average travel time to work, per MWCOG (Arlington, Alexandria: home, employment)

[brooklynborndad]

I am providing this info because JEB seemed interested in it.


based on census data

http://www.mwcog.org/uploads/pub-doc...0211101450.pdf

see page 8. Time in minutes. Not broken out by mode.


ArlCo has the second shortest in the region (at 26 minutes), after College Park. You'd expect that based on its location I guess - interesting that heavy use of (generally slower?) non auto modes doesnt offset that.

Its followed by Falls Church, Alexandria, and then DC.

Fairfax county is 31 minutes, and Loudoun County is 33 minutes.

The longest average in the region is Manassas Park, at 41 minutes. The longest for a county, perhaps not surprisingly, is PWC, at 39 minutes.

What may be most counterintuitive is how bunched they all are - some folks may have expected outer counties to have much longer commutes than that. Those folks are certainly underestimating the impact of a favorable employment/population balance on shorter commutes. IMO thats why Loudoun has shorter commutes on average than PWC and PG county in Maryland - and matches Montgomery County. And why Fairfax County (not terribly well designed in its transport and land use IMO) does so much better than Montgomery.

[JD984]

Originally Posted by brooklynborndad

I am providing this info because JEB seemed interested in it.


based on census data

http://www.mwcog.org/uploads/pub-doc...0211101450.pdf

see page 8. Time in minutes. Not broken out by mode.


ArlCo has the second shortest in the region (at 26 minutes), after College Park. You'd expect that based on its location I guess - interesting that heavy use of (generally slower?) non auto modes doesnt offset that.

Its followed by Falls Church, Alexandria, and then DC.

Fairfax county is 31 minutes, and Loudoun County is 33 minutes.

The longest average in the region is Manassas Park, at 41 minutes. The longest for a county, perhaps not surprisingly, is PWC, at 39 minutes.

What may be most counterintuitive is how bunched they all are - some folks may have expected outer counties to have much longer commutes than that. Those folks are certainly underestimating the impact of a favorable employment/population balance on shorter commutes. IMO thats why Loudoun has shorter commutes on average than PWC and PG county in Maryland - and matches Montgomery County. And why Fairfax County (not terribly well designed in its transport and land use IMO) does so much better than Montgomery.

The Washingtonian recently published a listing that showed Loudoun residents as having a shorter commute than Fairfax and PG residents, among others. I don't have it handy at the moment and don't recall that the source of the info was provided.

[HokieFan]

Originally Posted by brooklynborndad

.

The longest average in the region is Manassas Park, at 41 minutes. The longest for a county, perhaps not surprisingly, is PWC, at 39 minutes.

I wish my commute was 39 minutes. That would be sweet!

[brooklynborndad]

Originally Posted by JEB77

The Washingtonian recently published a listing that showed Loudoun residents as having a shorter commute than Fairfax and PG residents, among others. I don't have it handy at the moment and don't recall that the source of the info was provided.

MWCOG is based on the American Community Survey, 2005-2009. Its possible Washingtonian is using more recent data. Until I see the data I would hesitate to be more specific. It would be interesting to see if the commute lengthened for FFX, or shortened for Loudoun. if the former, I could hazard some guesses - beltway construction and metro service problems being what come to mind.

[IndiaLimaDelta]

Originally Posted by HokieFan

I wish my commute was 39 minutes. That would be sweet!

My commute is about 30 seconds (5 seconds if I left my iPad in the master bathroom).

[Jenjen391]

Agreed! I wish my commute was only 39 minutes!

[JD984]

Originally Posted by brooklynborndad

MWCOG is based on the American Community Survey, 2005-2009. Its possible Washingtonian is using more recent data. Until I see the data I would hesitate to be more specific. It would be interesting to see if the commute lengthened for FFX, or shortened for Loudoun. if the former, I could hazard some guesses - beltway construction and metro service problems being what come to mind.

The Washingtonian published the following "mean travel time to work" earlier this year and cited VDOT and MSHA as its sources:

Arlington 27.3
DC 30.1 minutes
Alexandria 30.7 minutes
Loudoun 31.8
Fairfax 32.9
Montgomery 35.0
Prince George's 36.6
Prince William 40.5

The only thing I can vouch for is that these are were numbers reported by the publication earlier this year. I don't know how they are derived. However, they do seem consistent with the notion that, with the bulk of Loudoun's population in eastern Loudoun and so many jobs in western Fairfax and eastern Loudoun, many Loudoun residents have a decent commute, even though the percentage of Loudoun residents who take public transportation to work was separately reported as much lower than other area jurisdictions.

[hilsmom]

the shortest commute I ever had (when not telecommuting/working from home) was 20 minutes. And that was intra-Arlington commuting by car as public transportation was not a viable option.

I want to know who they are talking to, or if they are counting non-commuters into the survey, skewing the times. I honestly know very few people who work away from home who have commutes any LESS than 30 minutes. There are the lucky few who score jobs 5-10 minutes from home, but seriously, something about this data just feels off.

[brooklynborndad]

Originally Posted by JEB77

The Washingtonian published the following "mean travel time to work" earlier this year and cited VDOT and MSHA as its sources:

Arlington 27.3
DC 30.1 minutes
Alexandria 30.7 minutes
Loudoun 31.8
Fairfax 32.9
Montgomery 35.0
Prince George's 36.6
Prince William 40.5

The only thing I can vouch for is that these are were numbers reported by the publication earlier this year. I don't know how they are derived. However, they do seem consistent with the notion that, with the bulk of Loudoun's population in eastern Loudoun and so many jobs in western Fairfax and eastern Loudoun, many Loudoun residents have a decent commute, even though the percentage of Loudoun residents who take public transportation to work was separately reported as much lower than other area jurisdictions.

I dont know how VDOT would manage to estimate a door to door commute. Given how close the numbers are to the MWCOG numbers, Im guessing its just based on more recent responses to the Census Journey to Work questions.

And the result that Loudoun and Fairfax have similar average journeys does not differ from what I posted above - in this case LoCo slightly shorter, instead of slightly longer (and with Fairfax getting longer AND LoCo getting shorter)

I agree with you that its probably driven by the large number of eastern LoCo residents who either work in LoCo or in the Reston/Herndon area, which pulls down the average compared to LoCo residents who work in Tysons or further in.

Im not sure I would call that an urban design advantage - Id call it an employment/residence balance advantage. I don't know of any jurisdiction that does not seek such balance - and in the suburbs that mostly means drawing more employment (in the District it may well mean drawing more residents). It MAY be that good design is what draws employers to the tech corridor, but I think there are many other factors that could account for it.

I am surprised that you seem to think that Fairfax's greater transit usage would mean lower average commutes. While transit can relieve congestion on very heavily traveled corridors, it has intrinsic speed limitations - especially where transfers are involved, as is the case for many Fairfax transit commuters - and of course few Fairfax commuters use transit for shorter intra county commutes (that MAY change as Tysons transforms) - its mostly for commutes to DC, or to the Pentagon, which are relatively long commutes. In any case, I hardly see Fairfax as representating the paradigm of multi modal commuting - while it has (IIRC) a higher transit share than LoCo, and I suppose higher bike and ped shares, its still fairly low on all three compared to the inner jurisdictions. Edit: look at the mode share chart - FFX appears to be about 72% drove alone - vs 78% for LoCo. Lower for Fairfax, but not enough to offset longer commutes, even if driving alone IS a slower mode.

Note again the high commute distances for people from PWC. To some degree thats the long commute into DC/Alexandria/Arlington - but I would guess that the commute from PWC to the tech corridor also comes into play. We certainly see here people looking for less expensive housing convenient to the tech corridor, and western PWC is often mentioned as a choice.

In that sense the tech corridor acts in some ways the way downtown DC does in its impact on trip length - the people who live near it have short commutes, while it draws large numbers from further who have quite long commutes.

But its different, in that in DC and the close in jurisdictions, the distances are so short (thanks to higher residential densities) that those short commutes are achieved despite heavy reliance on slower modes. In LoCo, the average commute is LONGER than in DC or Arlington, despite virtually complete reliance on what is often considered the most convenient and fastest mode. On the other hand, the tradeoff for that is that the LoCo residents who commute 20 minutes to half an hour to get to Reston or to Chantilly (or who commute from Leesburg to Sterling) get newish SFHs on quarter acre lots for a more or less affordable price - while the folks in Logan Circle biking down the 15th street cycle track to the CBD are getting a lot less space for the money.

[brooklynborndad]

Originally Posted by hilsmom

the shortest commute I ever had (when not telecommuting/working from home) was 20 minutes. And that was intra-Arlington commuting by car as public transportation was not a viable option.

I want to know who they are talking to, or if they are counting non-commuters into the survey, skewing the times. I honestly know very few people who work away from home who have commutes any LESS than 30 minutes. There are the lucky few who score jobs 5-10 minutes from home, but seriously, something about this data just feels off.

It would depend where you live, I guess. If you lived in Ashburn and worked in Ashburn, lived in Reston and worked in Reston, lived in Ballston and worked in Ballston, that should be quite possible.

When I lived in Baltimore, it took me about 20 minutes if I rode the bus, or about 30 minutes walking. On the rare occasions I drove (cause I had some large package to bring in or something like that), it was about 10 minutes, and about half of that was walking from the cheap lot on the edge of downtown to the office.