Tag Archives: commuting

Living close to work

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Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke tweeted earlier this week about the ability of workers to live near their place of work:

https://twitter.com/BetoORourke/status/1171238016289034240

There is a lot to think about here. A little historical context: most workers lived very close to work up until the Industrial Revolution and the urbanization that came with it. The separation of home and work life is a relatively recent phenomenon for humans.

A little data on commute times. The 2017 American Community Survey showed the average commute time was 26.9 minutes. Commuting time can differ quite a bit across metropolitan regions:

McKenzie says the East Stroudsburg, Pa. metro area has among the longest average one-way travel time, clocking in at about 37.9 minutes. The U.S. Census Bureau contacted NPR with new information to include the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro area, which has a travel time of 37 minutes. Travel times for the two metro areas are not statistically different from one another.

Among the shortest average travel times, usually less than 20 minutes, were in Cheyenne, Wyo. and Grand Forks, N.D.

There is an academic term that addresses this issue: spatial mismatch. In this theory, jobs available to lower-income workers are located far from their residences. Imagine a typical well-off suburb: can the workers at the local Target or McDonald’s or gas station or hotel live in that community or nearby? Patterns of residential segregation and exclusionary zoning can mean that cheaper or affordable housing is not available close to certain jobs. This can be a more hidden form of inequality as longer trips to work mean less time for other activities.

This might get trickier for people with more resources and the options of where they want to live. A common American trade-off for the middle-class gets at this: should a homeowner move further out from work to purchase a larger home or live closer to work and job centers (which can include urban downtowns as well as suburban job centers dozens of miles away from urban downtowns)? Is a shorter commute worth having if it comes with paying more money for (possibly smaller) housing?

And perhaps the wealthy can truly live the closest to work if they so choose. Some of them might even locate their business or firm to where they are. Others might have multiple homes, including ones significant distances away where they can get to work by means not available to many such a private jets and helicopters.

So perhaps the issue here is not really living close to work but deeper issues involving mixed-income neighborhoods and moving away from resources (income and wealth) determining where people can life. O’Rourke gets into this a bit more, calling for smarter and denser cities that he says will lead to numerous positive outcomes – which could include shorter commutes.

A test of taking Lyft from the train to the suburban office park exposes mass transit issues in the suburbs

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One company in the Chicago suburbs is running a test to encourage employees to take the train to get close to their office and then use Lyft to complete the trip:

The two-year program aims to solve the “last mile” problem — how to bridge the gap between the train station or bus stop and the rider’s final destination. This problem is especially nettlesome for reverse commuters, who live in the city but work in the suburbs at jobs that are sometimes far from transit stops. More than 400,000 people commute every day from Chicago to jobs in the suburbs, according to the RTA…

GlenStar Properties is paying 75 percent of the cost of transporting employees at its Bannockburn complex on Waukegan Road to and from Metra stops in Deerfield, Highland Park, Highwood and Lake Forest. The Regional Transportation Authority is picking up the rest of the cost, up to $30,000 during the pilot…

The program, which launched in March and is the first of its type in Illinois, is starting small with just a few trips a day, according to the RTA. Bannockburn Lakes tenants get a monthly Lyft pass for the rides.

Many suburban companies, including Walgreens and Allstate, have some kind of shuttle bus program to get workers to and from Metra stations, said Michael Walczak, executive director of the Transportation Management Association of Lake-Cook, a nonprofit that works with companies and the private sector to figure out transit issues.

This is an interesting way to solve a common problem in both cities and suburbs: how to get people and goods that last step (or “last mile”) between a mass transit stop and their destination. Even in cities with good mass transit, the last step can cause a lot of problems.

This strikes me as the pragmatic solution to the larger problem of limited mass transit in the suburbs. The Chicago train system runs on the hub and spokes model where suburban communities, typically their downtowns, are connected to the Loop. This system may help funnel people into the center of Chicago but it is both difficult to get around the region and the train lines run into historic town centers, not necessarily the work and residential centers of today. Ride-sharing can help make up the difference by connecting train stops to workplaces. This can limit long-distance solo trips by car and allow more workers to not have a vehicle or to drive significantly less.

On the other hand, this solution could be viewed as less-than-ideal reaction to the real issue: sprawling suburban sites do not lend themselves to mass transit and the ride-sharing solution is just a band-aid to a much bigger issue. Chicago area suburbs have tried versions of this for decades including public bus systems in the suburbs to connect office parks to train stations, buses from remote parking lots to train stations, and private companies operating shuttle buses (as noted above). This all may work just for a limited number of workers who are located near rail lines and who are willing to use mass transit. But, most suburban workers – and they tend to work in other suburbs – have no chance of using timely and convenient mass transit to get to work. The densities just do not support this (and the office park in the story illustrates that this may be more feasible with denser concentrations of workers).

If companies, communities, and regional actors truly wanted to address these issues in the Chicago region, a more comprehensive plan is needed to nudge people closer together to both take advantage of existing mass transit and develop new options.

My 2.4 mile drive to work includes 6 stop signs, 2 traffic lights, and 1 train crossing

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In my daily drive (or bicycle ride) to work through mostly residential neighborhoods, I encounter multiple intersections that require stopping with six stop signs, two traffic lights, and one trip over railroad tracks. A few patterns for my suburban trip and including these stops:

-The majority of the stops occur along an important north-south road in the community that is one lane each way, goes past houses of various kinds, and has a speed limit of 30 mph. Both traffic lights involve this road with only one light involving a four lane road.

-My average speed is roughly 12.5 mph. If I could go the 30 mph allowed on most of the trip and there were no stops, my trip should be more like 5 minutes long.

-Most of the stops are pretty short except for two kinds. The traffic lights can cause a wait of up to a minute and a half and the busier one can be longer if I have to wait through multiple lights. The train crossing obviously can wreak havoc with a typical trip with a stop for the train and then heavier traffic afterward as a long line goes down the road. Most of the time, I do not encounter a train and I now have a decent sense of when the passenger trains come during the morning and evening rush hours.

The average American one-way commute is now 26.9 minutes so my commute is much shorter than many. But, that time factor can obscure distances – a 20 minute commute in a more rural area is going to cover more distance than my 12 minute drive in a residential suburb and a 35 minute commute in a major city might be a different distance.

One promise I have read about involving self-driving cars is that they will be much less impeded by intersections. Because vehicles will be able to communicate with each other, stopping at a stop light for 1+ minutes or a required stop at a stop sign in light or no traffic could be limited. Removing all that stopping and starting would also be good for the environment because of reduced idling.

I assume all of the stops are there due to safety concerns and trying to keep traffic flowing in all directions (based on traffic counts, accident reports, and road and planning guidelines). But, it would be great to see in the next few decades changes to how many stops and starts vehicles must make.

Naperville train parking permits require 7 year wait yet parking lots are 88-90% full

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Long waits – seven years or so – for a parking permit at the busy downtown Naperville train station are not new but recent data hints that those parking lots are not full every day:

Of the 1,681 spaces at the Naperville station, 918 are dedicated to quarterly permit holders but those spaces generally don’t fill up. Because about 10 percent to 20 percent of permit spaces are left empty on average, Naperville oversells the number of permits for each of the three dedicated lots.

“Our spaces that are dedicated for quarterly permit holders, the utilization there is significantly lower than what we see for our daily fee spaces. Our daily fee spaces are generally fully occupied by about 6:30 (a.m.),” Louden said…

Naperville issues 850 quarterly permits for the 526 spots in the Burlington lot, which sees an average utilization rate of 89 percent, according to a presentation from city staff. The city issues 185 permits for the Parkview lot’s 110 spaces and sees an 88 percent utilization rate. And 474 permits are issued for the 282 quarterly spaces in the Kroehler lot, which sees a 90 percent utilization rate…

“For a lot of communities, what we would recommend at CMAP is to better manage the parking supply by using pricing as you would with any other economic good,” Bayley said. “It’s about incentives as well as disincentives, and really the disincentive is going to be the cost and the wait list.”

Parking can be a difficult commodity to manage. In suburban areas, it is often expected to be plentiful and free. Americans love to drive. Yet, keeping parking prices low and having a good amount of availability can influence behavior. If parking is easy, there is little incentive to do something else instead. Plus, there is a bigger picture to keep in mind. As the article asks, it is good in the long run to provide spaces that enable driving or is it better to develop and promote alternative forms of transportation?

There are numerous ways Naperville could get creative in promoting higher utilization rates. The article mentions raising prices but they could also notify certain permit holders about their spots being empty and talk about the possibility of reducing permit spots and replacing them with daily fees.

I wonder if there is are two other groups the Naperville needs to hear from:

(1) those who do not buy quarterly permits yet are unsuccessful when they try to find a daily spot. What do they do – then drive into the city? Take another form of transportation? What about the people who are not daily commuters but who might occasionally want to ride the train into the city – can they access a spot?

(2) people who do not purchase a quarterly permit but instead rely on day-to-day parking. Why are they willing to do this and can they always get daily spots

 

Supercommuters up 15.4%, or 0.4 million, between 2005 and 2016

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A small and rising number of Americans commute more than ninety minutes a day:

While super commuters still represent a small share of the overall workforce, their long commutes have become increasingly common over the past decade. In 2005, there were about 3.1 million super commuters, roughly 2.4 percent of all commuters. By 2016, that share had increased by 15.9 percent to 2.8 percent of all commuters, or about 4 million workers. In some parts of the country the problem is much worse; in Stockton, where James lives, 10 percent of commuters travel more than 90 minutes to work each day.

The rising number of super commuters underscores a general trend towards longer commutes. The share of commuters traveling 24 minutes or less to work each day has decreased to 55 percent of all commuters in 2016 from 59 percent in 2005. Meanwhile, the share of commuters traveling 25 minutes or more has increased to 45 percent in 2016, compared to 41 percent in 2005. The share of commuters traveling an hour or more to work each day increased 16.1 percent to 9.2 percent in 2016 from 7.9 percent in 2005.

I understand that this article is geared around showing differences in commuting over time. And the data can back that up: supercommuting is up and more Americans have longer commutes.

At the same time, this may be overselling the data:

  1. The changes over 11 years are relatively small. The article talks about percentage changes but the absolute numbers are small. This is the difference between supercommuting is up 15% versus saying it is up 0.4 million.
  2. Given that this data is based on samples of the US population, is a 4% change statistically significant? Is an increase from 2.4 million supercommuters to 2.8 supercommuters substantively significant?
  3. What are the trends between 2005 and 2016? Both of these measurement points are with a more robust economy. Driving was down after the housing bubble burst – was supercommuting affected by this? Is the trend line steady in an upward direction over the last 11 years or is it up and down?

From a broader view, this is not that much change. (There may still be shock value in reminding the public that 2.8% of all commuters are really willing to go far each day.)

Self-driving cars could benefit suburban residents the most

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While reading an article considering what daily life may be like with autonomous vehicles, a thought hit me: suburbs – compared to cities and rural areas – will benefit the most from self-driving cars. Sure, cities could remove a lot of cars off the streets and enhance pedestrian life. Rural areas could benefit from easier driving and trucking. Yet, as far as daily life is concerned, not having to pay attention to driving could help suburbanites the most as so much of their life involves driving from one place to another.

Here are the primary advantages of self-driving vehicles for the suburbs:

1. The commute to work changes as passengers can now work or relax or sleep on the way.

2. The other various trips in the suburbs now can be more enjoyable (like commuting in #1).

3. Suburbanites do not need to own as many vehicles.

4. Two groups disadvantaged by auto-dependent suburbs – teenagers and the elderly – now have access to transportation.

5. Suburbanites can live even further away from work and urban centers, possibly providing cheaper housing as well as more options regarding what communities they can live in.

6. The cheap goods suburbanites expect from big box stores and online retailers may be even cheaper as retailers and businesses also utilize autonomous vehicles.

7. Suburban congestion and traffic will be decreased due to both the new vehicles handling roads better and a reduction in vehicles (#3 above).

Granted, these reasons might not account for the ongoing costs of driving. For example, suburbanites may not need to own as many cars or may enjoy their regular drives more but roads still need to be built and maintained.

I drove past the same scenery for almost eight years

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I realized a few days ago that I drove almost the same route every day to and from work for almost eight years. It was not a bad drive: it usually took about 15-20 minutes to go roughly 7 miles, I saw a lot of greenery due to Forest Preserves and a private park, I drove past some important local institutions, and there were not too many traffic lights.

But, as I was recently driving part of this route for another destination, I noticed that I had not seen this part of the world for a few months – and I live just a few miles away. With no daily commute along this route, I do not need to bother with this territory.

Does it matter that I do not keep up with this area any longer? It did not appear that much had changed. Yet, I felt like I missed something that had been part of my life for years. Now, I see different things on my daily route: new houses and buildings, new cars, and new obstacles to avoid in order to reach work faster.

It was easier when I was younger to simply explore my own suburbs and those around it. Although slower, this could be accomplished best by bicycle and with no set destination. This could even be accomplished when driving was still exciting in the early years (and gas was very cheap and what else was there to do in high school and college). Today, my goal is usually to get to a place quickly.

In the end, it is easy to see one set of sites for years and years. At the least, we can try to pay attention to those sites and be a part of the place (even if that means passing through at 30+ MPH). On the flip side, we can blindly go along that same route for a long time and also miss out on numerous other nearby places that are just off our daily route.

The ongoing difficulty of Chicago suburb to suburb commuting

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The Daily Herald’s transportation writer details the difficulties of taking mass transit between Chicago suburbs:

My odyssey was prompted by the annual Dump the Pump Day, which encourages people to embrace public transit instead of driving.

Here’s a recap of the two-hour, 36-minute voyage to work:

• 8:20 a.m.: Boarded a Metra BNSF train in Downers Grove that arrived at Union Station.

• 9:23 a.m.: Caught a Blue Line train to Rosemont after a short walk from Union Station and a fight with a Ventra machine.

• 10:13 a.m.: Arrived at Rosemont and transferred to Pace Bus Route 606 at 10:30 a.m.; reached work at 10:56 a.m.

The tedious reverse commute lasted two hours, 57 minutes.

• 2:49 p.m.: Boarded Pace Bus Route 757 in Arlington Heights en route to the Forest Park Transit Center.

• 4 p.m.: Left on Pace Bus Route 301 headed to Oak Brook Center.

• 5:03 p.m.: Departed on Pace Bus Route 322 to Yorktown Center at 5:23 p.m.

• 5:30 p.m.: Took Pace Bus Route 834. Arrived in Downers Grove at 5:46 p.m.

By car, the trip is typically 30 to 40 minutes in the morning and 30 to 60 minutes in the afternoon, depending on traffic.

There are some easy answers as well as some more difficult discussions. The easy reasons to start:

  1. Mass transit in the region was constructed in an earlier era when many more people wanted to commute from suburbs to the city. The suburb to suburb trip is a product of recent decades.
  2. There is not money to do mass transit in the suburbs. This applies both to constructing mass transit (such as rail options) or attracting riders (with buses) who have too many starting points and endpoints.

But, given that so much commuting is now suburb to suburb, why aren’t there some more consistent options? Two deeper reasons:

  1. Infrastructure – not just mass transit but other systems including water – are in trouble. We are decades behind in providing good infrastructure. If it is any consolation, highway systems aren’t in much better shape as they often wait too long to add lanes or new routes (and it is debatable how successful these efforts are anyway.) It is both a funding and planning issue.
  2. Wealthier suburbs and suburbanites don’t really want mass transit. They don’t want to pay for it and they don’t want certain people coming to their community. They can generally afford driving and they like the freedom (and the exclusivity) it provides.

Overall, there is both a lack of will to build and use mass transit in many suburbs.

“Politics of pavement” amidst the start of construction season

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Commuters and taxpayers may be unhappy with annoying roadwork but as this summary of upcoming projects in the Chicago region reminds us, roadwork is political:

With no state budget in sight as Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner feuds with Democrats, the idea of a capital plan to fix infrastructure seems as likely as unicorns in hard hats.

That disconnect is not only strangling transportation funding in Illinois, it’s also thwarting a pet project of Rauner’s — adding tolled express lanes to I-55 in Cook and DuPage counties…

For the Illinois tollway, money’s not a problem. But the agency is locked in a dispute with the Canadian Pacific Railroad over land it wants for I-490, a ring road around the west side of O’Hare International Airport.

If Canadian Pacific wins support from federal regulators in a pending case, it’s a potential catastrophe for the tollway.

Roads are power? Any major infrastructure project involves lots of money, voters, and jobs. Additionally, in a country where driving is so important, construction on major roads is a big deal.

So, is anyone winning the political battle through roads in the Chicago region? Big city mayors like to claim that they are different than national politicians because the mayors have to get things done. The same may be true for governors on infrastructure issues. Presumably, limiting the political battles over roads helps everyone win as costs are reduced (prices for big projects only go up over time) and residents can start experiencing the benefits sooner.

Snowproofing the morning commute

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Hearing the morning travel times near Chicago this morning, I wondered what it would take to reduce the abnormally high drive times due to the lake effect snow. The short answer is easy: get more people to take mass transit. But, this may not be doable. Here’s why:

  1. Not desirable. Even with the troubles presented by daily commuting via car (high costs, getting stuck in traffic, road maintenance), this is what Americans choose to do, even when they have other options. It is simply too attractive to be able to go and leave when you want and to not have to be close to other people while doing so.
  2. Not practical. Much of the American lifestyle, even in a city like Chicago, is built around the car. We have our own private homes with yards and garages (even in many of Chicago’s neighborhoods), we don’t put much emphasis on promoting street life, and our activities (work, school, recreation) tend to be all spread out. If you wanted to get rid of your car, you would need to live in denser areas – which do exist – but this would be a significant change for many.

Another way to put it is that days like today might be terrible for commuting but they are likely not enough to cause significant lifestyle changes. Americans have a high tolerance for putting up with commutes and having to use mass transit 300+ days a year isn’t worth it to many.

An additional option would be to delay commutes on days like these. Can’t more businesses and institutions provide more leeway to commuters? This might free up some road space if more people could delay their start or work from home.