HOUSTON – (By Dale King, Realty News Report) – It’s a bird; it’s a plane; it’s a super commuter.
Super commuters are the workers who spend 90 minutes or more each way getting to work. Nationwide, 2.9% of workers fall into this category, traveling long hours by car, bus, train or other means, according to a recent Apartment List survey. Very few super commuters walk or bike to work.
The Apartment List study, prepared by Chris Salviati, finds that commute times are increasing even when distances remain moderate.
Between 2005 and 2017, the share of American workers enduring 90-minute-or-longer commutes each way rose by 32%. That increase far outpaces the 9% growth for commutes under 90 minutes, the report notes.
The report includes county-level data for the entire country and offers an interactive map to highlight where super commuting is expanding most rapidly.
In the Houston metro area, the share of super commuters by county is:
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Austin County: 6.5% of workers are super commuters, the highest rate in the Houston metro. Chambers County records the lowest share at 2.0%.
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Brazoria County: 2.2%. The county includes the city of Pearland.
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Fort Bend County: 2.4%. Fort Bend is the wealthiest county in Texas and includes Sugar Land. It has been identified as one of the nation’s fastest-growing counties.
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Galveston County: 2.9% of workers are super commuters. The county’s population is about 335,036, with Galveston as the county seat.
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Harris County: 2.1%. As the most populous county in Texas, with over four million residents, Harris County is part of the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area, one of the largest metro regions in the United States.
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Liberty County: 5.5% of workers are super commuters.
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Montgomery County: 4.2%. Located north of Houston, Montgomery County covers roughly 1,047 square miles.
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Waller County: 3.3% of commuters are super commuters—about half the share it held in 2005.
Mode of travel affects the likelihood of long commutes in the Houston area: 11.3% of public transit users are super commuters, compared with 2.2% of those who drive.
By occupation, workers in extraction industries—such as oil drilling—have the highest share of super commuters at 11.2%, followed by construction occupations at 5.9%.
Apartment List explains that while rising super commuting is often linked to middle-class workers in high-cost “superstar” cities being pushed to distant suburbs, county-level data reveals other patterns. Super commuting is also common among lower-income workers who depend on public transit, and among blue-collar workers traveling to remote job sites in rural areas.
“We also find that super commuting is common in areas closer to the urban core, where transit-dependent workers may face trips of 90 minutes or more even when geographic distance is relatively short,” Salviati said.
He added that rural pockets with specialized industries can generate long commutes as well: blue-collar workers often travel long distances to reach remote worksites.
About Houston specifically, Salviati noted: “Counties with the highest super commuting rates tend to lie on the metro’s outskirts, farthest from downtown where most jobs are concentrated. Housing is generally more affordable in those areas, so people who can’t afford to live near downtown accept longer commutes to keep their cost of living manageable.”
The report points out examples from other regions to illustrate the patterns. In Elko County, Nevada—ranked 11th nationwide for super commuting—10.5% of workers are employed in natural resources and mining, compared with just 1.3% nationally, helping explain long travel times in that county.
Salviati observed that super commuters are concentrated around the edges of supply-constrained coastal hubs such as the San Francisco and New York regions.
Pike County, Pennsylvania, on the outer edge of the New York City metro, has the highest national share of super commuters: 17% of the workforce spends 90 minutes or more each way traveling to work.
But long commutes are not always about distance. Richmond County, New York (Staten Island) sits relatively close to Manhattan yet has the nation’s fifth-highest super commuter rate at 14.3%. There, commuters often rely on time-consuming transit combinations—bus, ferry, subway and walking—that extend total travel time. Elevated super commuting appears across New York City’s outer boroughs for similar reasons.
Aug. 21, 2019 Realty News Report Copyright 2019
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