01363282

Component

Despite a process of adjustment toward automobile use, previous research has found that immigrants in the United States are more likely to use carpools, take transit, walk, and bicycle than the U.S.-born, even after controlling for relevant variables, and even after long periods in the United States. Others have found a positive effect of living in an immigrant neighborhood on the use of non-auto modes and carpools. These studies have been limited by two important factors: their narrow geographic scope, and their inability to test whether all individuals in immigrant neighborhoods experience this “neighborhood effect,” or if the effect is limited to immigrants only. This paper improves upon prior research by expanding the geographic scope of the analysis to a U.S.-wide sample using the confidential, geocoded version of the 2001 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) and the 2000 Census. The combination of these two datasets also allows for a comparison of the strength of the immigrant neighborhood effect on the U.S.-born and the foreign-born. The analysis suggests that immigrants within immigrant neighborhoods are far more likely to walk, bicycle, use transit, and carpool than are non-immigrants living in immigrant neighborhoods, though both groups are more likely to use these modes than are individuals living in non-immigrant neighborhoods. These findings imply that the “green travel” lessons that many may hope to learn from immigrant neighborhoods cannot be considered from a geographic or spatial perspective only, but that the social ties among immigrants within immigrant neighborhoods may play an important role.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADD20 Social and Economic Factors of Transportation

01362476

12-2729

English

22p

2012

Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Immigrants; Mode choice; Neighborhoods; Nonmotorized transportation; Social factors

United States

Highways; Passenger Transportation; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2012 Paper #12-2729

TRIS, TRB

Feb 8 2012 5:11PM