
Mega Commuters in the U.S. [pdf] - colinscape
https://www.census.gov/hhes/commuting/files/2012/Paper-Poster_Megacommuting%20in%20the%20US.pdf
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goostavos
I was a mega commuter for about 6 months. It did terrible things to my mental
health. On a really, really lucky day I could make it home from work in about
75 minutes. Those were good days. Average was around 90min, and god help me,
if there was an accident on the bridge, it could sky-rocket to 2.5 hours.

I have never been more depressed in my entire life. After the drive home on
Wednesday, I had already spent over the equivalent time of a standard work day
in my car. At the end of the month, I had spent well over a work week's worth
of hours commuting.

That is time you don't get back, and it is near impossible to use it for
anything worth while if you're stuck driving. Audiobooks helped _a little_
some weekly podcasts made some days better than others, but on the whole, it
was just 3 hours of bored raging every day.

When you're finally home, you've got about enough time to cook, say hello to
the family, and then nip off to bed because you've gotta wake up before dawn
to beat the bulk of the traffic. It was such a fucking grind.

Never again. I'll happily trade 10s of thousands of dollars off any potential
salary to not endure traffic again.

~~~
ryandrake
Yea, it sucks. Here's what a 2 hour commute looks like:

* Wake up at 6:15AM

* Leave house at 7AM

* Arrive at work at 9AM

* Leave work at 6PM (sometimes 7PM if there's a late meeting)

* Arrive home at 8PM (or 9PM depending on above)

* Play with young daughter for an hour or so until bed time

* Try to manage to get some dinner into my mouth as I'm falling asleep from exhaustion

This is when I don't come in very early (like today), which can sometimes
shave 30 minutes or so off the trip.

Honestly not sure what the solution is. I'd trade salary for a saner
lifestyle, but I would not trade away the job security that comes with having
a tech employer on every block for miles. You don't get that certainty in non-
insane small towns. The only thing I can imagine worse than a long commute
would be to have to move every 2 years to a different city for work when your
company goes belly up or when your company realizes it can abuse you because
there are no other employers around.

~~~
mbrameld
> to have to move every 2 years to a different city for work when your company
> goes belly up or when your company realizes it can abuse you because there
> are no other employers around.

You have a very warped view of the tech industry outside the valley. Your
impression certainly doesn't match reality, but enjoy that commute!

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tsunamifury
Of course San Francisco is at the top of the list. This city seems to have de-
evolved into one of the worst places to work in America, not even justifying
the 2x or 3x national average wages.

Its the perfect storm of Gen X tech scene who settled in the suburbs and Y and
beyond who refuse to leave the city, turning even 20 mile commutes into 90 min
plus Ultra-marathons.

I regular experience 120 min commutes with the occasional 2hour 30 min each
way commute. It has gotten to the point that I believe people are forgoing
families because they simply don't have the time to get to work, work, and
spend time with their kids, while still affording to live here.

And no, natural market forces are not rebalancing this.

~~~
christophilus
Yeah. I took a big pay cut leaving Seattle to move back to small-town USA and
work remotely. I'm much happier with this arrangement.

~~~
jplahn
Curious where you were living in Seattle that the commute was so bad?

~~~
existencebox
Not OP; but as someone who recently bought a house near seattle and has
started feeling the pain:

I couldn't afford to compete in redmond proper/seattle proper (low end ~500k+,
regularly escalated with 20+ bidders 100k+ in cash over listing) so I got a
house out in the suburbs (duvall, off in the northeast about ~20-30 miles) for
~430k.

Grew up/worked on the east coast for many years, and regularly lived 60-80
miles outside of cities but could rely on light rail to get in to center <40
minutes of very regular, very easy travel. Here, a fraction of that distance
regularly takes me 60-70 minutes to drive. I'm VERY LUCKY that I have a bus
route, so that I can at least work, but as others have said, if any of the 1
lane roads have an accident, my drive rapidly becomes 2 hours+. I have to wake
up before 6 to avoid rush hour, and even then it's a coin flip.

I would frankly never make this tradeoff again. I now burn 2-3 hours every day
(assuming I get home at 5-6 and sleep at 10-11) this just ate ~50% of my
leisure time for a given day. I fucking love nature, having a yard, having
autonomy to run my house how I want, but this is slowly destroying my sanity
as I go to sleep each night with an even more pressing feeling of "not enough
time in the day" than I ever had in an apartment near work.

I'm... not too happy with the job/home life tradeoffs that I've seen available
thus far. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but in most cities with high tech
job concentration and reasonable stability I don't see a way around having to
live like this unless you happened into money. (I was priced out of Seattle
even with over a decade of life savings)

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CalRobert
Maybe if we didn't make it illegal to put homes next to jobs this wouldn't be
an issue.

~~~
JBReefer
The funny thing is mixed-use zoning and density have becoming increasingly
allowed basically everywhere in the US ... except for SF.

Here in NYC a lot of the NIMBY voice has been silenced by "look, they tried
your policies, and it failed. Let's try these instead."

~~~
hx87
There's this weirdly common idea that density = skyscrapers, which ignores the
fact that a community of 5-story walkups can easily support 70,000+ people per
square mile.

~~~
JBReefer
I never got that. SF is 17k per sq mi., Queens is 21k. Queens is 4 stories
with greenery, courtyards, parks, etc - forever. It's really calm and easy to
get around.

People think SF will be Beijing when it needs to be Queens.

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rayiner
I used to commute about 80-90 minutes each way by train (Baltimore to Union
Station, Union Station to Foggy Bottom). It was okay--you can get a lot of
work done on the train. The worst part was how much it cut into your sleep.
Basically have to get up at 7 to get to work by 9.

~~~
perryh2
I'm in the same train right now (literally as I type this) and have been
commuting from Santa Clara to SF everyday. This takes me 2hrs 40mins combined
of just being inside the train and another 20-30 mins of getting to the train
station each day. Being in a train is not that bad as long as I'm preoccupied
with my laptop, but I now have to sleep and wake up 2 hours earlier.

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mfonda
I wasn't a mega commuter, but I had a commute of around an hour. A few years
back, I moved into the city. One of the most life changing decisions I've ever
made. I didn't love commuting at the time, but it wasn't the worst thing.
After experiencing what it was like to not commute, I realized how truly awful
it was. Killing the commute is one of the best things I've ever done for my
overall well being. If you're able to cut out your commute, even if it means
sacrificing other things, I definitely recommend it.

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rplnt
I'm pretty spoiled when I automatically discard job postings that are in a
remote part of city, some 30 minutes away on a bicycle.

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dictum
"Mega Commuters" makes it sound like a great subject for a _Hoarders_ -like
television series.

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brahmwg
Related thread;
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11232111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11232111)

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vermontdevil
I commuted 40 miles each way for four years living in Vermont. Not by choice
as I got the job after moving there when my wife got hers first.

As housing options are limited in Vermont due to restrictive development laws,
we had to pick a place that is reasonable for my wife to commute. It ended up
that my commute was much longer when I got the job.

It sucked esp during the brutal winters! Never again. Now I'm happy with an
easy 10 mile commute.

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muad
I took a $80k pay cut to leave LA and work fully remote.

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jabbanobodder
I wonder how automated cars will change this. I would expect we will see
larger and larger commute times, as people will be able to work in their cars
(given their job), and it won't be so onerous as many of the things we do at
home to relax can possibly be done while the car drives us where we need to
go.

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stirbot
I hope the people commuting from Northern New Jersey to DC are flying. Should
that even be considered commuting?

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santaclaus
I had friends who commuted from Philly to NYC, and from NYC to Princeton.
Insanity!

~~~
RmDen
Princeton to NYC Penn is 45 minutes on the express train, first stop from
Princeton is Newark. Back in the day, you could go on the Amtrak
(Clocker/keystone) with a monthly NJT pass..they stopped that 10 years ago or
so

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JoeDaDude
With a self driving car, a long commute could become a nice quiet time to
read, meditate, sleep, or whatever.

I commuted 90 miles one-way for several years. Most of it was on a turnpike,
and I could almost see myself reading a book or something during my drive (I
never did though).

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walshemj
50 miles is a mega commute :-) that would be an average commute for many uk
commuters into London

~~~
pacala
50 miles from Downtown London places one in Brighton or 5 miles away from
Oxford. The diameter of London is about 50 miles, hard to believe that the
average commuter moves from one end to the other on a daily basis.

I'm also fun at parties.

~~~
dx034
It's certainly not the average commute but there's a fair amount of people who
do it. Don't have any statistics by there are several people in my office who
do it. If you live close to a train station it's not much of an issue (as long
as the trains not on strike). You can easily make it to the office in ~1 hour
as most offices in the city are close to one of the train stations. Annual
tickets are very expensive but so is living in the city.

The major difference to the US is that here in London basically no one
commutes by car. Train services are nearly always faster. And it has the
advantage that you can use your time more productively.

