Studies paint a grim picture for Virginia's beleaguered commuters

by Heather B. Hayes
for Virginia Business
December 2006

No wonder so many Virginians are constantly caught in rush-hour traffic. In all but two Virginia counties, more than 25 percent of workers commute to jobs outside their home counties.

That is one finding of Commuters in America III, a study conducted every 10 years by the Transportation Research Board. The study also says that, proportionally, a higher percentage of Virginians travel from home to work in a different county than do commuters in any other state. Overall, 51 percent of Virginians travel across county lines to get to their jobs.

The study's author, Alan Pisarski of Falls Church, also discovered that Virginia drivers are more likely to be involved in two significant commuting trends: The study showed a sharp increase during the past 10 years in the proportion of workers traveling "extreme commutes" of more than 60 minutes and sometimes even more than 90 minutes. In addition, the percentage of workers leaving for work before 6 a.m. has increased significantly. "We found that in some cases, workers felt it was worth it to leave extra early, get to work long before they have to be there and then sleep in their car," Pisarski says.

A major contributing factor to these trends is the large number of government agencies and military bases in expensive housing areas around the state. "People are adopting weird strategies to avoid sitting in traffic, and that's almost a perfect demonstration that the system is failing," Pisarski says.

The bad news doesn't end there. Another recent study conducted by the Center for Housing Policy (CHP), the research affiliate for the National Housing Conference, found that low- to moderate-income workers who bought more affordable homes in the outer suburbs end up spending as much, or more, money on transportation costs than they are saving on housing. The study says that in 28 major metropolitan areas including Washington, D.C., working families earning annual incomes of $20,000 to $50,000 are spending an average of $9,700 on housing costs but $10,400 on transportation.

Despite the results of the CHP study, Pisarski predicts that the cross-county life/work pattern will continue, thanks to the high-cost of housing, a desire among young families for more house for the dollar and regulations that ban new housing developments in areas closer to center-cities.

That pattern will have an effect on employers, especially as the skilled worker pool declines, Pisarski says. "They're going to have to accept the fact they're going to be drawing skilled workers from 10, 20, 50 miles away, and that means they going to be under tremendous pressure - especially from working women - to be more flexible, to offer more variable hours, more variable structures and more flexible working arrangements wherever possible," he says. "If they don't, they're going to have a hard time competing for employees."