to protect privacy.

You can see the general shape of the census year curves are similar within each quadrant (with a little noise at the extremes of age probably due to smaller volumes), suggesting a similar relationship between PT mode share and age holds over time.

We can clearly see how mode shares have increased over time for age bands, including:

  • those who work in the City of Melbourne (top row),
  • non-parenting younger adults who worked outside the City of Melbourne (bottom-left), and
  • to a smaller extent parents in their 30s and 40s who worked outside the City of Melbourne (bottom-right).

There were PT mode share spikes at age band 16-17 (at least for people working outside the City of Melbourne), which is just before people can gain independent licences. Those aged 18-19 working outside the City of Melbourne had a much lower PT mode share than those aged 16-17, and PT mode shares were lower again for those aged 15 who are perhaps more likely to work locally or be driven to work by parents.

So is this a general mode shift over time, or is it something intrinsic to birth years or “generations”? The next chart is similar to the previous, but the X-axis is notional birth year (approximated by census year – age at census time, which will be within a year of actual birth years).

Technical notes: For this chart I’ve calculated the 2 year birth year bands so that the youngest birth band is for ages 15-16 in all census years.

Let’s walk through the quadrants:

  • Non-parenting, City of Melbourne (top-left): PT mode shares have increased over time for those born between the 1940s and mid-1980s, despite these commuters getting older (assuming the same people still work within the City of Melbourne). This suggests general mode shift to PT over time has been stronger than any mode shift away from PT due to aging.
  • Parenting, City of Melbourne (top-right): PT mode shares have increased over time for almost all birth years, despite getting older (although the membership of this cohort will change as people acquire and lose parenting responsibilities). This is the same as non-parenting workers in the City of Melbourne.
  • Non-parenting, outside City of Melbourne (bottom-left): Ignoring those aged 15-22, mode shifts are generally smaller and not all in the same direction. If there was a negative relationships between age and PT mode share, you’d expect to see a shift away from PT between 2006 and 2016 for all cohorts. But for those born between around 1975 and 1985 (younger generation X and older millennials) and those born between 1940 and 1958 (mostly Baby Boomers) there was a small shift towards PT over time, despite them getting older. However these mode shifts were in the order of only 1-2%. Those born between 1960 and 1974 (mostly Gen X) shifted away from PT over time.
  • Parenting, outside City of Melbourne (bottom-right): For people born between around 1955 and 1980 (baby boomers and gen X) there was a shift towards PT between census years 2011 and 2016, despite people ageing. However in this quadrant mode shares were pretty flat and low over most ages (except at the young and old extremes of the cohort).

Of course many people will move from the left column to the right column as they start families, and then perhaps back to left column when they have adult children who no longer need care, so this analysis isn’t perfect.

So are there generational effects on PT mode share? Between 2006 and 2016 there was a significant shift towards PT in Melbourne for most birth years, parenting statuses and work locations, with only non-parenting workers born between 1960 and 1974 and working outside the City of Melbourne shifting away from PT. So the answer is no – any impact from birth year appears to be very small, and was generally swamped by an overall mode shift towards public transport.

That analysis was for for people born in Australia, but what about immigrants?

Immigrants to Australia

Are people who immigrated into Australia more recently, more likely to use PT to get to work? The next chart provides a clear “yes” answer to that question. I’ve included parenting status and work location as known significant factors, and animated the chart over censuses 2006, 2011 and 2016.

While the lines appear to shift left, they are really shifting up or down (people’s birth year doesn’t change), and are growing on the left with new younger workers entering the labour market, and falling away on the right as people leave the workforce.

Time of immigration had a big impact on PT mode shares – with people who arrived in Australia in the five years before a census most likely to use PT to get to work. The biggest difference in PT mode shares was for recent non-parenting immigrants working outside the City of Melbourne (bottom-left quadrant). Perhaps if public transport quality was boosted in areas with many recent immigrants there might be less loss of mode share over time. Or the drop in mode share might reflect people moving to areas with lower quality public transport.

For those working outside the City of Melbourne, PT mode share quickly fell after arrival into Australia, and after around 20 years living in Australia immigrant’s mode shares are similar to those who have been in Australia longer (or were born in Australia).

The chart also shows that there are age-related factors at play (beyond parenting and work location), regardless of whether people were born in Australia or immigrated – although much less so if they are parenting.

So could it be that recent immigrants make up a greater share of young adults, and might this explain the overall average mode shares across age groups?

The next chart shows the distribution of working population in five-year age bands by year of immigration / those born in Australia. I’ve animated this over 2006 to 2016. While the chart appears to animate with vertical movements, people actually shift one column to the right between census years.

If you watch the chart you’ll see that the immigrant share of the working population under 45 years increased between 2006 and 2016, with strong surges in immigration after 2006. This will undoubtedly impact the overall mode share for younger adults, but it doesn’t explain all of the mode share variance by age. The previous chart showed age-related factors influencing PT mode shares, regardless of when people moved to Australia.

I will explore potential reasons why recent immigrants were more likely to use public transport to get to work in an upcoming post.

Can we now explain why young adults are more likely to use public transport?

So far we’ve established that the following factors appear to have a strong impact on public transport mode shares:

  • Workplace distance from the CBD
  • Recency of immigration to Australia
  • Parenting status
  • Age

If the first three of these factors are the most important, and age or other age-related factors were not important, then we would expect flat mode shares across ages when you control for the other three factors.

The following matrix-of-worms chart combines all four factors. But please note that the Y axis within each row has a different scale and doesn’t necessarily start at zero. I am really looking at the slope of the line within each matrix cell, so I’m not too concerned about the actual values. I’ve only shown data points that included at least 400 commuters, and I’ve removed some columns and rows where data was too sparse to show meaningful trends.

How to make sense of this chart? Well, if the factors of parenting, arrival year and work distance from the CBD explained all the differences between age groups, then you would expect these lines to be flat within each matrix cell.

On the parenting (right) side of the chart, many of the worm lines are indeed quite flat, with the exception of those who arrived between 2006 and 2015 and those who worked within 2 km of the Melbourne CBD. Even though many of these matrix cells only have two or three data points, most data points include thousands of commuters so I don’t expect much false “noise” in the chart.

Within non-parenting commuters:

  • There is generally either a relationship with age, or a very low and flat PT mode share across ages, suggesting age itself, or some other age-related factors were at play.
  • The relationship with age appears to be strongest for more recent immigrants. The Born in Australia column also shows a strong relationship with age but this also has the widest age range. The columns for those who arrived between 1976 and 1995 only contain 3 to 5 age bands (all 30+), which will partly explain why there is less of an evident slope in the line.
  • Age band 60-69 is often an outlier to the trend, particularly for those born in Australia or who arrived between 1976 and 1985, again perhaps related to discounted “Seniors” public transport fares.

So I haven’t been able to fully explain variations in PT use by age. Age itself may be a factor, there may be other age-relevant factors that are important, or more likely there are lots of complex interactions between factors that are hard to unpick.

The next post in this series will look at the impact of income, socio-economic advantage/disadvantage, and occupation on PT mode shares across ages.

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Posted by chrisloader

Why are younger adults more likely to use public transport? (an exploration of mode shares by age – part 2)

Sun 27 September, 2020

This is the second post in a series that explores why younger adults are more likely to use public transport (PT) than older adults, with a focus on the types of places where people live and work, including proximity to train stations, population density, job density, motor vehicle ownership and driver’s licence ownership.

In the first post, we found younger adults in Melbourne were more likely to live and work close to the CBD, but this didn’t fully explain why they were more likely to use public transport.

This analysis uses 2016 ABS census data for Melbourne, and data for the years 2012-18 from Melbourne’s household travel survey (VISTA) – all being pre-COVID19. See the first post for more background on the data.

Proximity to train stations

Melbourne’s train network is the core mass rapid transit network of the city offering relatively car-competitive travel times, particularly for radial travel. It’s not Melbourne’s only high quality public transport, but for the want of a better metric, I’m going to use distance from train stations as a proxy for public transport modal competitiveness, as it is simple and easy to calculate.

In 2016 younger adults (and curiously the elderly) were more likely to live near train stations:

Almost 40% of people in their 20s lived within one km of a station. Could this partly explain why they were more likely to use public transport?

Well, maybe partly, but public transport mode shares of journeys to work were quite different between younger and older adults at all distances from train stations:

Public transport mode shares fell away with distance from stations, and age above 20 (the 15-19 age band being an exception).

With VISTA data we can look at general travel mode share by home distance from a train station:

There’s clearly a relationship between PT mode share and proximity to stations, but there’s also a strong relationship between age and PT use, at all home distance bands from train stations.

Younger adults were also more likely to work close to a train station. Indeed 46% of them worked within about 1 km of a station:

And unsurprisingly people who work near train stations are also more likely to live near train stations:

The chart shows around 70% of people who worked within 1 km of a station lived within 2 km of a station. Also, 37% of people who worked more than 5 km from a station, also lived more than 5 km from a station.

But again, journey to work PT mode shares varied by both age and workplace distance from a train station:

For completeness, here is another matrix-of-worms chart looking at journey to work PT mode shares by age for both work and home distances from train stations:

PT mode share declined with age for most distance combinations, but this wasn’t true for the 15-19 age band, particularly where both home and work were within a couple of kms of a station. We know from part one that teenagers are much less likely to work in the city centre, so this might represent teenagers who happen to live near a station, but work locally and can easily walk or cycle to work.

If we take age out for a moment, here is the relationship between PT mode share of journeys to work and both home and work distance from train stations:

The relationship between PT mode share and work distance from a train station is much stronger than for home distance from a station.

So while home and work proximity to train stations influenced mode shares, it doesn’t fully explain the variations across ages. So what if we combine…

Work distance from the CBD, home distance from a train station

Work distance from a station is strongly related to work distance from the CBD, as the CBD and inner city has a higher density of train stations:

I expect workplace proximity to a train station to be a weaker predictor of mode share when compared workplace distance from CBD. That’s pretty evident when looking at journey to work PT mode share by place of work on a map:

And even more evident when you look at PT mode shares for both factors (regardless of age):

So perhaps work distance from the CBD, and home distance from a train station might be two strong factors for mode share? If we control for these factors, is there still a difference in PT mode shares across ages?

Time for another matrix of worms:

The chart shows that even when you control for both home distance from a station, and work distance from the CBD, there is still a relationship with age (generally declining PT mode share with age, with teenagers sometimes an exception). So there must be other factors at play.

Population density

Consistent with proximity to train stations and the CBD, younger adults are more likely to live in denser residential areas:

Higher residential density often comes with proximity to higher quality public transport. Indeed, here is the distribution of population densities for people living at different distances from train stations:

The next chart shows the relationship between residential density and mode shares – split between adults aged 20-39 and those aged 40-69:

The chart shows that both age and residential density are factors for journey to work mode shares. Younger adults had higher public transport mode shares for journeys to work at all residential density bands.

Similarly, VISTA data also shows PT mode shares vary significantly by both age and population density for general travel:

Technical note: data only shown where age band and density combination had at least 400 trips in the survey.

Curiously, people in their 60s living in areas with densities of 50-80 persons/ha were more likely to use public transport to get to work than those in their 40s and 50s living in the same densities (maybe due the presence of children?). For lower densities, PT mode share generally declined with increasing age (from 20s onward).

Population density is also generally related to distance from the CBD:

And here is a chart showing how PT mode share of journeys to work varied across both:

The chart shows home distance from the CBD had a larger impact on mode shares than population density. Indeed population density only seemed to have a secondary impact for densities above 40 persons/ha. However, as we saw in the first post, people living closer to the CBD were more likely to work in the city centre, and therefore more likely to use public transport in their journey to work.

Job density

Young adults were more likely to work in higher density employment areas in 2016, where public transport is generally more competitive (with more expensive car parking):

But yet again, there is a difference in mode shares between age groups regardless of work location job density:

So job density doesn’t fully explain the difference in PT mode shares across age groups.

I should add that job density is also strongly related to workplace distance from the CBD:

and workplace distance from train stations:

And putting aside age, PT mode shares for journeys to work are related to both workplace distance from the CBD and job density:

PT mode shares are also related to both job density and workplace distance from stations:

You might be wondering about the dot of higher job density (200-300 workers/ha) that is between 3 and 4 km from a train station. It’s one destination zone that covers Doncaster Westfield shopping centre – a large shopping centre on a relatively small piece of land (almost all of the car parking is multistory – see Google Maps)

Motor vehicle ownership

Are younger adults more likely to use public transport because they are less likely to own motor vehicles?

With census data, it is possible to measure motor vehicle ownership on an SA1 area basis by adding up household motor vehicles and persons aged 18-84 (as an approximation of driving aged people) and calculating the ratio. Of course individual households within these areas will have different levels of motor vehicle ownership.

Using this metric, young adults were indeed more likely to live in areas which have lower levels of motor vehicle ownership (in 2016):

But yet again, the PT journey to work mode shares varied between younger and older adults regardless of the levels of motor vehicle ownership of the area (SA1) in which they live:

Using VISTA data, we can calculate motor vehicle ownership at a household level. I’ve classified households by the ratio of motor vehicles to adults.

VISTA data shows PT mode shares strongly related to both age and motor vehicle ownership (I’ve shown the most common ratios):

You might be wondering why I didn’t calculate motor vehicle ownership at the household level for census data. Unfortunately it’s not possible for me to calculate the ratio of household motor vehicles to number of adults because ABS TableBuilder doesn’t let me combine the relevant data fields (for some reason).

The best I can do is the ratio of household motor vehicles to the usual number of residents (of any age). The usual residents may or may not include children under driving age – we just don’t know.

Nevertheless the data is still interesting. Here is how public transport mode shares of journeys to work varied across different vehicle : occupant combinations for households in Greater Melbourne:

Yes that’s a lot of squiggly lines – but for most combinations (excluding those with zero motor vehicles) there was a peak of PT mode share in the early 20s, and then a decline with increasing age.

The lines with green and yellow shades – where the ratio is around 1:2 or 1:3 – show a sharp drop around the mid 20s. I expect these lines are actually a mix of working parents with younger children, and working adult children living with their (older) parents. The high mode shares for those in their early 20s could represent many adult children living with their parents (but without their own car), while those in their 30s and 40s are more likely to be parents of children under the driving age. So the sharp drop is probably more to do with a change in household age composition.

If we want to escape the issue of children, the highest pink line is for households with one motor vehicle and one person (so no issues about the age of children because there are none present) – and that line has a peak in PT mode share in the mid 30s and then declines with age, suggesting other age-related factors must be in play.

But motor vehicle ownership levels aren’t only related to age. They are strongly related to population density,

..home distance from the CBD,

..and home distance from train stations:

And public transport mode shares are related to both motor vehicle ownership rates and population density (with motor vehicle ownership probably being the stronger factor):

Technical note: for these charts I’ve excluded data points with fewer than 5 qualifying SA1s to remove anomalous exceptions.

Public transport mode shares are also related to both motor vehicle ownership and home distance from the CBD:

And shares are also related to both motor vehicle ownership and home distance from a train station:

In all three cases, PT mode shares fell with increasing levels of motor vehicle ownership, but this effect mostly stopped once there were more motor vehicles than persons aged 18-84.

Drivers licence ownership

I’ve previously shown on this blog that people without a full car driver’s licence are much more likely to use public transport, which will surprise no one. So are younger adults less likely to have a driver’s licence?

VISTA data shows us that younger adults are indeed less likely to have a car driver’s licence, with licence ownership peaking around 97% for those in their late 40s and early 50s, and only dropping to 91% by age 75 (there is a little noise in the data):

So the lack of a driver’s licence by many young adults will no doubt partly explain why they are more likely to use public transport.

Consistent with VISTA, data from the BITRE yearbooks also shows that younger adults have become less likely to own a licence over time:

At the same time, those aged 60-79 have been more likely to own a licence over time.

But do public transport mode shares vary by age, even for those with a solo driver’s licence? (by solo, I mean full or probationary licence). The following chart shows public transport mode shares for age bands and licence ownership levels (data points only shown where 400+ trips exist in the survey data).

PT mode shares peaked for age band 23-29 for most licence ownership levels, including no licence ownership (there isn’t enough survey data for people older than 22 with red probationary licences – the licence you have for your first year of solo driving).

As an aside, there is a curious increase in public transport mode share for those aged over 60 without a drivers licence – this may be related to these people being eligible for concession fares and occasional free travel with a Seniors Card (if they work less than 35 hours per week).

So even younger adults who own a driver’s licence are more likely to use public transport.

But is this because they don’t necessarily have a car available to them? Let’s put the two together…

Motor vehicle and driver’s licence ownership

For the following chart I’ve classified households as:

  • “Limited MVs” if there were more licensed drivers than motor vehicles attached to the household,
  • “Saturated MVs” if there was at least as many motor vehicles as licensed drivers, and
  • “No MVs” if there were no motor vehicles associated with the household.

If there were any household motor vehicles I’ve further disaggregated by individuals with a solo licence and those without a solo licence (the latter may have a learner’s permit). I’ve only shown data points with at least 400 trip records in the category to avoid small sample noise (I am reliant on VISTA survey data).

Except for households with no motor vehicles, public transport mode share peaked for age band 18-22 or 23-29 and then declined with increasing age. So again there must be other age-related factors. However the impact of age is smaller than that of motor vehicle ownership and licence ownership.

Unfortunately driver’s licence ownership data is not collected by the census, so it is not possible to combine it with other demographic variables from the census.

Summary

So, what have we learnt in part two:

  • Younger adults are more likely to work and live near train stations, but that only partly explains why younger adults are more likely to use public transport.
  • Workplace distance from the CBD has a much bigger impact on public transport mode shares for journeys to work than home distance from a train station.
  • Younger adults are more likely to live in areas with higher residential density, but this only partly explains why they are more likely to use public transport.
  • Younger adults are more likely to work in areas with higher job density but this is highly correlated with workplace distance from the CBD, which is a stronger factor influencing mode shares.
  • Younger adults are more likely to live in areas with lower motor vehicle ownership (these areas are generally also have higher residential density and are closer to the city centre and to train stations), but this again only partly explains why they are more likely to use public transport. Motor vehicle ownership appears to be a stronger factor influencing mode shares than population density, distance from stations, or distance from the city.
  • Younger adults are less likely to have a driver’s licence, but again this only partly explains why they are more likely to use public transport.

While this analysis confirms younger adults tend to align with known factors correlating with higher public transport use, we are yet to uncover a factor or combination of factors that mostly explain the differences in public transport use between younger and older adults. That is, when we control for these factors we still see differences in public transport use between ages.

The next post in this series will explore the impacts on public transport use of parenting responsibilities, generational factors (birth years), and year of immigration to Australia.

1 Comment | Car ownership, drivers license, Employment density, Melbourne, Mode share, Urban density | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

Why are younger adults more likely to use public transport? (an exploration of mode shares by age – part 1)

Sat 19 September, 2020

Young adults are much more likely to use public transport (PT) than older adults.

Is it because younger adults are more likely to live and/or work near the city centre? Is it because they are more likely to live near train stations? Is it because they tend to live in higher density areas with better public transport? Is it because they are less likely to own a car? Is it because they are less likely to own a driver’s licence? Is it because they are less likely to be parents? Is it to do with their income? Is it related to how many of them are recent immigrants? Or is it a generational thing?

The answers are not as simple as you might expect. This is the first post in a series that aims to understand what influences mode choice across different ages. I’ll focus on (pre-COVID19) data about general travel and journeys to work in my home city of Melbourne, but I suspect the patterns will be similar in comparable cities.

About the data (boring but important)

My largest data source is the 2016 ABS census of population and housing which provides detailed demographic data about residents, captures the modes used for journeys to work, but doesn’t record travel for any other purposes and only covers a single day in August. There’s data on the travel choices of millions of people, and so it is possible to disaggregate data by several dimensions before you run into problems with small counts.

For general travel mode shares my data source is the Victoria Integrated Survey of Travel and Activity (VISTA) which is Victoria’s household travel survey, recording the transport and activity of a representative sample of Melbourne and Geelong residents across the whole year. The data set is smaller than the census (being a survey), but also contains rich demographic information and covers all travel purposes by people of all ages. I have used aggregated data over the survey years 2012-2018 to form a larger sample, so any underlying trends in behaviour over that period will be averaged out.

For this analysis I am filtering my data to either Greater Melbourne (for 2011 and 2016 census data) or otherwise the 31 local government areas (LGAs) that make up metropolitan Melbourne (all are entirely inside Greater Melbourne except Yarra Ranges).

All of this data was collected before the COVID19 pandemic, and of course travel patterns may well not return to similar patterns once the pandemic is over.

Consistent with elsewhere on this blog, I attribute

  • any journey involving a train, tram, bus, or ferry as a public transport journey (even if other modes were also used, including private transport),
  • a journey only involving walking and cycling as an active transport journey, and
  • any other journey as a private transport journey (mostly being car journeys).

This post mostly focuses on public transport – which I will often abbreviate to PT.

While the data sets I am using only identify sex as male or female, I want to acknowledge that not all people fit into binary classifications.

How does PT mode share vary by age and sex for general travel?

Here’s a chart showing public transport mode shares by age and gender using VISTA data for all travel purposes:

Public transport mode share peaked in the 15-19 age group – essentially around the later years of secondary school and early years of tertiary education or working life where people have more independence, may need to travel longer distances to get to school or university, and are too young and/or cannot afford private transport.

Public transport mode share then fell away with age, though the profile by gender is slightly different (some of this may be noise in the survey). Women under the age of 30 were more likely to use PT, but then they became less likely to use PT after age 30 – perhaps after the arrival of children.

Children under 10 years were least likely to use public transport, and there was only a small increase in public transport use amongst women aged over 65. Public transport use dropped considerably for those aged 85-89, and there wasn’t sufficient sample to confidently calculate mode shares for any older age groups.

How does PT mode share vary by age and sex for journeys to work?

Here is a chart of public transport mode share of journeys to work in Greater Melbourne by age and sex (using census data):

The chart shows women were much more likely to use public transport to get to work than men, particularly for young adults but also those in their 60s. Overall PT mode share was 17.7% for males and 20.3% for females. PT mode share peaked for females at age 26, and for males at age 24.

So what might explain the variations across age and gender? In this first post I’m going to explore the how mode share varies by home and work distance from the CBD.

Travelling to the city centre

We know that travel to/from the central city is much more likely to involve public transport, so here are general travel PT mode shares dis-aggregated by whether or not the trip was to/from the City of Melbourne (local government area):

For travel to/from the City of Melbourne, PT mode shares peaked around 50% for workers in their early 20s, and generally fell away with age, with females showing a higher PT mode share in all age groups (mode shares are only shown for ages 20-64 due to small samples of trips in other age groups).

For travel not to/from the City of Melbourne, PT mode shares peaked for teenagers and was very low for all other age groups, with only slightly higher mode shares for those in their 20s, early 30s, and early 80s.

With census journey to work data, we can increase the resolution to 2 year age-bands and dis-aggregate work destinations by distance bands from the CBD. The darker line of each colour is for females, the lighter for males.

Public transport mode share was much higher for workplaces near the CBD, and then declined with workplace distance from the CBD.

But within each workplace distance band from the CBD there was also a generally declining PT mode share with age, flattening out somewhat for ages above 45. While there was a difference between genders at all workplace distance bands, it was generally smaller than the overall mode share difference between genders for journeys to work.

How can these lines have quite a different curve shape to overall PT mode share by age/sex? Well, here is a chart showing the proportion of Greater Melbourne workers at every age who worked within 4 kms – and within 10 kms – of the Melbourne CBD:

Young adults were much more likely to work closer to the CBD than older adults, and women even more so (although they are not actually a majority of workers close to the CBD).

Teenagers were least likely to work in the City of Melbourne, which likely reflects their lack of qualifications for high-skill jobs that tend to locate in the central city.

The curves for men and women peaked at different ages, with younger adult women more likely to work in the City of Melbourne than younger adult men, which then flipped for ages 38+. This isn’t because of stay-at-home mums because the data only counts people who travelled to work.

Here’s another look at that data – showing the distribution of work locations from the CBD for age bands. Around 40% of young adult workers worked within 6 km of the CBD:

And flipping that, workplaces closer to the CBD have a higher proportion of younger adults:

Public transport mode shares for general travel (in the VISTA survey) were related to both age and trip destination distance from the CBD, with those in their 50s least likely to use PT for destinations within 5 km of the CBD:

So a major explanation why younger adults were more likely to use public transport in their journey to work is that they were more likely to work in the central city. However, when you control for travel proximity to the CBD there is still a significant relationship between PT mode share and age – other factors must be at play.

I’m curious – is the fact that younger adults (particularly women) were more likely to work in the city centre related to their…

Educational qualifications

Well, younger adults turn out to have the highest educational qualifications of any age group, with those in their early 30s generally being the most qualified (as at 2016):

Note: Supplementary codes includes people with no educational attainment.

Furthermore, younger women are generally more qualified than younger men, which could explain why a higher proportion of younger women work in the City of Melbourne, and therefore have a higher public transport mode share overall.

[As an aside: I find that chart fascinating – there’s been a generational shift in educational attainment which will continue to work it’s way up the age brackets in the decades ahead, resulting in an increasingly skilled workforce over time. Part of this will be skilled migration, part may be temporary migrants (eg international postgraduate students), and another part presumably reflects greater access to higher education in recent decades.]

Looking to the future perhaps this cohort of highly educated young adults will continue to work in the inner city as they age, along with younger skilled graduates, leading to more centralisation of employment in Melbourne as we become more of a “knowledge economy”? Or maybe the recent mass working-from-home experience of highly skilled workers during the COVID-19 pandemic will see more workers based in the central city but travelling to their workplace less often.

But back to the how education levels impact work location and mode choice…

People with higher educational attainment are more likely to work closer to the CBD:

The chart shows around half of workers with postgraduate degrees worked within 4 km of the CBD, whereas those who didn’t complete secondary education were much more likely to work in the suburbs.

We know that workplace distance from the CBD impacts PT mode shares, but does varying educational qualifications explain the differences in mode share between ages?

The following animated chart shows how PT mode shares for journeys to work vary by age for people with the same level of educational qualifications and working the same distance from the Melbourne CBD. I have animated the chart across workplace distance from the CBD bands.

If you watch and study the chart, you’ll see that there is a relationship between age and PT mode share for most combinations of educational attainment and workplace distance from the CBD. That is, age is significant in itself, or there is some other explanation for mode share difference by ages.

You’ll also see that public transport mode shares were generally higher for higher levels of educational attainment, with postgraduate degrees mostly showing the highest public transport mode share.

Here’s an alternative, non-animated view of that data. It’s a matrix of mini line charts showing PT mode share by age, for each combination of workplace distance from the CBD and highest level of educational attainment. You could call it a matrix of worms. The light horizontal line within each matrix box represents a 50% PT mode share, and the colours give you a rough sense of age (refer legend). I don’t expect you to be able read the mode share values for any age band on any line, but it does show PT mode shares falls with rising age for all education levels and workplace distances from the CBD (except some further out where PT mode share is just very low for all ages).

Here is yet another view: the relationship between PT mode share, workplace distance from the CBD, and highest level of educational attainment. I have roughly sorted the education levels by PT mode share, rather than ordering by level of qualification.

PT mode shares were not directly proportional to education levels, but I suspect this will be partly related to occupations – eg Certificate III and IV qualifications often related to trades where driving to non-centralised work sites is a more convenient option.

Those with postgraduate degrees generally showed the highest public transport mode share at each distance interval.

So we’ve explored work distance from the CBD, but what about…

Home distance from CBD

Younger adults were more likely to live closer to the Melbourne CBD compared to other age groups:

Public transport service quality is generally higher closer to the CBD, so does the fact that younger adults were more likely to live closer to the city explain their higher PT mode shares?

The following chart shows how public and active transport journey to work mode shares vary by home distance from the Melbourne CBD:

Public transport mode shares show a relationship with both home distance from the CBD and age – with mode shares peaking for ages 20-39, and dropping with older age bands. I’ve plotted active transport mode shares as well (for interest), which shows teenage workers much more likely to get to work by active transport – which makes sense as many of them will be below driving age and/or unable to afford private transport. Curiously those aged 70-79 who live in the suburbs are slightly more likely to walk to work.

Okay, but people who live closer to the CBD are more likely to work closer to the CBD, as the following chart shows:

Or another way of looking at it:

While the distance bands vary on each axis (more intervals for work distances from the CBD), you can see a very common scenario is that people’s work is a very similar distance from the CBD as their home. That is, they work relatively locally (for more on this, see Introducing a census journey to work origin-destination explorer, with Melbourne examples)

The following chart looks at mode shares for those who worked within 2 km of the CBD:

PT mode shares for these commuters were relatively high and flat for workers who live more 5 km from the CBD (those closer are more likely to use active transport – as per the bottom half of the chart). PT mode shares rose slightly with distance from the CBD for home distances 25-40 km from the CBD. But there was still a difference between age bands, with younger adults more likely to have used PT to get to work, regardless of how far from the CBD they lived.

So are there still PT mode share differences by age if you control for both home and work distance from the CBD?

Home AND work distance from the CBD

Firstly, here are PT mode shares for journeys to work by home and work distance from the CBD, animated over age bands:

Technical notes: the chart only shows mode shares where at least 200 people fell within the age and distance bands – which is quite a low threshold so there is a little noise – so please try not to get distracted by small differences in numbers. For teenagers and those aged 60-69, many combinations failed this threshold so are left blank.

The chart shows that work distance from the CBD is a very strong driver of mode shares at all age bands. Home distance from the CBD is much weaker driver of PT mode share – and only really significant for those living within 5 km of the CBD, and those under 40 years within 15 km of the CBD.

If the animation is hard to follow, here’s another matrix-of-worms chart. It shows PT mode share by age band – for every combination of home and work distance from the CBD.

The thin horizontal lines within each square of the matrix represent 50% PT mode share. While you cannot read off the PT mode shares for any age and distance combination, you can see that within each pane PT mode share either generally fell with increasing age, or were very low for all ages. That is to say, that home and workplace distance from the CBD doesn’t fully explain the relationship between age and PT mode shares for journeys to work. Other factors must be at play.

The above chart makes it hard to compare mode shares for the different work distances from the CBD, so here is a transposed version with work distances as rows and home distances as columns:

There’s not a lot of difference between home distance bands for each work distance band, except for younger adults living closer to the CBD and working in the city centre. This confirms the earlier finding that work distance from the CBD is a much stronger determinate in PT mode shares.

So in summary, younger adults are more likely to live and work closer to the CBD, and that is likely related to them generally having higher educational qualifications. While these factors generally lead to higher public transport use, we’ve found they don’t fully explain why younger adults have higher public transport mode shares.

Further posts in this series will look at other demographic factors that may explain these differences. Read on to part two.

3 Comments | Melbourne, Mode share | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

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