Better data for transportation serves local communities by

1. reducing congestion
2. helping workers reach firms
3. helping firms find workers
4. promoting economic development and urban planning

The data needs for transportation planning in an ever changing economy are substantial - the data should ideally be current, local, dynamic and include information about both place of work and place of residence. The Local Employment Dynamics (LED) program dataset has each of the desired features. It is current - the data are available 9 months after the end of a reference quarter. The Program has developed confidentiality protection tools to enable information to be provided at a very detailed geographic level while protecting individual and business identities. The data are longitudinal on both firms and workers, permitting an analysis of economic change over time.

Summary

The Census Bureau has partnered with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics to evaluate the potential of the new data for transportation planning The project produced Origin-Destination (O-D) tables for two states - Florida and Illinois - at the block level.

In addition, for each residence block, the LED program produced

1. The number of employees
2. The number of employees in different wage ranges (low, medium and high)

And for each workplace block, the program produced

1. The number of businesses
2. The types of businesses (by industry)
3. The number of businesses in different payroll ranges (low, medium and high)

More Information

For more detail on the BTS pilot project, see PDF " BTS - LED Pilot Study" [PDF; File Size: 170KB] Ref: LED WD-2003-07 [PDF; File Size: 170KB].

The LED program is also developing maps for decision making such as that provided in Figure 1, to provide more insights into planning decisions, see PDF "Mapping Applications of LED data" [PDF; File Size: 601KB] Ref: LED PN-2003-03 [PDF; File Size: 601KB].