Source: Oregon Department of Transportation Read this document

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Over 1 million people in the Portland metro area commuted to work as of 2016. This is about 80,000 more workers than in 2010, and the area is feeling it: Multnomah County has one of the longest reported commute times in the state. The image above is from a 2016 report by the Oregon Department of Transportation that documents the scope of congestion problems in the region.



But an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive shows that your commute could have gotten even worse.



Read on to see why.

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Most workers who live in the Portland metro area drive alone to work



Like most of the country, most Portland-area workers drive alone to work, but at a rate well below the national average.



Data in the following chart, and others below, came from American Community Survey tables for Portland and the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro Metro Area.

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Melissa Lewis

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City residents have an even lower rate of solo driving than the region as a whole

The chart below contrasts 2016 commuting patterns for city of Portland residents versus residents of the metro area as a whole.

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Melissa Lewis

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It hasn't always been this way

Just since 2010, commuters living in the Portland area have moved away from driving alone. The declines are small (about about 2.6 percentage points for the city, 1 percentage point for the metro area), but it isn't just noise. The gray bands in the following charts, denoting margin of error, are narrow and don't overlap, meaning the changes are statistically significant.

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This subtle change made a difference



That tiny 1 percentage point shift away from solo commuting in the metro area had a surprisingly huge impact.



Yes, newly arrived car commuters put 53,225 more cars on the road between 2010 and 2016. But the increase could have been 21 percent higher (64,566) if Portlanders kept jumping into their cars alone at the same rate as they had.

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Melissa Lewis

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Three forms of non-motorized commuting absorbed would-be car traffic



City residents changed how they commute the most. The chart below depicts percentage growth or decline in market share for each type of commute originating in the city. The gray bands convey margins of error. They are big enough that carpooling and public transit may well have stayed the same between 2009 and 2016.



The trends for commuting by walking, biking and working from home, meanwhile, are unambiguous. They increased in proportion, or share, of the ways people commute between 2009 and 2016, and by a lot.

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Melissa Lewis

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Bicycle commuting has increased significantly since 2009



It's an increase of just 1.5 percentage points. But that's big relative to the tiny market share bike commuting occupied in 2009, a 30% increase in proportion. This makes biking the fastest growing commute mode overall.



The raw number of people commuting by bike went from 14,000 people in 2009 to 21,000 people in 2016.



(Want to join them? We've written a guide for beginners.)

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Melissa Lewis

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Portland has more walkers than it used to



Biking and walking are similarly popular commute types in the city. The raw number of people walking rose by about 6,000 from just 14,000 in 2009, roughly the same pattern as with biking.



"Walkable City" author Jeff Speck told NPR's Marketplace in 2013 that "no city has put the thought into walkability what Portland, Ore., has." But the city still has room to improve. Officials adopted a plan called Vision Zero in 2015 to eliminate all traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2025, noting that pedestrians make up a disproportionate share of the victims. The plan's adoption coincided that year with the highest number of pedestrian fatalities the city had seen since 1998.

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Melissa Lewis

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Working from home is also on the rise

The proportion of workers in Portland who reported doing so from home grew by 25% between 2009 and 2016. In raw numbers, that translates to 7,000 more home offices than in 2009.

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Melissa Lewis

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Still, Portland has a long way to go to beat Seattle

Despite how far Portland has come in reducing reliance on cars, it lags far behind Seattle. The biggest difference is that a far greater percentage of Seattle workers commute via public transportation.

Although Business Insider recently reported that researchers ranked Portland among major U.S. cities with the best public transportation, there's clearly room to improve. TriMet's general manager Doug Kelsey noted last month: Because buses largely operate in the same lanes as cars in the city, they're consistently stuck in traffic the same way. One city plan proposes giving buses priority at traffic signals, but Kelsey says that should just be the beginning.



Portland makes up for that -- a bit -- with an edge on bikes.

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Melissa Lewis

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What if Portland commuters were more like Seattle commuters?

The following chart shows what our roads would have looked like in 2016 if Portland-area residents drove alone as little as Seattleites did.

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Melissa Lewis

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The conversation will continue, as it has for 100 years



Planning a better commute has been a popular pastime in Portland since forever. There will almost certainly be more vehicles on the road a decade hence.



But will the Census count their occupants as "driving alone" if the cars drive themselves?

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Portland Bureau of Transportation

Correction: The Oregon Department of Transportation published the 2016 Traffic Performance Report. An earlier version of this story misidentified the publisher of the report.

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