Here’s how far Houston’s large population of “super commuters” travel to and from work each day

If you work in the Houston metro area every day, you may be one of the many motorists who has cursed the heavy traffic on I-610/West Loop. This route is consistently rated as the most congested road in Texas.

But imagine if you were one of the nearly 80,000 Houston-area workers who travel at least 90 minutes each way for work. This is an even more revolting displacement scenario.

United States Census Bureau data collected by Apartment List shows that in 2022, in the Houston area, 79,645 workers were labeled as “super commuters.” These workers represent three percent of all commuters in the region.

The Houston area figure for 2022 is down slightly from the pre-pandemic year of 2019, when 82,878 area workers were super commuters, according to the apartment list.

Igor Popov, chief economist at Apartment List, says 3.7 million American workers spent at least 90 minutes commuting in one direction or the other in 2022. These extreme commutes are becoming increasingly common as suburban populations grow and employers move away from remote work, he says.

Nationally, the number of super commuters jumped by 593,000 in 2022 compared to 2021, when the pandemic caused that figure to drop by more than 1.5 million.

“In general, super commutes are more common for transit users, workers who live on the outskirts of the metropolitan area, or those who commute between entirely separate metros,” says Popov.

Commuting is also common among higher-income workers who are willing to travel longer distances to get better-paying jobs, according to Popov.

A recent study by Stanford University and travel data provider INRIX largely aligns with Census Bureau data cited by Apartment List.

Since the pandemic, the study found, the share of one-way trips covering at least 40 miles has increased in the nation’s 10 largest metros, including Houston. In the Houston area, the share of super one-way trips, which the study defines as those longer than 75 miles, increased 18% from 2019-20 to 2023-24.

Among the 10 areas examined in the study, a typical round-trip commute takes nearly four hours and 40 minutes.