The Evolution of Commuting Patterns in the New York City Metro Area

With the emergence of the American suburb in the 1940s and its growing prominence in the 1950s and 1960s, the expectation arose that the suburbs would eventually become independent of their central, or "host," cities. In this view, the suburbs would over time surpass their host cities in population and become employment centers in their own right. In this issue, the authors track the changes in commuting patterns in one metropolitan region -- the twenty-seven-county area that centers on New York City -- from 1980 to 2000. Their examination suggests that throughout the New York metro region, commuters are traveling farther and spending more time in transit than in the recent past. To assess the contribution that these two factors -- worker flows and distance -- may have made to longer commutes, the authors use a gravity model. The authors determine that the dispersion of both people and jobs has played a role in the metro area's longer commutes. Also important, however, has been a change in the behavior of employers and employees.