Long Commutes

I have no office. My commute is I roll out of bed and open my laptop. I do remember commuting though. I lived in Houston years ago. If you have to travel across it during rush hour, it can take forever.

Longest commute I’ve ever had is 20 minutes. I’ve moved - now I get on the interstate but stay on the merging lane. Get on but get right back off less than 1/4 Mile. My road dead ends so I can’t get there from here without the interstate

Years ago, my commute was 1 hour each way, but that could easily go to 90 minutes in bad traffic. That's how I discovered audio books.

Done everything I could to not have long commutes, for ecological reasons. So far okay.

In future travels I will be going long distance, but that will never be a daily back and forth.

SJG

My worst was 37 miles each way, an hour with typical traffic, an hour and a half with heavy traffic. I often left early or stayed late to avoid it, and like Ishmael, got into audio books. Now I no longer commute.

That California guy is nuts. Commutes 3.5 hours each way and sounds like he loves it. He has a lot of time to spend with his wife? Does he sleep?

When I lived in the distant outskirts of New York, I had people in my building driving to the Metro Rail, then taking the NYC Subway to Lower Manhattan--3 hours total--to drive a public bus for work. No idea how they did it.

Cars locked in traffic is totally wasteful.

It all come down to people insisting they need to be able to live one place and then work in another. And usually the former is for lower costs. It is all about real estate pricing.

Always learned to live with urbanization to avoid that. And then telecommuting changes everthing.

In future times though I will have many places, and that is to expand a business.

SJG

X - Los Angeles youtube.com

My first job out of college was driving from my folks house to the train station, commuter rail into Chicago. Then, depending on weather, schedule, etc., how long I would walk and how much I would pay for water taxi to my work. About 2 hours each way. I quickly realized I would never be able to move out if I didn't find a cheaper, more sustainable commute.

It's easy to have a 6 hour both ways commute jn los angeles

“ Done everything I could to not have long commutes, for ecological reasons. So far okay. “

Hey bud I think you need to have a job first before you can have a commute, and rolling from your cardboard box to the San Jose Public Library to log in to TUSCL to eat up bandwidth doesn’t really count as a job.

My longest commute was about 40 miles one way, mainly on the Garden State Parkway (NJ) which can be a real parking lot sometimes.

However, I worked odd hours, usually arrive at work about 2AM and went home around 3PM, so never hit much traffic.

And I think gas was about a dollar a gallon then.

I used to have about an hour long commute to work. It was completely by choice since I prefer to live in a rural area instead of the city or the suburbs. On the bright side it was all two lane roads so no interstate traffic to worry about. The biggest thing that would add to the drive time would be bad roads in the winter.

Luckily, I still work the same job and still live in the same place but now I have about a 60 second commute to work as I walk down my hallway to my home office.

I used to commute over 2 hours each way to/from Manhattan. It is very common for folks who work in the NYC yet want to keep their families in less urban areas. Add 10+ hours in the office and basically you are going home to sleep, shower and go back to work.

Before Covid caused working remotely, my commute was about 16 miles, but it would take at least 60-90 mins every morning. Fucking miserable.

Have a new job now and might have to start working from the office next month; it's about 26 miles from my house (I think), but the commute should be about 35 mins each way.

Commuting from Austin to San Antonio could be pretty brutal. Especially when north of downtown, and crossing through that mess is already half your drive before you even leave Travis county. Thankfully that wasn’t daily tho. I don’t get why Austin is so beloved anyways. If I was a transplant from another state, I’d pick Dallas all the way. grumble

As escort use to drive about 3 hours one way to see me. She'd get these weird crusty spots on her butt from sitting in the car, but they can off quick with a little rubbing. She was in her thirties.

Currently a stripper is driving over 2 hours one way to see me for OTC. But since it's less time and she's in her twenties, no crusty spots.

When I was just out of college at my first office job - my commute was the longest I’ve had. I worked in Bergen county NJ and I was living with a relative in Southport Connecticut. It was all highway driving - but it was miserable paying tolls with quarters and cash - and waiting to pay a big toll on the Tappan Zee Bridge.

I would leave early in the morning - and the drive would be very nice. The evening trip home was miserable - as there was too much traffic.

The dude commuting from the Poconos is just looking for sympathy. There are many hotels in the Poconos now - and he could get a lower paying job out there - or even two jobs - and make reasonable money and avoid his commute.

When I worked in downtown Chicago, my home in Barrington was 40-some miles away. But I took the train, which took about an hour and allowed me to read or sleep.

I had friends who drove downtown from far out suburbs, and their commute was 2 hours or more.

The longest commutes are probably being done by a lot of air line pilots. Lots of them don't even live in the same state that they are based at. Most of them are required to be in base 24 hours before their scheduled flight. So most of them have to fly on commercial flights to get to work. I did know one that flew his private plane from Apple Valle CA to LAX thus avoiding the horrible southern CA traffic. Some times bad weather or mechanical problems involves delayed or canceled flights and the pilots cannot get to where they are supposed to be. This may cause additional cancellations.

after work i went my friend's house. from downtown manhattan all the way to south new jersey. close to 3 fucking hours!!! i'm pissed already just doing this only one time.

i noticed this one guy getting up for his stop. suit on with a briefcase. i'm thinking holy shit!!!! this guy has to do this shit 5 days a week!!! the sacrifices one has to make in order to live that suburban upper middle class lifestyle.

^ Well, I think that 3 hours is excessive even for an NYC commute. Most people I have dealt with who commute to NYC for adjoining states live in either N. NJ (PATH train out of Penn Station) or near the Mid to Southern CT/NY border (Metro North RR to Grand Central).

But the bitch of it is not just the time, but the elements. First the drive to the train station. Then the walk from whatever spot you can manage to get in the open air parking lot to the train platform. Then the wait on the platform itself, also open air. Then finally, after a long train ride, having to trudge through the elements once again to get from GCT or Penn to your office. In frigid Winter conditions or on rainy/snowy days the commute is simply miserable, especially when one must do it in nice work clothes while hauling around a computer bag (most people don't use briefcases any longer).

Years back when I lived on New York's Long Island, in Smithtown, the business I owned was base in Long Island City beside the the Queensboro Bridge, many of our accounts were in Manhattan, and we would finish up between 3 and 4 PM, first there would be the miserable ride of at least 45 minutes back to the shop, then after clocking out at the shop generally around 5 PM it was usually a 2 Plus hour ride on the LIE to Smithtown, Morning commute wasn't so bad as the Expressway wasn't usually very congested when we drove in leaving Smithtown about 6 AM every morning, that ride was generally less than an hour.

You know you have a long commute when the driver's seat is a toilet. You know its from a northern state when it has the heating option.

@25: As an aside, there won't be many of those warehouses or industrial shops there for much longer at the rate they're going. They're gentrifying the fuck out of that area. They already got rid of the two strip clubs that used to be near the bridge (Scandals and the old Cityscapes) as well as most of the other Long Island City clubs.

Only two remain in all of LIC, SugarDaddy's and Show Palace. I don't think anyone cares about SD since it's under a highway bridge in an industrial armpit of LIC barely accessible by public transit, but Show Palace has been in their cross hairs for years and I have no doubt that they'll eventually succeed in killing the club off - to this day the club still can't get a liquor license after being open for 15+ years.

^ I haven't been there since 1988 or 89 when I sold that business, I don't know if you remember a thread a year or so back, where the gang was pissing on AOC about keeping I think Amazon from building an operation in that area, back in the day that whole area all the way from LIC to the River was warehouse's and service businesses, with the majority of those businesses servicing Manhattan, where are all of those businesses going to locate now, and by pushing them farther out into the edges of Queens and into Nassau County, that's going to become insanely expensive to provide service throughout NYC. Inflation is going to become even worse, if they are successful in gentrifying Long IslanD City, and Astoria.

Once Citicorp built that huge building in LIC - I thought things would shift out there. It’s getting gentrified all over the boroughs. That Metrotech area was a shithole in the 1980’s - and then Chase built offices there. It was still sketchy as shit in the early 90’s - especially after dark wearing a suit.

There is such thirst for lower rents - and short term gains - business will keep pushing out from Manhattan.

@25: I don't think that they'll gentrify all of LIC anytime soon, but pretty much any place with easy access to a subway station is a prime target. You'd hardly recognize the area around Queensboro Plaza right now. It used to be where lower income workers lived and cheaper tourists stayed in 2 star hotels for easy access to Manhattan when they couldn't afford Manhattan prices. Shit when I worked in Midtown I'd occasionally stay overnight in one of those cheap hotels and party in the clubs around the plaza.

Now it has some high-end apartment buildings and high rise hotels. I guess that space arounds Queensboro Plaza was just too valuable to leave under-developed. It's just one stop from Lex and 59th in Midtown and a few stops from Grand Central. Wherever those low income people are living now it ain't there anymore.

^ But where will there be affordable space for all those service businesses needed to keep NYC running, I mean , taxi yards, electricians, elevator mechanics, cleaning services, food commissaries, and the like. Most people don't have any idea what it takes to keep all of those offices running, coffee shops, space intensive construction equipment yards, and with the amount of congestion at all the entry points the gridlock is going to be terrible, service people can't get around on the subway, how will they carry tools, spare parts even if private cars are banned during the day, the logistics, are the stuff of urban planning nightmares.

Well there are still parts of LIC that are not easily accessible by subway, so I'm guessing that those areas will be OK for the foreseeable future.

But as far as the rest, they'll likely just keep pushing the service businesses further out. There are no taxi yards anywhere near Queensboro Plaza anymore as far as I know. They have been pushed out further into Queens. The nice part about that is how easy it is to hail a cab on the inbound side of Queens Blvd after I've sauced up in Gallaghers, lol.

I worked on the south shore of Boston during the big dig. If I had to be on the north shore for 9, (20 miles) I had to leave no later than 6:30. Its why I am where I am now.

Cars locked in traffic is totally wasteful.

It all comes down to people insisting they need to be able to live one place and then work in another. And usually the former is for lower costs. It is all about real estate pricing.

Need to use more telecommuting.

SJG

^^^ does the Sam Jose Library allow telecommuting at the computer kiosk?

^^^ Does the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving allow telecommuting from its waiting room? It certainly allowed one high school home schooler to complete an essay about "Maintaining Teenage Abstinence", while his mother was completing an advanced course on driving with air bags and anti-lock brakes.

SJG

I guess SJG could get the TUSCL award for the most green/eco-friendly member? His living in a tent - and use of a bicycle as a mode of transportation - and the use of public access internet - is quite green.

Congrats on reaching such a lofty status!