Trend Observations: Commuters from Suburbs to Cities
Written by Irene Ma
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 09:25
In America, the development of suburbs has become a central reason for the movement of people to areas more suitable for “family-living” and further away from metropolitan cities and jobs. As cities sprawl and suburbs grow, the amount of commuters in America has risen by a significant amount. According to Alan Pisarski’s Commuting in America, the average travel time from home to work in the U.S. has grown from 21.7 minutes in 1980 to 25.5 minutes in 2000. Today, more than 10 million workers commute for more than 60 minutes one way and about 3.3 million people travel 90 minutes or more one way. Keep in mind that this includes all methods of transportation – by car, public transportation, bike, etc. While the fact that commuters have risen in number is widely known and accepted, the common conception that most people travel from suburbs to cities is slowly being challenged.
Several trends in commuting have emerged over the past couple of decades. The general trend across America has been that bigger cities generally mean longer commutes. Smaller cities such as Phoenix and Minneapolis have more spread-out employers. Big companies such as General Mills and 3M are both located in the suburbs of Minneapolis, providing employees with shorter commute times.* However, there is evidence that jobs are going to the suburbs even in big cities. The case is especially true for wealthier suburbs that host office plazas or parks. Robert Cervero, professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, claims that these suburbs like office parks because they generate tax revenue and dislike rental housing since poorer people do not bring in much tax revenue but still require expensive public services such as education.
“Reverse commuting”, the term coined for city-to-suburb commutes, has been on the rise because of this distancing of companies away from the city. However, there exists a trade-off that comes with spread-out employers. As jobs follow workers to the suburbs, heavy traffic also becomes more widespread not only because of the growth of city-to-suburb commuting but also because of the emergence of suburb-to-suburb commuting. According to Commuting in America, between 1990 and 2000, reverse commutes accounted for 20% of the growth in commuting and suburb-to-suburb commutes accounted for 46% of the growth. Meanwhile, traditional suburb-to-city commutes accounted for only 14% of the growth. Christopher B. Leinberger, a visiting fellow at Brookings Institution in Washington has observed the increase in demand for walkable communities near jobs and public transportation in suburbs. Shortly put, Americans have increased their demand for convenience, giving the rise of widespread jobs.
Even if someone is wealthier, it does not necessarily mean that they desire or will choose to live in the cities. Some households may opt to live in the suburbs even though they may be able to afford more expensive housing in the city and a shorter commute time. Some reasons include the quality of lower division public schooling, which is more often poorer in the cities, and the amount of private space vs. public space. Cities are more crowded, piling homes on top of each other in tall buildings, while suburbs offer larger homes with spacious backyards. Also, white-collar workers most likely have two “bread-winners” in their family. Chances are that not both of them have the luck of finding high-paying jobs in the same city. The reasoning follows that at least one of them needs to commute a further distance. Also, mobility costs of moving homes given the poor real-estate market forces people who change jobs to commute even longer. Evidence shows that people who change jobs would prefer commuting further than relocating their homes.
A study done by Seattle’s PayScale.com, which measures real-time salaries of individuals, suggests that the richer you are, the further you live, and thus the longer your commute time. In New York City, commute times climb as annual salaries rise and there is not as great of a wage differential for people who earn more than $110,000 a year. The commute time peak measured in annual salary depends on the city. For example, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area has a peak commute time at $metropolitan area has a peak commute time at only $30,000. While the commute time peaks are different, this finding that wage differentials suggest different commute times is the same across all cities in America. However, though someone richer may have more choice to where he lives, he has less choice of where he works. Again, there are trade-offs.
With the economic downturn, people may be scrambling to get jobs that they may not have considered before. Any job is better than no job. Unemployed persons without jobs may even consider commuting longer distances for a job, which may contribute to the rising commute rates in America. Though Americans commute long distances to work, commuting from suburbs to cities is not always the norm.
