Super Commuters: America’s Growing Workforce

Firefighters, vagabonds, bus buddies. Just a few names given to the new wave of people who spend more than an hour and a half traveling to and from work every day, the national average being 50 minutes. These new super commuters have increased over 95% since 1990, and the number only seems to be rising.

About 3.5 million people in the United States are termed “extreme” or “super”  commuters. That is one in six people who spend one month a year commuting. This has become a growing national trend as Americans are forced to take jobs further away from home. This drastic increase may be attributed to the recession. People may be less selective about where a job is located, so long as they have one. Dual-income households are also continuing to fuel the trend. It is rare that a married couple will find a job in the same location, one spouse having to settle for a longer commute.

While major metropolitan centers, such as Los Angeles and New York, help to provide jobs for millions of people, high housing prices make it increasingly hard for people to afford to live where they work. This forces people to move away from cities and into the “exurbs”–the suburbs of suburbs. This is especially true for the immediate suburbs of major metropolitan centers such as Los Angeles and New York.

People endure these extreme commutes day to day because they feel it is worth it. The long commute into the city is viewed as a trade off for something better, whether it be a bigger house, a higher paying salary, or a better school district for their children. According to USA Today, residents will literally get on the freeway and drive away from areas, such as Los Angeles, until they find a house with a mortgage payment that they can afford. This is termed “driving until you qualify.” It is not uncommon to see price differences more than 50% between housing near major metropolitan enters and that in the exurbs.

Today, the distance traveled by many extreme commuters even has them traveling through several weather zones–”from Pennsylvania resort towns in the Poconos to midtown Manhattan,” states USA Today. An increasing number of people not only travel through different weather zones, but use multiple modes of transportation to do so. Nick Paumgarten of The New Yorker spent a day in the life of an extreme commuter. Tracking the commute of Judy Rossi, a legal attorney working in Manhattan, he found that her commute totals 6 ½ hours a day. Leaving work at 5:30 P.M, and arriving home at approximately eight-forty, her trip home consists of “a subway ride on the E train to Pennsylvania Station (seventeen minutes), a New Jersey Transit train to Secaucus (eleven minutes), and a transfer there to a train that heads northwest to the end of the line, in Port Jervis, New York (two hours). From there, she drives across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania (thirty minutes).”

Some proponents of extreme commuting suggest that quality of life may also increase in the exurbs. Large lawns, fresh air, better schools, and lower crime rates are just some of the perks that may be offered to those living outside a city. While it may be worth the travel time for some of the perks the exurbs have to offer, it also comes with its downsides. The most obvious being the the length of the commute itself; the more time spent en route, the less time spent at home.

Studies show that commuters are on average much less satisfied than noncommuters. According to Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer of the University of Zurich’s Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, “a commuter who travels one hour, one way, would have to make 40% more than his current salary to be as fully satisfied with his life as a noncommuter. Commuting is stress that does not pay enough."

Whether it is an increase of people on the roads, a decrease in carpooling, or a lack of public transit, congestion is only getting worse in extent, intensity, and duration. While more mass transit, instead of freeways, may help to alleviate congestion, it may only serve to increase the number of extreme commuters. According to Alan Pisarski, a transportation consultant and author of Commuting in America III, building more roads or extending mass transit, essentially making long distance travel more accessible, will only entice more commuters to move further away from cities. “The real change,” Pisarski says, “will be when companies build away from metropolitan centers.” However, with the cost of housing in metro areas only rising, it is likely that the number of extreme commuters will continue to grow as more workers decide to hit the highways.

By: Mary Flannelly