Hampton Roads commute time idles despite less congestion

Sandra Williams lives in Villa Heights, less than three miles from her job at Norfolk City Hall. 

But with her walk to the bus stop and a transfer, it can take 45 minutes to get to her desk. Add in travel to her second job, and Williams spends nearly two hours a day commuting.

Given that her neighborhood is near downtown, you’d think the lengthy commute would be a rare case. But nearly a third of residents there travel at least 40 minutes each way, according to the American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

That means residents of Villa Heights and the eastern edge of Park Place share commute times similar to workers on the region’s outskirts. And they aren’t alone – people in Portsmouth’s Southside, Chesapeake’s South Hill and Norfolk’s Grandy Village neighborhoods also reported lengthy commute times despite inner-city locations.

Williams chalks it up to a reliance on the bus.

“It does take a bit of time when you take public transportation,” Williams said. “It does put a little bind on people at times.”

Although congestion has lessened in the past year or two, the American Community Survey reveals that South Hampton Roads commutes have  stayed constant in the past decade.

Across the region, the average commute time remained  about 26 minutes one way, the same as it was 10 years ago. That’s still far less than the average commute of 37 minutes in the Washington region, and it also beats out commutes in the Richmond, Charlotte and Raleigh metro areas.

Planning officials, though, say local workers shouldn’t be comforted. Especially for those who take bridges and tunnels – “notorious chokepoints” – commutes are stretching out, said Dwight Farmer, executive director of the Hampton Roads Regional Planning District. The numbers are likely  to get worse quickly as the economy turns around and more people go back to work, he warned.

“Just because the average has maintained a steady state doesn’t relieve us of our responsibility to come up with solutions,” Farmer said. “The way most of the statistics are, it masks what’s really going on. It’s clear our chokepoints, the bridges and tunnels, are getting much worse. And they’re getting worse at an accelerating rate.”

Nick Schuetz knows all about that.

He and his wife moved out near the Holland area of Suffolk 16 years ago, trading a short commute for 4 acres in the country.

“Peace and quiet, and the Milky Way,” he said of their neighborhood. “There’s no doubt about actually being able to see the stars. That’s one of the reasons we fell in love with this place.”

As a trade-off, Schuetz, a project engineer for a marine repair company, now travels 42 miles one way to his office. If he has to go to a shipyard in Newport News, it’s a 48-mile trip that stretches as long as 90 minutes in afternoon tunnel traffic.

He recently retired his Toyota 4 Runner, which had 490,000 miles on it. His motorcycle just went over 200,000 miles.
Nearly half his neighbors have similar commutes.

“We all do it,” Schuetz said. “After a bad day, it gives me an hour to cool off before I get home. On a good day, it makes it even better.”
Like Schuetz, Marta Allen moved to southern Chesapeake for a more rural lifestyle. She, too, now lives in one of the areas with the region’s longest commute times.

When she moved 12 years ago, Allen, a first-grade teacher at Windsor Woods Elementary School in Virginia Beach, didn’t even think about transferring to a closer school.

“That’s where I started,”  the 38-year teaching veteran said. “It’s just a special place to be.”

So, she leaves her house before 6:30 a.m. for her 45-minute trip to work. Sometimes, she listens to books on CD to make the ride seem faster.
“You kind of get used to it,” she said. “I take the back roads.”

Across South Hampton Roads, the shortest commutes belong to enlisted military who live on or close to bases.

On average, residents of the census tracts that contain Oceana Naval Air Station, its Dam Neck Annex and  Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story  reported fast trips to work, nearly all of them 20 minutes or less.

“Both bases are small enough – and the barracks are centrally located – you’ve got a walking commute,” said Kelley Stirling, public affairs officer for Oceana and Dam Neck. “Obviously, that’s an awesome commute. But of course, you have to live where you work.”

In most cities, living close to downtown – or, in Virginia Beach’s case, the center of the commercial Oceanfront – also leads to shorter trips to work. In Norfolk, the survey reported that 95 percent of residents of Central Brambleton, Spartan Village and Norfolk State University had commutes shorter than 20 minutes.

That includes Ronald Johnson, who rides his bike to his job loading and unloading trucks at a container company off Ballentine Boulevard.

“I just ride straight to work,” he said of the quick commute he’s done for the past eight years. “It’s only slower if I stop at the store.”

Meghan Hoyer, (757) 446-2293, meghan.hoyer@pilotonline.com