Study: Linton Hall, Dale City among worst commutes
Linton Hall now holds the title of worst small town to commute from, according to a new report by Forbes magazine.
What was once a small town in Prince William has grown to not only become an area of dense suburban sprawl — it is now ranked the nation’s worst commuter town.
Linton Hall now holds the title of worst small town to commute from, according to a new report by Forbes magazine.
The area lies just west of Bristow, with a population of around 20,000. Linton Hall’s population exploded at more than 650 percent between 1990 and 2000, according to county figures.
The magazine based its study of the worst 100 U.S. towns on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which found the average commute from Linton Hall to Washington, D.C., took 46.3 minutes, 17 minutes longer than the average commutes in both New York City and Los Angeles.
Forbes said the Washington area has 18 towns on the top 100 list, the most for any metro area in the country.
Chicago comes in second with 16 of its suburbs on the list.
The data also said just 4 percent of Linton Hall residents used public transportation. Three quarters of the population there choose to drive alone.
While the numbers are eye-catching, area residents said the lack of public transportation in the area makes driving the only viable option.
“I work in Chantilly which is only 16 miles away and it will take me anywhere from 40 to 55 minutes to get to work at 5:30 in the morning,” said Wayne White, a teacher who lives off of nearby Sudley Manor Drive. “My wife works in the same area and she leaves at 7:45 a.m. and it takes her anywhere from an hour to an hour-and-a-half to get to work.”
OmniRide commuter bus service started its Linton Hall Metro Direct line in 2004, ferrying passengers from stops along Linton Hall Road to and from the West Falls Church Metro station four times during the morning and afternoon.
The service has been a success but the lack of adequate commuter parking stops more people from using it, said Christine Rodrigo, spokeswoman for the Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission.
“We have a commuter lot at Limestone Drive, but other than that there are not any other commuter parking lots, so people who use the service tend to drive to the one commuter lot or walk to a stop that may be near their house. The lack of parking commuter parking is what is inhibiting the growth of the service,” Rodrigo said.
Some commuters said they have seen the commuter buses in the area but didn’t know about commuter shuttle to Metro. And since the area has grown exponentially without public transportation in place, some would still opt to drive their car.
“To be honest I have never seen a cab around here. I wouldn’t even know where to catch a bus. I wouldn’t even know how to ride a bus,” said Angie Paulraj, who drives Interstate 66 to get to her accounting job in Reston.
Paulraj said she was lucky enough to have a best friend work with her, one that she has been carpooling with for the past seven years. If it weren’t for the one HOV express lane on I-66, she said she would be unable to describe how bad her commute to work would be.
Paulraj and other area commuters do see some light at the end of the tunnel, after Linton Hall Road is widened from two to four lanes, from Sudley Manor Drive to Va. 28.
The expansion is slated to be complete in August of next year at a price tag of nearly $43 million.
Coming in at No. 6 on the list was nearby Dale City, with an average commute time of 41.3 minutes. With a population of more than 63,000, Forbes said 68 percent of residents drive to work alone.
The two best small commuter towns in the country were Cedar City, Utah, and Ponca City, Okla. Both towns had average commute times under 13 minutes, said Forbes.
Staff writer Uriah A. Kiser can be reached at 703-878-8065.
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For those of you so hung up on whether it’s a city, a town or a place, maybe you should look at the article in Forbes (that served as the basis for this article). Forbes used the Census Bureaus designations. “It ranks cities, towns and Census-designated places by the average amount of time it takes for residents to get to work. The data, of places with populations between 20,000 and 64,999, come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s three-year American Community Survey, which, between 2005 and 2007, asked respondents across the country how long it took them to get to work in the previous week.“
Does it REALLY matter if these places are “towns” or “cities”? The fact is the commutes are terrible. I travel from Dale City to Arlington daily. The drivers on the road in this area are terrible, rude, and more interested in being on the phone, eating, drinking or putting on makeup then paying attention so we can get there at a decent pace. And if they were just a little more courteous and would let people MERGE there probably would be a better flow and less accidents.
I’d be happy to commute from Gainesville. My commute from Warrenton to the Pentagon takes 1.5 hrs, leaving at 5:20am to get to work by 7am. We have one commuter bus, that costs over $300 if I recall, so that’s not really an option. I drive to the Kmart on Rt 234, which takes 35 minutes. Then ride approximately 50 mins on the Omni-Ride, which has been a blessing, for $160+ (cost just went up yesterday). I love Warrenton, but hate the commute. Had I realized it would be this bad I would have opted to move to Bristow, which is closer to the bus. I really wish I could have afforded to live in Fairfax where I could have more of a life during the week and time with my kids.
Dale City with an average commute time of 41.3 minutes to Washington, D.C.? Who are they trying to kid?
I live in Dale City and work in downtown D.C. I carpool with three other people so we can use the HOV, meeting up at the Horner Road commuter lot.
It takes me an average of 20 minutes to drive from my house to Horner road, then an average of 35 minutes to get to my office. There is no extra time needed for dropping off our carpool members as we all work within a few buildings from each other and share parking spaces. I also normally have to wait a few minutes for other carpool members to show up.
So, using the HOV takes an average 55 minutes for commuting not counting the wait times for our carpool members to arrive. On days when I have to drive in, and for some reason cannot pickup slugs, my commute is a minimum 1.5 hours.
Last year, I actually accepted a job that paid considerably less than two other offers, just because the job location was a ten minute commute in Woodbridge and the other two were in D.C. Alas, that job didn’t last and I was then forced to accept a higher paying job in D.C.
Linton Hall AND Gainesville aren’t
towns nor is Dale City a city. They
are communities in Prince William
County. The same for Woodbridge
and Lake Ridge. Hopefully reporter
Uriah A. Kiser (what a great name)
will stay awhile and learn some
local geography.
There seems to be some confusion….Linten Hall is not a town, it is a road in Gainesville (Linten Hall Road crosses over Rt. 29), so I think what needs to be said is Gainesville is named the worst small town to communte from. Let’s give credit where credit is due.
Bad communte…yeah, the people building the houses aren’t building more or wider roads.
I must have missed when they decided to create and name the town “Linton Hall”. I really would like to have been notified because I would have suggested they call it “Wally World” in honor of Wally Covington who almost single-handedly created the circumstance from which this traffic nightmare sprung.
This is because of all the people who don’t know how to drive in this area.
You know the people:
-Who yap and text on their little cell phones while driving
-Who with their significant others feel frisky and like the risk of “getting caught”
-Who play with their hair that they bought, smoke their blunts, play with the radio, basically everything else BUT Driving
And of course you pair those idiots with the volume of people in this region = very long commutes even for the shortest distances.
This is very true; I only live 19 miles from ft Belvoir, but it take an hour to get there.
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