County of Kern Traffic Analysis Zones

Shapefile

Description Spatial Attributes



Keywords
Theme: TAZ, Traffic Analysis Zone, Transportation, society
Place: California, Kern County
Temporal: 2004

Description
Abstract
The Census defines Transportation or Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZ) as a special-purpose geographic entity delineated by state and local transportation officials for tabulating traffic related data from the decennial census, especially journey-to-work and place-of-work statistics from the Census Transportation Planning Package distributed by the Federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics.  During the 1990 and 2000 Census geography delineation program TAZ boundaries were drawn by Kern COG in consultation with its member agencies and submitted to the Census Bureau.  The Census Bureau made additional changes required by their rules for TAZ boundaries.  TAZs provided in the Census Bureau TIGER File releases have always differed from those used by Kern COG for regional transportation modeling.



The primary determining factor for Kern COG in creating TAZ boundaries is to provide for adequate loading on the regional transportation model major street network regardless of what other census geographies are split.  Most TAZ boundaries are drawn to represent a vehicle flow sheds onto the major arterials of the regional road network.  Regionally significant collectors are also modeled.  One of the rules determining TAZ boundaries is that TAZs are subdivisions of Census Tract.



Kern COG maintains current year estimates and 30-year future forecasts of socio-economic characteristics by TAZ.  The characteristics include Population, Household Population, Group Quarters, Households, Income, Employment, and School Enrolment.   These forecasts are disaggregated based on historic growth and available land set aside in the General Plans of the 11 jurisdictions in Kern County.

Purpose
TAZ boundaries are used as statistical areas for modeling social and economic interactions in the regional transportation model.

_________________

Status of the data

Time period for which the data is relevant

Publication Information
_________________

Data storage and access information

Details about this document