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AFP - Getty Images file
Commuters move slowly during heavy traffic on a freeway in Los Angeles in 2011. California is among the states with the highest percentage of people commuting an hour or more.
The jokes about Washington, D.C.’s gridlock usually refer to politics, but they might as well be talking about the traffic.
A new government report finds that more than one quarter of the people who work in Washington, D.C. are commuting an hour or more each way to work.
The District of Columbia has the highest rate of workers with long commutes, but it’s not that unusual for Americans to spend hours each day commuting.
Overall, a Census Bureau report released Tuesday found that 8.1 percent of American workers spent 60 minutes or more getting each way to work in 2011. That’s a little more than double the average travel time for commuters, which was 25.5 minutes in 2011.
The good news is that the people with the longest commutes are far more likely to be using public transportation. The bad news is that most of them were still driving alone in their car.
The Census report found that 23 percent of workers with travel times of 60 minutes or more were taking public transportation, compared with just 3.7 percent of workers with shorter commutes.
Still, 61.1 percent workers with travel times of 60 minutes or more drove alone. That compares with 81.5 percent of workers with commutes of less than 60 minutes. The rest were carpooling or using other means of transportation.
The majority of people who are commuting to Washington, D.C. are coming from other states, and it’s not uncommon for people with long commutes to be going from one state where they live to another where they work.
Here’s a list of the states with the highest percentage of workers who work in that state and are commuting an hour or more to work.
10. Georgia: 9.1 percent
9. Virginia: 9.4 percent
8. California: 10.1 percent
7. New Jersey: 11.1 percent
6. Illinois: 11.3 percent
5. Massachusetts: 11.7 percent
4. Maryland: 11.8 percent
3. Puerto Rico: 13.9 percent
2. New York: 18.2 percent
1. Washington, D.C.: 27.4 percent
Hate commuting? You might want to consider relocating to Nebraska, which had the lowest percentage of long commuters, or asking your boss if you can work from home.
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We Americans love our cars and take pride in having the world's longest commutes.
This just in DC has horrible traffic issues... What will be the next breaking story the sun is hot?
Yep, DC and NYC are the worst. so if you're doing a long N-S trip on I95 you try to hit them between 10 pm-4 am
In my early years in Washington (the early 50's) the city was a great city to live in ... relatively safe, uncrowded .. except for the summer tourist .. and then the developers moved in... and began to "remake" it ... that was the beginning of the change .... and not for the better ..long term.
There were no restrictions or limits of where you could go ... as a teenager, I wondered through the capitol, riding the tram regularly to the house office building, and even was fortunate enough wander the galley of the rotunda and gain entry into the columned tholus beneath the Statue of Freedom ... all by myself .. all buildings were open to the public ... without restriction
When you are constantly in the city, it's change of pace is barely noticed .. it just seems busier at first ..... when the beltway was built ... it was almost empty .. and we would race on it .. without fear .. it was like a private road .
By the time I left in the early 2000s .. it was horribly crowded, but I had grown up with it ... coming on slowly ...and just accepted it the norm .....
Then I moved to a rural location on the water a few miles from the Chesapeake Bay .. I thought I'd go mad the first six months .. it was so quiet & slow
It wasn't until I returned To the DC area on business that I realized just how bad it was ... I couldn't get away fast enough ... I actually dread the thought of a return trip .... to return to the rat race again!
I have learned to love my privacy, freedom & solitude .. to much to fight the through the traffic that consumes the capitol city and its suburbs ...
god is a damnyankee
moonbeamracer
Your memories of DC in the '50s are obviously those of a white, middle class kid. My family moved to DC in 52 when I was 8 years old. My parents had to explain to me what "whites" and "colored only" signs meant. We had moved down from NJ and DC was the equivalent to my being on an alien planet.
Of COURSE most of the commuters to DC come from other states. The majority of the workers are suburbanites from Maryland or Virginia who live outside the District and commute in. DC has very poor road connections to the central district, which makes for a long drive for those who try to do it alone. My father-in-law drove into downtown for many years, but always in a carpool.
D.C. needs to have a 2nd beltway to service the relatively far Virginia suburbs like Manassas and to divert some of the traffic from the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, I-95 and I-70 from Western Maryland that funnels into I-495, the Washington D.C. Beltway. If I plan to drive from Baltimore, an hour north of D.C., and want to go to south of D.C. to Central Virginia (King's Dominion, Richmond, etc.) or farther south (Colonial Williamsburg, the Carolinas, etc.), the BIG problem is taking into account the time it takes to get past Washington.
I-495 is a constant hassle now and has been a rush hour problem for nearly a half-century. As far back as the late 70's, I was playing in the U.S. Open Chess Championship, held at George Mason University -just off the west side of the D.C. Beltway and had to quit after the 2nd round because it took too long to get there even though I was able to get off work early in Baltimore and had 2 hours to get there.
Looks like another great reason to get rid of a large number of government employees. It will help traffic flow improve in Washington DC.
It would be far better and more productive to ban the lobbyists.
Well, if all but a few of the Metro lines weren't havens for dropped-pants thugs, maybe people would commute more.
I lived in DC when it was a city of "northern charm and southern efficiency." I get back there often enough to realize that if you doubled my salary I still would not want to live and work there. It is quite depressing when traffic on the Beltway is already backed up at 5:30am and getting across the Woodrow Wilson bridge is only slightly easier than Washington crossing the Delaware River.
Long commutes are big stress factors in a person's life and will take it's toll eventually affecting a person's health.Cities in this country, for the most part, did not build affordable and easily commutable neighborhoods near the jobs.It's a major problem in California.The light rail is expensive and once you get to a station in some cities there isn't any transportation beside RTD(the bus) to get to your job location unless you work in San Francisco.
I live in Northern VA and work in DC. Because of the hours I work, there is no public transportation or vanpools. The traffic is horrible. I don't like riding the metro because of the bad service and thugs that ride it. This area has never done much as far as building the infrastructure as the population grew, yet taxes are crazy. But this is where the jobs are, so I am here for now.
I live about 1 mile from work, commute time is under 5 minutes even with rush hour traffic and the best part is that I only have to fill up the car with gas once every 3 months.
Something else DC can be proud of other than firearm related crime (strict gun control works, right?), and electing/appointing corrupt politicians.
My daily driving commute from North Arlington to SW DC = 25 -30 minutes.
Try leaving earlier......Stop trying to drive in the middle of the rush hour period. Get to work a little earlier, sit back and enjoy a cup of coffee, relax, and listen to the news reports about the screwed up traffic.
Hopefully the traffic situation in DC will improve as the sequester kicks in.
My commute from northern VA to Crystal City is about 45 minutes, but nearly all of it is by train, for which the cost is reimbursed. The drive to the train station from the house is only 2 miles. From the train station in CC, it's a 5 minute walk to the office. I would retire before I would drive to work.
Guessing by the subsidized commute that you are a Federal Government employee? .... but I could be wrong.
I'm thinking if they took away your daily free train ride, your opinion might change.