My Commute Sucks
My commute’s actually fine, since I live very close to my office so I could probably hop to work and it would be fine. That said, many people’s commutes aren’t good. And research indicates that bad commutes are a very important source of unhappiness in life. Apparently when people are making decisions about where to live or which jobs to take, they tend to underestimate the extent to which long and/or annoying commutes will slowly grind their spirits into dust. So I think Transportation for America’s My Commute Sucks website has some real promise as a concept.
They’re launching a petition asking congress to adopt a reform transportation bill that will actually improve people’s commutes rather than just line the pockets of special interests. The idea is to give more people more options, and create a situation in which drivers get to enjoy less-congested roads in part because more people have more—and more appealing—non-driving options. Go check the site out.
34 Responses to “My Commute Sucks”
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May 15th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Your readers demand a video of you hopping to work.
But yes, when apartment hunting in a new city recently, commute was #2 on my list of important factors, right after the quality of the place and above price. People seem to be poor at judging how long they spend in the car going to work and back five days a week (5 hours a week for a 30 min commute) as a percentage of the overall driving they do.
May 15th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I live within walking distance to a MARC train stop, but I have to drive to work, because the train won’t stop where I need it to in the mornings because I’m counter-commuting (DC to Baltimore), so instead, I need to drive everyday, even though a train passes within walking distance of both my house and work.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Well, my commute sucks and I live in a dense urban neighborhood with a really high Walkscore and semi-adequate public transit access (Rogers Park, in Chicago). It would be a decent commute if I were going downtown like my wife does but since I don’t work there and have to drag the kid halfway across town, taking 3 buses to get to daycare and then work really is not my idea of a fun way to spend 3 hours in the morning, vs. one hour with a car. But if Chicago’s halfass and perennially bankrupt public transit system could be improved and extended, it would help me a lot. I mean, I still wouldn’t use it, but if other people would use it, it would get them off the road and out of my way. Before talking about extending transit to new areas, why don’t we improve it in the areas where it exists to show people it can be a good thing and not just a nightmare.
For the record, I wouldn’t have moved to my neighborhood if I knew how awful the trip would be. During most of the day, you could take my trip in maybe half an hour. So that’s what I thought I was in for. But at morning rush hour it’s an hour, and in the evening it’s abut an hour and fifteen, an hour and a half if the Cubs are playing a home game.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
I’m doubly strange on this. Currently my commute is two flights of stairs, down to my in-home office. However, back in the 20th century when I actually went to work physically I loved a long commute. I always found less then 45 minutes each way to be kind of annoying because I couldn’t get a whole album in.
I think the reason long commutes lead to unhappiness is they listen to talk radio, which will make anyone miserable, instead of music.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I think the reason long commutes lead to unhappiness is they listen to talk radio, which will make anyone miserable, instead of music.
This alone justifies the cost of satellite radio. Or a good iPod hookup.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
The site could catch on. The form letter it builds for you doesn’t provide a lot of detail in terms of alternatives for Congress to consider. It mostly just says stop paying for the same broken system.
I thought it was interesting that a lot of the submitted stories were actually people bragging about their good commutes.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Elwood and Musa,
You guys ar eperfect examples for how improving mass transit helps people who don’t use it. Mass transit is very unlikely to be a viable solution for people with reverse commutes in most places. But if better mass transit options made it so more people doing standard commutes used it you benefit.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
look, matt: hop is not a strategy.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
The hours I spend commuting are my only waking moments when someone doesn’t want something from me.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
There was actually a study done about 25 years ago that found that a sizable majority of the folks questioned considered their commute to be the most pleasurable time of the day. One can only imagine the quality of their jobs and home life.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
“I mean, I still wouldn’t use it, but if other people would use it, it would get them off the road and out of my way.”
I really wish more people thought this way, so drivers would understand why they should pay into a public transportation system. Anyway, I loved my 45 minute each way subway commute was I was in college, because I got almost all of my school reading done without needing to consciously devote time to it. Now that it’s 45 minutes each way to work, I enjoy it considerably less.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
You could do a hop-a-thon fundraiser, everybody pledges so much per hop, then put the hop-omute on youtube.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I have for the past year commuted 60 miles each way from northern Virginia to my office near BWI airport. It actually isn’t as bad as most people fear. 99% of the time the drive is quite enjoyable. I have my satellite radio and time to think about the day’s events and I’m mentally prepared when I reach home to deal with the wife and kids.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Jim wrote: You could do a hop-a-thon fundraiser, everybody pledges so much per hop, then put the hop-omute on youtube.
He could also wear an engineer’s cap and move his arms like the side rods on a steam locomotive. The video might go viral.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
There was actually a study done about 25 years ago that found that a sizable majority of the folks questioned considered their commute to be the most pleasurable time of the day. One can only imagine the quality of their jobs and home life.
That’s really depressing. I guess a lot of jobs and wives are pretty unpleasant.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
I find it amazing that so many people complain about their commute. I used to work in New York and I had a commute of between 60 and 75 minutes on a normal day. I used to leave home at 6AM in order to avoid the bad delays. I caught up on a lot of sleep while the bus was sitting in traffic.
I lost my job and found a job in the suburbs and my commute was about 45 to 60 minutes driving. I decided that I had to move. It was a tough decision but I needed the job.
Now I live less than 3 miles from work, have company paid parking, and I take the bus to work because I want to leave the car for my wife.
The solution to bad commutes is not easy. More buses and trains will do very little to help. The solution is to live closer to work and to live in more densely populated places.
For everyone who complains about a commute and lives in a single family house on a cul de sac….
well, what did you expect??
For the idiots who paid for light rail in places like Houston, Baltimore, or the Jersey suburbs….
I am sorry you wasted your money.
We need toll roads. We need express bus lanes. We need higher parking taxes. We need to tax vehicles in the crowded downtown areas. We need lower other taxes in downtowns to make them more attractive. We need a big gas tax.
Otherwise, all we will be doing is bitching and moaning and watching the problem get worse.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I get to drive 20 miles each way to and from work. It’s through a small city and some recently-suburbanized countryside.
Unfortunately, my hours, duties and multiple work locations don’t let me carpool.
But I fantasize about a program where people with long commutes could post their home and work locations, and when two people of similar jobs lived next to each others’ workplaces, they’d be helped to swap either their jobs or their homes.
May 15th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Just to chime in again…I would rather take the train than drive, but I can’t because its a counter-commute, but since its a counter-commute I am rarely stuck in traffic and the drive is quite a bit quicker than what a train ride would be, so with podcasts, its not too bad. I would still rather walk or bike if I could. I commute though because we live about a five minute bike ride from my wife’s work. I imagine there are others like me that are “forced” into a commute because of dual careers. Incidentally, there’s been quite a bit of research on this, and it usually turns out that the man ends up doing the commute while the working mom lives much closer to her work.
I’ve also met dual career couples in my neighborhood where both have to do a long commute because they work in areas where housing prices were just too outrageous for them to afford. It seems to me though, that most white collar professionals like myself or my neighbors, where we don’t have much of a choice where we work because our skills are pretty specific, or where we live because of marriage or housing prices, that tele-commuting should be pushed as a viable option. Fortunately, I only have to commute three days a week, and can work from home for two. It actually results in a nice balance. I don’t mind the driving if its not an every day grind.
May 15th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
My commute is ten miles each way, on my bike, 95% of which is on a lovely tree-lined bike path. I’m very lucky.
May 15th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
I’ve also met dual career couples in my neighborhood where both have to do a long commute because they work in areas where housing prices were just too outrageous for them to afford.
Part of the problem with commuting is there are so few actually convenient places to live that they are horrifically expensive. I would rather live in the neighborhood where I work – it’s closer to day care and to my wife’s work, too. It’s also closer to downtown and has become prohibitively expensive for our income, which in most parts of the country would be considered rather high. In fact, we used to rent here and can’t find anything remotely affordable anymore so we moved up north.
Smarter growth policies are good for a number of reasons, but one that’s often cited is that transit access increases property values. From my point of view, that’s a negative, not a positive. The huge runup in home prices during the bubble was partially caused by policies that end up restricting the supply of housing (zoning etc). Do you really think people would have been taking out home loans they couldn’t afford if there were viable alternatives? We talk about the economic crisis as a “market failure,” but it’s tied closely to the housing sector where the free market has not been tried for generations. When the market operated, we got charming Main Street downtowns and walkable city neighborhoods. Sprawl is not a market phenomenon, it is the result of regulations, of policy decisions. In order to get different outcomes, you’d need different policies. The problem has always been that people who already own homes have a financial stake in restricting the supply of housing to increase the value of their property. It’s difficult to see a way out of that trap, politically.
May 15th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
REGARDING SHABADOO ‘S comment # 19
I don’t mean to be nosy.But which city do you live in where you can ride 10 miles on a bike path to work.We can defintly rule Baltimore out.
I would seriousely be intersted to know how practicle this path is for most commutters.In Baltimore ,all we have is the Gwinns Falls trail which is basicly a recreational trail.
I would be interested to hear about bike trails which actually could be used for commuting for work.
BTW , i hope the 10 miles is flat for your sake.I ride my bike to work ,but 10 miles uphill would defintly wear me out!
May 15th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
I have about the same commute (10 miles each way on a bike path). In my case it is from downtown San Jose to northern Santa Clara and the Guadalupe River Trail goes pretty much the entire distance. A lot of it is gravel, but I can still bike it faster (about 50 minutes) than taking light rail along the same route (about 60 minutes). Driving is 20-30 minutes.
May 15th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Re: Apparently when people are making decisions about where to live or which jobs to take, they tend to underestimate the extent to which long and/or annoying commutes will slowly grind their spirits into dust.
Prossibly because when they are house of apartment hunting they are doing it on the weekends or at other non-peak times when the traffic isn’t that bad an they have no idea what rush hour will be like.
When we moved from Florida to Baltimore last year I made up my mind that I would not have a long commute and so I live just two and a half miles from the office. By car it can still be a royal pain, but it’s easily doable on a bike given reasonable weather.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
This is all part of this bullshit American obsession with owning houses. You get rid of this stupidity (which has unfair effects on the tax code, and clearly is not a great economic strategy either) and you’ve solved part of the problem. Renters find it much easier to move than owners when circumstances change, or when they simply realize after a year that they’d rather pay more, or have a smaller place, for less commute.
Sure there are some people who would still have long commutes for whatever reason; but if there are fewer people on the road, their commutes are also easier.
There are plenty of societies that function just fine with very low levels of home ownership — learn from the rest of the world, goddamnit.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
That’s really depressing. I guess a lot of jobs and wives are pretty unpleasant.
Why do you assume that the commute itself is unpleasant? Lots of people enjoy driving. Bumper to bumper downtown isn’t so fun, but out on the highway is great. Blast the music and relax.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Driving my commute nearly drove me crazy. Despite being really easy-going, traffic really angers me and stresses me out. There is no way I can drive and be in a good mood (good music helps, but does not solve). Public transportation was a step up, but rush hour was crowded and involved a fair amount of being packed like sardines in a tin. But, it was preferable in way because my troubles felt a bit like a shared experience. I didn’t hate the other commuters. They were going through the troubles with me. In traffic, I felt like other drivers were causing my troubles and they angered me. I hated feeling angry all the time. Ultimately though, I switched to biking. The ride got my blood pumping and I got to work energized instead of miserable and desperate for more coffee. It also took half as long as either driving or public transportation which meant an extra 30 minutes of sleep in the morning (or a slow calm breakfast with the paper, sometimes even outside at a cafe in the summer). That helped a lot too.
I really feel like there is no better way to get someone to hate the world and their fellow citizens than to stick them in a car stuck in bumper to bumper traffic. Sometimes I also think removing that from my life made me more in favor of things like universal healthcare, social nets, etc. Its harder to think of your taxes going to help other people when, for the most part, you hate all other people.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
My commute is the eleven foot walk from my bed to my computer. So it doesn’t suck. What sucks is the cabin fever. I have to force myself to leave the house just so I don’t go crazy in my house. And by crazy, I mean crazier. I’m already bipolar, and spending my life in my house doesn’t help. Walking down to the store for whiskey and cigarettes helps. But the best commute was when I had a fifteen minute walk to the office. It was short enough to walk, but long enough to actually get a little exercise. In the end what really sucks is that I can’t really leave the office. If I want to go to bed in my own house, I walk by the computer, and I feel the need to do something. So now I have this pattern where I work a half hour every hour, but I do it for sixteen hours. It would be easier if I just worked somewhere else.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
My worst commute was when I worked the nighshift at a laundromat that was 50 feet from my apartment.If someone forgot their clothes while they were in the bar [there were several bars within 100 feet] they would bang on my door at 2 am.
While my case is extreme, I do know people that try to put some distance from their homes and work.Not just physical distance , but psychological distance as well.Closer is not always better. I do not envy MR Fostert .
With all due respect to mr Handley at comment # 24 , if i own my own home ,why should he care. I am not hurting him. I don’t complain about my commute.I don’t cause pollution [I ride a bike] .And i support the city through property taxes. And my mortgage is $460 a month total. I could never rent an apartment ,let alone a 3 bedroom house, for that money in Baltimore.
Yes some people probably should not have bought, but they are not children.They are able to make their own descisions. And by the way, many people can not write off their mortgage interest.I myself can not .I think it may be because i do not make enough income.Or because i can’t itemize.
May 16th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
More options, larger variance in prices? Sounds like private roads.
May 16th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
http://reason.tv/video/show/6.html
May 16th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
So I think Transportation for America’s My Commute Sucks website has some real promise as a concept.
LOL
They’re launching a petition asking congress to adopt a reform transportation bill that will actually improve people’s commutes rather than just line the pockets of special interests.
LMAOROFL.
Ah, internet petitions: changing the world since Seinfeld and the Macarena.
May 16th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Right Adam(#15), “home lives” = wives. Cuz only men work, right? Right?
The fuck is wrong with you?
May 16th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Word. I have a 50-mile commute so we can live near elderly in-laws. I’m an introvert, the Omaha market has a great local morning show and a great afternoon sports show on the radio, and it’s an all-freeway drive mostly through rural Iowa. I adore my wife and really like my job, but I’ve turned down several carpooling offers because I absolutely love having that time alone to just chill.
May 21st, 2009 at 12:37 pm
[...] in the past year here in Florida, the almost endless driving has — in the words of Yglesias — slowly grinded my spirit into dust. To say nothing of my paycheck – last summer’s gas [...]