Can I live in San Antonio and work in New Braunfels or
vice-versa? How many people commute from and into San Antonio each day?
Take a look at this map, using data from the American
Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, and see how many people
are answering those questions each and every day.
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| Journey to Work Data, 2009-2013 based on the American Community Survey counts for the Alamo Area |
With cities like New Braunfels, Seguin, and Boerne growing
each day, traffic and the corridors that connect San Antonio to the cities
surrounding Bexar County will continue to increase. Over 67,000 daily
work-related commutes in Bexar County originate from surrounding counties such
as Wilson, Comal, Guadalupe, Kendall, Atascosa, and Medina.
For hours every morning, cars stretch for miles on Bexar
County’s major freeways and roads, stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The U.S.
Census Bureau released new data (include hyperlink here) showing San Antonio
and the communities in the Alamo Area MPO study area are some of the fastest
growing areas in the country.
With this growth, traffic is expected. The average citizen
in San Antonio spends more than 38 hours stuck in traffic each year, an
increase of 58% over the past decade. With San Antonio’s low unemployment rate
of 3.2 percent making the city an attractive place to live or work, the regional
population is projected to keep rising. We know just seeing the raw data for
transportation can be overwhelming.
When we talk about tens of thousands or
even hundreds of thousands of trips each and every day, it can seem a little
disconnected from being behind the wheel and dealing with this traffic each and
every day.
Over the coming months the Alamo Area MPO will be producing more
infographics, like this one, to help our region tell the story about the growth
we are experiencing, the traffic we face, and how we are planning, together, to
keep everyone moving!
