The first of my weekly “special topics” posts, out every Friday. Let me know in the comments if there is something specific you’d like to learn more about. And as always, please share and spread the word. I am sure you all know a few “extreme commuters” who can identify with these statistics - share it with them!
Last month I wrote about the fact that high housing prices might be driving some people out of or away from the Inland Empire. The situation is complicated because, within California, the region boasts a relatively cheap cost of living. Thus, one way workers stay close to the economic opportunity the state offers is by moving inland and commuting to the major job centers – in Southern California, those would be San Diego, Irvine/Orange, and Los Angeles.
A result of this is that the Inland Empire reports some of the longest commuting times across major metro areas. About 7.4% of the region’s working households commute 90 or more minutes to work each day; another 11.1% commute between 60 and 89 minutes. Thus, close to 1 in 5 households is an “long commuter”, taking at least 2 hours total to get to and from work each day.
In Los Angeles, the statistics are 4.1% households commuting 90 or more minutes and 10.3% commuting 60 to 89 minutes. San Diego is lower than this: 2.4% and 5.6% respectively. These statistics are from the American Community Survey for 2019. The Inland Empire ranks 9th among 390 metro areas in its proportion of “long commuters”, while Los Angeles and San Diego rank 32 and 157 respectively. The top 10 commuting metro areas are in the chart below. Stockton, CA is #1 at 22.9%, and #10, just below the I.E., is Washington-Arlington-Alexandria at 18.3%.
Of course, commuting a lot does not necessarily mean something bad. But commuting in a car, alone, is not very comfortable and can be stressful for the commuter - not to mention the costs of transportation (gas, mileage wear and tear on the car, pollution, etc.). Many of the high-commuting areas in the table that are on the East Coast are blessed with much higher rates of public transit usage – for example, in New York City metro area, 31.1% use public transportation of some kind. The same cannot be said of areas like Stockton (2.2%), Vallejo (3.3%), and of course the Inland Empire (1.1% take public transportation).
To be fair, the pandemic-induced shift to remote work might make this a point of debatable significance, but commuting times reflect distance to other amenities as well, and are certainly a factor in migration decisions. It’s just another trend to watch for as our housing crisis continues.