Long-Distance Work Commutes Make a Comeback

One of the analytic and data-driven insights into employees and office use over the last few years is that commute time is important to people.

A short commute isn’t the most important thing to people. In 2023, a Fannie Mae and PSB Insights survey found that 36% of people said home affordability was an important consideration of where to work, while 22% would relocate or accept a longer commute from a job to find an affordable home.

But the pandemic made some things clear. The best incentive to bring people back to the office is shorter commutes, according to MCSI. Also, in April 2023, Moody’s Analytics CRE analyzed the correlation between vacancy rate changes in metros and the percentage of workers who had less than a 15-minute commute. “There is plenty of ‘noise’ in the chart, but the general trend line does show that vacancy rates rose more in metros where it takes workers longer to get to work,” they noted.

Between avoiding Covid and looking for affordable places to live, there has been a “surge in long-distance commuting,” according to an analysis from Stanford University and transportation analytics firm INRIX.

“Examining car GPS data, we see a rise in the share of commute journeys over 40 miles across the largest 10 US cities,” the researchers wrote. They said the increase is greatest for “super-commuters,” which refers to commutes at least 75 miles. “The share of these super-commutes have grown by 32% post-pandemic.”

The super-commutes “typically take 2 hours and 19 minutes.” That means a daily commute would be 4 hours and 40 minutes, or more than half of an eight-hour workday.

The data suggests an increasing buildup of people farther from central business districts, driven by the cost of housing and the greater flexibility at work that lets them move further away because they may not need to go into the office every day. Working from home increased five-fold from pre-pandemic to post-pandemic.

Now, time for some additional context, because post-pandemic, super-commuters are only 2.9% of commuters. Look at 50 miles and more; the percentage of commuters traveling that amount is 8.9%. Look at 20 to 34 miles, it’s 71.9%.

Even a commute of 20 to 30 miles can be time-consuming into and out from a city center. The solution for an office return might be outside of what many companies can provide. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that super-commuting is a major factor given the relatively low percentage of people who travel that far for work.