By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Lincoln County residents are doing a good job of staying home – better than the statewide average, according to analytics that Google released this week.
The location data comes from various apps installed on cellphones, including games, shopping and driving directions. The information is normally used by retailers and marketers. But now various technology companies, including Google, are sharing the anonymous, aggregated location data from users to estimate how effective people are at social distancing.
The data, which does not include personally identifiable information is broken down by state and by county. It could help health officials determine if public policies are working.
“It’s a key indicator in understanding how the overall patterns of people’s mobility changed,” Melissa Haendel, director of translational data science at Oregon State University told KGW(8) News in Portland.
The data suggests most people in Oregon are staying at home – and Lincoln County residents are doing an even better job of it.
Google analytics showed Oregon had a 51 percent decline in visits to restaurants, stores and other public facilities. In Lincoln County that drop was 62 percent.
Declines in other destinations included:
- Parks and outdoor recreation: Oregon 22 percent; Lincoln County: 53 percent
- Work places: Oregon 38 percent; Lincoln County 52 percent;
- Grocery and pharmacy: Oregon, 25 percent decline; Lincoln County, 29 percent decline.
We’re also better at staying home. Statewide home statistics showed a 12 percent increase in staying in place; Lincoln County saw a 17 percent increase.
The Google data indicates there was a significant decline in visits to places like restaurants, shopping centers and movie theaters leading up to and immediately following Gov. Kate Brown’s order on March 23 for Oregonians to stay home.
“Overall, it’s a fantastic indicator that people are actually being responsive to the recommendations,” Haendel told KGW. “Our region is doing pretty well — relative to the rest of the nation.”
Traffic plummets in Newport
Numbers from the Oregon Department of Transportation seem to back that up.
ODOT has dozens of automatic traffic counters on highways around the state. Normally compiled once a year and released to the public, this week it began showing week-to-week numbers on traffic volume on major Oregon highways.
On U.S. Highway 101 on the north edge of Newport, ODOT’s count shows that on many days after the governor’s March 23 stay-in-place order that traffic volume dropped by half compared with the same dates of 2019.
Daily vehicle counts in Newport were 21,500 on March 24, 2019, for example. This March 24 — one day after the governor’s order — they dropped to 10,100.
On April 8, 2019, the count was 17,000. This week ODOT counted 11,500 vehicles.
Counts were similar elsewhere in Oregon, according to ODOT’s automatic traffic counters. Traffic in the Interstate 5 corridor through Oregon was 52 percent lower on March 30-April 1 than for the same period of 2019, and 47 percent lower on Oregon Highway 20. ODOT’s numbers indicated that the traffic was even lower on the weekends in late March – 67 percent less along I-5 and 78 percent lower on Highway 20.
Not everyone, apparently is doing so well.
On Friday — during the third straight sunny day of spring — Gov. Kate Brown said she was not pleased to see a lot of Portlanders sneaking back to parks and playgrounds.
Brown admonished residents of Oregon’s major city, according to Willamette Week, saying they were failing to adequately comply with her stay-home order as the weather improved.
“Some parts of Oregon are doing better than others at staying home and practicing social distancing,” Brown wrote. “To all our Portlanders: As tempting as it is to be out and about, please remember that our No. 1 priority right now is staying home and social distancing.”
