April 2000

The Daily Commute: It's not what it used to be

Commuting - the regular pattern of travel between home and work - has been the traditional focus of urban transportation planning. The influx of suburban workers to central city offices and shops during the morning rush hour, and the corresponding evening exodus, historically created the greatest challenge to area streets and highways. In major urban areas, including metropolitan Baltimore, those same travel patterns were behind decisions to invest in high-capacity transit facilities, such as Baltimore's Metro, and MARC service between Baltimore and Washington.

For a variety of reasons, ranging from the ways we've organized our activities in the metropolitan landscape to the ways we organize our time, these traditional patterns of travel are changing dramatically. Recent reports from the Washington area indicate that our usual notions about daily travel habits are outdated. No longer are the Monday through Friday morning and evening rush hours the peak travel hours in our neighboring metropolitan area to the south. Peak travel time on the Capital Beltway and other major highways in the Washington area is at mid-day on Saturday.

Why has this happened?

For starters, we no longer live where we used to, in the traditional urban core. Less than a century ago, Baltimore City stopped at North Avenue. In the areas annexed in 1918, red brick rowhouses with white marble steps gave way to detached homes on tree-lined streets in neighborhoods such as Forest Park, Roland Park and Lauraville. The march to the suburbs had begun. By the 1960s, people were moving farther out, to new communities along the Baltimore Beltway. From the 1970s on, development has occurred farther and farther from downtown Baltimore. The developers built, and the people came.

As people moved out into the counties, jobs followed. The Baltimore region gained nearly half a million jobs between 1970 and 1995, but almost three-quarters of them were located outside the Baltimore Beltway. In 1970, Baltimore City accounted for nearly half the region's jobs. Today only one-third of the jobs are located in the city.

New employment centers at BWI Airport, Columbia, Owings Mills, White Marsh and Edgewood have led to the phenomenon known as suburb-to-suburb commuting. Many of these suburbs are underserved by transit. Workers need cars to get to their jobs.

The growth of suburban employment centers presents special problems for both employers and workers. Most unskilled workers still live in the city and are transit-dependent. Low-end and entry level jobs increasingly are located in the suburbs. Where transit is available, it often can't be used by second and third shift workers. There is a mismatch between workers and jobs.

Special programs have been developed to provide transportation for the urban workforce to reach suburban jobs. For example, the Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition's Bridges to Work program connects city workers with jobs in Columbia.

The fact is, many workers now live farther from their workplaces than they used to. That, in turn, has led to longer workdays. Take the longer commute, add a daily stop at day care or school, and a worker can be away from home for 10 to 12 hours a day.

Morning and evening rush hours now begin earlier and end later than they did 20 years ago. This leaves little time for other activities, such as grocery shopping or even visiting with local family members. In addition, women who used to be home during the week to take care of family business are now in the work force, and have to take care of errands "after hours."

In 1997, the Maryland General Assembly passed the Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Act, designed to encourage revitalization of established communities. Unquestionably, the commitment to direct state funding towards older neighborhoods and industrial areas is beneficial to traditional urban centers such as Baltimore.

BMC staff studies for the Transportation Steering Committee suggest that stabilizing and reinvesting in older city and suburban neighborhoods can reduce sprawl and make better use of past investments in highways and transit facilities. By developing neighborhoods with new zoning policies, we can make a walk to the corner store more than a quaint and nostalgic idea.

Greater Baltimore has not yet reached the transportation congestion crisis of Northern Virginia and other stressed portions of the Washington metro area. Decisions on land use and infrastructure investments made today by the public sector and private development community can help Baltimore avoid such a transportation crisis in the future.

Posted: April 26, 2000