Wasting Away in Traffic: Commutes Starting Earlier
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 09.20.07
Sean noted earlier that the average American spends a full week per year in traffic getting to work; they are also getting up earlier to do it. Census data documents ever-lengthening commutes at earlier times: 15 million Americans are out the door before six, 2.7 more than in 2000.
It is changing people's lives- one example in a USA Today article used to turn in after catching the first few minutes of the 11 o'clock news. He'd walk or jog in the mornings. Now, he goes to bed at 9 p.m. and rolls out at 4:30 a.m. "If I leave home after 6 and there's an accident," he says, "I'm late for work."
According to USA Today: This "commuting creep" is changing the lives of tens of millions of Americans. It affects everything from the breakfast-food industry to television viewership trends, from traffic-signal timing to newspaper delivery times, from carpooling patterns to personal fitness routines. Increasingly early commutes also are altering workers' relationships with their families.
"What we're seeing now is this tremendous amount of traffic even before 5 a.m. It seems there's a big lifestyle change here," says Alan Pisarski, author of a wide-ranging study on commuting in the USA. ::USA Today
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After seeing my dad commute to Oshawa from Newmarket Ontario - an hour each way - for about 30 years, I decided that I would never live like that. My time is too precious to be spending it on commuting. Now I commute as little as possible. I roll out of bed at around 9, work in my PJs from home and feel sorry for all the suckers who waste their lives in cars...
Karin
solutions: more mass transit/utilization...and STOP moving to the exurbs. The farther out people move from the center if industry, the longer their commutes will be. And is the extra closet space really worth spending half of your life in your car going to and from work? Not in my book.
Emily, all the mass transit in the world won't fix the problem unless you can get people to use it. I lose up to 2 hours (usually a little over 1) of my day in traffic but it would be 4 or more if I rode transit.
I tried it once, took the train to the city and rode the L to the station close to my work and then had to walk 15 min after that. About the only thing that would be good about that is I would be able to read more. If I move closer to work my wife who is only a few min from work would end up in a longer commute. My time in traffic is part of the price paid for our good jobs and an affordible house. Now if my job was in the Loop of Chicago and not south of it I'd take the train every day and love it.
I don't have a very long commute, but on most days I get to the parking garage and don't want to leave the car, because I'm in the middle of an audio book or a lecture from Great Courses. If I get to the parking garage early, I just sit in my car and listen. Now that I'm no longer in college, it's one of my few intellectual indulgences.
The reason I see so many people commuting in my area (Hampton Roads, VA) is simple: the people that work here can't afford to live here!
The average guy in the city I live in makes $30,122. Taxes and basic health insurance are going to eat up about 25% of the gross pay so he brings home $22,592 or $1,883 a month.
The average home sale is $155,000 for a mortgage around $1,000 a month.
Needless to say, things are tight for a lot of people, including myself, around here.
I agree. I moved closer to my office, 1.4 miles away into a smaller place and am much happier. I telecommute two days per week and walk the other three days. It is fabulous and the lack of space is definitely worth the time I have freed up and the reduced impact on the environment.
I've found that as little as a five minute window can swing my commute by 20 minutes or more. I drive 15-20 minutes (to get to the train station with the biggest parking lot), so I have to time it so that I make my train, without sitting around for 10 minutes waiting for it to show up, and not missing it if there's some sort of an accident.
Please, everybody, be patient! Getting in accidents only makes it worse. Breathe. Relax. Make some use of your time, get yourself an MP3 player and listen to some podcasts or something. Frustration is the last thing you need.
http://commutesmarter.blogspot.com
This may be naive but why is the solution always to build more mass transit? Why not look into and address the reasons people are moving to the exurbs to begin with? If people can find the type of housing that they want closer in they will not move to the exurbs in the first place.
I get up 4 days a week at 4AM. I'm out the door by 4:30. It takes an hour and a half in the morning to get to the parking lot, where I sleep for an hour and go into work. If I don't leave work by 4pm it can take two hours in the evening to get home. I work from home on Fridays. I've been doing this for 5 years. My family really likes where we live and there's no work for me in our town so I go into the city..
With public transit if trains come fairly often (every 10 minutes during rush hour on NJ transit), even if the system is backed up, you usually manage to catch the previous train, and arrive only slightly late. You don't get a seat, but you don't have to drive, and you don't usually spend more then an hour unless one or both of the tunnels is completely blocked.
"nd STOP moving to the exurbs. The farther out people move from the center if industry, the longer their commutes will be."
That's not true. I lived FOUR miles away from my job in downtown Chicago last year and it took AT LEAST an hour to get to work EACH way. On top of that, I had to WAIT 15 minutes for buses and walk at least 15 MINUTES each way as well because only the super rich can afford to drive and dark in big cities everyday.
The problem lies in poor mass transit problems mor ethan anything. No excuse.
I leave for work early, sure its a commute, but its not just for a bigger closet Emily.
Its a nice big back yard so my kids can play ball, drive their tractor cars around etc. They can fly their remote control planes there, go swimming, climb trees, have buddies round, play on the playscape, plant things, follow bugs around for hours on end, see how frogs go to sleep, watch birds nesting, need I go on.
In my book, that it worth an hour or so of my time every day to commute to work.
OK. So people are leaving earlier and earlier to get onto the road before others. There's only a finite number of commuters. By the time everyone else is leaving at 4:30 to get to work for 9:00, the roads will be clear at 8:00. I suppose eventually the lemmings will wrap around, and your sweet Monday drive will be gridlocked by people commuting for Tuesday, but if you're not working somewhere you can telecommute by then you're not really trying. Tell your boss that decentralization is the only defence against biological terrorism (which it is) and that we must all make sacrifices.
Scott- are you saying you drove to your work only 4 miles away? If so, I don't think you're in any position to complain about how bad traffic is.
as another challenged commuter in Chicago the problems aren't just more people on the road. construction also plays a drastic role in commute times and it is a two headed beast. we need the roads to be well maintained, but fixing them causes more traffic!
public transit works some of the time, but funding issues are also huge issues here. commuting to a 'good' job is pretty out of control. i work with people who commute from different states AND others who will take a train for over 2 hours to avoid a 15 - 20 mile ride in their car... congestion and construction to support more congestion (trying to relieve it of course) is horrible. it seems there is truly traffic 24/7 here .. even on weekends maybe the issue extends beyond commuting?
people, obviously this is a sticky issue, and the solutions are varied. last year i lived in yolo county and commuted to work and school in sacramento county. took the bus. what would have been a 15 minute car ride, turned out to be an hour 1/2 bus experience. that's 3 hours out of my day to ride public transit. oh it was a pain. so i don't think merely adding more busses is the answer, as they don't always go where you need to go
i agree with the wise person who noted we should be asking the questions why we're moving to the exburbs, why people have to work in places they can't afford to live in. major shifts in priorities should be encouraged, what makes a good neighborhood, what makes a good life.
there's no simple solution to this, is there?
Live where you work.
Comuting is a pain. I however work in construction and must go where the work is. It is quite impossible for me to live where I work. I would have to move every day.
The simplest problems to solve are other peoples problems. See you in traffic.
Forget cars, buses, trains etc. Just install SkyTran. Google SkyTran, you will see what I mean.