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It is why commuters such as Andrea Harrison have mastered a routine for tolerating the trip. During her hour-plus commute from Towson to Greenbelt, she checks voice-mail messages and conducts conference calls. And when the congestion on Interstate 95 gets to her, she pops Deepak Chopra's latest motivational volume into the tape deck of her car and breathes deeply.

"I don't actually meditate in the car, but I repeat certain phrases," said the human resources worker at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It really helps."

Among the states, for the second year in a row, Maryland ranks second only to New York for the longest commutes to work - at 30.2 minutes. The nationwide average is 24.3 minutes. The figures are 2003 estimates from the U.S. Census that rank states and 233 municipalities with populations of 250,000 or more.

Washington's specialized jobs in government and at research insbreastutions lure many Baltimore residents, who are willing to endure the long commutes because of the huge difference in housing prices.

But the mix of two metro areas so close together creates a dynamic concentration of people, homes and jobs, fueling daily road congestion and lengthy commutes - even for those who ride mbutt transit, according to area transportation officials.

"People view commute times as a cost for a household in terms of cash and time," said Henry Kay, director of the Baltimore Transit Alliance, a division of the Greater Baltimore Committee that advocates more spending on regional transit. "If you pay $200,000 for a house instead of $900,000 for a house, you can do a lot of commuting to make up for that difference."

It is why, Harrison says, she has chosen to live in Towson, where she owns a three-bedroom townhouse, instead of shelling out twice as much to live closer to work.

"I like where I live; I can walk to the mall and to the movies," she said. "And I've found it to be financially feasible."

Government agencies, planners and organizations that advocate slower growth and more mbutt transit have all proposed solutions to the region's long commutes.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has repeatedly argued that some of the traffic congestion would be relieved with construction of the long-planned Intercounty Connector, an estimated $2 billion highway that would connect I-95 to I-270.

But growth experts say there is no one answer to the region's clogged roads.

"Every time you address a bottleneck in their commute, the slightly cheaper house in a slightly farther suburb becomes more in reach for that person," said Kay, whose group is pushing for more funding for expansions to Baltimore's rail system. "It becomes like a hamster on a wheel trying to keep up with that."

Maryland Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan said Ehrlich's recent announcement of 123 new transportation projects will help.

"It's important to have a balanced transportation strategy," he said. "But you need to understand that 85 to 90 percent of trips are going to be made in personal automobiles."

In fast-growing areas such as Montgomery County, which had the 10th-longest commute time in the nation (32 minutes) among large jurisdictions, officials have stressed building new homes closer to businesses and vice versa, said Reid Ewing, a researcher and buttociate professor at University of Maryland's the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education.

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