Metropolitan area definition

[mcalumni01]

Originally Posted by RocketDawg

25% of the workers are supposed to commute into the central county for the one losing workers to be included is the major criterion. There are other factors as well, as I recall.

The reason Bibb County was added to B'ham-Hoover was workers commute to Shelby County, where one of the two main cities (Hoover) is located. The geographic positioning and shape of Jefferson County enables it to include counties that probably would have not been included if it had a rectangular shape like most others.

The shape of jefferson county really don't have anything to do with the other counties being included. Believe it or not, jefferson county and birmingham is where the jobs are at within the metro area. The counties in the metro are really suburbs counties that has to commute to jefferson county and birmingham, that's the reason.

[jero23]

Originally Posted by AU HSV

It will be interesting to see how Toyota/Mazda changes the commuting/trade dynamics. May take a few years but you would expect Decatur, Athens, Florence, Cullman and Fayetteville interaction to increase with Huntsville. With the possibility of possibly 50 suppliers locating within a 100 mile radius things are changing.

That's true. It's just most of the Cullman County population does business or things more often in Birmingham metro area now.

[jero23]

Originally Posted by RocketDawg

Yeah, closer to downtowns, but it's only 37 miles from Exit 310 in Cullman to the 565 exit, which is where Huntsville/Decatur sorta start. Not sure what the north side of B'ham Exit numbers are. Gonna be pretty much a wash as far as distance goes. And Cullman County is in the Huntsville NWS County Warning Area. There are quite a few Cullmanintes that work up this way though.

The northernmost Birmingham interchange is Exit 265B where the city limits surrounds the interchange.

On the NWS, that's more of a technically by the federal designations of areas. Remember they just reopened the Huntsville NWS office a couple of years ago, and placed Cullman County in the area to justify its existence. However, Cullman County is still a part of the Birmingham Designated Market Area because of television viewership habits of local TV stations and economic ties according to advertisers and businesses. The likelihood of Cullman shifting things away from Birmingham CSA is very low.

[RocketDawg]

Originally Posted by jero23

The northernmost Birmingham interchange is Exit 265B where the city limits surrounds the interchange.

On the NWS, that's more of a technically by the federal designations of areas. Remember they just reopened the Huntsville NWS office a couple of years ago, and placed Cullman County in the area to justify its existence. However, Cullman County is still a part of the Birmingham Designated Market Area because of television viewership habits of local TV stations and economic ties according to advertisers and businesses. The likelihood of Cullman shifting things away from Birmingham CSA is very low.

Well, not really. The Huntsville Forecast Office opened I think in January 2003 ... so over 15 years ago. And as I understand it, Cullman is in the warning area because they asked to be ... it wasn't to justify its existence. There are plenty of reasons to justify its existence. Forming the office certainly had a political genesis, but public safety of all of north Alabama and southern middle Tennessee played the biggest role. There was a huge hole in coverage here, northern Indiana, and I believe Key West. Those issues have been rectified, and as a result the Huntsville office, along with UAH, has one of the largest Atmospheric Research facilities outside of Oklahoma University.

Yes, Cullman is in the B'ham televison market, but they receive stations from both towns. They're in a good location for some reasons ... they can live in a small town but still have cities less than an hour away.

[Southlander]

Originally Posted by cjseliga

From Wikipedia:
The CSA is situated along the Tennessee River, and is made up of two separate metropolitan areas (Decatur and Huntsville) that are usually referred to as one. The area also consists of two micropolitan areas, Albertville and Fort Payne.

Gorsh! It's Wikipedia, so it HAS to be right! Right?