Data Source: 2010 Travel Behavior Inventory, Metropolitan Council

Using the Metropolitan Council’s Travel Behavior Inventory, which is data from surveys of trips people actually make in this region, we can look at how travel differs based on housing type – and there are noticeable differences. This chart looks at all trips (not just a commute) made by residents of the central cities – Minneapolis and St. Paul – based on housing type. In this data set, multifamily housing includes duplexes, triplexes, apartments, condos/co-ops, and townhouses.

People who live in multifamily housing travel almost half as much as those who live in single family houses. Residents of multifamily housing not only travel less, but they make more of those trips on foot, on transit, and by bike than single family house residents do.

The proposed zoning for housing on the Ford site in St. Paul only includes multifamily buildings. Current residents of nearby single family houses worried about how traffic related to the site will impact them should be relieved their new neighbors are much less likely to drive than they are.

Skeptics can go hang out at Highland Parkway and Woodlawn Avenue near the Ford site, where a high rise apartment building is already neighbors with several other apartment buildings, and wait for the nonexistent congestion.

740 River Drive apartment building by older apartment building at Highland & Woodlawn, St. Paul