NYC's outer-borough residents have some of the longest commutes in the country
Unless you’re planning to relocate to Alaska (the state with the quickest commutes in the country), here in our neck of the woods, it looks like long commutes are here to stay—and that’s not even counting the "Summer of Hell" that just began at Penn Station.
Residents of four different regions of NYC face commutes that rank among the nation’s top 10 longest ones, according to a study conducted by statistician Chase Sawyer and originally reported on by CityLab. Unsurprisingly, outer borough residents have the toughest slogs in the city: Queens residents have an average commute time of 42.6 minutes, Brooklynites have a 41.7-minute commute on average, Bronx residents 43 minutes and Staten Island residents 42.6 minutes on average. By comparison, Manhattanites' average commute time is about 31 minutes, according to the map. Interestingly, both Westchester County and Nassau County residents had shorter commutes than outer-borough residents — 32.9 and 34.9 minutes respectively, though we'd imagine the aforementioned "summer of hell," and recent LIRR woes may skew these numbers a bit the next time around.
Sawyer used 2011-2015 data from the U.S. Census to create the interactive map shown below, which makes it easy to visualize how much time it would take one to get to and from work in places all over the country.
The reason for our super long commutes here in the four boroughs? We'd imagine it to be a combination of traffic—on public transportation and by car (remember, we have a lot of people who live and work here)—and our current MTA woes, which have included delays, over-packed cars, and even a derailment.
But moving to a more rural area may not be your answer to this problem. According to Sawyer's data, people in Pike County, Pennsylvania, have the longest journeys of all—at an average time of 44 minutes. Maybe we should cut the MTA a little slack after all?
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