In the counties north and west of NYC, the houses are going up as fast as developers can put them in. From what I’ve seen, it seems that most of the people moving in work in Manhattan or close by, so their daily commute is in the 1-2 hour ballpark, one way, each day. (Length of commute varies depending on which and how many forms of transportation you’d need to get to your job.)
The plus side to this arrangement seems to consist of lower housing costs/property taxes; a more spacious plot of land around your house (usually); and a “safe” environment for your kids to grow up in.
These are things worth having, agreed, but at what point would you feel that not being burnt out by the commute takes precedence over some or all of those pluses? How far would you be willing to commute for a “better quality of life”?
Well, when I lived in Seattle, I did a 45 minute commute each way. Of course, I only lived 5 exits away from work.
I currently have odd hours, so my commute is only 20 minutes, but during rush hour I hit 30 minutes to an hour. Wouldn’t be here long if I had to do that all the time.
No f***ing way would I ever commute anywhere near that far. At the risk of offending everyone who does, I think you’re bloody nuts. How can you have good “quality of life” when you spend 2-4 hours a day in a car/bus/train?!?
I currently have about a 15 minute commute. I’d go up to 30 minutes, but it’d have to be a kickass job, or have other benefits. I hate spending time commuting, and strive to reduce it even further.
This question really hits home for me, right now. Currently I have a great job, with a ten minute commute. I actually drive by my babysitter’s house to get to work.
However, housing around here is extremely expensive. My sitter’s daughter also leaves her kids with her mom. She drives almost an hour to drop them off and then another 30 or 40 minutes to get to work. Why? Because they can only afford a big house if they live out in the middle of nowhere.
Now I’d love to buy a house, too, but is it worth it if you only go there to sleep during the week? We could eventually buy a tiny, older place around here and renovate it, but there is only one good elementary school near us because most of the young families have fled to the hills.
I go back and forth on this. Part of me would love a big house with plenty of space and a garden. But then I go somewhere and hit the rush hour traffic and think “What if I had to do this everyday?”
Over a year ago, I had about an hour commute each way by light rail and commuter train. I honestly didn’t mind it because it gave me downtime to read or just sit and think. Or sometimes just to sit.
Currently, I have a commute of about 20 minutes or so, and I’m driving. sigh I’d just as soon stay home, if I could.
To paraphrase Athena, if it’s a kick-ass job then I’d be willing to travel quite a bit every day. I would drive an hour or much more each way if the job was REALLY awesome, though I would look into getting some gas reimbursment or the like. Though eventually I would probably look into living closer to that awesome job.
As it is now, I luck out. I live downtown-ish and work in the more remote parts, so both ways I beat the gridlock! My current commute is 20-odd minutes in the AM and 30-ish in the PM.
In the car I play tapes and listen to NPR mostly. After work I will often enjoy a fine cigar while spitting out the window. I also speed.
I used to have a 45-minute, one-way commute, and not on expressways either.
If you live in a northern state, when it really sucks is in the winter. Not only are you in that cold car, but I shudder to think about what it’s doing to your potential death-expectancy.
I now have a commute down my stairs and into my den. (OK, I still have to do some driving around, and I report in to the Mother Ship once every two weeks, and that’s a 50-mile, hour-plus drive one-way.
I currently commute 15-20 minutes each way. When I worked in Seattle it was about a 45 minute commute or a 1 hour bus ride. I usually took the bus for the same reason others here have mentioned – so I could read. (I would also come home in a MUCH better mood since I didn’t have to pay attention to the other drivers, some of whom had the nerve to think differently than I did.)
But that one hour was awfully close to my limit. I knew it was only temporary or I would have re-worked something, either my house or my job. I agree with Athena (hey, us deities have to stick together). I wasn’t put on this earth to spend my days wishing I was somewhere else.
“But when all was said and done, the winners were Bush and Gore, one of whom will be our next president, unless – and I would not totally rule this out – the Constitution suddenly is discovered to be missing, and it mysteriously turns up a few days later in the White House living quarters, and, lo and behold, the part that limits the president to two terms is GONE.”
– Dave Barry
I used to have a 40 mile commute. One way. On a good day, getting to Silver Spring from Annapolis took me 45 minutes. This was usually on a weekend. On a normal office day, my commute took at least an hour and a half. One little thing wrong, and it can (and did) take over three hours.
Did I mind? Not really…I had no choice. I couldn’t afford a car payment and rent, so I lived at home. My father did the same commute for 25 years. I love listening to the radio, so I’d just put in a CD and sing the whole way. Didn’t make sense to get mad over something I couldn’t control.
I moved to being 10 miles away from my office 18 months ago. Much better. Still takes me 30 minutes to get there, and I’ve had it take over 90 minutes. DC traffic SUCKS.
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Environment? Nah. Mood lighting and ambience is what counts.
For my dream job I would commute oh 80 feet.
for a fantastic job it would depend on how I commuted. Trains or buses would be good for 1 hr (gota read the paper.
Car no more than 30 minutes. not that I dislkie being in my car, I just hate the other idiots on the road.
My morning commute use to be about 25-30 minutes. The drive home was another story all together depending on what day of the week it was. It averaged about one hour and fifteen minutes.
Until it was summer time and friday. Then everybody was heading up north early and I would not make it home in under two hours. If I didn’t have a cd player in my car, I’d have had gone postal.
Right now, my commute involves walking down the hallway and taking care of child numero uno. Sometimes, its a very long walk. Child numero dos is in a bassinet at the end of our bed and it is amazing just how far that seems at 3am.
Hubby has it worse because he hits the traffic on both ends and doesn’t mind as long as he has his all-sports talk radio to zone out on.
I’m at 13 minutes right now, from front door to desk (hell, 3 minutes is just from parking space to desk). But I’ve lived in the past with an up to 2 hour commute and know plenty of other folks who still do that. Most of them live in one of the fringe communities and travel into (or across) the city to get to work. And I’ve known a couple of folks who lived far enough away that they had apartments in town and went home for weekends - blech!
My most arduous commute was my last semester at UT when Austin had it’s first semester of federally mandated bussing for public schools. Suddenly, by virtue of operating under the federal guidelines, AISD had to field both a driver and a monitor for each school bus, and I became a monitor.
Now for a veteran college student, it was enough of a burden to rise early enough to make the school bus runs, but the commute involved transporting myself to the bus yard almost 6 miles away. If I kept up the pace, I could comfortably walk it in about an hour. It wasn’t a great job, but I needed it and I could do it and I got to study ebonics on the job.
Definitely an aside, but still on the subject of somebody’s commute: our first run involved grabbing a bunch of deep eastside kids and running them up to an elementary school on the northwest side, no biggie - the second run was Special OPS - we drew the route for the kids all over the city who were in the special disciplinary program who all attended the Alcatraz high school. It was a long run and my driver and I were both at a cynical enough that we held out little hope of accomplishing anything more than transporting these kids without major disruptions breaking out. These were kids who did not want to be going to school or even be around each other. Peace was achieved when I established the regime wherein everybody understood that NO beercans or cigarettes would ever be visible to anyone outside the bus, and I would NEVER smell marijuana on the bus.
So, that was a commute aside. If anybody paused to read it, I hope that anybody was not DoctorJ (get back to work or go to bed, ya slacker!).
A few years ago, I lived so close to my job that I could go home and nap on my lunch hour. That was really great.
The longest commute I ever had was 45 minutes one way, in city traffic. That really SUCKED!
My current job commute is about 20-25 minutes, except on Friday evenings, when I have to fight traffic. Then it can take 40 minutes. It’s tolerable.
I work with a doctor who lives in Orlando, and she has to drive about an hour and a half each way. I think that’s nuts, but she doesn’t have to do it every day like someone with a normal job would.
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