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Taking the highly congested road: Census Bureau reports 507,000 workers commute into Dallas County each day
By Zach Markovic, zmarkovic@starlocalnews.com
Despite the George Bush Tollway opening up a year ago to the north of Sunnyvale, residents know it's no Sunday stroll to get to and from work if they are headed into Dallas every day.
Dallas County has among the highest number of commuters coming from another county in the nation, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday in new estimates released from the American Community Survey. Nationally, 27.4 percent of workers commute outside the county where they live.
Among workers in Dallas County, 507,397 live outside the county, according to 2006-2010 estimates from the American Community Survey. For example, 142,514 workers commute from Tarrant County, 142,042 from Collin County and 108,740 from Denton County. The first two were not significantly different from each other.
"It is well known that Dallas County draws a lot of commuters to work. The detailed information in the American Community Survey tells us where Dallas County workers are coming from, where its residents work, and how its commuting patterns compare to those of other large counties," said Brian McKenzie, a Census Bureau statistician who studies commuting. "This information shapes our understanding of the boundaries of local and regional economies, as people and goods move across the nation's transportation networks."
The American Community Survey also provides annual estimates about how commuters in Dallas County travel to work and how long it takes them to get there.
The survey provides a wide range of important statistics about people and housing for every community across the nation. The results are used by everyone from town and city planners to retailers and homebuilders. The survey is the only source of local estimates for most of the 40 topics it covers, such as education, occupation, language, ancestry and housing costs for even the smallest communities.
Ever since Thomas Jefferson directed the first census in 1790, the census has collected detailed characteristics about the nation's people. Questions about jobs and the economy were added 20 years later under James Madison, who said such information would allow Congress to "adapt the public measures to the particular circumstances of the community," and over the decades, allow America "an opportunity of marking the progress of the society."
About 8.1 percent of U.S. workers have commutes of 60 minutes or longer, 4.3 percent work from home, and nearly 600,000 full-time workers had "megacommutes" of at least 90 minutes and 50 miles. The average one-way daily commute for workers across the country is 25.5 minutes, and one in four commuters leave their county to work.
According to official reports, 23 percent of workers with long commutes (60 minutes or more) use public transit, compared with 5.3 percent for all workers. Only 61.1 percent of workers with long commutes drove to work alone, compared with 79.9 percent for all workers who worked outside the home.
"The average travel time for workers who commute by public transportation is higher than that of workers who use other modes. For some workers, using transit is a necessity, but others simply choose a longer travel time over sitting in traffic," McKenzie said.
Rail travel accounted for 11.8 percent of workers with long commutes, and other forms of public transportation accounted for 11.2 percent.
Based on the 2006-2010 American Community Survey, 586,805 full-time workers are mega commuters -- one in 122 of full-time workers. Mega commuters were more likely to be male, older, married, make a higher salary, and have a spouse who does not work. Of the total mega commuters, 75.4 percent were male and 24.6 percent women. Mega commuters were also more likely to depart for work before 6 a.m. Metro areas with large populations tend to attract large flows of mega commuters, according to bureau reports.
More than a fourth of all U.S. workers commute outside the county where they live, according to a bureau report on commutes between counties. About 27.4 percent of all U.S. workers traveled outside the county where they live for work during a typical week, compared with 26.7 percent in 2000.
Means of Transportation
• In 2011, 79.3 percent of workers in Dallas County drove to work alone, compared with 76.4 percent nationally.
• 11.0 percent of Dallas County workers carpooled in 2011, while 9.7 percent in the nation carpooled to work.
• In 2011, 2.8 percent of all workers in Dallas County used public transportation -- excluding taxicabs -- to get to their job, compared with 5.0 percent in the nation as a whole.
• About 0.2 percent of all workers in the county biked to work in 2011, compared with 0.6 percent nationally.
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