Riverside County is 'extreme commute' king

By: DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer | Thursday, March 31, 2005 12:46 AM PST ∞

Welcome to the land of the "extreme commute." Riverside County has one of the highest concentrations in the nation of people who drive at least 90 minutes to work, according to a survey released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The survey estimated that 44,523 weary county commuters, or 6.5 percent of the 687,223 residents who work outside the home, spend at least an hour and a half on the road between home and the workplace.

That rate puts Riverside County in a tie for first in California with Stanislaus County, where many San Francisco Bay Area workers have gone in search of affordable housing.

When it comes to large cities with populations of 250,000 or more, the city of Riverside ranks fourth in the United States in the proportion of workers ---- 5 percent ---- who sit in a car, bus or train at least an hour and a half en route to work. The survey did not break out numbers for smaller cities. The top three big cities are New York City, Baltimore and Newark, N.J.

The census bureau dubbed the 90-minute-plus trip an "extreme commute," in reporting the results of a 2003 American Community Survey.

That Riverside County is near the head of the pack hardly comes as a surprise to Susan Lane, 34, of Wildomar, who drives more than 100 miles round trip each day, back and forth to a software development job in the Mira Mesa area of San Diego.

It takes her 90 minutes to drive home each night. And each year it gets worse. It used to be that she had only to negotiate the stop-and-go obstacle course of Interstate 15 through Rancho Bernardo and Escondido. Not anymore.

"You think you're out of the traffic once you pass Escondido, and then you hit the Temecula bottleneck," Lane said. "It's really irritating. That is probably the worst part of the commute because you know you are almost home, but you have to deal with still more traffic."

And that's just Monday through Thursday.

"On Fridays, forget about it," Lane said. "You're talking two hours. Friday is miserable because you have all the people trying to get away for the weekend on the road, too."

But for all the misery, Lane has found a way to put her "extreme commute" to good use. She is teaching herself Spanish by playing language-instruction compact discs on her car stereo.

"I can't control the traffic, so I don't let the traffic control me," she said.

Besides, she said, at least her children have a safe place to live.

"We lived in Mira Mesa and that wasn't a good neighborhood," Lane said. "We had drive-by shootings a block away from our house."

If anything, said Sheryl Ade, a Wildomar community leader and friend of Lane's, the census statistics understate the problem facing Southwest County residents. Most newcomers are moving in from San Diego County and keeping their San Diego-area jobs, as Lane did, Ade said. She suggested the vast majority drive an hour and a half.

A September 2002 survey conducted by planning agencies in Riverside and San Diego counties found that more than half of Temecula-Murrieta-French Valley households had at least one person commuting outside the county. For them, the average drive time was one hour.

Among other things, the census survey found that:

The average commute for all working residents of Riverside County was 30.8 minutes in 2003. That ranked Riverside second in California and 18th in the United States. Contra Costa County's average of 32.1 minutes was tops in the state. The average for all of California, which ranked fifth worst nationwide, was 26.5 minutes.

16.3 percent of Riverside County commuters drive one hour, third highest among large metropolitan California counties. Contra Costa was No. 1 at 18.4 percent, followed by Solana County at 16.9 percent, according to calculations based on survey statistics.

When it comes to sheer numbers, nearly 112,000 Riverside County residents drive at least 60 minutes. By comparison, fewer than 100,000 Orange County residents are on the road that long. And fewer still ---- 91,000 ---- spend that much time in their cars in San Diego County. Both of those counties have a substantially larger population ---- and big job bases.

Ade said the numbers make one thing clear: "It's time to have jobs here before all the land is filled up with rooftops."

Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2616, or ddowney@californian.com.

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