Commuters in Alabama’s four largest cities are driving to work from farther afield, according to a Huntsville Times analysis of federal data and interviews with large employers. And the trend – evident in 10 years’ worth of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Surveys — could have implications for everything from highway construction funding to the debate about which metro area is really the state’s biggest.
The data, based on estimates from the ACS 5-year surveys completed in 2015 and 2020, shows:
- In Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery and Mobile, percentage growth in daily commuters from outside the city’s home county far exceeded internal growth.
- Birmingham saw increases from Tallapoosa and Walker counties but small percentage declines from Shelby and St. Clair.
- In Huntsville, commuters from DeKalb County rose an estimated 295 percent, along with increases from two Tennessee border counties.
- Most of Mobile’s commuter growth came from Jackson and Harrison counties in Mississippi.
- Daily commuters from Montgomery County to the state capital declined slightly, while Dallas County commuters nearly doubled.
The analysis draws on commuting flow data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which estimates daily commuters between counties based upon surveys of U.S. households over the course of five years. It focused on the home counties of Alabama’s four largest cities. It excluded those counties with less than 100 estimated daily commuters to the Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery and Mobile areas.
The most recent data on commuter flows is now four years old. Recent growth in many Alabama metro areas – as well as their surrounding counties – could call some of it into question.
That was the case earlier this year when a think tank used similar data to rate the Birmingham-Hoover metropolitan statistical area one of the nation’s worst-performing, a point disputed by Jefferson County’s Economic Development adviser. Jefferson Traywick told The Birmingham News in February the ranking did not align with recent economic data, including wage growth that had outpaced the national average.
AL.com also recently reported St. Clair County was among the fastest-growing in the Birmingham metro area. Recent growth in the near suburbs would not be captured by the 2020 ACS data.
But even if only some of the trends toward longer-distance commutes hold, they could influence Alabama’s metro areas for years to come. Commuter volume is one measure by which the federal government judges the counties that are included in a metropolitan statistical area: the space surrounding an urban center of at least 50,000 people. That’s of more than just academic interest: It influences how social and economic data are collected and analyzed, which in turn can inform decisions about a range of federal funding.
Some north Alabama employers said while the trend may be growing, it’s not new to them.
“A lot of our people that commute in have done it for a long time,” said John Watson, CEO of Torch Technologies, a Huntsville-based defense services and solutions company. “One of our folks that comes in from Tennessee actually is a third-generation commuter: his grandfather, his father and now him.”
Torch Technologies, which specializes in high-end modeling, simulation and prototyping, employes just over 1,000 in Huntsville, of which about 2 dozen live in Tennessee, Watson said. Others live as far away as Cullman, about 50 miles as the crow flies but a bit more as the highway winds.
Watson said some workers have talked about staying close to their childhood homes, looking for real estate bargains or even locating in places where the morning and evening drives run counter to the usual traffic flow.
“If you move in the right direction, the time it takes to commute may be the same although the distance is father,” he said. “We’re fortunate that people can stay in their rural communities and stay connected to their families, and still have a high-tech job in a thriving city.”
A spokesperson for the Fortune 500 company Leidos said it of its about 2,100 workers in Huntsville, 13 percent live about an hour’s commute from their workplaces, and 3 percent live more than an hour away. The company draws local workers from as far away as Florence, Moulton and Franklin, Tenn., she said – thanks in part to flexible workplace policies.
Alabama’s average commute time of 23.5 minutes falls in the middle of U.S. states: Drivers in South Dakota have the shortest average at 17.4 minutes, while New Yorkers lead with a 33.2-minute average drive time. Data from the Federal Reserve shows average commute times in 2022 for Mobile and Jefferson counties – 26 and 24.4 minutes, respectively, were far ahead of Madison County’s 21.8 minutes.
The commuting workforce at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville has historically come from large parts of the state, said Martin Traylor, whose post as deputy to the garrison commander is roughly equivalent to a city manager. And with a peak daily workforce of up to 46,000, the arsenal would be Alabama’s 11th largest city.
“We’ve always had people commuting from distances almost hard to believe,” he said. “Scottsboro, down around Anniston, north of Birmingham – we have people who drive well over an hour one-way, and that’s been the case at Redstone for as long we’ve been keeping track.”
History aside, Traylor said, commuting distances have grown.
“I think that’s probably a good thing for the economy here and in some ways for those outlying areas, but housing is tight [in the Huntsville area], so being able to go a little further out opens opportunities for more people,” he said.
Some of the rise in long-distance commutes is likely due to the rise in telework opportunities for the Department of Defense elements on the arsenal, Traylor said. Yet even with telework and flex hours, Redstone has recently exceeded its pre-COVID numbers for daily onsite workers.
“It’s rewarding to do what a lot of these organizations do,” he said. “People enjoy their work, they like the mission sets, they’re committed to it. It’s something that’s bigger than themselves, and that draws people.”
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