Karl Baker

The News Journal

The ZIP code that includes Middletown is home to 983 workers who commute more than 90 minutes each way.

The growth is tied to rapid population growth in southern New Castle County and a lack high-wage positions.

State and local officials are working to encourage more pedestrian-friendly, mixed-used neighborhoods.

On any workday, more than a thousand residents of Delaware’s fastest-growing region undertake what the U.S. Census Bureau considers “extreme commuting,” enduring at least three-hour round-trips to jobs in Baltimore, Washington, New York City and beyond.

The strip of New Castle County south of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal is home to the largest number of long-distance commuters in the state, according to a census report issued this year.

They reside in places like ZIP code 19709, home to rapidly growing Middletown, which had 983 people spend three hours or more driving round-trip for their paycheck.

Marybeth Edgar lives in a quiet Middletown neighborhood and travels to her job as a recruiter at a Washington law firm four days a week, facing some of the worst gridlock in America. Her odometer ticks more than 100 miles each way – a formidable 3,200 miles a month, or about the distance from Delaware to Alaska’s southern tip.

“Absolutely, it wears on me. What has really suffered is my sleep,” said Edgar, a mother of three. "In the morning, it’s hard to get out of bed."

Marathon commuters like Edgar are a part of a trend in southern New Castle County – a byproduct of inexpensive homes, good schools and the state’s low taxes have lured residents from across the Northeast Corridor to row after row of subdivisions filled with spacious lawns far from the urban rush.

Statewide, 10,437 people were classified as extreme commuters, according to the census report released in January, giving Delaware the 14th highest rate in the country. The number represents a 9 percent increase from 2011 and likely has continued to creep up south of the canal as more and more subdivisions have come online in the two years since the data was collected.

The daily migration – fueled in part by a lack of high-paying local jobs – is contrary to the way state officials and those in Middletown would like to see communities evolve, as pedestrian-friendly and full of residences close to workplaces.

Mayor Kenneth Branner said Middletown is benefiting from workers who want to save money now and see a lengthy drive as a tradeoff. They can have a well-paying job, live in a nice community and a have spacious house without a massive mortgage – a rarity in many East Coast cities.

“They’re making higher pay in New York and Philadelphia, and they’re living for the retirement,” he said. “They don’t want to give that up and try to find a job here making half as much money or whatever.”

Gas prices also have plunged from a 2014 national average of $3.34 to $1.84 last week, making those commutes less of a financial strain. The census data does not break down whether commuters used carpooling or public transportation, and the amounts don't take into account issues like weather and congestion, which can tack on more time each way.

Middletown resident Brian Wyre installs security equipment for companies throughout the Northeast, which means he regularly drives his white Chevrolet utility van topped with ladders hundreds of miles each day. His main office is near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, about 60 miles from home, but he frequently works in northern New Jersey.

"Most of it's really the grind up and down the Jersey Turnpike, and the Pennsylvania Turnpike can be a bear," Wyre said.

The Newark native said Middletown seemed like the best fit for him, his wife and three children when they moved in 2013 because of the schools and open spaces.

But like Edgar, the commute is wearing on him, and he's considering moving closer to Lancaster. It would be an easy sell if Middletown wasn’t so desirable, he said.

“Their taxes are very high up in those areas. We're talking a difference of $6,000 to $8,000 in some spots over what we pay here,” he said.

All told, the 19709 ZIP code – which runs from south of the canal to the southern Middletown limits in the west and the Appoquinimink River in the east – had 17,612 commuters in 2014. Almost 5,000 of them spent 40 to 90 minutes commuting, nearly twice the state rate, according to the census report, which used 2014 data.

Further south, the 19734 ZIP code, which includes Townsend, also had a high concentration of extreme commuters with 343 people out of a population of 5,120 who spent more than 90 minutes commuting. Only the tiny ZIP codes that carve out a section of Port Penn in New Castle County and Marydel in Kent County had higher proportions of extreme commuters, with 14 and 54, respectively.

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Growth south of the canal

Delaware, as a small state within a short distance to major metro cities, has long been a place for commuters. Vice President Joe Biden famously took Amtrak to Washington during his lengthy run in the U.S. Senate.

Jim Lardear, spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, said he remembers commuting by train to New York City from Wilmington during the 1990s alongside school teachers.

"You got to go where the jobs are," he said. "You've got these big metro areas, and they are really straight shots from Delaware."

Lardear wonders whether the recent increase in the number of extreme commuters is due to people who had visited Delaware beaches and then decided to plants roots in the First State.

"They are sacrificing their own time to give their families a better quality of life," he said.

With its relatively low taxes and inexpensive properties, the state exemplifies an upward extreme in the national commuting trend, said transportation consultant Alan Pisarski.

"There has been an extraordinary increase in the number of people making (extreme) commutes," said Pisarski, author of the “Commuting in America” series published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

Pisarski said as the cost of living rises inside metropolitan areas, communities like those in southern New Castle County are enticing more people to drive even farther to work, he said.

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"It's a natural complement to the growth of metro areas," Pisarki said.

Separated from the state’s historic industrial center by the C&D Canal, the towns of southern New Castle County carved out a niche as bedroom communities during past decades – sending people to big employers in the Wilmington and Newark areas, such as DuPont and the General Motors and Chrysler auto manufacturing plants.

Over time, vast fields of farmland growing corn and soybeans that surrounded the towns have gradually been transformed into subdivisions sprouting houses instead of vegetables. The population of the area spiked to 60,698 in 2015 from 18,578 in 1990, according to a report from the Wilmington Area Planning Council.

Middletown in particular has seen a residential building boom, with the population surging 426 percent between 1989 and 2015, to just under 20,000.

By East Coast standards, the new houses are relatively inexpensive.

Edgar, her husband, and three children moved to Delaware last year from Falls Church, Virginia, drawn by the possibility of having a new home at a reasonable price. The median price of a home in Falls Church is $486,200, compared with $235,800 in Middletown, according to the real estate website Zillow.com.

They made the move, but Edgar decided her job in Washington was too good and paid too well to give up.

“I’ve been making this commute since June, but I’ve been with my firm for eight years, and I really love the firm,” she said.

The decision means that for four days a week, before sunrise, Edgar guides her grey sedan out of the driveway of her north Middletown subdivision home and quickly turns onto U.S. 301 southbound before daylight.

She won’t see her neighborhood again until 8 p.m. Satisfying both career and home life leaves her little time to sleep, she said.

“The job that I do, I can’t do in the Middletown area,” said Edgar, who drives to a suburban Maryland rail station for the final leg of her commute and spends one night a week with friends in Washington. "But we moved out of D.C. for a particular reason. We wanted to get away from all the congestion, and we moved to Middletown because of the fabulous community.”

Edgar said she has no plans to leave the community, which offers less congestion and more open space for her family. Still, she said, she wishes there were more job opportunities nearby like the law firm recruiting position she has in Washington.

“I’m really excited to be in a more rural environment and away from city life,” she said.

The limited number of high-paying positions also surprised Tom Pardini, who moved from Rock Hall, Maryland, to a beachfront property near Port Penn recently.

“My wife and I always say to each other, where in the world do these people work?” he said.

He commutes to his job as a property manager in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, waking most mornings to see the sun rising over Delaware Bay. He and his wife drive 65 miles to Norristown, Pennsylvania, then she continues on to her job in Philadelphia. The whole process takes about two hours in uncongested traffic.

Pardini said the routine is punishing, but he’s anchored in his home next to Delaware Bay because of its scenery and likes having low taxes.

“Some of my friends think I’m crazy, but they don’t have the view that I do,” he said. “We have a nice little beach out front.”

Few high-paying positions seen

The long-haul trend is a double-edged sword for officials like Branner, who is overseeing a city in growth mode.

The lack of high-end positions in Middletown is one of the key factors making long-distance commuting a viable option, and Branner said more needs to be done locally to create those kinds of jobs closer to home.

Some progress has been made, Branner said, pointing to the opening of Amazon's 1.2-million-square-foot distribution center in 2012, and Christiana Care’s emergency hospital in 2013.

But the growth has also snarled traffic on the once rural and small-town roads, causing daily congestion on Main Street and U.S. 301, which is undergoing a gigantic modernization project to the Maryland border. Debates over new businesses and subdivisions have raged as a result, as some residents suspect that the small-town appeal that brought them to the area could be slipping away.

Tim Seward, who grew up in the area, believes Middletown’s small-town feel “left a while ago.”

“All of the traffic is crazy,” he said. “People move from different areas and then complain about how it's hard to get around.”

As far back as the late 1990s, Middletown and the Delaware Department of Transportation partnered on a plan where development would take place within the municipality’s limits.

Today, residential growth in the town is nearly "filled in" according to the plan, said Branner, and the next step for Middletown in its municipal evolution is to attract more industry so that residents can have more work options.

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Placing jobs near neighborhoods is key for communities to keep their residents from seeking jobs in far-away places, said Drew Boyce, planning director at the Delaware Department of Transportation.

The prevalence of many extreme commuters in Delaware runs counter to the state’s goal for towns to be walkable, bikeable, and to place jobs near to houses.

But transportation agencies must also make tradeoffs. The Del. 1 expressway between Christiana and Dover opened to connect two of the state’s population centers. It also likely encouraged more extreme commuting, he said.

“After [Del.] 1 opened up, people said, ‘Now I can move a half-hour south,’ ” Boyce said.

While there will always be some people who work far from where they live, Boyce said, “if we have everybody driving an hour, that’s not sustainable.”

Shift may be on horizon

It’s also unclear whether the mega-commuting trend will continue, especially since technology offers more opportunities for workers to telecommute.

According to an August survey by Gallup, 37 percent of U.S. workers say they have telecommuted sometime during their career, an increase of 7 percentage points from a decade earlier, four times greater than in 1995.

Marcia Scott, who studies urban planning at the University of Delaware's Institute for Public Administration, said younger people have been moving to cities like Washington at higher rates in recent years seeking the public transportation and nightlife options those places provide. That trend will likely show up forcefully in Delaware in near future, she said, which could change where and how developers build.

"Millennials are kind of the driving force behind new housing," Scott said. "In D.C., everybody wants to live near a Metro station, and those are also becoming the most expensive place to live."

A good example of the mix, she said, is Trolley Square in Wilmington.

The trend is already reaching the Middletown in the form of the Town of Whitehall, a sprawling 2,000-acre community of townhomes, stand-alone homes and businesses under construction off Lorewood Grove Road near Middletown.

Whitehall is advertising in markets as far away as Connecticut and Virginia. The project relies on a model of “new urbanism,” which mixes uses and values pedestrian-friendly access.

A critical component is having businesses and residences within close proximity, said Brian DiSabatino, president of Wilmington-based developer EDiS Co.

"It's a walkable community so the whole premise is to locate your business there," he said.

DiSabatino not only sees a future Delaware shift in commuting habits but also one in workplace practices. More people, he said, will work from home in the future.

“You can see a radical shift in the other direction, to technological commuting,” he said.

Pisarki, the transportation expert, said another factor is the understanding that with more time spent in vehicles, workers are less able to enjoy the benefits of the communities that drew them there in the first place. It can be a chore to meet neighbors or visit a park after 14 hours away from home, he said.

"The people who get home late are not about to take their kids to soccer practice,” he said.

Two decades ago, he said, “we started talking about commutes being crazy when they went over 60 minutes, now it's 90.”

For now, the long haul continues for mega-commuters like Wyre, the security equipment installer.

He said his family will continue talking about moving closer to Lancaster, but it’s difficult to imagine saying goodbye to the schools and low taxes in Middletown. Until they decide, he’s staying behind the wheel for another demanding commute.

"I used to love driving,” he said. “Not so much anymore.”

Contact Karl Baker at kbaker@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2329. Follow him on Twitter @kbaker6.

The long road: The rise of ‘mega commuters’

The trend: The U.S. Census Bureau since 1990 has identified a data trend in which there are more long-distance daily commutes.

What’s considered a long commute: The census has three categories – “long-distance commuting” for traveling 50 or more miles to work; “extreme commuting” for traveling 90 or more minutes to work; and “mega commuting” for traveling 90 or more minutes and 50 or more miles to work.

Where it’s most pronounced: Washington, D.C., has some of the longest commute times in the country. More than a quarter of District of Columbia workers traveled 60 minutes or longer to get to work.

What’s driving the trend: A New York University Wagner School of Public Service study said the 21st century is “emerging as the century of the super-commuter.” “The changing structure of the workplace, advances in telecommunications, and the global pattern of economic life have made the super-commuter a new force in transportation,” according to the study.

By the numbers

25.5

Minutes of average one-way commute in the U.S.

983

Residents in the Middletown ZIP code who commute more than 90 miles

10,437

Delaware residents classified as "mega commuters" by Census Bureau

9 percent

Increase in Delaware "mega commuters" between 2011 and 2014

Source: U.S. Census Bureau