Surviving commuting

American Demographics, July, 1998 by Jan Larson

Each weekday, Steve Angulo spends nearly three hours getting to and from work. The journey from his Stockton, California, home to his Sunnyvale office takes him through the rural farmlands of the San Joaquin Valley, past the high rises of San Francisco and the suburban hillside homes of the Bay Area, before giving way to the crush of communities that line the highways leading to Silicon Valley and Angulo's ultimate destination.

The 42-year-old executive has been doing the commute nine years. "I leave at 4 o'clock to stay ahead of the game," says Angulo. "Even at 4 a.m., it's bumper to bumper, moving at the limit."

Obviously, Angulo is not alone on the nation's highways in the wee hours. Each day, 100 million Americans settle in their cars for the drive to work, according to 1990 Census Bureau journey-to-work data. Mega-commutes, like Angulo's, are largely limited to the nation's most congested and sprawling metropolitan areas. In 1995, the mean commute to work is a considerably more manageable 20.7 minutes, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's 1997 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey.

Whether commute times in the most congested cities will continue to increase is a complicated issue. A growing population coupled with a static number of roads doesn't necessarily mean longer commutes. The biggest contributing factors are good economic conditions and increasing labor-force participation. People drive more when they have well-paying jobs and spending money.

The U.S. labor force is expected to grow more slowly between 1996 and 2006 than it did in the previous decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It projects growth of 11 percent, to 149 million participants in 2006, compared with the 14 percent increase seen between 1986 and 1996. If these projections hold true, strain on the nation's commuter routes could increase more slowly than in the past.

Even if the journey to work doesn't get markedly worse in the coming decade, millions of commuters are literally stranded in their cars for moderate to long periods, five days a week. Thirteen percent of U.S. commuters spent 45 minutes or more driving to work in 1990. And suburban edge cities continue to be the sites of most new jobs. In many large cities at rush hour, highways are clogged with both city dwellers commuting in from suburbs, and suburban residents returning from work in town.

In the largest metropolitan areas, more people are in cars for longer periods of time. Surviving that daily commute is an ongoing challenge for millions of workers. They're finding ways to make the most of it, often with the help of creative companies who are designing products and services for this captive audience.

People who drive to work are found just about everywhere in the U.S. Yet the truly stressed commuters are concentrated in a few metropolitan areas. Almost half of the nation's total population lives in 39 metro areas. In those areas, nearly 83 percent reported driving to work in 1990, most alone. In 14 of the 39 metro areas, more than 90 percent of workers used a private vehicle to get to work.

More recent data show where traffic conditions are thick enough to have workers stranded in their cars for significant amounts of time each day. An annual study by the Texas Transportation Institute examines roadway congestion in Texas's seven largest metropolitan areas and 43 others across the nation. Researchers use a complex equation to compute a Roadway Congestion Index (RCI) for each metro. An index of 1.0 or greater indicates that congested conditions exist widely across an area. An index of less than 1.0 suggests that average mobility within a metro is uncongested, although the area may experience pockets of congestion.

In 1994, the top-ten most congested urban areas were Los Angeles (RCI 1.52), Washington, D.C. (1.43), San Francisco-Oakland (1.33), Miami (1.32), Chicago (1.28), Seattle-Everett (1.25), Detroit (1.24), San Diego (1.21), San Bernardino-Riverside (1.20), and Atlanta (1.18). Detroit and Miami are also among the metros with the fastest growth in RCI between 1988 and 1994, at 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively.

Most of the other metros with escalating congestion had RCI values at or below 1.0 in 1994. Places such as Salt Lake City, with an RCI of 0.94, probably seem more congested to residents, even though drivers generally experience mobile conditions. Yet fast-growing congestion suggests these metros may be up-and-coming centers for future gridlock.

MAKING THE MOST OF DRIVE TIME

When people are in their cars for longer periods of time each day, companies have a greater window of opportunity to reach them through media, sell to them-thanks to cellular phones-and create products and services that make the commute a little more bearable. By the time long-commuting Americans leave work in the afternoon, many are probably thinking about managing the time that remains once they get home. Morning may be the perfect time to communicate with drivers through advertising, or help them handle telephone shopping on the road.