The Long and Grinding Road

The rat race is turning into a marathon. Inside the lives of ‘extreme commuters.’

At 5:40 a.m., the alarm blares news-talk radio and Bill Small rolls out of bed. With a two-hour commute ahead of him, the Chicago doctor wastes little time. He showers, dresses and is out the door by 6. At this hour, his car is the only one navigating the winding streets of his upscale neighborhood in St. Charles, Ill., a quaint community nearly 50 miles west of the Chicago hospital where he works. Small’s routine is so finely tuned that he won’t stop for coffee if there are more than three cars in the drive-thru. Today there are just two, and he picks up an extra-large. But there’s no time for a bathroom break, so Small, 41, won’t allow himself a single sip for nearly an hour. At the halfway mark, he takes his first swig as he hits gridlock on the Eisenhower Expressway. With the sun rising over the Chicago skyline, he crawls along, placidly listening to sports radio. Finally, he arrives at exactly 8 a.m. Though he won’t return home for 12 and a half hours, Small still says the killer commute to and from exurbia is worth it. “It’s a nice place to raise kids,” he says. “And it does feel like you’re away.”

The drive to get away from it all is turning us into a nation of nomads. As we’re pushed to the edge of civilization by runaway home prices and a longing for wide-open spaces, the daily rat race is turning into a marathon. “Extreme commuters” who travel more than 90 minutes to work, one way, are the fastest-growing group of commuters, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More than 3.4 million commuters take that long road to work every day, double the rate of extreme commuters in 1990. And the fastest-growing departure time is now between 5 and 6 a.m. Even $3-a-gallon gas and growing gridlock aren’t slowing the rise of this group, which is changing the way we live as we spend more time in our cars and less time in our communities. This endless commute is becoming the defining characteristic of the 21st-century working stiff. So much of what we worry about today