Todd Clausen

@ToddJClausen

Exodus of downtown jobs to the suburbs has left many in poverty with hours-long commutes.

New alternatives are in the works to cut down travel lengths for those without a vehicle.

Rochester may be lauded for short commutes but for those without vehicles — particularly those living in poverty — traveling to work has not gotten any easier in recent years.

For many, getting to work entails traveling an hour or more one way just to get to a job roughly 10 miles away. The problem, some say, is growing with jobs moving out of downtown, where a $50 million Transit Center opened roughly two years ago.

Downtown high-rises once filled with jobs are being converted to lofts and apartments; while retail has largely left the area after the demolition of Midtown Plaza and transformation of the Sibley Building.

Nearly 50 downtown buildings have been converted from commercial, to either residential or mixed use since 2000, according to a report by the Rochester Downtown Development Corp.

About 1.65 million square feet of commercial space downtown has disappeared along with the hundreds of jobs.

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Meanwhile, new call centers have bypassed the city for Gates, Henrietta and elsewhere. A casino promising 1,800 jobs opens Feb. 1 nearly 50 miles away in Tyre, Seneca County. Maximus brought roughly 2,000 jobs to the Rochester Tech Park. Spectrum plans to add an additional 225 jobs in Henrietta.

The dispersal of local jobs has stretched the public transit system , forcing those without vehicles to face multiple transfers and long commutes that contribute to a host of other adverse social and health issues.

"If you put dots on the map of 100 or more employees in a location, many more of those are being located in the suburban areas, where they used to be in the downtown area," said Bill Carpenter, chief executive officer of the Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority.

"It's not my job to tell employers where to pick their locations but gee, you build a transit center that’s so beautiful and nationally recognized why wouldn’t you want to put jobs near there?"

HOURS-LONG COMMUTE

Palmer Smith sometimes left his home two hours early to get to a food service job at the RIT Inn & Conference Center, about 8 miles from his Rochester home.

He would catch a bus from the city’s west side into downtown, wait for a second bus and take it to Henrietta. It is a trip that takes about an hour today, according to Regional Transit Service.

Bus routes also are on fixed schedules.

"I have taken the bus and gotten to work maybe an hour or so early," Smith said. "I would describe it really as very time consuming (but) it's better to be very early than late."

Palmer was among 115 Rochester-area residents hired by del Lago Resort & Casino at a job fair held earlier this month at Rochester City Hall.

Eric Goof of Greece also attended the job fair. He said those without transportation have to plan ahead when choosing where to work.

"You can’t wait until the last minute and plan to catch some kind of transportation that already has some kind of set schedule," he said. "You have to be on their schedule and not your own. You've got to plan ahead. You've got to be willing to do it."

Getting reliable and timely transportation to work concerns many city residents forced with applying for jobs along current mass-transit lines.

Roughly half of the 612 responses in a survey by the city and the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative said transportation was an issue in northeast Rochester.

Roughly 30 percent described it as "major issue."

About 8 in 10 said that they would be interested in paying for a neighbor vanpool option to take them to work, according to the survey.

“We know there are some transportation barriers," Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said at the job fair earlier this month. "For an 8-mile ride, it may take an individual an hour to get there. We want to remove all those barriers."

It led the city to pilot a program with vRide, a service subsidized by the city that will cost each rider $75 a month. Nearly 80 people have signed up for the service.

"While the job opportunity may be someplace else, those dollars will come back to the community in one way or another, and that's why it is important for us to provide them with a chance to take care of their families in a meaningful way, to earn a living wage," added Warren, who has thrown support behind other ride-services, although those services would be more costly than public transit.

Jillian Moran is a 28-year-old single mom hired at the job fair as a server. She plans to use the vRide.

"It's hard finding anything really more than 20 hours a week with better pay," she said. "Hopefully, (I can) get my own transportation within six months."

Wegmans Food Markets has 15 stores within Monroe County, with most located outside city limits. A spokesperson for the Gates-based chain said 85 of the 305 student workers in the Hillside Work Scholarship Connection program are transported by Hillside to their jobs.

"It's sometimes the case that they cannot easily get to the store even when that store is on a bus route," Wegmans spokesperson Jo Natale said in an email.

FUTURE SERVICES

Several studies have shown that longer commutes — whether by car, public transportation or other means — impact workers in all sorts of ways and tend to lead to higher levels of stress, divorce, absenteeism at work and less sleep.

Lengthy commutes also serve as a barrier for those living in poverty for improving their financial status, said Peter Nabozny, an associate principal at the Center for Governmental Research who has written on the issue for Reconnect Rochester.

"Just having a system that requires people to take so much time to get from their neighborhood to their jobs, it just kind of stacks the deck against people," he said. "The decisions we make about where — particularly those jobs that employ low-income people — are located is really, really important. We're making it that much more difficult for those residents we want to support."

Carpenter said the local bus service, which continues to offer $1 fares, has roughly 60 agreements with area businesses to help pay a portion of service. He added that the agency continues to be involved in ongoing anti-poverty efforts through several collaborative efforts.

RTS provided roughly 17.1 million rides in Monroe in the year ending March 31, 2016. It provided nearly 1.1 million rides to passengers in seven nearby counties, too. Cost to passengers remains the lowest in the state, Carpenter said.

The service has received high marks for covering the city, where residents rely more heavily on public transportation.

"I get that it's more difficult to get to the bank, the doctor and to work and stop and pick up your child at daycare and have a reasonable commute time with how often our buses run currently," he said. "We’re trying to cover so much geography and it becomes in our industry the difference between frequency and coverage."

He said the service is examining ways to provide transportation to more neighborhoods by using smaller buses to shuttle people to certain areas. The service might offer a way for riders to send a text for a ride in the northeast portion of the city.

It could also cut down on commutes. Efforts also are underway by the city and Reconnect Rochester to bring bike-sharing programs to the city.

New bike programs, along with the potential addition of ride-sharing services, promise to alter public transportation over the next several years, Carpenter said.

"We are right at that gap, the gap between what we know and what is yet to come," he added. "This transformation is going to be pretty interesting as people who try other products realize the difference in cost between public transit and other options."

TCLAUSEN@Gannett.com

Rochester Employment and Job Hubs

TRAVEL TIMES

The number of jobs reachable by public transportation, according to a 2011 report by the Brookings Institution.

10.4%

56,297 jobs reachable within 45 minutes.

15.9%

86,476 jobs within 60 minues.

32.4%

176,938 jobs within 90 minutes.