Community Corner
Do You Carpool?: Carpooling Varies by Neighborhood in the Downers Grove Area
In 2011, there were 437,637 total commuters in DuPage County. Of those commuters, 33,985, or 7.8 percent, carpooled.
In an area of homes southeast of the intersection of W. 63rd St. and Fairview Avenue in Westmont, 17.5 percent of commuters choose to carpool to work, according to a Crain's Chicago Business interactive map that looks at carpooling.
This is far above the 11 percent average of carpoolers who make up the three million total residents in the six-county Chicago area who drive to work, according to the Crain's interactive map, which was compiled from five-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau 2012 American Community Survey.
Carpooling can vary greatly be neighborhood. Almost 4 percent of commuters carpool in a neighborhood east of Main Street and immediately north and south of Ogden Avenue in Downers Grove carpool while immediately to the west of that area, around 9.5 percent of commuters carpool, according to the Crain's interactive map.
Of those commuters, 359,499, or 82 percent, drove alone to work; 33,985, or 7.8 percent, carpooled; and 30,394, or 6.9 percent, chose to take public transit, according to the CMAP data, which was pulled from the 2011 American Community Survey, five-year estimates.
A Commute Options survey found the reasons commuters chose for driving alone included: 41 percent wanted more flexibility for running errands and emergencies; 40 percent found public transit inconvenient and 12 percent reported telework was impractical or unsupported, according to data compiled by the Metropolitan Planning Council and the January 2014 DuPage Energy Summit.
See how carpooling varies by neighborhood throughout the Chicago suburbs on the Crain's website.
How do you get to work each day? Do you carpool? Tell us why you have chosen to — or not to — in the comments section.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
