Most commuters still drive alone. Household incomes still track with neighborhood reputation. And the usual neighborhoods are still popular with young families.
But a few trends detected by the American Community Survey are changing the picture of Pittsburgh. The survey makes Census estimates in the years between the Census counts, and those recently released are an aggregate of a 10 percent sample based on 2 percent samples over the past five years.
These estimates are not totals of any neighborhood and are drawn from such a small sample that the first words of caution are to not take them as actual counts. They are big-picture indicators only. The margins of error can be great.
Nevertheless, when you see, say, carpooling numbers in the hundreds in numerous census tracts and compare them with public transportation use, your eyebrows lift a little.
The rate of carpooling among Pittsburgh residents is one of the few surprises among the spreadsheets on poverty, employment, family composition, age and gender and occupancy rates.
Numerous census tracts show numbers of car-poolers that are equal to or on the heels of public transit riders. The overwhelming majority are two to a car. Beechview, Brookline and Greenfield have the highest numbers.
The Latino population, which was reported as 3,425 in the 2000 Census, is reported in the 2009 Pittsburgh survey as 6,788. Again, the second number is not a population report but an indicator.
Of all the neighborhoods, Banksville has the lowest property vacancy rate while Esplen is half vacant, half occupied.
An interesting category is the median year that owner-occupiers in each neighborhood moved in. Four neighborhoods' median year was 1969, the earliest one based on the small sampling -- East Carnegie, West End, Ridgemont and Central Oakland, despite it being the heart of the transitory student universe.
The neighborhoods with the most intact families with children under 5 are Brookline, Beechview, Squirrel Hill South, Greenfield and Morningside. Boys outnumber girls in all but Morningside.
The neighborhoods with the most Ph.D. degrees are Squirrel Hill South, Shadyside, Highland Park, Point Breeze and Bloomfield, and the male to female ratio is relatively consistent in each case.
Allegheny West is one of few neighborhoods whose residents are disproportionately above the poverty level. More than half the people surveyed in Arlington Heights, the Bluff (Uptown), California-Kirkbride, Chateau and Esplen were living in poverty during the last calendar year.
Half those surveyed in Central Oakland were living in poverty in 2009. A large student population may account for that, as it may in the Bluff, which is the home of Duquesne University students and Allegheny County Jail inmates.
Median household income is highest -- more than $100,000 -- in one census tract of North Oakland, one census tract of Point Breeze, one tract in Squirrel Hill North and in the South Shore, whose survey numbers were drawn from a 2000 Census count of 56 people.
Chris Briem, a demography researcher and analyst at the University of Pittsburgh's University Center for Social and Urban Research, said South Shore's few denizens are in the lower portions of West Sycamore Street.
Neighborhoods with median household incomes below $15,000 were Terrace Village, Northview Heights, Glen Hazel, Esplen, Crawford-Roberts, the Bluff, Bedford Dwellings and Arlington Heights. The majority of those are public housing communities.
Per capita, Bloomfield has the most people commuting by bus and is the runaway leader among bicycle commuters. It is also one of the five neighborhoods with the most walking commuters. The others are North Oakland, Central Oakland, Squirrel Hill North and Shadyside.
The League of American Bicyclists reports that Pittsburgh made the fourth biggest gain of any city in the country in the number of bicycle commuters, up 200 percent since 2000.
Some of the data seem sketchy or downright head-scratching. For instance, no male in California-Kirkbride is reported to have finished high school but 25 have completed some college.
And some or even one person reported taking the train to work from Squirrel Hill and Greenfield even though there is no train transportation to or from there. Whether these are data collection mistakes, pranks or the people marked "train" to indicate that they take the 'T' in some portion of their commute is not known.
The American Community Survey was created to replace the old long-form questionnaire that one-sixth of households filled out for the decennial census. The 2010 census findings will be population statistics and are due out later this winter.
First Published: December 30, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
