Study: Number of super-commuters growing

The number of people schlepping more than 90 miles or 90 minutes each way in order to work in the city has increased sharply over the last decade, according to new research.

Although super-commuters make up only 3 percent of the Manhattan workforce, their numbers climbed 60 percent between 2002 and 2009, according to a report by the Rudin Center of Transportation at NYU.

"This is a trend that's only going to intensify, because Americans are much more able to become mobile in terms of their jobs than they can be in terms of housing," said Mitchell Moss, director of the Rudin Center and a co-author of the study, released earlier this year.

The study analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Longitudinal Survey and other sources to come to their conclusions. The number of people commuting at least once a week between Boston and Manhattan jumped 128 percent, making it the fourth-fastest-growing interurban trek in the country, after Dallas/Fort Worth to Houston, Texas; San Jose to Los Angeles, Calif.; and Yakima to Seattle, Wash.

Most super-commuters "are not elite business travelers, but rather more representative of middle-income individuals who may opt for more affordable housing and means of transportation, such as driving or intercity buses," said the report, "The Emergence of the Super-Commuter."

The trend has been generated by several factors: an inability to unload real estate acquired before the recession; the growth of two-earner households in which both parties can't land jobs in the same location; and a desire not to uproot children.

The greatest numbers of Manhattan super-commuters come from western New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Moss said, because "Manhattan wages pay more."

SEE PHOTOSLIRR trains and commuters through the years