On the road again and again

Number of North Texas 'super commuters' driven up by almost 50 percent

"Super commuters" travel 90-plus minutes each way.

Eduardo Garcia/Getty Images

Long commutes are nothing new in North Texas. In 2019, the average worker in Dallas-Fort Worth spent nearly 29 minutes commuting to work each day and another 29 minutes going home.

Some workers in North Texas, however, spend far more time traveling by car or other modes of transportation. In fact, the number of so-called “super commuters” — those traveling at least 90 minutes to get to work, and another 90 minutes or more to get home — rose 49 percent in the region from 2010 to 2019. That’s according to a new analysis by Apartment List of data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 49 percent growth rate in super commuters here compares with 45 percent for the U.S. regions included in the study and a 25 percent growth rate for the regional workforce from 2010 to 2019.

The analysis dives into commuting data for combined statistical areas, which are a combination of adjacent metropolitan and micropolitan areas. Therefore, in the case of this region, the data encompasses more than just the 11-county DFW metro area.

Apartment List’s analysis found there are 84,000 super commuters in the North Texas combined statistical area, representing 2.2 percent of the workforce. Henderson County — a little over 80 miles southeast of Dallas — had the highest share of super commuters (7 percent). Nationally, super commuters made up 3.1 percent of the workforce in 2019.

According to Apartment List, the rise of remote work “is unlikely to meaningfully alleviate” the long-term trend of more American workers becoming super commuters.

“Since the start of the pandemic, the fastest rent growth in large metros has been occurring in the further suburbs and exurbs, indicating that hybrid remote work arrangement[s] could create a new class of part-time super commuters,” Apartment list notes.

If you think the increase in super commuting in North Texas is worthy of honking your horn in disgust, consider that super commuting soared 68 percent in the Houston combined statistical area from 2010 to 2019. It’s the only other Texas region that appeared in the Apartment List study.

Houston ranks 10th among the regions in the study for the number of super commuters in 2019 — 85,445, representing a 2.6 percent share of the workforce.

Stockton, California, notched the biggest share of super commuters in the study (25 percent of the workforce). Elsewhere in Northern California, the San Francisco Bay Area saw the largest growth rate for super commuting from 2010 to 2019 — a whopping 255 percent.

Death Penalty

Tarrant County man gets death for murder of convenience store owner

Tarrant County Sheriff's Office

Christopher Turner

A man received the death penalty for his 2020 cold-blooded execution of a convenience store owner.

According to a release from the office of Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Phil Sorrells, a Tarrant County jury sentenced Christopher Karon Turner, 48, to death on November 20 for executing convenience store owner Anwar Ali during a robbery. Tarrant County Assistant District Attorneys Charles Boulware and Allenna Bangs represented the state.

On March 27, 2020, at around 6:15 am, Turner, a convicted felon, wore a surgical mask and a glove and entered the Super Big Country Mart in an unincorporated area of Tarrant County south of Fort Worth. There, he held a gun to the back of Anwar Ali, the 62-year-old store owner, and walked him through the store.

Ali did everything Turner demanded, including opening the cash register to give him money. And yet Turner forced Ali into the bathroom and onto his knees, and shot him in the neck. Ali was discovered, dead in the bathroom, about an hour later.

Turner fled the store in Ali's Toyota minivan with the money from the register and Ali's wallet. In the van, he found more than $50,000 cash in a black bag. Over the next few days, Turner went on a shopping spree, buying cars, jewelry, drugs, clothes, and more. He and others used cash and a credit card that belonged to Ali.

Turner fled to Colorado where U.S. Marshals arrested him. On his body they found a firearm which was determined to be the murder weapon.

"This was a premeditated, cold-blooded murder," Boulware told the jury. "From the moment he was charged with this crime, he has tried to escape responsibility."

Bangs noted that before this trial began, Turner obtained the names of jurors and their telephone numbers, and gave them to an inmate charged with murder. At the trial on November 20, as Bangs addressed the jury, Turner tried to hold up a sign to the jury but was handcuffed by Sheriff's deputies who removed him from the courtroom, while he yelled out "she lied."

Ali came to the United States from Pakistan decades ago to pursue the American dream. Ali's son, Hussein, spoke in the courtroom after the death penalty was announced. "Thank you for giving us justice," Ali said. "I hope there are no more devils like this person."