Published: July 12, 2008 07:34 pm            

MARK BENNETT: ‘Extreme commuters,’ beginning to rethink their drives to work

Gas prices cut into incomes

TERRE HAUTE — It costs a lot to earn a living these days.

That sounds like a Yogi Berra-ism or some New Age piece of circular logic, but it’s the tough truth. Vigo Countians are now spending 7.5 percent of their paychecks on gasoline, according to the Oil Price Information Service.

Nobody understands the crunch of $4.15-a-gallon gas more deeply than long-distance or “extreme” commuters. Nearly 15,000 people commute from outside communities into Vigo County for work, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Another 3,680 drive from Vigo County to jobs elsewhere, including 458 to Indianapolis and 444 to Illinois.

When many began making those treks, fuel costs were less of a concern than road time, traffic hassles and vehicle maintenance. Now, gasoline tops the list, while also intensifying those other worries.

Some may have to change the way they live, or where they live. Life in suburbia just got more expensive.

“Basically, those are the two things that are going to happen when gas gets up around $4 and $5 a gallon,” said Carol Rogers, who has studied Hoosiers’ commuting patterns and is deputy director of the Indiana Business Research Center at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. “If it’s more than an hour and a half [commute], people are going to think twice about taking that job or moving closer.”

Those are difficult choices, especially in America, where boundless accessibility to the open road has been considered a virtual birthright for nearly a century. But the once-unimaginable pump prices are altering that tradition.

After 31 years away during an Army career, Dennis McKay returned to his hometown of Terre Haute and landed a job as a microcomputer network consultant at Indiana State University nine years ago. Eventually, he met and married a woman who lived in Olney, Ill., moved there in 2002, and began commuting 80 miles, each way, to his ISU job.

“I figure gas cost me $8 a day when I started, and now it’s $32 a day,” McKay explained. “It puts quite a dent in the wallet.”

McKay drives about 4,000 miles a month to and from ISU. He’d rolled up 217,000 on a Chevy S-10 pickup before buying a Chevy Colorado more than a year ago.

The 59-year-old Wiley High School graduate gets up at 3:30 a.m. Central Time, leaves by 4:30. That allows McKay to arrive at ISU between 7:15 and 7:30 a.m. Eastern Time.

With no plans to move closer, McKay learned a few other university employees commute from Illinois. But they live in towns off his direct driving path, and “they don’t go to work as early as I do,” he said. “So carpools are pretty much out.”

Cutting into

advantages

The flow of commuting Wabash Valley workers headed east to Indianapolis isn’t as sparse as the Olney-to-Terre-Haute journey.

“I’m amazed at how many ‘84’ [Vigo County] license plates I see coming and going,” said Terre Haute resident Jan Eglen, who commutes daily to Digonex Technologies on Monument Circle in downtown Indy, where he’s the CEO.

Eglen began that commute — a 70-minute ride — in 2004, when he opened Digonex, a firm that helps companies systematically determine pricing. Except for one three-year period, Eglen has lived in Terre Haute since enrolling at ISU in 1961. He worked as a psychologist for 25 years and co-founded Associated Psychologists in Terre Haute, where and his wife, Jo, raised their family. Establishing a business in the heart of Indy was not a prelude to moving to the capital city, he said, and they plan to stay here. Still, their son lives near Indy in Fishers, and their daughter works at Digonex, too, and rides with Eglen. He thinks she may someday also move to Indianapolis.

“I never started the trips with the idea that I would ever move,” Eglen said. “But I didn’t start the trips with gas costing 4 dollars and 9 cents a gallon.”

An upside for a majority of extreme commuters is a job in a higher-paying market, along with stronger benefits and stability. Per-capita incomes average $37, 403 in Marion County, compared to $27, 649 in Vigo County.

“Typically, commuters commute because they can get a higher-paying job,” Rogers said. “People aren’t going to commute to Indy to be a barber or a beautician or to work at the grocery store.”

Middle- and lower-income workers are more likely to live closer to their jobs, she added.

As gas costs eat up more of commuters’ extra income, they’ll begin to assess the advantages, Rogers said.

Some may move, but selling a home in the current struggling housing market isn’t easy or lucrative. Plus, long-distance commuters often involve a couple who drive to jobs in two different towns from a home in between, Rogers said. So a move closer to one spouse’s job merely extends the drive for the other spouse.

The next best option: Carpooling.

Sharing the road

Indiana hasn’t seen much carpooling. A Kelley School study in 2002 showed that 83 percent of Hoosiers 16 and older drove to work alone. Only 10 percent carpooled, and just 1 percent took public transit.

Jay Mitchell, a transportation planner for the Indiana Department of Transportation in downtown Indianapolis, began making his Terre Haute-to-Indy commute seven years ago when gas cost about $1.20. When it hit $1.90, he parked his pickup truck and switched to a Honda Civic. When it neared $4, he considered renting an apartment near Indy for weekday stayovers, or camping in a state park. Luckily, he found a carpooling partner who lives near his family’s neighborhood south of Terre Haute.

“That’s helped dramatically,” Mitchell said.

Both he and his fellow carpooler drive Civics, and Mitchell’s now has 245,000 miles on it. Another Terre Haute resident who works at INDOT in Indianapolis, John Wooden, also linked up with a carpooling partner this year. Wooden meets that fellow INDOT worker in Cloverdale, and then they share the ride to Indianapolis three days a week. Wooden, whose Ford Taurus wagon gets 21 to 23 mpg, is saving $25 to $30 a week, cutting his weekly fuel costs to $130.

Carpooling had definite upsides for Wooden. Before joining INDOT, he’d worked 22 years in Terre Haute for the city and an engineering firm, and drove just three miles to his jobs. With an investment in a Terre Haute home, “my family just wasn’t ready to consider” moving to Indianapolis, he said. Plus, carpooling forces him to wrap up his work day at a more finite time to accommodate his driving partner’s schedule.

“My wife says it gets me home earlier if I ride in the carpool,” Wooden said.

Some of Wooden’s other co-workers participate in a shuttle van service from Cloverdale to Indy. They park in an INDOT substation lot, and share the van ride with other folks who work in Indianapolis hospitals, insurance companies and government agencies. The cost is $145 a month per person.

Fuel expenses could shift the nation toward city living. Real estate chain Coldwell Banker polled 903 of its brokers nationwide, and 80 percent said gas prices have increased clients’ desire to live in cities, according to a Reuters report. Wayne Collins, owner of F.C. Tucker-Wayne Collins Realtors of Terre Haute, said, “I haven’t seen that happen yet.” Still, Rogers thinks that change could show up in a couple of years.

Progressive cities should prepare for a new era, when Americans choose shorter or less-costly drives to work, Rogers said. A new generation of workers value leisure time more highly than their nose-to-the-grindstone elders, she added, and hours lost inside a car don’t appeal to them.

“It’s really a good opportunity for cities to try to build their residential tax base,” said Rogers, a native Chicagoan who lives just 10 minutes from her job in Indianapolis, “and let people know that if you live in the city, you’re going to be closer to your job, closer to your supermarket, closer to everything. It will kind of remind people of why we used to live closer to each other.”



Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.

        

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