Quote:
Originally Posted by Jdawgboy
I said I wouldn't be surprised in the future, I didn't say it was happening now. I also didn't say Williamson would be defined by the metro area, I said Williamson is projected to reach a million people. Your talking about what is going on in Milam County right now but when you consider 20 to 30 years into the future, its a pretty good bet to assume Milam will be growing just by the fact that it will border a county with a million people and will be influenced by the Austin metro as a whole.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas
Actually counties like Caldwell and Milam, which have very little there in the way of jobs, rely heavily on the Austin metro for jobs. Places like Hays County and Burnet County are less dependent because they do at least have some jobs thanks to a university and resorts. Caldwell is already part of our metro, I think the only reason Milam hasn't been added yet is that it's slightly farther away. That could change if a major employer were to pop up closer to Milam County to bring in those residents.
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These are both very good points. In fact, good enough that - in light of a fresh look at the current commuter data - I have entirely reconsidered my opinion. Milam is likely to be added to the metropolitan area.
After looking back at the current data, I have come to realize that I made myself look like a total fool in this debate. In the interest of being entirely fair and open, the current metropolitan area is defined as the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metropolitan area, with all three of Travis, Williamson, and Hays being considered core counties (although note that the nomenclature of the metro does not always indicate core county classification, in this case it does line up perfectly). See here on document page 24 (page 27 of the .pdf):
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defa...013/b13-01.pdf
Thus, according to the standards reviewed on page 6 here ...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defa...s-Complete.pdf ... a combined 25 percent of the workforce must commute into the core counties to be included (or another criterion which isn't likely to be met for any of the counties in our area save for Williamson, which doesn't matter because it's a core county).
Bexar, Comal, and Guadalupe are the core counties of the San Antonio metropolitan area.
Given those statistics, here are the current counties immediately adjacent to (although I also include Llano County, and left off McMullen because they have no commuters to any of the core counties according to the census data, and ofcourse left off the counties currently in another metro area) the current definitions of the San Antonio and Austin metropolitan areas ranked by their sum total of commuter percent into the core counties of the relevant metro for each particular county.
I've dumped all data points that are not above a 5 percent threshold to talk about. For Austin these are the following counties: Fayette.
For San Antonio these are the following counties: Burnet, Gillespie, Kerr (what was I thinking? I clearly made myself look like an idiot as only 2 percent travel into the core counties), Live Oak, Real, and Uvalde.
For Lee I also checked the data for College Station (Brazos is the only core county) and they were beneath my threshold, and for Milam both College Station and for Killeen-Temple (both Bell and Coryell). Milam has no attachment to Brazos at all (3 percent). For Llano I also checked Killeen, where there was no connection.
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Likely:
1. Blanco County. Of all the counties, this clearly is the one that stands the greatest chance of being added to a metropolitan area. 17% currently travel to one of the three Austin core counties (13% in Travis, 4% in Hays, 1% in Williamson), and 11% currently travel to one of the three San Antonio core counties (7% in Bexar and 4% in Comal)
and it starts off with a low employment base (4,733 total employed) so any future additional workers move the baseline more quickly
and those workers are likely to be employed elsewhere as Blanco County doesn't have much in the way of economic potential itself. There's clearly competition between Austin and San Antonio, but for now Austin definitely has the edge (and will likely keep it).
2. Burnet County. 17% currently work in the Austin core counties (12% in Travis, 5% in Williamson). There's a high employment number (18,657) which will make future inclusion more difficult to attain as each additional worker moves the needle less, but keep in mind that suburban growth could encroach along two different corridors: 29 out to Burnet, fueling commuting into Williamson and 71 out to Marble Falls fueling it into Travis. There's no direct link to Hays, which also places a hamper on the combined score. This was part of the former Austin CSA, but that was dropped because the commute from Austin MSA into the Marble Falls mSA was too low and the inclusion was in error to begin with based on the census's own data.
3. Milam County... 15% currently travel into the Austin area (7% to Travis, 7% to Williamson, and 1% to Hays). That's 10% beneath where it needs to be, but I can't imagine that as Williamson grows and becomes a major source of employment on it's own that that won't increase substantially. I effectively concede entirely on this point. However, there is still strict competition as 10% commute into Bell County.
4. Lee County. 15% commute into Austin's core counties (11% into Travis, 3% into Williamson, and 1% into Hays. This is a county that we did not consider at all in the above discussion, which was a mistake to forget.
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Perhaps:
5. Llano County. 9% commute into Austin (8% to Travis and 1% to Williamson). Much of the further growth here is immediately adjacent to Marble Falls, so I'd expect that number to climb in tandem with Burnet County's number, though there is ofcourse going to be lag time between the two being added.
6. Frio County. 9% currently commute into Bexar. Perhaps suburban growth between Pearsall and Devine this might change. This is the closest county to Bexar that isn't currently included.
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Unlikely:
7. Gonzales County. 10% currently commute into San Antonio (3% into Bexar, 1% into Comal, and 6% into Guadalupe). Although this has a higher commute percent than Llano and Frio, the commute stat is driven by Guadalupe County, which doesn't have a huge economy. The low number for Bexar suggests that there isn't much room for improvement on the score.
8. Karnes. 6% currently commute into Bexar. This is way too low a number to warrant any consideration of future inclusion.
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This was my mea culpa. I was wrong. I apologize for making such a big... fuss. One last note: these numbers are from the 2006-2010 estimates, because that's the newest data. Current numbers are likely to be higher.
If the counties that look like good bets (the first category) were added to the Austin MSA, we'd be at 1,929,164 in the '12 estimates. San Antonio would still be at 2,234,033. That's still a good deal away from Austin. We'd still need a good 15 years of relative growth to become bigger.
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