Long-distance commuters’ road to nowhere

Allison Linn Senior writer • Profile • E-mail

For Dollie Kinkead, the economic turmoil gripping the country translates into an 80-mile drive each work day from a house she can't sell to a job she thinks she's lucky to have.

For Danny Jesse, it means living with his parents and enduring a commute that is at times so costly and brutal that he would rather spend the night in his car.

For Brian and Ronda Mitchell, the combination of high gas prices and a housing market downturn has forced them to make the difficult choice to allow the home they have owned for seven years to go into foreclosure.

“Gas was, for us, the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Brian Mitchell said.

The weak housing market, high gas prices and iffy job market are proving a nasty mix, leaving many Americans stuck with long commutes, unwanted homes and few options.

“Right now, we’re in the middle of this unpleasant confluence of a number of things,” said Patricia Mokhtarian, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Davis who studies commuting.

Mokhtarian said her research has long shown that Americans don’t just endure but actually enjoy having some distance between work and home. Commuting experts also have long argued that the cost and hassle of commuting was offset for many by perks such as better schools,  bigger yards and cheaper housing.

In the era of cheap gas, the data seemed to corroborate that notion. As the suburbs and exurbs extended farther and farther from urban cores, Americans spent more and more time in their cars.

In 2000, the most recent Census data available, the average travel time to work was 25.5 minutes, up from 21.7 minutes in 1980 and 22.4 minutes in 1990. Most workers — three out of four — were spending that time alone in their own car.

The number of people who spend more than 90 minutes traveling to work nearly doubled between 1990 and 2000, from 1.76 million to 3.44 million, according to the Census data.

But the rising cost of gas has some experts wondering whether the cost of transportation is finally high enough to make far-flung suburbs far less attractive.

“Now all bets are off,” Mokhtarian said.

Still, some are skeptical that ingrained American habits will change dramatically, despite the current woes.

Alan Pisarski, author of a series of books called “Commuting in America,” believes high energy prices will prompt even more people to turn to carpooling, public transportation, telecommuting and fuel-efficient vehicles. Still, he disputes the more radical notion that a wide swath of Americans will suddenly flock back to in-city living. One big reason is that, in recent years, more jobs have moved to where those outlying houses have sprung up.

Nevertheless, he notes that the current spate of woes stand to hurt many Americans, especially those with the least financial wiggle room.

Even cutting trips to church
When the Mitchells bought their modular home in rural Platteville, Colo., north of Denver, they were among the many Americans trading a long commute for an affordable house.

Seven years later, the Mitchells are making another, more painful trade. Their housing woes compounded by the growing cost of Brian’s 50-mile roundtrip commute, the couple recently decided to let their home fall into foreclosure. Instead, they are renting a house that is biking distance from Brian’s job.

The Mitchells had bought the house in 2001, for $129,900, with the intention of fixing it up and selling it for a profit. But in 2005, when they put the house on the market, interest was tepid at best.

The couple decided to put more money into improving the house, in the hopes that it would stand out among comparable homes in the area. In the end, they plowed some $15,000 and countless hours of sweat equity into the improvements, using credit cards and a loan against a 401(k) account to fund some upgrades.

Still, the house didn’t sell, even when they dropped the price from $126,000 to $122,000. In the meantime, gas prices skyrocketed, which added to their own expenses and made their rural home even less attractive.

The couple, who have two kids, found themselves using credit cards for everyday expenses, like groceries and bills. Even trips to church were curtailed to save on gas. Finally, they decided that their only option was to let the bank take the house.

“Sometimes, in surgery, amputation is the best solution,” Brian Mitchell said.

As the foreclosure proceeds, the Mitchells have rented a house in Longmont, west of Platteville toward Boulder, Colo., that is nicer than the one they had owned. It's also less than five miles from Brian’s job as a project manager. Although the rent is more than their former mortgage payment, Brian, 43, said that, with gas savings, they are still coming out ahead. The move into town is allowing the couple to downsize to just one car.

“It was a tough decision for us to decide to let the house go into foreclosure, but I’ll tell you what, once we made it … it was very liberating, actually,” he said.

While Mitchell can now bike to work, for other Americans the weak economy means adding hours on the road.

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