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The Longer and Winding Road
John Sullivan is a working project manager who writes and speaks on project and career issues.
Jobs are going south in my part of the world. Over the past year, more than a dozen of us have taken jobs requiring a southward daily commute of 45 minutes to over an hour. No matter what the direction, longer commutes are part of a national trend. An October 2006 study by the Transportation Research Board (“As the Population Grows, So Do Commute Times”) reported almost 10 million Americans now drive more than an hour to work, a 50 percent increase from 19901
Americans aren’t alone. British workers have the longest commute in Europe, averaging 45 minutes per day. An October 2000 survey reported 21 percent of Japanese workers need more than one hour to travel to work.
My former co-workers and I chose to make the commute because the jobs and salary levels we wanted were no longer available close to home. But for most workers, long commutes are a lifestyle choice. “Housing costs are pushing people toward edges (of cities) and job shifts to suburbs permit workers to leapfrog even farther out,” says Alan E. Pisarski, an independent consultant specializing in transportation policy, planning and analysis. “This process has been going on for a century at least, (showing) a natural preference for space when possible.”
For the last 10 years, PM Network columnist Michael Hatfield has commuted 100 miles (161 kilometers)…
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