A Nationwide Look at Immigrant Neighborhoods and Travel Mode Choice

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.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADD20 Social and Economic Factors of Transportation
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Smart, Michael J
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2012-1-22 to 2012-1-26
• Date: 2012

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 22p
• Monograph Title: TRB 91st Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Immigrants; Mode choice; Neighborhoods; Nonmotorized transportation; Social factors
• Geographic Terms: United States
• Subject Areas: Highways; Passenger Transportation; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01363282
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 12-2729
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Feb 23 2012 8:20AM