The Record (Hackensack N.J.)

HACKENSACK, N.J. – It’s 3:40 a.m. and teeth-chattering cold when Dave Blaha steps onto the train platform in Port Jervis, N.Y., a town just north of New Jersey’s High Point State Park.

Sunlight won’t peek over the nearby mountains for at least another three hours. The only hope for hot coffee, a Burger King next to the train station, is pitch dark. And Blaha, a research analyst for a financial services firm in Manhattan, is waiting for a 3:51 a.m. train that will take him on a more than 2-hour journey to his office.

“I’m an early bird anyway, so it doesn’t matter to me,” said Blaha, a 50-year-old divorced father of two grown children.

Is he insane? Not at all, says Blaha, who moved to Port Jervis from Fair Lawn last month. Just a small tradeoff for the ability to pay $150,000 for a 1,450-square-foot Victorian with less than $2,000 a year in taxes.

The U.S. Census Bureau has a name for daily routines like Blaha’s: extreme commutes.

And the number of people traveling at least 90 minutes to work – which is labeled extreme – is increasing. Since 1990, it has been the fastest growing segment of commuters in the nation.

The reasons for the trend are varied. Many, like Blaha, are willing to commute an extra hour or so to find an affordable house.

“North Jersey’s too expensive for most people for the space it gets you,” said Adam Birnbaum, whose two-hour trek from Middlesex County, N.J., to Manhattan each day inspired him to create a forum for frustrated commuters called TransitHell.com.

“I would gladly work close to home, but the position I’m in and the career growth where I am far exceeds the opportunities in New Jersey near my home,” said Birnbaum, an Internet development manager for a New York media company.

Others resort to extreme commutes after an untimely job relocation or other workplace changes.

Rafael Menjura, an aircraft mechanic from Clifton, N.J., was furloughed from his United Airlines job at Newark Liberty International Airport and accepted a transfer to La Guardia Airport.

The move meant keeping his 18 years of service with United. But it also meant spending four hours on two buses and the subway each day.

Menjura, who works an overnight shift at La Guardia, takes a DeCamp bus to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, then the No. 7 train to Queens, and then another bus to La Guardia.

“The commute is not something I enjoy, but it’s something I have to deal with,” Menjura said one morning last month at the bus terminal.

Right now, relocating his family to Queens is not an option. “There’s no comparison to New Jersey,” he said. “You have a little more space – a little more breathing room.”