New Census Data Released on Commute Times

Every day, roughly 1.7 million Kentuckians commute to work and nearly one third leave their resident counties to travel to their places of employment. On average, the state’s workers spend about 22.1 minutes commuting each way, slightly down from past years and approximately two minutes less than the national average. But the workers in a number of Kentucky’s rural counties have considerably longer drives to work. The long-standing rural-urban wage gap has left many Kentuckians who seek better pay to make a choice: relocate to metro areas or commute to them. Elliott County’s workforce faces an average daily commute of 48.7 minutes, the longest county average in the state. Over 64 percent of workers living in Elliott have jobs outside the county, some traveling as far west as Nelson County. Workers in the other counties with the five highest average commute times—Magoffin (38.5 minutes), Robertson (37.8), Bracken (37.4), and Menifee (36.1)—follow a similar pattern: most drive to contiguous counties, but many travel to the Urban Triangle. For example, over 100,000 people commute to Jefferson County from other counties, including 36,000 from Indiana.(1) From 1982 to 2002, the number of travelers in Louisville during peak hours rose 24 percent to some 449,000 people. During this same 20-year span, the number of centerline miles of Louisville’s roadway system grew 51 percent to 3,745. Nonetheless, the annual time of delay per person swelled 400 percent to 20 hours.(2)

Possible Implications for Kentucky:  In addition to being an inconvenience, long commutes adversely affect productivity, increase the likelihood of worker tardiness, and contribute to escalating roadway congestion. From 1982 to 2002, the total inflation-adjusted estimated cost of congestion in Louisville rocketed a staggering 788 percent to $302 million.(3) These data suggest that road construction and finance will remain important public policy issues. Rural economic development, in fact, may eventually prove to be a key to relieving urban traffic headaches, enabling more Kentuckians to travel shorter distances to work at better jobs with higher wages.

Contributing Writer Mark Schirmer