Happy Wake-Up Time!

There are times it is really good to be a virtual assistant. This is one of them :-)

A recent study by the Trasnsportation Research Board, "Commuting in America III", found that, among other things, over 13 million ~more~ people are solo commuters than were in 1990.

The Transportation Research Board has been analyzing commute info since 1986, based primarily on U.S. Census data. So, while report is very interesting, it also six years out of date since it is based on the 2000 Census.

The same study also indicated that people are leaving for work earlier, arriving home later, and spending more time on their commute--the number of people commuting over 60 minutes grew almost 50% from '90 to 2000. (Hence the popularity of audiobooks?)

The most interesting thing about the report, to me, was the fact that less and less people are commuting from the suburbs to town centers. More and more people, apparently, are commuting from suburb to suburb as major employers move out to the 'burbs for tax advantages or to be closer to the skilled employees they want to attract.

Another touchy aspect of this report is the immigration stats. It mentions how traffic has increased in border states due to the population influx--during normal population growth it would take 20 years for the next generation to start driving and commuting, but immigration increases the population without the delay. Boy, talk about a hot button issue!

You can view the entire report in pdf format at the Transportation Research Board's website or click here. If you don't want to read the whole thing (I don't blame you!) there's a handy little 'short' (12 page!) version of the findings here.

(and yes, if you happen to stop by both, I shamelessly cribbed this one from my own post on the OffAssist blog)