Commuters feel pinch

If you remember scratching your head over story problems in your math homework as a kid, consider the scenario on many people's minds as the price of a gallon of gas screams past the $3 mark.

Judy Jepson drives 35 miles to get from her home in Saratoga Springs to her job in downtown Salt Lake City. If she makes that drive every weekday, minus four weeks per year for holidays and vacation, and if her car gets 20 miles per gallon, how much does Judy pay per year for gas?

The short answer is: twice as much as when she and her husband, Fred, moved there from Taylorsville in 2000, when a gallon of unleaded cost $1.52.

The commute wasn't bad then, and Saratoga Springs was a "one-stop-sign city," a small-town size that Fred Jepson had sought, his wife said. "There were more horses than people. It was all rural."

Now Judy spends an increasing amount of time thinking about the cost of driving to work versus taking public transit, which would double her commute time.

"It's not to the point where I feel like I need to think about moving again, but enough so that I wonder if I will continue to drive every day," she said. "The price of gas becomes pretty important."

Nationally, 70 percent of consumers say the price of gas is now a consideration when deciding where to live, according to a HomePages.com survey.

"It's an interesting problem," said Tuscany Homes owner Debbie Hooge. Her company is building and selling homes in some of the newer suburban areas such as Spanish Fork and Saratoga Springs.

The farther-flung areas will likely be a harder sell, although areas that are a hefty commute from downtown Salt Lake retain their attractiveness to new employment centers straddling the Salt Lake/Utah County border, she said.

Hooge's son Jason lives in Spanish Fork and works in Draper, a 38-mile commute. He is planning on moving to Eagle Mountain, which would cut his commute in half.

"Eagle Mountain straddles the border between the two counties, so it's actually a very good commute," Hooge said. "But Spanish Fork and Tooele on the other hand, we see that slowing down."

Budget-conscious homebuyers have another story problem to consider: For each housing dollar they save living farther from the employment epicenters along the Wasatch Front, how much does their transportation cost go up?

The Center for Housing Policy in Washington, D.C., says that for every dollar a working family saves on housing, the transportation cost goes up 77 cents — and that does not include the value of time spent commuting.

"In their search for lower-cost housing, working families often locate far from their place of work, dramatically increasing their transportation costs and commute times. Indeed, for many such families, their transportation costs exceed their housing cost," said Kent W. Colton, the organization's policy chairman.

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E-mail: sfidel@desnews.com