[pwright1]

Check this story out. I saw it on the news last night. There is no way I could do this.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/20/eveningnews/main696990.shtml

 

[unusualfire]

Well truck drivers do it for a living and driving much further distances.

 

[Monkey]

But then driving trucks is not commuting, unusual, but a way of making a living.

The subject here is commuting in order to make a living.


And workers' commutes, in spite of additional or widened freeways and improved public transit, appear to get longer.

pwright brings up a very important point here. The average working person spends 8 hours on the job. Adding the commute at each end (1, 2, 3 hours per trip?) makes the time away from home, family and friends into an awfully large segment of the day.

My longest commute was 1 to 1 1/2 hours going to San Francisco & back. That amounts to a work day of about 10 - 11 hours. I consider that within the realm of the acceptable.

Trips to & from work well beyond that period of time seriously affect a person's general well-being and outlook on life, I should think, especially if they are solo drivers. I know people who drive from here to Sacramento or from here to San Jose every day. Too long on the road with too many frustrations, say I. The environmental and psycholocal impact, of course, are further factors not even considered here..

There's a whole lot to be done in this country, I feel, to cut down on commute times.

 

[Azn_chi_boi]

My dad drive from Chicago to Joliet 5 days a week to Work.
Thats like 1 hour.

I know some people that lived near Michigan City(on the other side of Lake Michigan) and work in Chicago, driving is about 1hour- 2 hours(traffic time). Maybe the trains take 2 hours.

 

[TheKansan]

I know someone who drives from Topeka to work in downtown KCMO 5 days a week. That is an hour drive. Too much for me.

 

[waj0527]

Sadly, a 45-60 min commute isnt abnormal in Baltimore-Washington at all.

 

[Agent Orange]

Here in Tampa, it has become common for lower middle class people to drive 90 minutes to work from the "cheaper" suburbs north of town where new, inexpensive housing can be had. Theres still PLENTY of land closer in to Tampa that could be developed, but there is no regional planning board or anything of the kind to dictate how land should be used. What can one expect in this country, though, when it comes to planning? This national crisis is made even worse in Florida by the local dumbass pro-development lawmakers promoting sprawl and highway expansion all in the name of a fast buck with no regard to what kind of urban fabric will be left for future generations. Or rather, no regard to anyone living in these developments five years after they're built.

 

[JTS LOU]

It takes me about 40 minutes in the morning to get from SW Louisville to The Jeffersontown business district in the morning and over 1 hour in the afternoon because of the congested traffic on Louisville Expressways(escpecially I-265: the southern Beltway b/c its only 4 lanes wide while the I-264: northern beltway is 12 lanes in some cases its still heavy in most spots).

 

[jmanhsv]

According to the 2000 Census, about 200 people commute from Huntsville to Nashville on weekdays, which is a good 2 hour drive.

 

[The anti-cheesehead]

I live about 9 miles from downtown Minneapolis and it takes me about 15 minutes to get to work during rush hour....because I car pool and I can use the car pool/toll lanes.

 

[e2ksj3]

Interesting article. I guess people are willing to put up a long commute to find affordable housing, although they are making up for it, in less time with family, stress, transportation cost, etc.

The New York area isn't alone either, DC and LA seem to have the same problem as well. The DC suburbs not only consist of MD and VA anymore, but now WV and PA. The Washington Post ran an article about extreme commuting in the DC Metro area.

Washington Post Article

 

[mad_nick]

Check this story out. I saw it on the news last night. There is no way I could do this.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/20/eveningnews/main696990.shtml

What I find interesting about the article is that she's riding a bus to the city. Most Americans wouldn't take the bus if their life depended on it, yet exurbanites living 100 miles from Manhattan are willing to ride a bus for 2 hours to get to work in the city.
Not that I can understand why anyone would want to commute 4 hours everyday just to have a big house with a large yard, isn't it more important that they spend time with their kids than having a large backyard?

 

[Third of a kind]

What I find interesting about the article is that she's riding a bus to the city. Most Americans wouldn't take the bus if their life depended on it, yet exurbanites living 100 miles from Manhattan are willing to ride a bus for 2 hours to get to work in the city.
Not that I can understand why anyone would want to commute 4 hours everyday just to have a big house with a large yard, isn't it more important that they spend time with their kids than having a large backyard?

its crazy, I know alot of people like this...

I used to work in upper westchester and sometimes rockland county it was really surprising to see how many people commuted in rockland by bus. Then again I would like to know the income's of some of these people, because I've met some people who live all the way at the top of the harlem line (metro north blue line) and they make a 2+ hour commute to manhattan everday...but the metro north is incredibly expensive. Do they're employers get tax benefits??? I wonder because I know there are certain employers who do this and the employees get money to commute.

I used to know this woman from pougkeepsie who would commute to her office in downtown brooklyn everday, that's a ridiculous commute!!!

 

[Justadude]

It's absolutely insane to think that a larger house with a yard makes up for the serious health consequences that result from getting a child up at 4am every day. Studies have very consistently shown that sleep is among the most important things (along with diet and exercise) that factor into a child's mental and physical development.

Someday these kids are going to move into a center-city apartment because they're going to value every minute of sleep they can get. An acre of backyard is going to mean shit to them.

 

[jmancuso]

it takes me an hour each away to get to work everyday. i hate it, i hate the job and i hate the overdependence on the car in this city. it's no way to live.

 

[xzmattzx]

my dad almost went through with a commute like this. he worked at dupont in the pharmaceutical division for 20 years, until dupont sold of the pharmaceutical section to bristol mayers squibb. bms wasn't going to operate in delaware, so my dad had the choice of joining bristol myers quibb in northern new jersey, or retiring. one of the options he looked at was commuting from our place in delaware to new brunswick, new jersey. this would mean a 30 minute drive to the train station in wilmington, then a 2 hour train ride to new brunswick. in the end, he decided to "retire", then find a new job in the wilmington area. as the father of 6 kids (me being the oldest, and i was still in college while this went on 2 years ago), he would lose too much time on trains and in his car. that time was too valuable, and would be better suited for being with the family, whether it be picking up the littler ones from swimming, or just plain old family time; or equally important, for sleeping. while working for a big company would benefit him and the family more, the lifestyle would just be too much on him, and he would most likely lose productivity.

 

[Kevin J]

I saw the story on CBS News that is the subject of this post. I had read a similarly-themed article in the New York Times about a year ago on the same subject. The tenor of the Times article was much more negative. The focus was on families being lured 100 miles away with promises of commuter rail extensions that never happened, thus necessitating driving commutes for most of them, and stunted/dropping property values. Greedy developers were also often approving a lot of these people for mortgages they were barely qualified for based on the usual income/mortgage ratios, just for the sake of moving the properties as quickly as possible.

Due to the falling property values, most of these people were forced to stick with their white elephant homes, even if they wanted to escape the monster commute, or sell at a loss, if they could sell at all. In addition, many of these lifelong city dwellers were feeling the negative effects of uprooting themselves from family and neighborhood support systems that they had come to rely on for child care, companionship, etc. Very sad stories all around.

But back to the CBS story. After watching it, I got my atlas out to get a better sense of the area they were talking about. The obvious advantage of the town they were talking about is that it was right on Interstate 80--hence the bus commute. But other than that, I wondered why the houses luring these people weren't being built in/near any of the many small towns also along I-80 in western New Jersey. Anyone familiar with the area have some insight?

 

[HowardL]

About ten years ago, I met a man who commuted five days a week from Grand Rapids to the North side of Chicago. It was a two and half hour drive, but with the time change, he lost an hour on the morning commute and gained an hour in the evening.

Either way, that is insanity.

 

[Velvetj]

it takes me an hour each away to get to work everyday. i hate it, i hate the job and i hate the overdependence on the car in this city. it's no way to live.

With so much hate, the answer seems so obvious jmancuso.

For me, I work 35 miles from my home and it takes 40 minutes in the morning and 1 hour on the way home. Would I like for my commute to be shorter, of course, but if commuting bothered me THAT much, I would simply move. My co-worker lives only 10 minutes away and that is because she chose to do so. I like my side of town and plan on staying there, so I will continue commuting everyday. I could use the bus but it would take much longer than driving in rush hour traffic.

I keep a lot of my favorite music in the car, and make sure my air conditioner is always in good shape. I try to make myself as comfortable as possible.

 

[Chris25]

I drive from Columbia, MD to downtown DC everyday on the commuter bus. That is about a 45 minute commute if there were no cars on the road. In reality, it takes much longer. DC traffic is so horrible that you wouldn't even believe it. Today, my commute took 2 hours to get home. Imagine sitting in a bus from downtown DC to Columbia going 20 mph the whole way. The whole way I was doing a timeline in my head as to when I can quite my job in DC and get a job in Baltimore or central MD to save my sanity. I would seriously take a pay cut just to not be stuck in traffic anymore.