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For commuters, time stands still

By Phillip Reese and Cameron Jahn -- Bee Staff Writers
Published 2:15 am PDT Monday, April 11, 2005

By the time Marlene Martinez got to work, she was ready to go back to
sleep.

The only way Martinez could start teaching her University of
California, Berkeley, biology class on time was to leave her
Sacramento home a little after 4 a.m.

"I couldn't afford housing there," said Martinez, who gave up her
part-time stint at Berkeley two years ago. "It was pretty bad. I had
an 8 o'clock class every day."

Tired of the commute and unable to live near her job, Martinez took a
position at American River College in Sacramento. She now drives 30
minutes to work each morning.



An increasing number of Sacramento County drivers fed up with two-hour
commutes are making similar choices and finding new jobs or moving
closer to work, new census figures show.

Believe it or not, the average commute time in Sacramento remained
pretty flat between 2000 and 2003 - even dropping slightly, according
to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report. Drivers in the Sacramento
County metro area spent, on average, about 24 minutes commuting to
work each morning during 2003, down 1 1/2 minutes from 2000.

The big change, census estimates show, is a sharp decline in the
number of "extreme commuters." Those are the people who travel more
than 90 minutes to work each way, every workday. Since they take so
long to get to work, they can have a big effect on average commute
times.

The Census Bureau numbers show extreme commuters in Sacramento County
declining from 14,400 in 2000 to 8,100 in 2003.

Those numbers could be off by a few thousand drivers, because they are
based on a sampling of the county's commuters. Still, a large,
progressive drop in extreme commuters showed up in the census
estimates each year from 2000 to 2003.

The biggest reason for a drop in extreme commuters, experts say, is
lousy traffic between here and the Bay Area - the most common long
commute from Sacramento.

For example, Contra Costa County, which Sacramento drivers must pass
through if they take Interstate 80 to the Bay Area, now has the
10th-longest average commute time in the nation.

"(Interstate 80) to the Bay Area has become untenable," said Robert
Fountain, a researcher at California State University, Sacramento.
"It's stop-and-go across the Bay."

Things are a little better on Amtrak's Capitol Corridor train, an
increasingly popular choice among extreme commuters, but it still
takes about two hours each way to make the commute to the Bay Area.

Betty Digilio, a Sacramento resident who takes the train to Oakland
for work four times a week, said she would quit commuting if she had
to drive.

"I'd move somewhere halfway," she said.

Extreme commuters often feel that way: They are rarely happy with the
long drive and often are looking for ways to get out of it, said
Gordon Garry, director of research at the Sacramento Area Council of
Governments, which distributes federal transportation dollars.

"You would think they would be the most sensitive group," Garry said.
"They will make some sort of change."

A couple other factors also could help explain the trend. Many people
who commute to the Bay Area from Sacramento do so because the housing
costs are a lot cheaper in the Central Valley, Fountain said. But
Sacramento housing costs have skyrocketed during the past few years,
making the area less of a bargain.

"Fewer people would be inclined to move here because it is cheap,"
Fountain said.

It's also possible that Bay Area jobs - or at least jobs similar to
ones found there - have moved to Sacramento in the past few years,
reducing the need for a long commute. Fountain said that is happening
some, but not much.

When extreme commuters are taken out of the mix, the commute numbers
aren't as peachy.

The number of commuters spending between 45 and 89 minutes on the road
jumped 34 percent between 2000 and 2003, rising from 37,500 to 50,200,
according to the census figures.

Fair Oaks couple Mario and Laurie Parker, who work for the Army Corps
of Engineers in downtown Sacramento, said they leave home at 5:30 a.m.
and still face traffic delays that last as long as 45 minutes.

"It doesn't matter what freeway you take, 50 or 80, it's all slower,"
Laurie Parker said.

That said, a lot of drivers - 41 percent - in Sacramento County spent
fewer than 20 minutes on the road, on average, each morning during
2003.

"I don't think it's gotten worse, but I don't think it's gotten any
better," said Nellie Hurtienne, who lives in West Sacramento and
commutes downtown to work for a consulting firm.

Commute times have remained pretty stable across the Sacramento
metropolitan area, census data show. In Placer County, for example,
commute times held steady at 24 minutes between 2001 and 2003.

Some of that could be because of job growth, said Pete Hathaway, a
SACOG traffic planner. It's now possible, in many cases, to live and
work in a Sacramento suburb.

"(Companies) are going there partly because of cheaper land and partly
because a large part of their work force lives in suburbs now and they
like to be close to them," he said. "And when they do that, to some
extent it shortens the trip for some workers."

Sacramento-area drivers certainly have a shorter drive than residents
of many other heavily populated areas of California. Commute times in
Sacramento and Placer counties are shorter than those in 16 of the 24
largest California counties tracked by the Census Bureau.

Mark Knight can attest to the relative calm of Sacramento traffic. A
computer systems engineer, he used to commute across the Bay Area,
which could take two hours.

Now, he lives in Cool and commutes to Folsom. It's roughly the same
distance, but takes much less time.

"I don't mind distance," he said. "It's sitting and moving and looking
at other people filing their nails" that bothers him.

That bothers Marlene Martinez, too. She has no desire to resume her
long commute to Berkeley. She'd even like to move a little closer to
American River College and cut down her 30-minute drive.

"I've put in my time commuting," she said.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/12708869p-13561289c.html


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     	"This became a credo of mine... attempt the impossible in order to improve your work."
               -- Bette Davis