THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 16, 1995 TAG: 9507150371
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MYLENE MANGALINDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
David Knight's economic lifeline is his van.
For 13 years, the 42-year-old has shuttled himself and a dozen other people from Gates County, N.C., to Smithfield Packing Co.
He leaves his home around 4 a.m. and travels 51 miles in about an hour and a half.
The commute doesn't bother him much any more because he makes it out of necessity. Knight, who works in the meat-curing section of the plant, said there are no suitable jobs in his area of North Carolina.
``There are no jobs, or if there are, they don't pay that much,'' he said.
Knight's commute helps make Hampton Roads the 27th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States, with 1.4 million people. That's because a metropolitan statistical area, or MSA, is largely defined by the commuting patterns of its residents and where they shop.
Technically, Hampton Roads is the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, Va.-N.C. MSA. Included in it are the counties of Mathews, Isle of Wight and Currituck, N.C.
The U.S. Department of Commerce adjusts MSAs based on census data released every decade. That data and a plethora of other demographic studies by John Whaley, chief economist at the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, and others, show that residents crisscross city and county boundaries more often than ever. Here are some highlights:
More than 77,000 people travel between Virginia Beach and Norfolk daily to go to work.
Roads connecting Hampton and Newport News are traveled by 32,671 commuters a day, the second-heaviest traffic flow in the region.
Chesapeake-Norfolk routes are traveled by 26,336 people daily, the third-heaviest concentration of commuting traffic.
Average commutes in the region last 30 to 35 minutes, one way.
``Cross-commuting makes this more of a region,'' said Dwight Farmer, director of transportation at the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission. ``The boundaries become more seamless and less visible.''
About 20 percent of the employees at Smithfield Packing Co. travel an hour or more from North Carolina. Jackson Thompson is among them.
The 40-year-old meat quality inspector for the Food and Drug Administration drives about 75 miles one way from Lewiston, N.C., every day. His commute lasts about an hour and 20 minutes.
After working 10 years at one of Perdue Farms Inc.'s poultry-processing plants in North Carolina, his job was phased out.
``I couldn't work there for the government, so this was one of the closest plants,'' said Thompson, who said he doesn't mind the commute.
Military personnel, one of the region's biggest pools of employees, are also scattered throughout the region, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Part of the reason is that military installations in Hampton Roads are numerous and diffuse. The region has 95,817 uniformed military personnel and 35,514 civilians, according to the public information office at Norfolk Naval Base.
About 10 percent of military families live in government housing, meaning that the other 90 percent commutes, said Martha Kessler, a spokeswoman for Navy family housing.
Newport News Shipbuilding Co., the commonwealth's largest employer, draws about half of its work force of 19,500 from Newport News and neighboring Hampton. The rest commute from a smattering of municipalities.
About 1,175 employees, or 6 percent of the yard's work force, travel from North Carolina; 877 hail from Suffolk and 696 from Smithfield. Other employees are well-distributed among the other Peninsula and southside cities.
Jeff Dent, who lives in Gates County, N.C., has no qualms about making the 54-mile commute daily to Newport News Shipbuilding. An 18-year veteran of the shipyard, he also drives north regularly to shop with his family.
``Yes, I'm a 90 percent Hampton Roads person,'' he said. ``I don't only work here, I do come to shop. There are very few shopping stores in North Carolina. We come to Hampton Roads all the time to do our shopping at Chesapeake Square Mall.''
Shopping habits go a long way to building a sense of regionalism, the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission's Farmer said.
``The more interaction you have, the closer together the region becomes,'' he said. ``People are looking for goods and services as your transportation infrastructure improves. As you're able to go from one place to another, you're not thinking about one locality. You're thinking, `Where can I go to get these goods or services?' The question is, `Is it accessible? Can I get there in 15 to 20 minutes?' You're probably likely to do that.''
The residential community of Currituck County is quietly being absorbed into Hampton Roads, largely because it depends on the region for jobs and shopping.
Average traffic on State Route 168, the main drag from Currituck County into Chesapeake, tripled from 4,700 trips in 1971 to 15,400 trips in 1992, according to a study by Parsons Brinckerhoff, a New York-based transportation consultant agency. And the number of North Carolina weekday commuters has risen about 5 percent since 1992.
Says Bob Henley, chairman of the economic development board for Currituck County: ``We see from Currituck, as a rural county, we're going to have to branch out and have a regional identity.'' MEMO: Related story on page D2.
ILLUSTRATION: Color graphic by John Earle, Staff
Who's Going Where
For complete information see microfilm
KEYWORDS: COMMUTING STATISTICS TRANSPORTATION REGIONALISM by CNB