Before his 21/4 hour commute, the Olympia resident makes a protein shake, checks his e-mail and kisses his three sleeping children.
Then Cognasso, 40, defogs his 2003 Hyundai Sonata and heads north on Interstate 5 toward Lakewood. This early, the roads are eerily empty.
He boards a packed bus at the Lakewood Transit Center for the ride to downtown Seattle, where he arrives about 5:30 a.m. He works out, then heads to his job at Washington Mutual, where he is a program manager.
Cognasso represents the extreme of South Sounds growing commuter population. Every day, roughly 28,000 commuters leave Thurston County for jobs elsewhere, according to 2005 census data. Thats an increase of about 70 percent in 15 years. And that number will only grow.
By 2010 nearly 40,000 people will leave the county to go to their jobs; by 2030, nearly 64,000 will commute out of the county, the Thurston Regional Planning Council estimates. Heres why:
• Housing costs: Its cheaper to live in Thurston County than in counties to the north. The median home price in Thurston County was about $256,000 in December, compared with $440,000 in King County, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
• Wages: The median income in King County was about $66,000 last year, compared with $54,000 in Thurston County, according to the Washington Office of Financial Management. People can earn more working in King County and spend less living in Thurston. The dynamic provides a huge boost to the local economy: Outbound commuters spend $1.1 billion in the county, said Pete Swensson, a senior planner for TRPC.
Those people buy homes here and put money into the construction industry. All that circulates through in retail trade, so it has a huge impact on our local economy, Swensson said. I treat it like an industry. In this case were exporting labor and bringing in the paychecks.
But commuting comes with a cost.
Commuters have less time to spend with their families, volunteer and take care of their health.
If youre working in a place you dont live, one of the things you lose is that connection to the community, said Dr. Diana Yu, the countys public health officer.
Commuting also taxes the road system, with traffic moving at a snails pace from 6 to 8 a.m. and 5 to 7 p.m. on weekdays.
And as the cost of gasoline increases to $3 a gallon or more this summer commuters are paying more to drive.
Commuting affects the quality of life in South Sound, said Cheryl Simrell King, director of the master of public administration program at The Evergreen State College in Olympia.
Commuting is a manifestation of the bigger problems: the problem of sprawl, the problem of inadequate public transportation systems, the problem of this individualized approach toward living, the problem of global warming, she said.
And yet, thousands of commuters see no reason to change.
Quality of life
About 13,000 commuters who live in Thurston County have a one-way commute longer than 45 minutes, though that figure does not differentiate between commuters who work in Thurston County and those who dont. Thats 12 percent of the total work force working outside the home, according to the census.
About 18,000 commute to Pierce County, where Fort Lewis is the largest employer, followed by the local school districts and McChord Air Force Base. An additional 2,900 commute to King County, where major employers are The Boeing Co. and Microsoft.
Commuters cite many reasons for spending one to four hours a day in the car.
Cognasso does it because he earns twice what he would make at a comparable job in Olympia. That enables his family to live in a three-bedroom, 2,100-square-foot home in a forested Olympia neighborhood; his wife can stay home with their three children.
I just dont want to raise my kids in Seattle, Cognasso said.
Wed be giving up so much: our community, our family, our friends, Cognassos wife, Kathy, added. Its not worth it.
Cognasso forfeits sleep rather than family time. His early departure allows him to arrive home in time to play with his 8-year-old daughter and 5-year-old twins, have dinner with the family, run errands and attend school functions. Hes there to tuck in his kids and usually gets to bed by 10 or 11 p.m., giving him three to four hours of sleep a night.
He could save two hours a day by driving the entire distance to Seattle, but commuting by bus saves him the stress of afternoon gridlock and finding parking. On the bus, he can sleep or work on his laptop.
Other South Sound commuters say they choose to live farther from work to afford more land and a rural lifestyle.
Every day I wake up to the sound of birds chirping, versus the sound of a highway near my door, Sharon Buechel of Shelton wrote in an e-mail. She commutes to Lakewood every day for her job at Camp Murray.
Not all commuters leave the county for work; thousands commute into Thurston County from elsewhere.
Todd Hass and his fiancee own a house in north Seattle, and she works in Everett, so it makes sense for them to stay put. Besides, Hass, who works for the state Department of Ecology in Lacey, likes Seattles music scene and microbreweries.
Other inbound commuters agree the night life in Seattle is worth the commute.
Olympias a great city, but I dont think its as vibrant for the single, urban professional, said Julia Bos, an oceanographer at Ecology.
Personal costs
Cognasso concedes that sleeping only a few hours a night can be exhausting.
He can never stay awake to watch TV or a movie, his wife said.
He missed doctors appointments when Kathy Cognasso was pregnant, and the couple can no longer eat lunch together, which they did when he worked locally.
I think Chris makes personal sacrifices. Hes tired, so he doesnt socialize as much with his friends, Kathy Cognasso said.
Commuting also can lead to health problems.
Theres a growing concern that sedentary lifestyles and commute patterns are having a large impact on growing obesity rates, said Jessyn Ferrell, executive director of the Seattle-based Transportation Choices Coalition.
Commuters are more likely to let diet and exercise slip, Yu added.
You end up eating more on the go, rather than eating a regular meal. You miss more family meals, she said. Experts recommend that people exercise a minimum of 30 minutes a day. Yu suggests commuters use their lunch break to go for a brisk walk.
She also suggests stocking the car with healthy snacks such as nuts and fruit to avoid the fast food temptation.
But with work, family and social commitments and health, theres often a trade-off, Kathy Cognasso said. Theres just not enough hours in the day, she said.
Commuting lifestyle
Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington State Transportation Center, said commuting is the result of a larger trend: urban sprawl.
Cars are relatively inexpensive, and housing is becoming more expensive in metropolitan regions, so (people) choose a longer commute, he said. That trend has been going on for 100 years.
For evidence of sprawl, one need look no further than Hawks Prairies explosion of subdivisions. Building permits issued for single-family homes in Lacey skyrocketed last year to 1,452, up from 238 in 2003.
Fifty-five percent of the new homes built between 2000 and 2005 in places such as Hawks Prairie, Lacey and Yelm are occupied by households with at least one commuter, Swensson said. He said housing prices will continue to push people south for affordable housing, even if their jobs remain up north.
King County is filling up, Swensson said.
Migration trends compiled by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune support that. Pierce County residents were the largest group to move to Thurston County between 2000 and 2005, followed by people from King, Lewis, then other surrounding counties. Following that trend, Chehalis and Centralia are on the way to becoming suburbs of Olympia, Hallenbeck said.
Such growth causes problems.
As roads become more crowded, commuters are more likely to be involved in an accident. The number of crashes in Thurston, Pierce and King counties increased 19 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to the state Department of Transportation. In the same period, the number of commuters on the road increased by about 10 percent.
Twenty percent of the accidents in 2005 occurred between 4 and 6 p.m., prime commuting time.
Its no wonder, said Bob Beckman, who commutes from Seattle to Lacey. He sees women applying mascara and men with books open on their steering wheel people trying to multitask to make up for time spent on the road.
Environmental costs
The ever-growing number of people on the road also sends carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and other pollutants into the air.
Car emissions can cause asthma, lung disease and cancer, Ferrell said. They have been linked to global warming.
Some researchers are calling freeways a ... tunnel of pollution, she said.
Vehicle emissions account for more than 60 percent of greenhouse gases in the central Puget Sound region, a 2005 King County study says.
The typical car creates air pollution costs of about 5 cents a mile in urban areas, according to the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, a transportation research organization. The VTPI calculates pollution costs using a formula based on the toll auto emissions take on health and the environment.
The average Thurston County resident drove about 12,000 miles a year in 2005, according to the census, creating $600 in pollution costs.
South Sounds population growth is also putting stress on Interstate 5 and major highways, and the stress adds to an ever-growing backlog of road repairs, said Hallenbeck of the Washington State Transportation Center.
We are facing a financial crisis on the roadway system, he said.
The future of commuting
By 2030, it is estimated that there will be:
• 64,000 outbound commuters, a 129 percent increase from 2005.
• Almost 34,000 incoming commuters, an 86 percent increase from 2005.
What were seeing is that its going to get worse and worse, and it is going to impact a lot of peoples lives, Swensson said.
By 2015, traffic on I-5 north of Highway 101 in Thurston County will be moving at speeds of less than 42 mph, said Forest Sutmiller, a systems analysis team leader for DOT. And yet, solutions are only in the discussion phase.
A DOT project is under way to extend a carpool lane on I-5 from the King County line to Tacoma by 2013, but expanding into Thurston County is further off, Sutmiller said.
More likely, drivers will see signs alerting them to accidents and an online program that would allow them to estimate commute times. Another possibility would be extending Sounder Commuter Rail to Thurston County, a priority of TRPC. Also, large employers encourage alternative transportation options, which is required by the Commuter Trip Reduction Program that was passed by the Legislature in 1991 and amended in 2006.
Hallenbeck favors toll roads and other financial incentives. The current system isnt sustainable, as the cost of driving is fairly cheap and doesnt factor in long-term costs to roads and the environment, he said.
The way we ration our road space is as communists: We stand in line. If you want to have free flow roads, you have to pay for them, he said.
Ferrell said the solution lies in better-planned communities designed to encourage walking and biking to stores, schools and jobs. King agreed. Pushing affordable housing farther from jobs isnt sustainable, she said.
We havent gone far enough in asking, How do we solve this problem?
Diane Huber is a reporter for The Olympian. She can be reached at 360-357-0204 or dhuber@theolympian.com.
