[Dave 20T]

Any comments or experiences?

To start, how about

a. 30 miles urban traffic, 1:20 hours
b. part rural, part suburban, 80 miles, 1:30 hours
c. longer than b., 120 miles, 2 hours each way
d. suburban, 20 min in rush hour
e. Other

Or just freehand comments. The above figures are mostly random, not exact. Would you take a job without first trying the commute?

 

[ard]

150.6 miles each way... on a Friday afternoon it can be 4+ hours.

But...only do it once a week (or less). down for one or two nights each week, unless I am flying then no office that week.

 

[Sportsdad]

4x10 schedule- 1 day a week I work from home (Virtual office)

We typically measure our commutes in time rather than miles any more, thus the reason for apps like INRIX (owned by a friend of mine) which I highly recommend. It finds the shorter route home based on TIME, not miles.

My commute TIME is 42 minutes in the morning (I start work at 5am) and 60 minutes home.

 

[L-F-C]

A few years ago i was working on a long term project in my company's Silicon Valley office. Driving from Concord down to SV took nearly 2 hrs, leaving the house around 8:00 AM. Coming back was something to the tune of 3 hrs. After doing this for 3-4 weeks I just couldn't take it anymore. I started leaving the house at 9:30 which got me to work at exactly 10:30. And I'd leave the office around 7 PM which got me home around 8:15.
All that time spent in traffic, I could do nothing but think. And I came to realize, this is how people go crazy. Thankfully the project didn't last too long (3 months) so I could go back to my usual routine.

Being in IT I often get calls from recruiters for jobs in the South Bay, and unless the job pays something insane, I say no. Good thing is that most don't. Must save my mental sanity.

 

[///M3lissa]

Anything longer than 30 minutes each way is too long.

Distance doesn't matter to me: I've done both (30 minutes of a hilly, awesome commute over the Santa Cruz Mtns & 30 minutes sitting in traffic in Silicon Valley - though I'd pick the former).

I've taken jobs without trying the commute, though I had a pretty good idea of what the commute would be.

My commute for the past 8 years: 20 steps from the bedroom to the office :thumbup:

 

[cmac2012]

My longest tenure with a construction company (6 years) came to an end when the only job they had for me was an approx 2 - 2.5 hours, one way, commute which included the Golden Gate Bridge, no movable barrier at the time. Major PITA to drive if attractive. I told them, guys, I really like you but driving 4 to 5 hours a day is not in my future. I found another company with which I had approx. 20 minute or less commutes most of the time.

 

[mark_m5]

For a couple of lousy years I had a 30 mile commute into downtown L.A. every weekday from an apartment in Van Nuys with barbed wire around it...
For a few years I had a 23 mile uncongested commute to Pasadena.
Then the job moved, I moved, haven't had longer than a 20 minute commute since.

If I had to do a longer commute, I'd look for public transport or rideshare, or relocation options. Don't like the idea of spending that much time behind the wheel and adding those miles onto a car. Just recently I was looking at a job that would have had a 2-hour commute down the 5 freeway. Would have purchased a condo to use during the week if I ended up taking it, but it fell through. The company contacted me again for another opportunity. Haven't decided whether or not to pursue it.

 

[Spike Holmes]

My last private sector job was in Ft Worth. I lived in Frisco. It was fifty miles door to door. If I left before 6:00 AM, I could make it in as little as 40 minutes and as long as an hour.
Every 10 minutes I left after 6:00 would add 20 - 25 minutes to the drive. Driving home was a beat down. Never less than 90 minutes, sometimes as much as 2.5 - 3 hours.
Now I have a 10 minutes walk to the E train and a 20 minute ride with a 5 minute walk to the office.

 

[Dave 330i]

I better do my shopping and errands done now before you guys clog up the roads. That's the bright side not having to work.

 

[Autoputzer]

When I finished college, I got a job 25 miles literally "over and (and under via a bridge tunnel) the river and through the woods." One of my buddies in my reserve unit (which drilled near my college) said "That's crazy, you're going to be fighting that tunnel traffic."

My response was "Yeah, on a Sunday morning in a U-Haul truck." Right after I got my job I did a spiral search out from there looking for a nice apartment complex with air conditioning, no rif-raf, and a washer and dryer in the apartment. I ended up five miles form work. Eventually, the hood rats moved into the area, and I moved to a duplex with a garage.

My last commute was my longest, twelve miles each way, 25 minutes. One of those twelve miles was behind the barbed wire and out in the woods. Between "Super Gliding Flex-I-Time," working one mile in the woods at work, driving to lunch, and going to the gym and running errands after work, car pooling or mass transit wasn't an option.

My wife had a specialized job in the medical field and the two hospitals that could use her were about 50 miles apart. We rented until it settled out where she'd be working. Also, she was usually only working four days a week, and had to be within 45 minutes for when she was on call. Mathematically, that meant we should live 45 minutes from her job toward mine. That's what we did, and her commute was 28 miles each way. She was putting 16k miles/year on a car.

I worked with a lot of civil servants in Texas who were transferred to San Diego. They couldn't afford to live near where they worked. Some quit. Some went there started looking for other jobs outside San Diego. Some moved out in the boonies and did the SOCAL commute insanity. One of my friends out there lives in El Cajon on a ranch. He'd start out for work at 2 a.m., be done by noon, and be back playing with his horses by 1 p.m., missing traffic both ways.

I have friends who are a power couple in D.C. and live walking distance from the Chesapeake Bay and the marina where their large sailboat is docked. They bought a modest condo in Bethesda near the Metro station. They drive into the city Monday morning and back to their house Friday afternoon, Thursday afternoon or Friday morning if they can compress their weeks. Friday traffic is noticeably better in the D.C. area because of so many people doing work week compression. Mondays, less so.

 

[CrushersBMW]

I have about a 45 minute commute - each way. Just under 40 miles each way. My first commute was under 10 minutes but I found when I got home, i was thinking about work - and it was too easy to go in on short notice/weekends/whatever. When I get home now, work is not on my mind - and with a 45 minute commute, they know I won't be there for at least an hour and I don't think about going in. But for me, it's not really the time or distance, but whether I'm moving. When I fly into LAX headed to the high desert, I hate it when traffic backs up and I spend 20 minutes going a mile (or less) - even if the rest of the commute is smooth sailing.

 

[ard]

Well, my record (at just past midnight on a Sunday night), was 1:40 to do the 150 miles.

4 traffic lights 5 stop signs one toll booth. M5/V1/Lidatek... Channeling Alex Roy (who I assisted prior to his run.. ) I had been pushing it for months, but when I hit the '100 minutes' goal and decided I was definitley pushing my luck...

There arent many shortcuts...I need to get over the SF Bay...and then there is the central valley part too.

 

[PropellerHead]

My commute for the past 8 years: 20 steps from the bedroom to the office :thumbup:

+1

8 years here as well. I wish to never go back.

 

[MoparJim]

Back in the 1980s when I worked in Silicon Valley my commute was about 8 miles and took about 1/2 hour most days (the '89 Loma Prieta earthquake day was a severe anomaly, 1.5 hours). I knew people, including family that were moving out to Tracy and beyond. I had little kids at the time and there was NO WAY I was going to spend that much time away from home every day. I had a job offer to stay with IBM in East Fishkill, NY, but to spend the same money on rent I would have been at least 30 miles farther north. That was one of the reasons I turned the job down and took the severance package. I currently drive about 9 miles each way to work, but next month it is going back to the 3 miles I have had since the mid 1990s.

So, no I have avoided the long commute my entire career on purpose. There's a reason I average well under 10k miles per year on my cars.

 

[Bob Shiftright]

1.) Newark to Chicago (719 miles) for too many years.
2.) Then worked for a NYC company just before 9/11 and after they cleared the debris out of the HVAC the company moved everybody who actually did anything out to East Bum**** Pennsylvania. Commute was awful but not as bad as it was for the commuters from Longisland. After my third near-death driving experience, I went to...
3.) Telecommute to office near K Street (if you want to throw tomatoes). 100 foot commute almost every day and that includes the detour to the kitchen to make coffee.

 

[M&K]

If you take out the years I had to drive to daycare on my way to the office, I've never had a commute over 15 minutes (currently under 10). I'm always in awe of people who have hour + commutes and don't move. I get that it's a lifestyle choice to live where you do, but I just don't have the patience to sit in the car that long in commuter dense traffic.