WRCOG Travel Survey
August 3, 2022
WRCOG Background
• WRCOG is a regional agency
• Joint Powers Association (JPA) composed of 18 cities, Riverside County, 2 water districts, and the Superintendent of Schools
• Formed in 1991
• City of Corona is a long-time WRCOG member agency
• Current WRCOG representative is Councilmember Jacque Casillas My Background
• WRCOG’s Deputy Executive Director
• Oversee the Transportation & Planning Department
• One of my main responsibilities is the TUMF Program
• Worked in Transportation Planning/Engineering since 1995 • Lived in the Temescal Valley since 2005
WRCOG Travel Survey
• WRCOG was asked by the WRCOG Technical Advisory Committee (City Managers committee) to study travel behavior in the WRCOG subregion • We used “Big Data” to look at daily travel in 2019 and 2021 • We wanted to look at data before-and-after 2020 to ensure any COVID-related effects were included in the analysis
• Big Data is a compilation of cell phone, GPS vehicle tracking, and other data sets • 100 million records in the data for the two study years Study Background
• Primary data source is the Streetlight Data platform
• Streetlight Data is a web-based data platform and not actual data from streetlights • Uses cell phone locational data to track trips based on travel patterns of persons with cell phones
• 100 million trip records
• Each trip record is a two-way trip
• For example: home to work / work to home
• Pre-COVID and Post-COVID analysis
• Trip distributions and percentages were remarkably similar • Overall number of trips went down between 2019 and 2021 What does the analysis cover?
• The origin of trips traveling into the boundaries of each member jurisdiction • The destination of trips traveling from each member jurisdiction • Commute trip distances
• Trip type
• Trip distribution to-and-from each member agency during the p.m. peak hour • Prepared city level summaries, as well as summaries for each Supervisorial District • Also prepared summaries at the TUMF Zone level
What did the analysis find?
• Approximately 90% of all trips recorded made in the WRCOG subregion start-andend in the WRCOG subregion • Only 10% of the trips recorded had either an origin or a destination outside of the WRCOG subregion
• Majority of trips with a destination outside of the subregion went to San Bernardino County (more than LA, OC, and SD combined)
• Majority of trips were non-work trips
• Trips to / from shopping, eating, and school
• Majority of trips either stayed in their home jurisdiction or traveled to an adjacent jurisdiction
City of Corona Conclusions
• 51% of all trips stay within the City
• 15% of all trips leave the County
• LA County- 3%
• Orange County- 7%
• San Bernardino County- 5%
• 46% of trips are not work-related
• School
• Shopping
• Eating
• 22% of trips to/from the City of Corona come from Riverside or adjacent unincorporated County
Policy Considerations
• #1- Corona is a regional travel destination for work and non-work trips • #2- Most common trip type is non-work home based trips • Eating, shopping, and school
• #3- People from Corona do travel to Los Angeles and Orange County • More people traveling to San Bernardino County than LA County • #4- More people traveling to/from the City of Riverside than Orange County on a daily basis
Concluding Thoughts
• Important that we base our policy decisions on the best available data • Big Data provides an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of how-and-where we travel
• Travel behavior is more complex than just people traveling to-and-from work • In the end, traffic congestion is truly a regional issue