(c) 2006 
Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.TO AVOID TRAFFIC on his 62-mile commute, Stephen Settle joined a carpool at 4:15 a.m., arrived at work around 5:20 a.m. and then napped in his office until his wife would call to wake him up for his 6 a.m. start time. "I would rather come to work a little earlier" to beat the traffic, says Mr. Settle, a manager for structure and ground at Washington Dulles International Airport. More recently, schedule changes and such broke up the carpool, and Mr. Settle now drives to work a little later, but he hopes soon to start a vanpool that would again get him to work in time for a nap.
As traffic worsens around the country, more commuters are heading out the door well before sunrise, adding to congestion on roads in the dark, predawn hours. In response, services and businesses from public transportation to coffeeshops are changing their schedules to catch early-bird commuters, effectively expanding the traditional 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. rush hour.
A report released yesterday by the National Research Council's Transportation Research Board looking at U.S. commuting patterns from 1990 to 2004 found that more commuters are leaving for work before and after the traditional peak hours of 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. In addition, the report found that the off-peak group gained about half of all new commuters from 1990 to 2000. In particular, commuters starting their journey to work between 5 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. gained about 25% of the growth in commuters, and those leaving between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. gained more than 12% of all new commuters.
"We've seen extraordinary growth in the percentage of the population that is leaving home before 6 a.m.," says the report's author, transportation consultant Alan Pisarski. One result of earlier commutes is that congestion no longer just occurs during the traditional rush hour. Congestion may have been encountered an average of 7.1 hours daily on major urban roads in 2003, up from an average of 6.2 hours in 1993 and an average of 4.5 hours in 1982, according to the Texas Transportation Institute's 2005 Urban Mobility Report on 85 urban areas.
Gary Wells, a 55-year-old public-relations executive who lives in Akron, Ohio, and works about 35 miles away in Cleveland, now leaves for work at about 5:30 a.m. every day for a 40-minute commute. He used to leave around 6:30 a.m. or 7 a.m., but the commute would take an hour because of traffic. "There is a lot more traffic heading into downtown Cleveland than there used to be," says Mr. Wells, who now can more easily also do work with clients in Europe and Asia.
Public transportation systems around the country are expanding their schedules to accommodate the trend. The Metrorail system in the Washington, D.C., area two years ago started opening at 5 a.m., a half hour earlier than previously, in response to more commuters using the system at 5:30 a.m., especially those in suburban Maryland and northern Virginia. In Washington state, the Sound Transit's earliest commuter train into Seattle now leaves at 5:45 a.m. from Tacoma, a change from 6:20 a.m. when the service was launched in 2000.
Starting Oct. 30, NJ Transit, the public-transportation service in New Jersey, will have six trains leaving from Trenton to New York between 5:05 a.m. and 6:10 a.m., up from four currently. Three of those will be express trains including new ones at 5:10 a.m. and 5:38 a.m., up from one express currently at 6:05 a.m. "We have been experiencing more customers traveling in the early peak period over the last several years, and we have been able to respond," says a spokeswoman. In recent years, NJ Transit has also added more trips to its bus services for commuters into New York between 5 a.m. and 6:45 a.m.
In April, the Metro-North Railroad in New York added an earlier train to each of its six line segments that leave as early as 4:12 a.m. and arrive at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan before 6 a.m., anywhere between 5:40 a.m. and 5:50 a.m. Metro-North added the earlier trains after noticing at the start of the year that ridership on its early trains between 5:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. grew 23% in roughly five years, compared with a decline of 9% in ridership during the overall peak period of travel from 5:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. The decision was also based on a survey of riders and a focus group that included drivers who commuted by car. "One of the reasons [the drivers] didn't take the train was because the train didn't come early enough," says Robert MacLagger, director of operations planning for Metro-North Railroad.
Companies that serve commuters, from coffee shops to day-care centers to breakfast restaurants, also are trying to help ease the pain. Last fall, almost all Caribou Coffee Company Inc. stores on the East Coast and other ones around the country started opening at 5:30 a.m., compared with 6 a.m. previously, to accommodate early-morning commuters. More than 90% of McDonald's Corp. restaurants in the U.S., similarly, now operate on extended hours -- opening at 5 a.m., closing at midnight, or staying open 24 hours. McDonald's restaurants generally used to open as early as 6 a.m.
Employers are also trying to help drivers beat the rush by adding more-flexible work schedules. Houston, for instance, ran a "Flex in the City" program last month encouraging employers to shift their employees' schedules so they could commute before or after peak commuting times or work from home. More than 140 employers participated. Of the 1,300 employees who responded to a survey, more than 50% said they will be continuing the flexible scheduling option as a result of the program, according to Kathleen Kelley, director of the Houston mayor's Flexible Workplace Initiative.
Commuters also are developing their own coping strategies. To get to her previous job, about 45 miles away from her former home, Amy Tidwell would leave as early as 6:35 a.m. and arrive at work around 7:25 a.m. Once there, the 27-year-old quality administrator in Houston would sleep in her car, setting her cellphone alarm clock for five minutes before 8 a.m., the time she needed to be at work. "I'm not a morning person so I was just leaving really early to avoid the traffic and then would sleep when I got to work," says Ms. Tidwell, who started a new job in August where she starts at 7:30 a.m. with a shorter commute. "I value my sleep."
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Changing Commutes
Some of the recent findings about commuting patterns:
-- Longer commutes: The number of workers with commutes longer than 60 minutes grew by nearly 50% between 1990 and 2000.
-- Walking wanes: The percentage of total workers walking to work dropped to 2.9% in 2000 from 5.6% in 1980.
-- Driving alone: The number of new solo drivers grew by almost 13 milion in the 1990s.
-- To suburbia: Suburb-to-surburb commuting is on the rise and from 1990 to 2000, the number of Americans commuting from the city to the surburbs grew by 20%.
Source: Commuting in America III by Alan Pisarski.
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