US / The number of Americans with marathon commutes is on the rise

The number of Americans with marathon commutes is on the rise, particularly following a debilitating recession that has pummeled employment and the housing sector, a recent report on the nation’s “super commuting” trend finds.

“What’s really driving this is the economy,” says Mitchell Moss, director of New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation and co-author of the report with Carson Qing. “We have people locked into current housing because it’s hard to sell and even harder to buy. … You’re not uprooting the family because you don’t know how long the job will last.”

For years, the freeways and tunnels around economic centers such as Los Angeles and New York have been jammed with commuters seeking financial opportunities in those hubs but who choose to live in often less-expensive communities an hour or so away. But in the past decade, long-distance commutes of at least 90 miles have become more common across the USA, Moss says.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor from

via Sour economy gives rise to extreme commuters – USATODAY.com.