A super commuter is a person who works in the central county of a metropolitan area and resides beyond the boundaries of that metropolitan area. As such, super commuters fall beneath the class of people generally known as multi-locals. Super commuters travel long distance once or twice a week between home and workplace mostly by air or rail, and sometimes also by car, bus or combination of modes. Often, super commuters spend most of the work week in the city their office is based, returning home on weekends. Super commuters are generally younger in age then average workers, and have a background of middle class. They are not elite business travellers; they try to cut their costs by taking benefit of higher wages in one region and lower housing and transportation costs in the city they come from.
A 2012 study by New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management showed that Manhattan alone has existing population of 59,000 super commuters. According to studies conducted in NYU there is great upsurge in this trend and 8 out of 10 of the major metropolitan areas in the U.S show similar findings. Megan Bearce, a marriage and family therapist and author of the book named “Super Commuter Couples: Staying Together When A Job Keeps You Apart” refers that there were an estimated 3.42 million full time workers who were super commuters in 2012 in the U.S The phenomenon has been getting increasing coverage on media. With the surge in demand, businesses are starting to cover the supply; recently, a travel company has claimed that it is going to provide services to super commuters to make their life easier.
Impact on personal and social life
In a study in Netherlands on commuter couples where 60 of such couples where sampled and interviewed it was revealed that 30 of those agreed with each other on the fact that they had no other choice than to live in dual locations. Their experience stated that they had no other realistic solution at the time when they decided to live in commuter partnership with each other. Another study suggests that learning to adjust to quirks of commuting and managing stress with a partner might be a mandatory bump in the road to success.