Interpretation of Commutes: A Distribution of Travel Time Across the US

It is no secret (sociological, scientific, or otherwise) that the distribution of social situations across the United States is defined by disparity. Most social scientists think of this disparity as being defined by demographic and economic characteristics, but there are other social locations and experiences that also vary greatly state-to-state. This includes the way in which the workforce commutes to their workplace, or whether they forgo the commute altogether and participate in the trend of workshifting. This is shown clearly in the map shown below, produced by University of Akron’s Institute for Health and Social Policy and Center for Policy Studies. The map shows each state in a varying state of red to green, depending on the mean commute time of the state. The variation is not that extreme – full green is less than sixteen minutes, while full red is anything over twenty-six minutes. However, the numbers represent a mean, so the difference is substantial for analysis.

The representation of the map is not surprising. California, New York, Maryland, Illinois and George all have a mean of over twenty-six minutes, while many Midwestern states are either under sixteen minutes or very close to it. Very few states are in the middle. While the results are unsurprising, they are nevertheless telling of the social processes associated with the workforce in the United States. In other words, we can look to the processes responsible for the distribution of commute time in order to explain why the mapping looks like it does.

Very simple put, the most obvious explanation for this distribution is urbanization; that is, the increasing amount of people that live in urban areas leading to both horizontal and vertical growth. While urbanization is predominately linked with modernization and industrialization, it is not merely a modern phenomenon, but an ongoing transformation of where societies place their roots. As such, the variation in commute time from state to state can primarily be explained through the level of urbanization that has taken place in that state across United States history. Along with this urbanization came a movement for suburban lifestyle (especially in the 1950s and 1960s). As more and more jobs are located within city limits, many families keep the majority of their life outside of the city. This leads to higher costs for gas when gasoline prices are already increasing, and longer commute times (and, ostensibly, traffic) we see in the map.

While other factors (such as ability to provide proper infrastructure, policing, or road repair) may be relevant to explaining the outcome, urbanization seems to be the most salient connection. It confirms intuition to see that the states holding the ten most populous cities in the United States (New York, California, Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Arizona) all fall under the top three categories with the most commute time. In contrast, the states with the least commute time are based on a rural or agricultural economy. The commute time does not necessarily reflect the state’s budget per capita, as urbanization can lead both to wealth and poverty.

With this explanation in mind, a map showing the relative distribution of the United States population across states would yield a similar image. Generally, states with higher populations also have a higher percentage of the population living close to and working in urban areas. With few exceptions, a map showing the urbanization of the United States would look relatively the same as the map here, showing relative commute times. Finally, this distribution of commute times is likely to change only if there is a massive restructuring of the United States’ workforce or the pressure and costs of urbanization become too high for the majority of the workforce to be located in urban areas. In other words, dramatic shifts in the distribution map (and thereby commute times) will only take place in an age that moves past urbanization.

(Figure 1 omitted for preview. Available via download)