Chamber reviews residents’ commute

By Stephanie Kassab
Published: May 20, 2008

Charlottesville resident Timothy Hulbert travels about 4 miles to his workplace in the city. Hulbert is one of 11,230 people who both live and work in Charlottesville, according to data compiled by his group, the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce.

The chamber has arranged data from the 2000 U.S. Census to better show where people reside and where they work.

Chamber intern Alex Lamm, who graduated from the University of Virginia this past Sunday, undertook the project, titled “Commuter Patterns.”

“We wanted to compile the data so people could see where people were going and where they were coming from,” Lamm said.

The data are sorted for Charlottesville as well as for the counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Madison, Nelson and Orange, along with the Augusta, Staunton and Waynesboro area.

There are 34,702 jobs in Charlottesville, according to the Census data. About 13,886 workers, or 40.01 percent of the city workforce, live in Albemarle, and 11,230 workers, about 32.36 percent, live in Charlottesville. The remaining commute from neighboring areas.

There are a total of 20,323 employed residents of Charlottesville, and about 9,093, or 44.74 percent, work outside the city.

Of Albemarle County’s 39,137 working residents, about 54.82 percent, or 21,455 people, work in the county.

Approximately 51 percent of people who work in Albemarle commute from outside the county.

Hulbert, the president of the chamber, cited the importance of delivering this data in a clear manner.

“We believe all discussions need to be empirically based,” Hulbert said. “This is really a baseline. … Nothing’s perfect but the U.S. Census is not an estimate; it’s a real number.”

Despite the fact that many are commuting to surrounding areas to work, nonetheless, “we are one community,” Hulbert said. “Very few of us pay attention to when we’re going out of the city into the county.”