Atlanta's Inner City Residents and the Journey to Work: A Summary of Three Transportation Surveys

ATLANTA'S INNER CITY RESIDENTS AND THE JOURNEY TO WORK: A SUMMARY OF THREE TRANSPORTATION SURVEYS Sanford H. Bederman* The journey to work by inner city residents has been the subject of numerous studies in recent years. Cities such as Detroit, Indianapolis , Columbus, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Tulsa, among others, have received particular attention by geographers. (1) Data sources pertaining specifically to travel to work exist for Atlanta, but they are complicated, difficult to decode, and almost impossible to map. Although the public expense incurred in collecting these data was enormous, they remain relatively obscure and unused by researchers. The three surveys summarized in this paper are the 1961 Atlanta Area Transportation Study (AATS), the Concentrated Employment Program (CEP) survey, and the Model Cities Transportation Needs survey . (2) Combined, they provide information for the decade 19601970 . Although precise monetary expenditures are impossible to obtain, their total costs are conservatively estimated to be over a half million dollars. Despite the shortcomings and the antiquation of the surveys, they demand review if for no other purpose than to furnish a sample historical source from which knowledge of travel to work habits a decade ago can be obtained. Considering their expense, this is the least that could be done. An additional purpose for analyzing the data collected in the transportation surveys is that it allows Atlanta to be compared with other large cities which have previously experienced academic scrutiny. Although some would question the value of another case study describing general patterns in yet another city, it should be pointed out that no geographical description of journey to work habits of the urban poor has been produced for a major southern metropolis. * Dr. Bederman is associate professor of geography at Georgia State University. This paper was accepted for publication in February, 1976. Vol. XVI, No. 1 63 A final purpose is to further sensitize readers to the problems of all urban researchers. If enough people demand that public agencies must cooperate and co-ordinate their activities with other public agencies, there is hope that in the future the urban researcher as well as the taxpayer will be happy beneficiaries. This paper makes no attempt at a comprehensive review of the surveys; rather, concern is focused 1) on the problems encountered in obtaining and utilizing data specifically relating to journey to work and 2) on summarizing the findings culled from the myriad of statistics. 1961 ATLANTA AREA TRANSPORTATION STUDY. To the researcher concerned with intra-urban variation the Atlanta Area Transportation Study of 1961 (AATS) is fraught with major problems. Its initial purposes were 1 ) to recognize and to correct deficiencies in the transportation system of metropolitan Atlanta and 2) to plan to meet the transportation needs of the future in the most efficient and economical manner. Unfortunately, by the time the survey data had been processed they were out of date. (3) Additionally, the original data base, a map of 280 origin-designation ( O-D ) zones was changed after the data were collected. Some of the resultant tabulations, therefore , use the old O-D zone numbers, while others utilize the new numbers. Because of the large number of O-D zones, the original base map is necessarily huge and cumbersome. When the base map is reduced to a usable size, it is illegible. In 1972 the Georgia Department of Transportation (DOT) commenced an "update" to the 1961 study. The scale and the number of O-D zones were changed again, and the data collected were not comparable to the earlier study; therefore, any chronological analysis is precluded. To its credit, Georgia DOT designed the 1972 update O-D zone data base to be compatible with the 1970 census tract map. This standardization allows for serious analysis because researchers will be able to correlate transportation information with the varied demographic data presented in the census, which could not be done with the earlier survey data. (4) Despite the data base problem the 1961 survey is an important source of geographically significant socioeconomic data. The total sample of the AATS survey was 64,200, or ten percent of the popula- 64 Southeastern Geographer TABLE 1 OCCUPATION, SEX, AND RACIAL COMPOSITION OF THOSE WHO WERE TRAVELING FROM...