3.4 Million Americans are Extreme Commuters (2005) | Hacker News Reader

3.4 Million Americans are Extreme Commuters (2005)

businessweek.com

24 pointsMikeCapone38 comments

Below is my personal experience with different job situations:

Between 17 and 20 I never travelled more than a few miles for work. I worked as a server at a resort ($14/hr), as a night auditor at hotel where I had 1 hour of work to do and 8 hours to do it ($8.25/hr) and as an entry-level web developer ($10-15/hr). All of the jobs paid more than I needed and I had ample free time.

The main drawback for these jobs was that I wasn't treated as well as I wanted. With one of the web companies, I happened to see a recent hire's check and saw that he made more than me. I asked the owner why this person made more than me when I had more experience, and her answer was that I made a lot for my age and that the other person had a degree.

From 20-24 years of age I worked as a freelancer, starting at $25/hr and going to $90/hr, billing about 30 hours a week and working about 50. I always worked remotely, and for a year during this period I lived in Hawaii.

The perks of working from home are many. I always lived near the beach and could take beach breaks during the middle of the day. I had a lot more time because I had no commute at all. The main drawback was that I didn't have enough social interaction. I'm still discovering what a huge, negative effect this has had on my life.

These days I make $100/hr, 40 hours a week, and I commute between an hour and half and two hours every day, depending on traffic. I listen to audiobooks on the ride in, but going home they make me too sleepy. Because of the audiobooks, I don't mind the commute as much as I would otherwise. I feel like I learn valuable things during my time in the car.

Also, because I earn more and bill for more hours, I make about twice as much as I did previously. This year I'm planning on traveling around the world, something I've never been able to do. I've also been able to afford a lot of little niceties like improv lessons and snowboarding lessons. I'm very glad that I'm able to buy these experiences.

I'm also trying to make friends with the people I work with. I already consider my immediate colleagues to be good friends and great people, and it makes me very happy to know them and see them every day.

The long-ass commute does get me down sometimes. I'm still trying to figure out how to make more time for my personal projects. With the amount of money I'm making, though, it's feasible that I'll be able to take little vacations just to work on my ideas, something which wasn't possible before. So overall, the long commute is definitely worth it.

Thanks for taking the time to write all this.

Question: Is there anything keeping you from living closer to where you work?

Not always an option. In my case, moving closer would quadruple my taxes. Decent neighborhoods are 40 minutes away (average commute in my office is about 40 min).

There's also the question of working spouses and kids.

If it were for a boffo CEO position I'd consider moving but, to be just another seat warmer, not so much.

(disclaimer: I really like my job which is why I drive 2 hours each way. If I can work out moving closer that would be beneficial to all involved I would. I won't get within 30 minutes though - that I already know).

Quadruple?? If you're talking a state boundary, I think you're probably missing something. Some states have higher income tax, some have higher real estate tax (which you pay for indirectly via rent).

Quadruple your cost of living, I could believe.

EDIT: Additionally, somewhere around 80% of the taxes that you do pay go to the federal gov't -- so it'd be really, really hard for a change in state to quadruple your tax burden.

Hyberbole retracted after a little research. I was speaking of property taxes specifically. It's possible to quadruple my property taxes by moving to the same state in which I work. That would put me about an hour from my office and is the most expensive area in the state. Being within 30 min of my office would be 1.5 - 2 times more expensive property tax wise.

I moved August of last year, and got my current job in October (after my main client, a startup owner, just up and stopped paying me.) I don't want to move again for maybe another year. There are other personal factors involved.

Other reasons to stay put are that my current living place is of really high quality for the price. I live in a very beautiful area very close to beaches, which I means a lot to me. I also have a great landlord that I consider a friend.

The cul-de-sac I live on is pretty close-knit, which is pretty rare and which I appreciate a lot. A lot of the people who live on the street (or within visual range) are relatives. A month after my girlfriend and I moved in, we got invited to their family reunion by the... 'patriarch' of the family, and we had a good time with them. That level of friendliness and familiarity really does a lot for me.

I think its worthwhile considering the possibility that work is broken.

It's easy to accept the status-quo.

Before the Internet, consumers accepted that there was an inherent trade-off between selection and convenience: you could either have the convenience of the corner store with its limited selection, or the selection of a WalMart if you were willing to take the drive out to their regional supercenter.

The Internet allowed companies like Amazon to deliver both more convenience and more selection. Consumers could have their cake and eat it, too.

Today, most people accept that there is a trade-off between living where you want to live, and working where you want to work.

What if that were not true?

Well, at least the idea that we all have to physically travel to a certain location is. It may be needed for certain jobs and may not be for everyone, but I think working from home could work from both the employer and the employee if it's implemented correctly. It also could reduce traffic and greenhouse gasses tremendously.

It's completely possible for IT jobs to be shipped overseas, yet the thought of a developer working remotely one day a week is still too much for most management to handle.

Fully agree. Having a developer work remotely requires the manager to also be more organized and work differently.

A single developer working remotely one day a week is easy to manage.

On a team of 13+, coordinating remote day per week plus late starts for kid-drop-offs / early leaves for kid-pick-ups, vacation days, etc. makes it very hard to figure out when you can actually get the team together. In practice, the members of the team also suffer because you can't plan when you're going to block on needing to talk at a whiteboard with someone. I've also found colocation to be the only way to handle complicated design tasks.

Team members who are around tend to exclude people who work remotely during key hours, relegating them to the easily separable work, which results in less impact and ultimately less pay and promotions.

I think it's also worth considering that American cities are themselves broken.

Americans driving everywhere (and increasingly driving further everywhere) is a problem larger than just an analysis of where we live and work. I'd love to see a study like this that also factors in how long we're spending to get to stores, restaurants, schools, entertainment, etc.

It's quite likely that the Bus Buddies from the article aren't only burning 15-20 hours a week commuting to work, but more like 25-30 hours a week commuting in general. To the store, to a ball game, to a kid's recital, to a park, to a bike trail, etc.

Indeed, broken by design. It's not just a myth that GM/Ford/Oil Companies killed streetcars and public transportation. They really did do their best to create the suburbs/commute/'MUST drive everywhere' layout to benefit their businesses. Unfortunately, it worked.

I wish I could mod this up more.

As I've gotten older, I find I avoid using our vehicle more and more (I commute the 12 mile round trip to my office on my bike year 'round). Sitting in traffic in a car seems like a massive waste of my time (and my family's). Of course, I am, perhaps, quite lucky--I can live near my job, in an affordable neighborhood (my mortgage is less than the rent many of my friends pay) that has actual stuff in it. Yes, I sometimes drive the four miles to the store for food, but sometimes I ride my bike there, too. Our kids play soccer at a field one mile from our house (we ride our bikes) and take piano lessons two blocks away.

I am one of those extreme commuters, by choice. I spend about 18 hrs/week commuting on public transit. The daily commute includes 15 min walking to the train station (which I love), an express train, a 20-minute bus ride (which I dislike), and buffer time (if you take the train every day, you do not want to stress yourself out running for the train) and (schedule gaps between bus arrival and train departure).

I don't recommend it to anyone but the fact is there are costs and benefits to everything. Sometimes the costs seem to outweigh the benefits of living in the city, but, in all, I think living in the city has made me able to meet people who I connect with. There are times when I am too tired to go out with friends and times when I should be tired because I did go out with friends.

The times (which are more frequent now) when I am heads down in iPhone programming - the train ride goes by quickly, almost too short. Tethering is an absolute requirement. There are many times when I simply rest and leave the MacBook in its case. Lots of time to think and start executing on app ideas.

It all comes down to: what do you benefit from living where you choose to live and working where you choose to work.

This brings up how public transit is a LOT different than driving. You have the ability to do other things safely so it's not like it is a total lost in productive time.

New thought exercise: add the hours you spend commuting to your "work" hours and calculate your new rate per hour. If your commute is significantly more stressful than your job (metropolitan traffic jams), bill yourself time and a half or more to account for the impact to your health.

It is often easier to drive and extra hour each way, then try to move yourself / your family in the current housing and job market.

Really? That's 460 hours per year, spent sitting on your ass in traffic. If you worked hourly at $20/hr, that's over $9000/year. If you average 30mph, and it costs 24 cents/mile in depreciation, maintainence, insurance, and gas to operate your vehicle, you're spending over $3300/year on that extra distance.

The equivalent of thirty days of your life not spent with family, training for marathons, writing code, building furniture. What would you give for an extra month of your own time each year?

It is not free to move, and it is unlikely that a person in this situation can find work closer to home.

You miss the problem of selling old house, getting new house or (more likely) rental versus low additional payment per week. Maybe you have kids, and the school where you are is better than the one you would move to. Maybe both spouses are working and you had to make that "whose work do we live closer to" decision.

You're right it isn't free to move, but what I think their point was is that not many people do the math to see how much it is costing them in money and time. I've done both, but when I was driving an hour each way I never sat down to think of how much it was costing. Normal people probably just don't even think that way, but once you see it on paper it is scary and I think a lot of people would reevaluate things like the cost to move, schools, and your job.

This calculator seems pretty useful: http://www.commutesolutions.com/howmuch.html

Lastly, although I can't find a statistic on, you have to think the more miles you drive the higher the risk of dying/getting hurt in a car accident.

People often don't have the upfront money to change their situation. It really doesn't matter the final cost, if you can't afford one of the options. You do what you can do.

> Really? That's 460 hours per year, spent sitting on your ass in traffic. If you worked hourly at $20/hr, that's over $9000/year.

Why are you assuming that he'd have been paid for that time if he hadn't been commuting?

And, if he had, he'd have been taxed on it. Assuming that it's additional work time, he'd be paying at his marginal rate.

> The equivalent of thirty days of your life not spent with family, training for marathons, writing code, building furniture. What would you give for an extra month of your own time each year?

That's probably closer to the truth.

I agree; it really depends on the individual situation. Most of the hourly folks I know who are commuting long distances are in the 30-45 dollar/hour range. Sometimes you have flexible hours, sometimes not. Other times you can freelance. Other times, those extra hours can save you money on childcare, parking, cooking, housecare... there are many factors. I chose $20 as a reasonable example that fits some real-world people.

I traded a stressful 50min car commute across a jam packed bridge for a 15min walk. I'm making slightly less money, but my quality of life has gone up dramatically. My wife likes it too.

I drive an hour to work b/c there is no reasonably nice and affordable housing with good schools anywhere near where I work.

For 5 of the 7 years that I worked full time before doing a startup I had a 1 hour commute. For 4 of those years it was with a train, which I actually kind of missed when it was over. The net result was that I spent 10 hours a week reading books. The amount that I read dropped off sharply after the commute was gone.

I'd be interested to see what has happened to these numbers in the past five years - particularly through the great run-up in oil prices that peaked in summer 2008 and the sharp economic crash that followed.

Disclosure: my daily commute is a refreshing 15 minute bike ride.

No doubt people with a 3 hour commute suffered with the higher prices and had second thoughts.

Really, considering how wasteful these commutes are in terms of pollution, time and energy expenditure for little gain, it wouldn't be so bad if energy prices rose again and discouraged this behavior.

Stable high energy prices would do a great job of discouraging this behaviour, as they've done in Europe. Unfortunately, in North America we're stuck with "an energy policy that encourages consumption" and leads to energy price volatility (with the accompanying economic volatility), coupled with governments that are terrified to do anything that looks like raising people's gas prices.

Well, since much of the US was built on cheap energy prices, and no alternative seems to be able to roll out in the next 5 years, all high energy prices will do is cause people to give up other things. Many cities and rural areas have no effective alternatives. Heck, I once consulted at a place in Minneapolis, MN that had no bus stop for miles.

Wow - I thought my 50 min. one way commute was bad, but I guess I should be considering myself lucky. For those commuting long distances by car, has anyone figured out how to optimize that time? I usually try to make calls, listen to podcasts, or just take some time to think about projects that I'm working on. I figure that about 50% of my commute is being used productively--if anyone feels much more efficient than that, I would love to hear strategies...

Have the national trends changed since a half-decade ago when the submitted article was published?

I work from home, except that I have contact hours for teaching about a twenty-minute drive from here. We live near a city bike and hiking trail, and walk to much of our shopping and to the public library where I do much of my research.

I recently moved and reduced my commute from an hour and twenty minutes (one-way) to about twenty-five.

It has made an incredible difference. I'm much more relaxed, and I feel like I actually have a life during the week again. I'd probably take up to a 20% pay cut to avoid doing it again.

I'm one of those extreme commuters too. I work from home two days a week so, I try to look at it like I spend 4-out-of-7 days at home. It helps only a little.

My previous job was 100% telecommuting. That lasted almost five years.

It's better than not working (did that too).

I got laid off in January, but I really, really miss my commute. It cleared my mind, woke me up on the way to work, made me feel healthier, and let me blow off some steam on the way home after the really stressful days. It was an hour each way, give or take...

By bicycle. ;)

New Paltz is a sweet town, but that bus costs $20 one-way. Doing that everyday adds up to a lot of money very quickly.

I wonder if the figures are the same now, after the housing bust.

First, I freely admit this is probably not even a meaningful comparison, I'm just gloating.

I'm a student (CS major) at a mediocre school in a tourist city. I live within walking distance of the bar I work at, and school is a 20 min bike ride away.

last week I turned in a file compressing application I wrote in MASM assembly language.

right now I'm high on mushrooms.

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