The time Capital Region residents spend commuting has gotten longer every year, according to census data.

People in the five-county Albany-Schenectady-Troy metro area spent 23 minutes on average commuting one way last year, data from the Census' American Community Survey shows. In the previous survey, from 2009, the average was 22 minutes.

Still, Capital Region residents are better off than those in many other areas. Statewide, New Yorkers spent 32 minutes on average commuting last year — six minutes longer than the national average of roughly 26 minutes.

Capital Region counties

From one end of the region to the other, commutes tend to be fairly consistent. At 20 minutes, Albany County residents had the shortest average commute last year, while the typical journey for Schoharie County residents took 29 minutes.

Schenectady County residents averaged 23 minutes, followed by Rensselaer County commuters at 24 minutes and Saratoga County at 25 minutes.

The consistency is partially due to decentralization, said Mark Castiglione, executive director of the Capital District Regional Planning Commission, which covers the four core counties, excluding Schoharie.

"Many other regions have a primary city everyone is commuting too, but the Capital Region is a polycentric region," he said. "This creates an atypical commuting pattern because people are commuting to all different areas rather than one central city."

Not only are people commuting to various cities in the Capital Region, but the town of Colonie has also become an employment hub, said Rocco Ferraro, planning board chair for the town of Clifton Park and adjunct professor at the University at Albany.

"Each one of these cities has employment centers, and Colonie is in the center of all this," he said. "Each one of these locations has employment centers, so the transportation patterns are not all going in one direction."

The worst local cities and towns for commuters

Residents of Hadley, a town in northern Saratoga County, spent the most time on average commuting to work last year: 67.5 minutes, a 127 percent increase from 2009. In another Saratoga County town, Milton, the average time residents spent traveling to work doubled, rising from 24.6 minutes in 2009 to 48.7 minutes in 2016.

In Albany County, residents of Preston-Potter Hollow had the worst commute: 43.6 minutes, a 75 percent increase from 2009. Schaghticoke residents had the longest travel time in Rensselaer County at 62.2 minutes. In Schenectady, Duanesburg residents spent 56.7 minutes on average commuting, though the rate decreased by two percent from 2009.

Large cities, longer commutes

Big cities with extensive public transportation systems tend to have longer commuting times, and unsurprisingly, the New Yorkers with the longest commutes primarily live around New York City. Bronx County had the highest average commute in the state at 43.5 minutes, while the average for Richmond County and Queens County was 43.2 minutes and 42 minutes, respectively.

Nationwide, among the longest metro area commutes is East Stroudsburg in Pennsylvania, at 38 minutes. New York and Washington D.C. metros were close behind at 35.9 and 34 minutes, respectively.

Public transportation gains popularity

The Capital Region is very car-centric. Nearly 85 percent of Albany County residents drive alone or carpool to work, and that's the lowest figure among the five metro counties. At the high end, 90 percent of Saratoga County residents drive alone or carpool to work.

But more residents are using public transportation to commute, and the percentage of people taking it to work rose in nearly every Capital Region county. In Albany, the percentage rose from 4.7 percent to 5.5 percent between 2009 and 2016. In the same time frame the percentage doubled in Schenectady, increasing from 2.2 percent to 4.4 percent.

"It's a bigger bump than you would think," said Carm Basile, CEO of the Capital District Transportation Authority. "There's no doubt more people are using public transportation in the Capital Region."

The numbers also rose in Saratoga County, to 0.9 percent in 2016 from 0.8 percent in 2009, but went down in Rensselaer County to 2.7 percent from 3.1 percent.

Basile credits several factors for the growing interest in public transit. Nationwide more people are returning to urban living, including millennials and retirees who don't want to live in the suburbs, and that trend is reflected in the Capital Region, he said.

The CDTA is also trying to make it easier for people to use public transportation, Basile said. One example is the Universal Access program, which allows students at partnering colleges to board buses with their student ID cards. The cards contain an embedded chip recognized by the farebox. Another example is adding new Bus Rapid Transit routes.

Gas prices have also had some effect on people's transportation choices. When gas prices spiked earlier this year, more people chose to ride the bus instead of commuting by car, Castiglione said. After prices began declining, they didn't see an associated drop in ridership, he said.

Still, there are challenges with getting people to use public transportation in a "car-oriented society," Basile said.

The Capital Region's geography makes developing bus routes difficult because people are commuting all over the place and not to one particular area. There's also an "image problem" - people don't see public transportation as a viable commuting option, he said.

But more broadly, getting people to opt to take the bus rather than drive their car to work involves changing their minds, attitudes and actions.

"It's a societal, behavioral shift," Basile said. "We're trying to change society ... the challenge is to keep this growth going. We can't let our foot off the gas."

Alternative modes of travel

The number of people who walk to work remains low in the Capital Region and declined in the four core counties between 2009 and 2016. Albany County had the highest rate, at roughly 4.6 percent, while Saratoga had the lowest, at roughly 2 percent.

More workers are using bicycles, motorcycles, taxi cabs and other alternative means of transportation to commute. In Albany County, the rate rose from 1.3 percent to 1.6 percent, and in Schenectady County from 1.2 percent to 1.3 percent. In Rensselaer and Saratoga counties, the rates fell: in the former, the rate decreased from 0.9 percent to 0.7 percent, and in the latter, the rate declined from 1 percent to 0.75 percent.

People's proximity from home to work is the biggest factor in determining whether it's convenient to walk. But zoning regulations and city planning also make a difference, Ferraro said. More cities and towns in the Capital Region should prioritize complete streets policies, he said, referring to an approach that requires streets be designed to provide safe access for drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and other transit riders.

For example, a complete street policy could mandate that sidewalks connecting city or town blocks be part of the approval process.

Density also matters, Ferraro said. Higher density in terms of residential and employment centers would mean a bigger customer base for public transportation options and the possibility that more people would live close enough to their workplace to walk, he said.

As cities in the Capital Region have begun to add more residential space, Ferraro expects more people will walk or bike to work. Addressing this shift from a development perspective can be challenging, especially in suburban areas, he said. In existing areas, cities and towns need to make existing transportation systems more efficient and promote transportation other than cars.

"It's difficult to retrofit a design into what currently exists," Ferraro said. "It's much more expensive and challenging from an engineering perspective. Cities and towns need to do the planning in advance."

miszler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5018 • @madisoniszler