ITT we talk/brag/complain about our commute.

[AGDee]

Originally Posted by PiKA2001

Does anyone have a commute that is over an hour? How does it work for you and do you get used to it? If I get the transfer I'm hoping for I will end up with a 50 minute drive (w/ no traffic) to/from work.

I used to work with a guy who had a 2 1/2 hour commute ( He lives in Grand Rapids but works in metro Detroit). He ended up renting a room in town and would just go home on the weekends.

Anybody trying to commute from GR to Detroit is just crazy.


I hope you're keeping in mind that 50 minutes with no traffic means an hour and 15 minutes with traffic and 2-3 hours with snow. You could deal with that for a little bit at first, but you're going to want to live closer than that. I have a co-worker doing Waterford to Detroit every day and she goes nuts.

[KSig RC]

5ish miles; 7-12 minutes.

[PiKA2001]

Originally Posted by AGDee

Anybody trying to commute from GR to Detroit is just crazy.


I hope you're keeping in mind that 50 minutes with no traffic means an hour and 15 minutes with traffic and 2-3 hours with snow. You could deal with that for a little bit at first, but you're going to want to live closer than that. I have a co-worker doing Waterford to Detroit every day and she goes nuts.

That doesn't seem too bad of a commute.. I was doing Royal Oak to Mt. Clemens and it was 20-25 mins in the morning and 45 mins in the afternoon.

[annabella]

Originally Posted by PiKA2001

Does anyone have a commute that is over an hour? How does it work for you and do you get used to it? If I get the transfer I'm hoping for I will end up with a 50 minute drive (w/ no traffic) to/from work.

My first job out of college involved a commute of ~45 with no traffic, which quickly turned into 1:15-1:30 with. I'm a morning person, and they let me adjust my hours to come in a little earlier and miss most of it.

I would absolutely suggest getting audiobooks or Pandora for iPhone though, because hearing the same drive-time news on a 15-minute loop gets really old, really fast. I got used to it pretty quickly though.

[Scully]

If I'm lucky, my drive is 45 minutes in the morning. Some days it can take up to an hour.

My commute home however, is anywhere from 1 - 1.5 hours depending on the time I leave. Somehow I end up home at 7:15pm whether I leave work at 5:30 or 6:30. So it pays for me to stay late!

I have a 60 mile round trip per day.

On nice sunny days, I don't mind the ride. I get to play my music and clear my head. But when it rains, snows, or I get stuck behind an accident it makes me completely insane.

[aephi alum]

I work from home.

I've had some pretty hellacious commutes, though. For a month, my commute consisted of a 2-hour Metro-North ride and a roughly 1/2 hour subway ride each way. I moved closer to NYC and later took a job in Midtown, which left me with "just" a one-hour Metro-North ride. I listened to a lot of podcasts and got a lot of knitting and needlepoint done.

[IrishLake]

My drive is 90 minutes one way, but that's just the time in the car. I live east of Cincinnati, and drive to the middle of no where southern Ohio for my job. Around 200 miles a day. A tank of gas gets me 2 days. By the time I get the kids dropped off at Preschool and the babysitters, I roll into work at about 7, and I left my house around 5 or 5:15.

It sucks. Yes, we are planning on relocating. Selling our house is proving to be difficult.

[thetygerlily]

Complain: A TomTom report awarded the Seattle metro area with the worst congestion last year. What makes it so great? From my perspective two things- geography and sprawl.

For geography, we are confined by the Puget Sound and mountains into a small space- and then we threw in a 34 square mile lake in the middle of it just for fun. That means everyone lives west (Seattle), north, east, or south of the lake. One freeway goes up each side, and two bridges connect in the middle. That means very few options to get where you want to go.

Thanks to urban sprawl and Microsoft, we also have two separate commercial areas. After Microsoft decided to set up shop in a tiny little town nobody had heard of, others decided to come join the party and now there's a booming tech scene. Redmond for sure isn't made for Microsoft traffic volumes. The kicker is that a lot of people live in Seattle but commute to Bellevue/Redmond, and vice versa. So although one way is less busy, it's not drastically so.

Originally Posted by PiKA2001

Does anyone have a commute that is over an hour? How does it work for you and do you get used to it? If I get the transfer I'm hoping for I will end up with a 50 minute drive (w/ no traffic) to/from work.

I used to- I had a 45 minute commute with no traffic, which could be as much as 2 hours with bad traffic (normally an hour to 1h 15min). I only lasted a few months before I moved closer to work. Then I went to a 30-45 minute commute going 8 miles. I got used to talk radio and actually looked forward to my time to catch up on the world. I think if I were to do that longer term I'd check into audio books.

Now my commute ranges from 10-30 minutes, 3-6 miles depending on the building. With any luck, I may be able to change it to a very stable 10-15 minutes soon... we shall see

[Drolefille]

I'm another one who's got 10 minutes at most to get to work. And that's if the college students walk across the street really slowly on my way.

[ADqtPiMel]

I walk out of my house, cross the street, and walk into my office. 50 yards at most.

Unfortunately, my office is moving closer to the Hill soon...so come April, I'll have about 30 minutes door to door (via Metro, I don't drive).

[lovespink88]

Ohhh this thread was like made for me.

Door to door my trip is roughly an hour and 10 minutes. Not terrible...I'm always engrossed in iPod touch games or a book, so the el ride goes quickly to me. What bothers me though is that when I work late, I take a cab home (paid by the company at least!!) and it takes 20-25 minutes. Unfortunately, that's only because it's usually 9-10ish around that time so there's no traffic...

[christiangirl]

I hate how mine is dependent on what time I leave.

7am: Takes 45mins to an hour.
7:25: Takes about 25 mins.
7:35:Takes about 40 mins.

If I don't leave at EXACTLY the right time, I could be getting very acquainted with the car in the next lane because we'll be looking at each other for quite some time.

[SWTXBelle]

Pick your poison - it's all bad. I'm coming in from Katy, so:

6:30 - leave and go to youngest son's school.
6:40 - drop off youngest son; head to eldest son's school. THIS is where it gets interesting. Do I 1.) go west (the wrong way) so I can hit the HOV lane before it gets really hairy 2.) go down Fry and hit the freeway, hoping against hope someone will let me over to get into the HOV or 3.) just go down the feeder roads? Depends on how backed up the freeway appears to be. Today it was the feeders all the way.
7:20 - 7:30 - drop off eldest son at his school.
7:45 - 7:50 - arrive at my school.

[shirley1929]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

Pick your poison - it's all bad. I'm coming in from Katy, so:

6:30 - leave and go to youngest son's school.
6:40 - drop off youngest son; head to eldest son's school. THIS is where it gets interesting. Do I 1.) go west (the wrong way) so I can hit the HOV lane before it gets really hairy 2.) go down Fry and hit the freeway, hoping against hope someone will let me over to get into the HOV or 3.) just go down the feeder roads? Depends on how backed up the freeway appears to be. Today it was the feeders all the way.
7:20 - 7:30 - drop off eldest son at his school.
7:45 - 7:50 - arrive at my school.

Augh! I'm from Houston originally...I know what a nightmare I-10 can be!! I grew up in the Memorial area.

[agzg]

I have a 40-45 minute el ride to work. It's not bad, but hard to get used to when I used to have a 20-25 minute el ride to work.