Work theoretically occupies one-third of our lives, but it feels even longer when you factor in the time we spend getting there and returning home. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the average American commute is up to 26.4 minutes each way, up from less than 22 minutes back in 1980. Even worse, the number of “extreme commutes” of 90 minutes or more is the fastest-growing segment of commuters; the number of extreme commuters went up by 8 percent just over the period from 2014 to 2015.
What’s to blame? Partly, it’s our own behavior, with the move toward more solo driving. There’s actually less carpooling than there was in the 1980s (perhaps thanks to gas prices, currently low when taking inflation into account).
But more importantly, it’s thanks to increasing growth in housing supply in the outer suburbs and exurbs. With housing in major cities becoming increasingly more expensive, more and more people have little choice but to live somewhere far from their jobs. (And on top of that, jobs are increasingly found in suburbs rather than the cities themselves; that sounds like it might work well with the increasing suburban population, but the real effect is that many people now find themselves commuting from one suburb to another one, often at a completely different end of the metropolitan area.)
So, if you’re looking to minimize the amount of time you spend behind the wheel, what part of the country has, on average, the most mercifully short commutes? The answer will probably surprise you: it’s Kansas’s 1st congressional district, the sprawling, heavily rural CD that occupies nearly two-thirds of the state. The mean travel time to work for residents of the 1st is a relatively short and sweet 15.7 minutes.
This may seem counter-intuitive to you. Everything in this district is far from everywhere else! You might be envisioning people commuting across multiple counties on two-lane roads to get from their small towns where there are few employment options, to the district’s population centers. There is, of course, some of that happening in the 1st district, but as large and far-flung as the district is, the reality is that many of the district’s residents still actually live in those population centers, putting them relatively close to their jobs. On top of that, the 1st has a higher-than-average rate of people who simply work at home (4.6 percent) and have a commute of zero minutes, though here that’s probably not so much remote tech-industry workers but rather people who both live and work on farms.
None of the district’s small cities have more than around 50,000 residents; Manhattan (where Kansas State University is located), Salina, and Hutchinson are all around that size, and they’re followed by some smaller towns dominated by the meatpacking industry, like Garden City and Dodge City, that clock in around 25,000.
It turns out that size for a city may be the sweet spot, at least in terms of optimal commute times. It’s large enough to generate enough employment opportunities that people don’t have to set off on long-distance commutes elsewhere in order to find work, but not so large that commuters run into traffic bottlenecks, or need to drive more than a few miles to get from home to work. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the other CDs with similarly low commute times are other far-flung Great Plains districts where you don’t have any major metro areas with their gridlock, but an assortment of small metros and “micropolitan areas.” Nebraska’s massive 3rd district is in 2nd place on the list, followed by the at-large districts in North and South Dakota, and the 19th district that covers much of west Texas.
If, based on what you've read so far, you’re already planning your move to rural Kansas to escape your hellish commute, though, keep in mind you might not enjoy the politics there. The 1st district is one of the reddest CDs in the nation; it gave 24.3 percent of its vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 69.3 to Donald Trump, following 27.6 percent to Barack Obama in 2012 and 70.1 to Mitt Romney.
And this isn’t one of those Appalachian-style districts that’s a recent convert to dark-red presidential voting and may still vote Democratic further down the ballot. Remarkably, in the 142 years that Kansas’s 1st district has been in existence, it has been represented by a Democrat in the U.S. House for a grand total of 2 years—a fellow named Howard Miller who somehow held the seat from 1952 until 1954.
Also, unlike those districts that recently swung hard in the GOP direction, the long-running Republican tradition here is of a decidedly more establishmentarian, rather than tea-flavored, variety. Of the six most recent representatives in KS-01, three of them eventually graduated to the Senate, and they all fit that mold: Jerry Moran, Pat Roberts, and before that, Bob Dole.
One big exception to that pattern was the 1st’s Representative from 2010 to 2016, Tim Huelskamp, who was a Freedom Caucus member and all around one of the House’s consensus biggest jerks. The Big First, though, is unique among dark-red CDs in that it actually rejected its tea party transplant. After Huelskamp was kicked off the Agriculture Committee for being anti-John Boehner, and then voted against a key farm bill, the local Republican establishment in this Big Ag-dominated district turned against him. Huelskamp won the 2014 GOP primary only narrowly (with 55 percent of the vote) against a little-known opponent. In 2016, the Kansas Farm Bureau and the Chamber of Commerce supported Huelskamp’s primary opponent, physician Roger Marshall, who outright defeated Huelskamp, holding him to only 42 percent in the primary.
No one, of course, would confuse Marshall with a liberal, or even a moderate. He’s still been a regular party-line vote for the Republican leadership, and during the ACA debate, helped out by chipping in with some terrible comments about Medicaid recipients:
“Just, like, homeless people. … I think just morally, spiritually, socially, [some people] just don’t want health care,” he said. “The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card, as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I’m not judging, I’m just saying socially that’s where they are.”
“The Most District” is an ongoing series devoted to highlighting congressional district superlatives around the nation. Click here for all posts in this series.