What do I see?

You can see the commute distance lines between work location and home location. The current dataset is limited to work location Census blocks which contain 1,000 to 15,000 employees. The data is filtered to only include employees who travel at least 24,000 meters (roughly 15 miles). The commute distance is also filtered on the high end to remove telecommuters. The high end limit for a commute distance is set to 100,000 meters or 62 miles. All distances are calculated as the most direct path between the two points. Travel distances therefore may be greater depending on the available highway routes between locations.

The map is pre-set to display the commute lines for all employees within the dataset who are between the ages of 14 - 29 years.

What can I do?

You can pan and zoom in the usual ways. The controls at the top right let you show and hide different map layers: Age Ranges, Earnings Level, and Industry Type. The Show option allows for turning on and off the background map and location labels.

What useful purpose does the map serve?

Residence to workplace employment commute data have a broad interest group including urban and regional planners, social science and transportation researchers, businesses, and emergency management and assessment.

What do the 3 colors represent?

The colors show the 3 distance ranges of commute to work lengths. The ranges are divided almost evenly across all 3 layer categories. Distance is derived from straight line calculation between the workplace and residence locations.

• The orange color depicts long commutes - any distance greater than 28 miles.
  
• The blue color depicts medium commuters - a distance less than 28 miles and 20 or more miles between the workplace and home residence.
• The white lines represent short commutes - distances between 15 and 20 miles.

What do the 3 earnings levels define?

• Low represents earnings less than $1,250 per month.
  
• Medium represents earnings between $1,251 and $3,333 per month.
• High represents earnings greater than $3,333 per month.

What is included in each of the 3 Industry categories?

Goods Producing is comprised of jobs in the following NAICS sectors:

• Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting (11)
• Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction (21)
• Construction (23)
• Manufacturing (31-33)

Transportation, Trade, Utilities is comprised of jobs in the following NAICS sectors:

• Utilities (22)
• Wholesale Trade (42)
• Retail Trade (44-45)
• Transportation and Warehousing (48-49)

All Other Services is comprised of jobs in the following NAICS sectors:

• Information (51)
• Finance and Insurance (52)
• Real Estate and Rental and Leasing (53)
• Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (54)
• Management of Companies and Enterprises (55)
• Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services (56)
• Educational Services (61)
• Health Care and Social Assistance (62)
• Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation (71)
• Accommodation and Food Services (72)
• Other Services (except Public Administration) (81)
• Public Administration (92)

Where did you get the data?

The data is sourced completely from the Census Bureau, specifically the LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES).

How was the map created?

The LODES data is processed and assimilated into geospatial files using Python. The geospatial data is transitioned into vector tiles using Tippecanoe. The tiles are stored on Mapbox. Leaflet is the main driver of the map utilizing Leaflet Vectorgrid to display the tile sets stored on Mapbox.

Who created the map?

Mark Cruse created this map as final project for the Master of Science in Digital Mapping at the University of Kentucky. You can learn more about this project by accessing Mark's github repository.

Learn more about the New Maps Plus program at the University of Kentucky.