Name: Cell phone data shows Bay Area remains extreme when it comes to staying at home during pandemic
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Cell phone data shows Bay Area remains extreme when it comes to staying at home during pandemic

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateWith vaccines now widely available and pandemic restrictions loosening, the U.S. is opening back up. But San Franciscans are moving more slowly to return to normal routines and get out of the house than residents of any other city in the country, according to mobility data.The Chronicle looked at how mobility patterns have changed for residents of different areas since the pandemic hit. We examined data from the Harvard-based research organization Opportunity Insights, which used geographical information from cellphones of Google users who had enabled their Location History setting.First, we looked at how residents’ total time away from home changed in each region during the pandemic, compared to a baseline period of January 2020.We also considered how many residents in each region visited categories of location such as “Retail and recreation,” “Grocery and pharmacy,” “Parks,” “Transit stations” and “Workplaces,” before and during the pandemic.Overall, the analysis revealed that San Franciscans had the greatest decrease in time spent away from home of any major metropolitan county in the U.S over the past year. The county’s residents spent, on average, 26% less time away from home in roughly the first year of the pandemic than the baseline period.Santa Clara and Alameda counties also consistently showed larger decreases in time away from home than nearly all other metropolitan counties: Santa Clara County residents spent 23.5% less time outside the home on average in the pandemic’s first year, and Alameda County residents’ time outside the home decreased by 21%. Those increases are far steeper than the U.S. average decrease of 11%.San Franciscans are now spending more time outside of the home than they were three months ago, when the city saw a major spike in cases and hospitalizations. But they’re still spending less time away from home than other metropolitan counties: As of early April, San Franciscans were spending about 20% less time outside the home on average than they were in January 2020, while the U.S. on average saw just 7% less movement.Looking more recently at visits to specific types of location, San Francisco consistently ranks lowest of all major metropolitan counties. In the first week of April, compared to January 2020, San Franciscans made 27% fewer trips to grocery stores, 49% fewer visits to retail and recreation locations, 67% fewer visits to transit stations and 53% fewer visits to work.Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.In fact, the only major category that San Franciscans aren’t currently at the bottom of are visits to parks. Visits to parks in San Francisco are down 26% as of early April compared with last January, but park visits are down even further in El Paso County, Texas; Miami-Dade County, Fla.; and Honolulu County, Hawaii. Google defines a park as official national parks, gardens, campgrounds and forests, but “not the general outdoors found in rural areas.”Santa Clara and Alameda counties, on the other hand, are actually seeing visits to parks increase this April compared with last year. Santa Clara County park visits are up 6%, while Alameda County visits are up by 15%.Susie Neilson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer, and Nami Sumida is a Chronicle data visualization developer. Email: , Twitter: ,Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateWith vaccines now widely available and pandemic restrictions loosening, the U.S. is opening back up. But San Franciscans are moving more slowly to return to normal routines and get out of the house than residents of any other city in the country, according to mobility data.The Chronicle looked at how mobility patterns have changed for residents of different areas since the pandemic hit. We examined data from the Harvard-based research organization Opportunity Insights, which used geographical information from cellphones of Google...

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Susie Neilson

Nami Sumida

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Cell phone data shows Bay Area remains extreme when it comes to staying at home during pandemic

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