Do you dread your commute?

Mine is usually around 25 minutes but it can vary. No highways or expressways, just busy surface streets and lots of huge intersections with 2-3 minute long lights. Rarely a drive happens where some yahoo doesn’t almost kill me. Not very relaxing.

My commute is pretty great. It’s about 2.7 miles from my home. By car it takes about 15 -20 minutes from my driveway to the parking lot to sitting at my desk. I ride my Vespa almost exclusively in the Spring, Summer, Fall and decent weather days in the Winter. Every once in a while I bicycle - it takes about 35 minutes through neighborhood streets, then a great bike path and park to downtown. I’ve walked a few times and it took about 40-45 minutes. Eugene, where I live, has virtually no traffic. When I do drive - I often carpool with my guy. We work together. It’s a great way to start my morning when I get to lean in at a traffic light, give him a kiss on the cheek and cop a quick feel. :stuck_out_tongue: . No, I don’t mind my commute at all.

I have to travel to another town on a weekly basis 3 days there 3 days home not a huge amount cumulatively but 6 hours each way does suck (bus and train). I start again in a week and I am NOT looking forward to it

About 20 minutes via elevated train. It’s a fine commute.

I’ve always tried to either live close or live where I can take a train. My longest commutes were when I lived in the suburbs and worked downtown Chicago, but I lived in walking distance to the train stations, so still didn’t use my car much, and the commutes were fine since I wasn’t driving at all. I briefly worked at a bank from which I lived across the street. It was nice to go home for lunch.

Mine was so bad, with no realistic alternatives, that it’s part of the reason I’m not working at the moment. I mean, it’d be difficult for me to work anyway (losing my voice, can’t stand up, can’t use my hands properly - difficult for teaching and, well, almost anything). It wasn’t far in terms of miles but it required standing, squished next to other people, on the tube, with nothing to hold onto, for an hour each way, plus lots of stairs to climb. That’s not pleasant for anyone but with rheumatoid arthritis it was unbelievably painful.

And no, I couldn’t get a seat. Couldn’t move fast enough to get to the bits where there was even the opportunity to ask for a seat. There was no alternative route and all the alternative jobs have the same commuting problem. I made a whole thread about it.

I have to say, commuting into Central London via the Central Line at rush hour really is pretty hellish for almost anyone. No sitting down to read your Kindle, certainly not on the way in, unless you get on at the very end of the line; queuing just to get onto the platform; the aforementioned squishing into strangers’ armpits; the heat; the noise that’s so bad that sometimes you can’t hear whatever’s in your headphones. Ugh. Some lines are better; we are trying to move house to one of them.

Mine is 35 minutes, one way. It’s mostly on back streets in DC until I kind of pop out at the office, I don’t mind it because my wire rides in with me.

Mine is about 30 minutes, by walking and train. That’s from walking outside my apartment building to walking into my office. Obviously there are days with bitter cold, rain, or train delays that make it less pleasant. Hot summer days when the trains are loaded with tourists or heavily intoxicated Cubs fans aren’t exactly fun either. Still, it beats the hell out of driving.

Well, I’ve had worse commutes, as far as the length of the commute goes. In decent traffic, it’s 25 minutes or so. If 128 is backed up, it can be forever. I once was stuck in traffic for two solid hours (an accident with a death had occurred a few miles up the road). Sometimes the traffic backs up for no apparent reason – no snow, no rain, nada.

And god forbid it rains. Or snows. You’d think New Englanders would know how to drive in snow.

Boston area traffic is such fun.

Mine’s not too bad, I’ve certainly had worse. It’s 46 miles each way in a car, but I work nights, so unless I go in early or leave work early and catch the tail end of rush hour, traffic is light. Most days I can do it in 35 minutes without a problem.

If I ever voluntarily go back to normal daytime hours with a normal daytime commute, it’ll be for a job that doesn’t seem like work.

13 miles, on the freeway for most of it, but since I live in the city and work in the suburbs, I miss the traffic both ways.

The drive to work is nice. Peaceful. Dark too, this time of year.

The drive home is less so, mostly because I’m tired and want to get home and crack open a beer. But I can still count my blessings as I see the deadlocked traffic going the other way. :slight_smile:

Plus I work with my wife, so we can talk or listen to music or just have a quiet moment of the kind that the kids and dogs don’t often let us get while at home.

My office is about 115 miles away from my house. Traffic is usually backed up from Lynnwood all the way in. Since the office has moved to the port, there’s often a long line of trucks that often do not obey the DO NOT BLOCK DRIVEWAY signs.

But I don’t have to clear a security checkpoint, and we have a parking lot. (The previous office was five miles closer to home, but it cost at least $12/day to park in a lot.)

Oh, and I telecommute three days a week. Today I am not dreading my commute.

25 miles or so each way. I know that sounds like nothing, but its not the miles its the minutes. Those 25 miles can take from 1 - 3 hours EACH WAY! I try to mitigate by working early shift whenever I am not assigned a specific shift. If there’s no accidents to contend with its about 1 hour minutes in, hour and half back. If there’s an accident or adverse weather then it gets much worse. Unfortunately there seems to be a bad day at least once a week if not more.

Does anyone have a commute where you have to drive facing into the sun?

I used to work at Edwards AFB. East in the mornings, and west in the afternoons. Weather was usually clear. During some parts of the year, the Sun was brutally low. And then there were the times it rained and the roads were wet, and the Sun came out and reflected on them. Of course, being in the desert, windshields were pitted by the blowing sand.

The SO was just hired onto a new job, and it’s ‘regular hours’, five days a week. It’s straight east to the freeway in the mornings. She’s driving my Jeep, which, although it didn’t live in the desert, I bought when I lived in Southern California. Its windshield is pitted. She says once she builds up a monetary reserve, she’s going to replace it so she can see.

At my new job, my commute’s actually fairly pleasant- it takes about twelve minutes, assuming no traffic, and I generally have a nice view of the mountains. My wife’s commute is better, though- when we moved, her employer couldn’t stand to lose her so they let her work from home.

I need that kind of commute.

No, thank god. Utah’s main artery, I-15, runs north-south.

My commute is 13 miles each way and takes about 25 minutes due to traffic lights. I consider that just about right. I have had shorter commutes (2 miles, 5 minutes) and longer (30 miles, 45-75 minutes, depending on traffic). I’m not a morning person and need some time to get into “people facing” mode, so I actually like this commute better than the 2 mile one.

Look forward to it - 5 mile bike ride (v easy, flat as a pancake). Excellent way to un-wind - would prefer a longer ride but there’s a balance to be struck with your recreational riding. Ramp up the commute miles and it can suck enthusiasm from the weekend / evening riding.
Ride a very simple bike that costs next to nothing to maintain - runs on fat, saves you money, not the other way round, as they say.

I don’t hate mine, I drive about 12 miles, on a rural 2-lane road and through a small town.

Humblebrag: A 25-minute commute on good-quality secondary road and Interstate, through the middle of Central Vermont’s Green Mountains. Aside from when the weather is sucky (and it can get really sucky!), I look forward to my commute.