I've made a couple new maps for all my map nerd friends.
The first one I really like. It's got the commute mode share of walking, bicycling, and transit all grouped together so we can see what neighborhoods are the least (and most) car-dependent:
Here's the link to a full-sized map.
For those interested in embedding the map on their own site, you'll want to go here, click the tab that says "LA County," pull down the tab that says "Publish," and copy from there. The embedded map will show whatever you're looking at when you hit "Publish" -- in my case I was viewing Los Angeles, for example -- so keep that in mind if you want to highlight a specific area.
The most car-free neighborhood of them all (census tract 2089.02) can be found right on top of Westlake/MacArthur Park station, where nearly 80 percent of residents use public transit for their commute. Long Beach also has an impressive concentration of non-car uses, as does the area around North Hollywood and Van Nuys.
Downtown LA is essentially surrounded by census tracts where the majority of residents get to work by foot, bike, bus, or train, but the core is curiously hollowed out by this metric: the most central, transit-accessible part of Downtown -- the area from Pershing Square to Staples Center -- has a non-car mode share of under 30 percent. Apparently most of the people living in this part of Downtown aren't also working in the area, and despite the wealth of transportation options available to them, they're still choosing to use their cars to get to work wherever they're going. Hopefully that starts to change in the coming years.
The other map is of the commuter mode share for walkers, below:
And the full-sized map.
Here we see a definite mode shift toward walking in Downtown, which isn't surprising given its recent ranking as the Most Walkable Neighborhood in Los Angeles. Long Beach again does pretty well, along with Hollywood, Glendale, Pasadena, and the area around UCLA.
Both of these maps also show a clear relationship between Downtown and USC, so let me reiterate one more time that you should really visit this petition and support the MyFigueroa project to better connect these two important communities. They're already leading the county in transit use, bicycling, and walking, and it's time to give them the infrastructure that makes those choices safer and more convenient.
UPDATE:
A commenter asked me to include a map of the absolute number of non-car commuters per census tract, rather than a population-weighted percentage. That map is below:
And once again, the full-sized map.