Twin Cities Transportation and Business Impacts

Project Description

The Twin Cities Transportation and Business Impacts Map (z.umn.edu/businessimpacts) illustrates how transitway and highway corridors had shaped Twin Cities business outcomes including establishment counts, sales volume, and employment size at the census tract level between 2000 and 2019. It also illustrates how potential transitway and highway improvements may shape these tract-level business outcomes in the future.

Related Materials

• Center for Transportation Studies
• Global Transit Innovations
• Data Axle USA (formerly InfoUSA)
• National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS)
• U-Spatial

About the values

The percentages shown in the app indicate the percentage changes in the next 15 years (between 2020 and 2035) in business count, sales volume, and employment size for small businesses in selected areas under three future scenarios:

• No Project: no transitway or highway improvements
• Transit: transitway improvements only
• Highway: highway improvements only

Note that the predictions were generated based upon the assumption that patterns of future changes are similar to those of the past changes. The small business category includes businesses that are standalone single-location firms in the retail (NAICS 4411-4543), food (NAICS 7211-7225), and personal services (NAICS 8111-8129) sectors.

The predicted values should be interpreted with caution for two reasons:

1. The predicted percentage changes are calculated based upon the assumption that future changes will follow past patterns which may not be true; and
2. The predicted percentage changes are point estimates which may not be statistically significant. Specifically, our models showed that the impacts of highway improvements on sales, employment, establishment counts were largely null. Interested readers should refer to the full research reports to obtain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the impacts of highway and transitway improvements on nearby businesses.

The transitway impact research report is available to view. Once published, the highway impact research report will also be available.

How to navigate the app

To find out business impacts, select the census tract(s) from the map using the selection tool located in the upper left corner. You can change the selection mode to select multiple tracts. Once selected, the tract(s) will be highlighted in purple.