Community Results: Trip Purpose
In this section, we will analyze why people come to Chinatown and what are their trip purposes based on the survey responses. The first section will cover the top trip purposes coming into Chinatown. The second section (after gallery) will go in further detail of the top 3 trip purposes from the intercept survey.
Understanding the Trips
Chinatown may be small in size but it’s a vibrant and dense neighborhood filled with services and community activities for both locals and tourists. Our transit dependency analysis shows that a majority of visitors are adults or elderly, an important fact that helps us understand the types of trips people are making to Chinatown.
The primary purposes for people visiting Chinatown are: Retail Shopping, Work and work-related activities, and School. Figure 2 (it may be noted that survey takers may assume retail shopping is the same as grocery shopping) highlights the top trips for Chinatown’s visitors from the intercept survey, whereas Figure 1 highlights the top trips for the local Chinatown community.
To the right is an interactive map where you can click/tap on a zip code area to learn more about trip purposes from each zip code. The number under each zip code represents the number of responses from that zip code.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3: The blue represents the percentage of people who are reliant on public transit to achieve their trip purpose while the orange shows those who are NOT reliant on public transit to achieve their trip purpose.
Diving Deeper on Popular Trips
Retail Shopping
Retail Shopping is one of our top results, as shown in Figures 1 and 2 above. This can be explained by Chinatown’s rich and diverse range of shops, markets, and specialty stores, which both locals and tourists typically come to Chinatown for, where they offer great value for what the customer is getting. Another possibility for why retail shopping is the top result may be due to the choice of names. Chinatown has numerous grocery stores along its streets, and many people visit the area primarily for groceries, thanks to the freshness of the food and its affordable prices. Additionally, Grocery shopping is under the “errands” selection. As respondents may be in a rush at the bus stop while taking the survey, and they may have selected retail shopping to cover their grocery shopping, as they would appear to be ‘close enough’.
To the right is an interactive map where it’s only retail shopping by zip code.
Work
On the left shows the interactive map with only responses that said work. Chinatown operates many small businesses and stores in its streets. Every block and corner has a commercial store where merchants and employees work, thus it is not surprising to see many workers coming from outside of Chinatown for work if not work-related reasons. Some notable offices and workspaces in Chinatown include local non-profit organizations such as Chinatown Community Development Center and many others. Additionally, Chinatown offers a variety of other services, such as law, banking, and accounting, where many in the Chinese community seek as they offer their services in Chinese (Cantonese) where many in the community are not proficient in English.
School
The 3rd most popular trip purpose to Chinatown is school. Chinatown has more educational institutions than people may think. Chinatown is home to many schools, ranging from public to private schools. There are early education preschools, elementary schools such as Gordon J. Lau Elementary, dedicated Chinese schools like Nam Kue, and up to college-level education with the City College Chinatown North Beach Campus. With such a variety, it is not surprising to see why education would be one of the top trip purposes to Chinatown.
Same with the other results, an interactive map on the right shows only school trips to Chinatown by zip code.