Commute Week, Part II

More effective than my car crusher at reducing commuting hassle is the state of the economy. According to the N.Y. Times, 30% of travel is commute related. Fewer people working means fewer people traveling on a daily basis.

In New York, ridership on trains is down from last year. Cars passing through toll booths are 5%-6% fewer in number than a year ago. The people who track these numbers say the numbers were down as they are now twice previously: after the 1987 market crash and the 2001 attack on the Twin Towers in NYC.

New Yorkers have the longest average commute to work, Chicagoans are next (that damned 2nd city thing again!).

Here, from the US Census Bureau (motto: it makes perfect Census to us, hahaha!) is a summary of commute times:

Ranking of large cities (populations of 250,000 or more):

• New York (38.3 minutes);
• Chicago (33.2 minutes);
• Newark, N.J. (31.5 minutes);
• Riverside, Calif. (31.2 minutes);
• Philadelphia (29.4 minutes);
• Los Angeles (29.0 minutes)

New York and Baltimore lay claim to having the highest percentage of people with “extreme” commutes; 5.6 percent of their commuters spent 90 or more minutes getting to work. People with extreme commutes were also heavily concentrated in Newark, N.J. (5.2 percent); Riverside, Calif. (5.0 percent); Los Angeles (3.0 percent); Philadelphia (2.9 percent); and Chicago (2.5 percent).

If you have ever been part of the communal parking lots that Los Angeles calls freeways, you are forgiven for questioning the veracity of the data. It is, by the way, data from 2005. The Census folks have been working on updates but are having trouble finding the time. It's the darn traffic...maybe they should try bicycles. Here's 2008 data for the top 5 cities for cycling to work:

• 3.47% Portland, OR
• 2.42% Minneapolis, MN
• 2.31% Seattle, WA
• 2.24% Tucson, AZ
• 1.85% San Francisco, CA

How did Minneapolis get in there?

If we sidestep home officing for the moment, the next best commute is walking. Here's where the walk to work people live:

• 12.55% Boston, MA
• 9.97% Washington, D.C.
• 9.59% San Francisco, CA
• 9.44% New York, NY
• 8.05% Philadelphia, PA

While the car commuters get all the media attention, there's a lot of people who have figured out a better way. The best commute is the stumble down in the stairs in your bunny slippers and turn on the computer commute. Makes my 8 minutes look like an eternity.