14 ms·

The True Cost of Commuting

231 points by joelhooks 15y ago

bdunbar 15y ago
In an earlier life, I lived in the Dallas area. Moving to be near work sounds great, but it would not have been practical. - I lived there for nine years. My average tenure was 18 months for each employer: Laid-off, right-sized, down-sized. Finding a new house for each new employer would have been costly. - One employer was way the heck out by the airport. There were no houses within biking distance. Or not ones I could afford. - Another employer had me relocate to a new client every few months. I saw a fair bit of the metro-mess that way. - The last employer turned out to be the best: closed the office in Texas and relocated me to Wisconsin. My house is two miles away from the office. I still need a car: biking to work in the winter is just crazy. 'The plural of data is not anecdote' but .. sometimes you gotta just get a place to live and live with a commute that you know is going to change no matter what.
- pchristensen 15y ago
  It gets even more complicated if you have a spouse/partner that also works. Lots of 2-professional families will never leave a huge metro, even if one of both of them could find better work in a different (but not the same different) city.
  - Periodic 15y ago
    This is a frustration for me currently. My work is taking me closer to Palo Alto and San Francisco, her work is taking her closer to South San Jose. Our most recent change is that she is working on finishing a project in Los Gatos, while I just found some great work in Palo Alto. We have compromised by living in the middle, but we both need to commute for about 30-40 minutes to our respective work places. I view this as an investment in our future. Right now we are both building careers which will make us much more money in the long run than the cost of commuting.
    - jowiar 15y ago
      The thing about commuting by bike/transit in the Bay Area is that it is doable, largely because there is critical mass with regards to enough people doing it that the facilities exist. In many cities, you cannot bring a bike onto a rush hour train. Here? 2 bike cars per train, packed to capacity. This summer, I was commuting from SF to Stanford. 10-minute bike ride on one end, 5-minute bike ride on the other end, 37 minute train ride in the middle. Got plenty of reading/homework done and a bit of exercise.
      - usaar333 15y ago
        Have to disagree here. The limited mass transit system that exists in the South Bay is ridiculously slow.
        recampbell 15y ago
        Compared to what?
        usaar333 15y ago
        Any vehicle. Even when going from station to station, VTA light rail is often less than a third the speed of driving. Biking is often faster. Coverage is also really poor, especially in the southern areas (Cupertino, Campbell, etc.) (Just to clarify: Biking in the Bay Area is really good. Public transit, at least in the South Bay, not so much.)
        dasil003 15y ago
        He's talking about Caltrain. If you can do pure Caltrain + cycle it will be faster than driving during rush hour, often significantly so, except on the one day a month that someone is killed, on those days you're fucked but at least you have a good excuse.
- GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
  Two miles is very walkable (given clear sidewalks in the winter)
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    True, but you will very selldom have clear sidewalks and even if they have been cleared you still risk falling on some piece of ice.
    - gaustin 15y ago
      Get a pair of Kahtoola microspikes and you won't have to worry much about falling on ice or snow. I run all winter in Montana with these. They handle streets or mountain trails without a problem. http://www.kahtoola.com/microspikes.php http://www.kahtoola.com/microspikes.php
      - sneak 15y ago
        Thanks so much for this! I have almost wiped out innumerable times here in the winter. Ordering two pairs of these today.
    - pivo 15y ago
      Live in a metro area where there are laws that sidewalks have to be clear. I live in Boston and have been walking to work for the last 15 years including during the winter. The only exception is that I take the metro (or 'T' as it's called here) when it rains. It's very rare to have an impassible sidewalk, and when you do you just walk around it in the street for a few meters. There are plenty of tech companies here within walking distance, lots of job options and an OK startup scene. Also, don't have a car. I use Zipcar or taxis when necessary (maybe 10 times a year). Not having to pay for a car, insurance and parking saves a lot of money. That savings makes living in more expensive city apartments more easy to afford. Not having to drive to work is my number one job perk, and living in a city is much more enjoyable (to me at least) than not.
    - bdunbar 15y ago
      Most civilized towns in the snow belt have a law saying the walks must be cleared X hours after the snow stops falling.
- dasil003 15y ago
  > My house is two miles away from the office. I still need a car: biking to work in the winter is just crazy. I grew up in Minneapolis, you should check out the bicycle commuting scene where you live. It varies by location, but in Minneapolis I was able to bicycle commute at least 4 days a week all winter long thanks to good plowing of bike paths, studded tires (only occasionally) and substituting a bus ride in right after significant snowfalls. Winter bike commuting is not for everyone, but with the proper gear it's not as bad as it looks (less uncomfortable than getting in a cold car and waiting for it to warm up IMHO).
  - briancurtin 15y ago
    For me the biggest part was having a place to change. I commuted rain/snow/shine for almost 2 years straight in Chicago, but I was only able to make it happen because I had a gym membership in the building. Some places around here are (supposedly, so I hear) getting better about having more of a locker room style bathroom to allow for people who ride to work and not be a sweaty mess when they get there.
    - Periodic 15y ago
      For about four years I did bicycle commuting year-round, rain or shine (no snow here). It was only possible because I had an indoor place to store my bike, a place to hang my clothes to dry, a place to change and wash up a bit, and space at work to store things like dry shoes and indoor jackets. This allowed me to just accept the weather and completely change between biking at work. Now, I don't have that luxury. I don't have a good place to store things, I don't have a good changing/cleaning area. I'm dreading the rain.
    - herge 15y ago
      What did you do to protect your bike against the water and salt in the winter?
      - mseebach 15y ago
        I've never done anything in particular to my bike in Denmark, except to keep it indoors at night. Haven't had any problems.
- tlholaday 15y ago
  Mr. Moustache's analysis of the cost of an automotive commute remains valid, even if the automotive commute is necessary.
- rbranson 15y ago
  Many employers are able to get away with their location decisions because as the original article states, most people do not prioritize commute mode & duration when they make major life decisions such as where to work and where to live. People have slowly grown accustomed to spending an hour a day in the car, mandatory, so the bar is very low here. Further, government subsidization of sprawl and predatory suburban towns tend to push buyers towards new construction in exurban areas along interstates. Employers that do attempt to locate close to employees end up chasing the single-family households out to the outskirts, right into a dead end where then everyone must drive. Employers should locate in sustainable, dense, transit-friendly neighborhoods, ultimately giving their employees a choice.
  - bdunbar 15y ago
    Employers should locate in sustainable, dense, transit-friendly neighborhoods They should, I guess. * Rent is going to be steep in a place like that. I worked for a concern that took space in a very nice office building. Wood paneling! We had a walled lawn with trees outside. Offices, not cubes. Rent was far more than the generic building across the street. It was great until we had to cut costs when the economy tanked. I prefer the cheap space, beige cubes and a job as opposed to laying folks off. * Not all employers can do that. Your average dense transit-friendly neighborhood is not going to take kindly to an electronics concern opening up 100,000 sq/ft of manufacturing space, for example.
    - rbranson 15y ago
      Rent is only steep because the supply far outstrips the demand for these neighborhoods. The government heavily subsidizes the incentives that make low density so economically attractive, skewing the construction and real estate industries towards those ends, even with the high demand. It's much cheaper to deliver services such as utilities and police/fire protection to high density areas, but low density areas pay the same rates and taxes. It gets even worse when predatory, independent suburban cities cherry-pick (thru zoning regulations) affluent households, offering them lower taxes and supposedly better services, which in turn further hollows out the urban areas, exacerbating existing problems. Industry took place at the center of the city alongside professional jobs. It's only relatively recently that it's been economical to locate distribution & light industrial jobs in dedicated, industrial zoned areas, now that workers have been conditioned to agree to subsidize the costs of cheap land. Further, local governments agree to extend infrastructure to these places almost exclusively for the benefit of these corporations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
wccrawford 15y ago
"Error establishing a database connection" So very true. When I lived 60 minutes from work and this would happen, it was a freaking nightmare. If I was lucky, someone else would be on call, but if I wasn't, it meant a 2 hour round trip to fix what usually ended up being an unplugged cable of some sort. Sometimes it just needed a power cycle. -sigh- ... That wasn't the article? I wonder if the article is as insightful?
- deweller 15y ago
  After one refresh, the article came up for me. But, yeah, there is a certain irony if this was caused by a remote connection issue.
  - wccrawford 15y ago
    I did actually try a couple times. :)
- wccrawford 15y ago
  Ah, here we go. "And it also doesn’t count as using up your personal time because it is adding something that nobody except Olympic athletes is doing enough of anyway – exercise. You can take your 10 minute bike ride directly out of time you would have otherwise spent in the gym, or waiting in the doctor’s office for prescription medication." I was wondering how he managed to eliminate that from his calculations. He didn't, of course. Some of us don't do either of the alternatives, so this really would be stealing the time from their day. And 10 minutes? 5 minutes each way? I'm pretty sure that's all but impossible in most major cities. And some of those car costs don't disappear when the commute does. You still have to -have- one to go shopping, on trips, and other errands around town. And so you get to work after your 20 minute bike ride, and what do you do? Why, you go shower, of course! You were just biking for 20 minutes! Nobody wants to smell you. That takes more time from your down... Don't forget the shower when you get home, too! ... Your company doesn't have a shower? Good luck with that! And danger! When you've got a ton of steel wrapped around you, you don't think much of the danger of the open road. But when the only thing keeping your brain away from the pavement is a little foam hat, the world is quite a bit scarier... Even if the drivers are playing nice! Oh, lunch time. My favorite time, I'll just go get... Oh wait. I biked in today. I can't go very far... Guess I'm eating that bag lunch after all. I choose my apartments for their proximity to work. And I love having a short commute... But even when I -could- bike, I rarely did. There were just too many problems with it.
antonioe 15y ago
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emu 15y ago
The author of the article completely ignores public transit. Commuting by train has at least two advantages: (1) it (can be) cheaper than driving, although the exact economics depend on a lot of things, and (2) you can do something else, such as work, during the commute time, so it need not be wasted time. Also, commuting an hour to a job sure beats not having a job in the same state as your significant other (my situation). I'm looking forward to moving to the same place and commuting soon. Commuting sucks, but you're optimizing for many things when choosing where to live, not just commute time.
- ChrisLTD 15y ago
  As a related point, podcasts (tech podcasts specifically) have made my driving commutes more bearable. Sure, I can't do actual work while driving, but I no longer feel like I'm wasting my time. The result is less stress. Now when my trips are quick sometimes I'm annoyed I didn't get to hear more of the show!
vsl2 15y ago
I couldn't finish reading the whole thing, and I'm usually thinking about maximizing everything all the time. He completely lost me when he said people could change jobs to reduce the commute. Isn't there usually a reason that people are working where they are? Things such as chosen field and salary? We're not talking about teenagers working fungible minimum wage jobs here... Everyone tries to minimize their commute times and where they end up living is a reflection of the compromise between different values. I think this article points out that people don't prioritize commute time enough because its only taken in small daily doses and that's a valid point, but that time is also not completely wasted if you can find something productive to do (e.g. listening to audiobooks, language lessions or relevant news).
- wnight 15y ago
  > He completely lost me when he said people could change jobs to reduce the commute. Isn't there usually a reason that people are working where they are? Sure, but that reason would probably evaporate for a large enough raise. Which not having to commute is, if you look at it rationally.
- magamiako 15y ago
  Yeah, he lost me when he said "JUST CHANGE JOBS!" haha. It's easy when you've been handed everything in life and the best you work for is a measily odd job here or there, but that's not doable when you're in a specialized field with a career path. Guess it's okay for the free floater, but not so much when you've planned out your path years in advance.
skrebbel 15y ago
I wonder how this story would apply to the situation in many European countries; in the Netherlands, companies typically pay commuting costs. Of course this money has to come from somewhere, so effectively everyone's salary is lower, but my salary won't increase when I stop commuting. This only leaves the cost of time, but IMHO that argument doesn't hold; most people consider their off time to be worth less, when expressed in dollars, than their on time. It's the same reason why many people with good incomes choose to paint their own house rather than work more and hire a painter. Finally, I think the author forgets about love. If my dream job is 30 miles this way, and my partner's is 20 miles the other way, the total commuting will be the same no matter where we live along that line.
ronnier 15y ago
I work in Seattle and have a one hour, one way commute. I live 15 miles away. Getting to the bus stop, waiting for the bus, and then walking from the bus stop to work really adds up.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  Seattle proper -> MSFT campus? That commute is the main reason I've never entertained any thought of joining MSFT. The choices are to live in comically stereotypical suburbia, or to suffer that commute daily. Amazon is hiring...
  - ronnier 15y ago
    I live in Kirkland and work at Amazon.
    - bokchoi 15y ago
      Avoid the lake and move. I was much happier after I left MSFT and reduced my commute to 12 minutes.
      - ronnier 15y ago
        I prefer the east side for my two kids. My wife also likes it. If it was just me, I'd have no problem living in Seattle.
Hisoka 15y ago
The true cost of commuting is actually the stress that piles on you, bit by bit.. it can contribute to divorce, physical disease, high blood pressure, loneliness, etc. Just ask anyone that has to ride their car into NYC traffic, or even take the crowded subways on a daily basis.
- timjahn 15y ago
  In my eyes, this is the biggest cost of commuting, especially you're driving. It used to take my wife anywhere from 1-3 hours on her return trip (depending on rain, snow, traffic, people looking at flashing lights, etc. - it is Chicago after all). She doesn't do that anymore. Now she drives 10 minutes maximum each. The less stress is very noticeable, both for her and me.
- smackfu 15y ago
  Yes. Around here in CT, it's fairly common to have a one hour train ride commute to Manhattan. Sure it is better than driving, but it still is pretty soul sucking according to my friends who have done it.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
    It's even worse going the other way because the trains aren't as frequent - or at least they weren't back then. I used to commute from Brooklyn to Darien, CT. I'd leave home at about 6:00 am and get there just around 8:30. After about 2 months, I'd had enough...
    - iqster 15y ago
      Here here. I thought the reverse commute out of Manhattan wasn't too bad. Subsequently, I experienced first hand how utterly soul sucking it is. On top of that, it isn't cheap! When you commute out of grand central in the morning, you pay a peak fare.
barrkel 15y ago
I work from home, but I still "commute" to get a fresh breakfast every morning - by scooter. It is such a joy to ride a scooter in London traffic that I deliberately go to much farther shops just to extend the amount of time I'm zooming past the traffic... Quite frugal on fuel (I get about 70 MPG, but I ride a fast 300cc scooter and don't have a light throttle hand), and I can do most regular maintenance (oil & filter mostly) myself.
- mahyarm 15y ago
  Aren't you worried about the higher likelihood of death (4x) and injury (6x) on motorcycles?
  - barrkel 15y ago
    Not really, no; for several reasons. You need to pick apart those statistics and look at risk factors (e.g. breaking limits, laws, alcohol) and also weigh up how much fun it is. Skydiving is dangerous but fun - I did it for a year, but ultimately it wasn't for me. Climbing mountains is dangerous, but there's a huge sense of accomplishment involved. Riding a motorbike is similar: there's less risk than the previous, but you can do it much more often, and the risk is scalable by how aggressively you ride. I've had a few ~30mph scooter spills in the past three years - a couple of lowsides from loss of traction owing to cornering too harshly in poor weather and poor surfaces (scooters exacerbate this owing to not having much lean angle to play with), as well as an 18 year old kid in a car who pulled out of a parked position behind a bus and did a u-turn as I was overtaking the bus - but none the worse for wear other than a scratched visor and a slightly scraped elbow (and an insurance payout to replace my bike). Ironically, I've travelled much further in total on my big bike (but over shorter time periods) with no incidents at all, yet was pushing myself through twisty mountain roads and much higher speeds. But I had the experience to watch extra carefully for road surface quality and dial right back in bad weather. You've got to die sometime. You only have a short time on this planet. Do you want to live fearfully and protect all that you have until your grave (when you'll lose it all anyway), or do you want to go out and live a little? At least on a motorbike you're more likely to hurt yourself than other people. I find driving a car, on the other hand, quite a scary experience owing to how large it is and how little vision you have of everything around you. It would be so easy to hit something small while reversing (a child, say), or clip something (like a cyclist) going around a corner. (I should add that I rarely ever go on my scooter without protective jacket, and almost never on my big bike without protective trousers and boots too. I never ride without gloves or full-face helmet.)
smackfu 15y ago
"For each of these miles, you waste about 6 minutes in the round trip..." This little line here has a huge effect on the computation, because it assumes you are only traveling at 20 mph on your commute. So all this only applies if you are in a heavy traffic area or commuting to a city center.
- pib 15y ago
  Some days I wish my average speed was 20mph on my commute. My commute is ~17 miles and it sometimes takes an hour or more.
  - kgermino 15y ago
    My commute on bike is 13 and it rarely takes an hour :)
cschneid 15y ago
Funny. I drive from Ft Collins, to the same Broomfield he's talking about (yay Colorado). I love my 50 minute commute. I use it to listen to podcasts and music. It gives me time to unwind and think. And most importantly, it came along with a raise that more than makes up for the monetary costs of driving. I'd love a mass transit or car pooling solution, but I haven't run across a viable one yet. Anyway, I really like my commute. Although, we'll see how it goes in the winter as roads get gross sometimes.
- saturdaysaint 15y ago
  I agree that technology has eased the psychological pain (if not the financial impact) - between podcasting, audio books, streaming music, voice journalling and calling friends, my drive is something I look forward to.
cletus 15y ago
The problems with long commutes all revolve around home ownership. People want big houses on big yards. Most can't afford that close to work, which means they make the economic choice to trade the commute time for that "dream". That's fine but the problem is that government subsidizes that dream to a ridiculous degree. Urban sprawl has a huge cost in infrastructure, largely borne by the taxpayer. Low-density urban sprawl largely also makes public transport uneconomic (public transport works best in high density cities and countries). Lastly, home ownership decreases the flexibility of the labour market. People are less able and less inclined to pick up and move to find work opting instead for lower-paid employment or no employment at all.
- FrojoS 15y ago
  I would be interested in the history of that. Homeownership seems very American to me, but subsidizes not so much [1]. And books or links, that you can recommend? [1] I'm aware there are many subsidizes in the US, for instance in agriculture. Still, it seems to be less than in Europe. There are subsidizes for homeownership in Germany but more people live in rented accommodation.
  - omellet 15y ago
    The single biggest subsidy for homeownership in the US is the mortgage interest tax deduction, where you can deduct interest payments on the first $1,000,000 of debt on your first or second home.
    - ahi 15y ago
      I imagine the homestead exemptions (terminology?) are a close second. Most places you get a property tax break on property you live in. Landlords, and therefor renters get to make up the difference.
    - mturmon 15y ago
      Agreed. Another one is Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, which work together to stabilize the home mortgage market, resulting in lower mortgage interest rates than would otherwise be the case.
d-roo 15y ago
I've often thought of the political cost -- frustrated drivers stuck in traffic listening to Rush Limbaugh.
ricksta 15y ago
I used to be all about driving. Then I did the same math this author did and realized how it doesn't work out. Then I invested in a data plan and a bus pass. It takes twice as long to bus, but now I get my two daily dose of hacker news on it. You would be surprised how fast 1hour 30 minutes commute feels when you are on hackers news the whole way.
evlapix 15y ago
I love arguments like this, but feel like they're useless in our culture. Specifically, the "value of time lost" argument. Most Americans take the hour or two that they gain and piss it away in front of a television anyway.
rbxbx 15y ago
A friend (and coworker) of mine is working on an app that allows you to calculate your true drive costs... consequently being http://drivecosts.com/ http://drivecosts.com/ If you're at all interested in this and would like to have a better idea what your commute is costing you (other than time) check it out :)
mathattack 15y ago
I abhor commutes. Walking to work is the greatest thing in the world. That said, I think he's stretching when he says: "But this misconception about what is a reasonable commute is probably the biggest thing that is keeping most people in the US and Canada poor." There are a lot of things keeping people poor. Bad education. Inequality of opportunity. Poor parenting. Commuting is only one of many. There article is definitely missing substitution effects. The commute may be reducing your working hours, but it's also reducing your TV hours. (And family hours!) I shake my head at colleagues with 3-4 hour daily commutes. I think both their careers and their personal lives suffer. That said, the article has gone a litte too extreme.
brianpan 15y ago
He's calculating the cost of commuting vs not commuting. That's not a real comparison for most people. And even if you do calculate the real cost differential, I think for many people, living somewhere you really like is similar to taking a job that you really enjoy. I would take decreases in salary for an awesome work environment. Call me crazy, but if I have the ability to "pay" for sanity, I will. It's priceless.
megaframe 15y ago
My commute is roughly 44miles each way (SF to MV)... but before moving to my new place I found public transportation that covers all but the last 5min of my commute. I also made sure I could tether and work remotely before starting this so I could count my 40min of train time as part of work; but I know people who drive the same route I do every day to avoid dealing with public transportation. I have little if no sympathy for them when convenient and fairly reliable public transportation exists. I also ran the math on the driving vs. commuting found my car is about $7.26/trip + my personal lost time. Train is roughly $4.53/trip and there's a subsidy I take that brings that to ~$1.20/trip
nhangen 15y ago
I drive an hour to and from work each and every day of the work week, and I hate it. It was great catching up on podcasts...until I ran out. I'm burning 2 hours of my life, each and every day...depressing. I will move closer when my lease runs out, but I won't sell the car. I enjoy being able to travel this great state of Florida.
- artmageddon 15y ago
  I feel your pain. It takes me 2 hours from the time I leave my garage till the time I get to the seat at my office. It's a mix of rail, car, and walking to NYC and back to central NJ, twice a day, 5 times per week. (Insert Reddit rage-face picture here) Edit: 20 minute drive to the rail station with a five minute wait to board, then a one-hour train ride, then a 25 minute 1.25 mi walk. Both ways. Sometimes in snow.
stouset 15y ago
It's amazing how many excuses people manage to come up with for how it's impossible for them to follow this kind of advice. Turns out, it's impossible up until the point that you just shut up and start doing it. Sweating is only a problem for most of you because you're unhealthy and overweight. You're overweight because you get no exercise. It's okay: I was too. Then I started cycling to work and lost 50lb. Now sweating's not a problem, and I can go significantly faster without showing up to work drenched. On my old commute (7.5mi), I ended up getting it down to 20 minutes once I got in shape. Time to drive? 20 minutes. Except instead of arriving to work tired and pissed off, I would show up alert, awake, and having enjoyed some time out in the sun doing something fun. It completely changed my mindset at work, and got me off to a much better foot every morning. Showering isn't a problem. Again, go slower until sweating is no longer an issue, then increase your speed to a point that you can still get to work without being drenched. If you still show up wet, or if you're wet from rain, bring a change of clothes. I infrequently had to, but it's not that hard to ride in wearing cycling clothing (which will, incidentally, keep you much drier) and bring a change of clothes with you. Go into the bathroom, change, and be on with your day. It takes less time than it would to find a parking spot for your SUV anyway. Weather is, again, not a big deal. We as humans have invented clothing for all sorts of weather conditions, intersected with the requirements of all sorts of physical activities. Cycling is no exception. There's cycling clothing for rain, for cold, and for rain _and_ cold. It costs equivalent to about a week's worth of driving for you 30-minute commuters. Less if your commute is longer. I mean, come on. Hacker News is a site supposedly full of entrepreneurial go-getters. And yet this guy gives you a way to save hundreds of thousands of dollars, your time, and your sanity, and all I hear is griping about how minor inconveniences make it completely impossible. Yeah, some of you are trapped between a rock and a hard place. Some of you are already owning impossible-to-sell property forty miles out in the 'burbs. But for the rest of you, quit making excuses and just give it a try — it's seriously not as hard or inconvenient as you're making it out to be. Who knows? Maybe the next time your apartment is up for renewal you'll find yourself moving closer to the city rather than farther away for once. And you won't ever look back.
- abalashov 15y ago
  Sweating is only a problem for most of you because you're unhealthy and overweight I don't know about that; body chemistries are very different. But more importantly, it sounds like you live in a place with reasonably cool, dry air. Some of us don't have that privilege. It's good advice, don't get me wrong. I myself lead a largely carless life in -- of all places, rather improbably -- downtown Atlanta, and walk about a mile and a half to work each way, and pretty much walk everywhere else too. But to think I could bike around here without getting sweaty is a practical impossibility, no matter what condition of fitness or body weight. It's extremely humid, though not quite as bad as the gulf coast. It's just not going to happen. So, I'd suggest for anyone in that set of circumstances to be pragmatic and bring a change of clothes and try to find a place where you can shower at work.
tomkarlo 15y ago
All of this assumes that a 30-something professional couple with two earners can actually both find (and keep) jobs within biking distance of a home they can reasonable afford. My experience, along with my fiancee, having lived and worked in 3 different major US cities in the past 5 years, is that assumption just isn't reasonable. It's hard enough to find two good jobs in a household in the same _CITY_ right now, much less the 10-15 mile radius of biking. In areas where it might be possible, the cost of housing is so high that it eats up that savings. Examples 1. New York: Lots of jobs in tight proximity and good public transport, but even in the "cheaper" boroughs, you're still probably paying $250K or more extra for a small family residence. 2. Los Angeles: Cheap housing. Owning less than two cars with two careers? Possible, but very, very difficult. Short commutes? Unlikely. 3. San Francisco: Expensive housing. Expensive car ownership. Jobs spread throughout the peninsula. Not to mention what happens when you have kids to transport. What we really need is to lift restrictions on new housing construction in dense urban areas like New York and San Francisco. The only way you can have both high job density and moderate housing prices close together is to allow enough vertical construction to reduce competition for housing to reasonable levels. Until you do that, you're inevitable going to see a large part of the population, especially younger / latecomer families, forced to live away from the job centers so they can reduce housing costs.
- gensym 15y ago
  Chicago. It's cheap and dense. It's difficult to go car-free with children, though. Some do, however: http://onelessminivan.tumblr.com/ http://onelessminivan.tumblr.com/ is about living car-free with kids in the city.
- jquery 15y ago
  > The only way you can have both high job density and moderate housing prices close together is to allow enough vertical construction to reduce competition for housing to reasonable levels. I think this is a pipe dream, unfortunately. How could you sell such an idea to the existing homeowner who comprise the voting base?
  - xxpor 15y ago
wallacrw 15y ago
This is why we need the ability to fund biking infrastructure around the country ourselves...governments are too risk averse and short-term-focused to build this infrastructure by the time it's needed. CivicSponsor.org allows the people to fund it directly, circumventing the entire government process with more control and transparency.
rbranson 15y ago
Lest we not forget the number one killer of otherwise healthy people in the US -- the automobile accident. Curiously, drops in accident fatality rates[1] correlate with spikes in unemployment[2]. I'll let you draw the conclusion there. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in... [2] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html
vacri 15y ago
His numbers are absolute nonsense - $125k over 10 years is only possible if you were spending your wage commuting - it's far more than just the $19/day travel costs he cites. If you go from a 60 minute commute to a 0 minute commute, you don't suddenly get 2 hours of extra pay per day. It's like saying "You don't get paid for that hour of chores you do every day - which means if you stop doing chores, you'll get more money!"
- keithpeter 15y ago
  I'm glad you said that, I was having problems with that bit of the arithmetic myself. My time is precious to me, but only earns me money when someone wants to pay me for it.
languagehacker 15y ago
It's kind of funny this guy is couching his arguments in how much they could be saving on some house they should buy. It can be argued a house is a bad investment, too. And driving around in a used Kia means a lot less pleasure and comfort derived from doing your weekly trips to the store and what not. There's a degree of enjoyment you can get out of life that you can't necessarily quantify in terms of how it affects your mortgage.
gwern 15y ago
He's probably underestimating the costs; cf. the Commuter's Paradox http://ftp.iza.org/dp1278.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp1278.pdf And then there are the health penalties... http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1490117 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1490117
johngalt 15y ago
And I commute via air once a week. According to his math; if I could simultaneously live in five cities at the same time, I'd be a millionaire. Mobility matters. I'd rather take the highest paying work within 500miles vs. the highest paying work within 10miles. Also moving is not as trivial as he would make it seem.
robryan 15y ago
Parking is a big part of this not really mentioned, if there was reliable free parking in the city (Melbourne, Australia) then the commute wouldn't be nearly as bad. As it you either need to skirt the law in regards to time limits, be lucky to find that parking at all, pay high daily amounts or get an expensive permanent park. I don't think I would drive anyway (usually take the train) but on the off chance I want to the stress of finding/paying for a park puts me off.
- thmcmahon 15y ago
  The lack of parking in Melbourne's city is a good thing. It acts as a cost on the negative externalities of driving into one of Australia's biggest cities. It encourages you to catch the train, which is better for everyone around you, because you don't have to drive.
  - robryan 15y ago
    Yeah I probably come off as if I was arguing for more, which isn't the case. Was just saying that it is another factor for those from the outer suburbs wanting to drive have to factor in and probably costs more than petrol or car maintenance. I definitely wouldn't want to drive, but on the off chance I do it is something I notice. It's interesting Melbourne now as the outer suburban fringes, places like Mernda, are so far away that you be almost crazy to think that buying a house out there and commuting to the inner city daily for work would be a good idea.
- gensym 15y ago
  Free parking increases congestion. Think about it - if it's a pain to park in a place, fewer people will drive to that place. Some will take alternatives (walk, bike, transit), others just won't go. More cars on the road -> more congestion -> longer commute times for everyone.
usaar333 15y ago
I'm a hater of long commutes (happily with a 1.5 mile one right now), but some of the analysis is flawed: 1) Commuting cost. The $0.17 as a minimum marginal cost per mile is reasonable. The IRS' $0.51 really can't be used as a margnal rate. Simply put, the operating cost of a car is not a linear function of mileage. There are exceptionally high fixed costs, namely depreciation, insurance, (some) maintenance and registration. Personally, as I only drive 7000 miles a year (well below car average), my car ownership costs per mile slightly exceed the IRS reimbursement rate. But my marginal rate is still extremely low - if I drove another 1000 miles a year, it'd cost maybe $200 more ($0.2/mile). Attempting to average a minimum marginal cost and an optimistic estimate of car ownership per mile does not produce a valid estimate for average marginal cost. 2) Mileage to time conversion: I have no idea how he concludes that 1 mile = 6 minutes round trip. Living father away generally implies freeway utlization, where a marginal mile would be closer to 2 minutes round trip. (Anecdote: I live in SF. Thanks to the lack of freeway system within the city itself, a commute may be shorter (and use not much more gas) living 20 miles away from work in the suburbs than 7 miles away within the city borders). 3) Value of time. On a long commute, I'm not necessarily wasting time. Whenever I had one, I deferred actual reading I would otherwise do to podcasts. I've always found the main benefit of a short commute is flexibility (go home and back in the middle of the day) and reduction of stress (traffic sucks). It is awesome to have a shorter commute, but in no way is it worth spending nearly $250k more on a house solely to live 15 miles closer to work for a typical person.
- kelnos 15y ago
  Yes, the 6 minutes per mile thing seemed weird to me. I live and work in SF now, but I used to work in Santa Clara, and I would do the drive in about 40 minutes -- just about 1 minute per mile. I drove at non-peak times, and my off-highway time was usually no more than about 10 minutes. Then I started working in San Mateo... half the distance, but usually 25-30 minutes. Off-highway time increased, and on-highway decreased. Still, though, a far cry from 6 min/mile. But I'm so much happier now that my commute involves only 6 blocks of walking and a 20 minute bus ride. I can even read on the bus! It's great, though the lack of control over my transportation still bothers me.
heresyforme 15y ago
I did a quick search through the comments, but didn't see anyone mention crime and schools. Believe it or not, there are start-ups in the Southern states and they tend to be in the cities (New Orleans, Baton Rouge LA, Jackson MS) where crime is pretty bad. If you have children, the public schools are pretty bad, so you'll want to send them to private school which will run you 6-10K per child. The only alternative is the suburbs. It's tricky, but I found a place about 20 minutes and 20 miles away, but we looked for over a year. The schools are relatively good and the private schools tend to be a bit cheaper. People don't want big houses (please show me the evidence that they want big houses), but big houses tend to cost more, which means the neighbors you'll likely have are people who are educated, well-behaved, friendly and have a good credit score. "Big houses" is a polite way of saying I don't want to live by people who can't afford a big house. ...I should also mention. Yeah, bus rides - you don't want to do that.
- rbranson 15y ago
  The lack of good urban schools and healthy mass transit is a self-perpetuating problem in southern cities, originally stemming from racism. Over decades, a near separate but equal environment within the framework of existing civil rights laws came to fruition.
- cafard 15y ago
  There are plenty of bad schools in the US, and always have been. As rbranson remarks, in some places this has to do with racism. In others, it has to do with generally low expectations. But yes, schools are a big deal, and often a deal-breaker on living close to work.
harshaw 15y ago
I have a 26 mile commute each way. As a biking nut this is nice because I can get 100 miles in per week if I want although with child care issues 50 miles is more likely. I usually leave the car over night and bike home and back in the morning. 1:22 door to door on average. Beats driving the mass pike and 128 :)
Duckpaddle2 15y ago
That's why I drive a 11 year old Toyota!
acak 15y ago
I live in Chicago. I am moving from the suburbs to downtown next weekend. The higher cost of rent offsets the savings in travel costs. It's not inconceivable that many people have their offices in a crowded area like downtown Chicago - so they'd be facing the same issue. But I'm doing it to save time and energy. Although, again, suburban areas tend to have cleaner air and bigger houses - much better for health than a studio apartment near a high traffic road. I'd say if you can telecommute, to live in the suburbs is a no-brainer. If you have to travel, car-pooling and public transport are better options than driving yourself to work everyday.
juiceandjuice 15y ago
I lived 7 miles from work in Menlo Park. I worked by the 280, and lived by the 101. It took me 20-30 minutes to get to work through 14 stoplights, depending on traffic. I didn't even like where I lived, but it was the closest, cheapest place I could find when I moved here. I moved to San Francisco, 32 miles away. I was commuting everyday at 9:30 and 7 and getting to/from work in 30 minutes flat. No stoplights. And I enjoyed living here much more. Now I have a roommate I commute with that works near me, except she wants to work at rush hour times, so we spend 40 minutes in traffic each way, which drives me nuts, but we switch out driving every other week so it's mostly worth it, and I love where I live now because I can walk places when I get home and drive less. It's not always black and white.
waqf 15y ago
I can't understand why everyone commutes at the same time of day. It would be of HUGE economic benefit if office activities were evenly distributed around the clock (and the calendar). There would never be rush-hour traffic because people came and went at all hours. Your favorite public place or activity wouldn't be crowded Saturday afternoon, because it wouldn't be Saturday for 6/7 of the population. Yes, there would be some large costs too, but the benefits are staggering.
donniefitz2 15y ago
First off, I really like this blog. Really well written and entertaining. He has good advice to boot. While I live within 10 miles of my workplace, there's no way I could bike it (a 25 minute ride all in parks). Reason being, I live in Arizona and it's about 105 at 9-10am in the summer. There's no way I'm going to peddle my way to work in that heat let alone ride home in it. I'm sure many people who live in cold climates (no idea what that's like) would object too.
cafard 15y ago
A point I would make is that employees are often at the mercy of the employer for the length of the commute. I knew a man in the Four Corners area of Montgomery County who had a quick commute to White Oak. The EPA relocated his office to the Crystal City area of Arlington County, changing his commute from 10 minutes to 45 minutes on a good day. BRAC just pushed a whole lot of jobs down to Fort Belvoir and quite a few more over to Bethesda Naval Hospital.
dlikhten 15y ago
I just calculated the cost of me owning my car. I don't commute to work via car, I pay a bit under 300/mo pre-tax for an express bus to/from work at about 25-45 minute ride. My wife has been doing bike commuting to work whenever possible. Hard to get my daughter to her pre-school without car. Ok so here goes, in 2 years when my lease is up: I will save $5500 on my car payments + insurance (NYC). I will then save probably another 3-4k or so on gas costs... So that's about 8-9k give or take. From 8-9k, subtract about 2k in car needs. We will have additional expenses that are met with a car like taking kid to doctor that is not easily reachable. So a cab here or there (eh its not expensive) and renting zipcar here and there. We already shop fresh direct so it wont change our shopping too much. So thats about 6-7k that I save per year. That means I can pay about 500-580 more for an apartment. Or just buy an ipad every month, or just save that money for future needs. Maybe spend an extra 1-2k on transportation needs a year. Basically cars are expensive. Incredible that people would work for minimum wage and still commute like this, its unthinkable.

231 points by joelhooks 15y ago

In an earlier life, I lived in the Dallas area. Moving to be near work sounds great, but it would not have been practical. - I lived there for nine years. My average tenure was 18 months for each employer: Laid-off, right-sized, down-sized. Finding a new house for each new employer would have been costly. - One employer was way the heck out by the airport. There were no houses within biking distance. Or not ones I could afford. - Another employer had me relocate to a new client every few months. I saw a fair bit of the metro-mess that way. - The last employer turned out to be the best: closed the office in Texas and relocated me to Wisconsin. My house is two miles away from the office. I still need a car: biking to work in the winter is just crazy. 'The plural of data is not anecdote' but .. sometimes you gotta just get a place to live and live with a commute that you know is going to change no matter what.

pchristensen 15y ago
It gets even more complicated if you have a spouse/partner that also works. Lots of 2-professional families will never leave a huge metro, even if one of both of them could find better work in a different (but not the same different) city.
- Periodic 15y ago
  This is a frustration for me currently. My work is taking me closer to Palo Alto and San Francisco, her work is taking her closer to South San Jose. Our most recent change is that she is working on finishing a project in Los Gatos, while I just found some great work in Palo Alto. We have compromised by living in the middle, but we both need to commute for about 30-40 minutes to our respective work places. I view this as an investment in our future. Right now we are both building careers which will make us much more money in the long run than the cost of commuting.
  - jowiar 15y ago
    The thing about commuting by bike/transit in the Bay Area is that it is doable, largely because there is critical mass with regards to enough people doing it that the facilities exist. In many cities, you cannot bring a bike onto a rush hour train. Here? 2 bike cars per train, packed to capacity. This summer, I was commuting from SF to Stanford. 10-minute bike ride on one end, 5-minute bike ride on the other end, 37 minute train ride in the middle. Got plenty of reading/homework done and a bit of exercise.
    - usaar333 15y ago
      Have to disagree here. The limited mass transit system that exists in the South Bay is ridiculously slow.
      - recampbell 15y ago
        Compared to what?
        usaar333 15y ago
        Any vehicle. Even when going from station to station, VTA light rail is often less than a third the speed of driving. Biking is often faster. Coverage is also really poor, especially in the southern areas (Cupertino, Campbell, etc.) (Just to clarify: Biking in the Bay Area is really good. Public transit, at least in the South Bay, not so much.)
      - dasil003 15y ago
        He's talking about Caltrain. If you can do pure Caltrain + cycle it will be faster than driving during rush hour, often significantly so, except on the one day a month that someone is killed, on those days you're fucked but at least you have a good excuse.
GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
Two miles is very walkable (given clear sidewalks in the winter)
- tomjen3 15y ago
  True, but you will very selldom have clear sidewalks and even if they have been cleared you still risk falling on some piece of ice.
  - gaustin 15y ago
    Get a pair of Kahtoola microspikes and you won't have to worry much about falling on ice or snow. I run all winter in Montana with these. They handle streets or mountain trails without a problem. http://www.kahtoola.com/microspikes.php http://www.kahtoola.com/microspikes.php
    - sneak 15y ago
      Thanks so much for this! I have almost wiped out innumerable times here in the winter. Ordering two pairs of these today.
  - pivo 15y ago
    Live in a metro area where there are laws that sidewalks have to be clear. I live in Boston and have been walking to work for the last 15 years including during the winter. The only exception is that I take the metro (or 'T' as it's called here) when it rains. It's very rare to have an impassible sidewalk, and when you do you just walk around it in the street for a few meters. There are plenty of tech companies here within walking distance, lots of job options and an OK startup scene. Also, don't have a car. I use Zipcar or taxis when necessary (maybe 10 times a year). Not having to pay for a car, insurance and parking saves a lot of money. That savings makes living in more expensive city apartments more easy to afford. Not having to drive to work is my number one job perk, and living in a city is much more enjoyable (to me at least) than not.
  - bdunbar 15y ago
    Most civilized towns in the snow belt have a law saying the walks must be cleared X hours after the snow stops falling.
dasil003 15y ago
> My house is two miles away from the office. I still need a car: biking to work in the winter is just crazy. I grew up in Minneapolis, you should check out the bicycle commuting scene where you live. It varies by location, but in Minneapolis I was able to bicycle commute at least 4 days a week all winter long thanks to good plowing of bike paths, studded tires (only occasionally) and substituting a bus ride in right after significant snowfalls. Winter bike commuting is not for everyone, but with the proper gear it's not as bad as it looks (less uncomfortable than getting in a cold car and waiting for it to warm up IMHO).
- briancurtin 15y ago
  For me the biggest part was having a place to change. I commuted rain/snow/shine for almost 2 years straight in Chicago, but I was only able to make it happen because I had a gym membership in the building. Some places around here are (supposedly, so I hear) getting better about having more of a locker room style bathroom to allow for people who ride to work and not be a sweaty mess when they get there.
  - Periodic 15y ago
    For about four years I did bicycle commuting year-round, rain or shine (no snow here). It was only possible because I had an indoor place to store my bike, a place to hang my clothes to dry, a place to change and wash up a bit, and space at work to store things like dry shoes and indoor jackets. This allowed me to just accept the weather and completely change between biking at work. Now, I don't have that luxury. I don't have a good place to store things, I don't have a good changing/cleaning area. I'm dreading the rain.
  - herge 15y ago
    What did you do to protect your bike against the water and salt in the winter?
    - mseebach 15y ago
      I've never done anything in particular to my bike in Denmark, except to keep it indoors at night. Haven't had any problems.
tlholaday 15y ago
Mr. Moustache's analysis of the cost of an automotive commute remains valid, even if the automotive commute is necessary.
rbranson 15y ago
Many employers are able to get away with their location decisions because as the original article states, most people do not prioritize commute mode & duration when they make major life decisions such as where to work and where to live. People have slowly grown accustomed to spending an hour a day in the car, mandatory, so the bar is very low here. Further, government subsidization of sprawl and predatory suburban towns tend to push buyers towards new construction in exurban areas along interstates. Employers that do attempt to locate close to employees end up chasing the single-family households out to the outskirts, right into a dead end where then everyone must drive. Employers should locate in sustainable, dense, transit-friendly neighborhoods, ultimately giving their employees a choice.
- bdunbar 15y ago
  Employers should locate in sustainable, dense, transit-friendly neighborhoods They should, I guess. * Rent is going to be steep in a place like that. I worked for a concern that took space in a very nice office building. Wood paneling! We had a walled lawn with trees outside. Offices, not cubes. Rent was far more than the generic building across the street. It was great until we had to cut costs when the economy tanked. I prefer the cheap space, beige cubes and a job as opposed to laying folks off. * Not all employers can do that. Your average dense transit-friendly neighborhood is not going to take kindly to an electronics concern opening up 100,000 sq/ft of manufacturing space, for example.
  - rbranson 15y ago
    Rent is only steep because the supply far outstrips the demand for these neighborhoods. The government heavily subsidizes the incentives that make low density so economically attractive, skewing the construction and real estate industries towards those ends, even with the high demand. It's much cheaper to deliver services such as utilities and police/fire protection to high density areas, but low density areas pay the same rates and taxes. It gets even worse when predatory, independent suburban cities cherry-pick (thru zoning regulations) affluent households, offering them lower taxes and supposedly better services, which in turn further hollows out the urban areas, exacerbating existing problems. Industry took place at the center of the city alongside professional jobs. It's only relatively recently that it's been economical to locate distribution & light industrial jobs in dedicated, industrial zoned areas, now that workers have been conditioned to agree to subsidize the costs of cheap land. Further, local governments agree to extend infrastructure to these places almost exclusively for the benefit of these corporations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

wccrawford 15y ago

"Error establishing a database connection" So very true. When I lived 60 minutes from work and this would happen, it was a freaking nightmare. If I was lucky, someone else would be on call, but if I wasn't, it meant a 2 hour round trip to fix what usually ended up being an unplugged cable of some sort. Sometimes it just needed a power cycle. -sigh- ... That wasn't the article? I wonder if the article is as insightful?

deweller 15y ago
After one refresh, the article came up for me. But, yeah, there is a certain irony if this was caused by a remote connection issue.
- wccrawford 15y ago
  I did actually try a couple times. :)
wccrawford 15y ago
Ah, here we go. "And it also doesn’t count as using up your personal time because it is adding something that nobody except Olympic athletes is doing enough of anyway – exercise. You can take your 10 minute bike ride directly out of time you would have otherwise spent in the gym, or waiting in the doctor’s office for prescription medication." I was wondering how he managed to eliminate that from his calculations. He didn't, of course. Some of us don't do either of the alternatives, so this really would be stealing the time from their day. And 10 minutes? 5 minutes each way? I'm pretty sure that's all but impossible in most major cities. And some of those car costs don't disappear when the commute does. You still have to -have- one to go shopping, on trips, and other errands around town. And so you get to work after your 20 minute bike ride, and what do you do? Why, you go shower, of course! You were just biking for 20 minutes! Nobody wants to smell you. That takes more time from your down... Don't forget the shower when you get home, too! ... Your company doesn't have a shower? Good luck with that! And danger! When you've got a ton of steel wrapped around you, you don't think much of the danger of the open road. But when the only thing keeping your brain away from the pavement is a little foam hat, the world is quite a bit scarier... Even if the drivers are playing nice! Oh, lunch time. My favorite time, I'll just go get... Oh wait. I biked in today. I can't go very far... Guess I'm eating that bag lunch after all. I choose my apartments for their proximity to work. And I love having a short commute... But even when I -could- bike, I rarely did. There were just too many problems with it.

antonioe 15y ago

Wordpress DB Error Here is the Web Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IsMbyPGqdMUJ:www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/+The+True+Cost+of+Commuting+(mrmoneymustache.com&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IsMbyPG...

emu 15y ago

The author of the article completely ignores public transit. Commuting by train has at least two advantages: (1) it (can be) cheaper than driving, although the exact economics depend on a lot of things, and (2) you can do something else, such as work, during the commute time, so it need not be wasted time. Also, commuting an hour to a job sure beats not having a job in the same state as your significant other (my situation). I'm looking forward to moving to the same place and commuting soon. Commuting sucks, but you're optimizing for many things when choosing where to live, not just commute time.

ChrisLTD 15y ago
As a related point, podcasts (tech podcasts specifically) have made my driving commutes more bearable. Sure, I can't do actual work while driving, but I no longer feel like I'm wasting my time. The result is less stress. Now when my trips are quick sometimes I'm annoyed I didn't get to hear more of the show!

vsl2 15y ago

I couldn't finish reading the whole thing, and I'm usually thinking about maximizing everything all the time. He completely lost me when he said people could change jobs to reduce the commute. Isn't there usually a reason that people are working where they are? Things such as chosen field and salary? We're not talking about teenagers working fungible minimum wage jobs here... Everyone tries to minimize their commute times and where they end up living is a reflection of the compromise between different values. I think this article points out that people don't prioritize commute time enough because its only taken in small daily doses and that's a valid point, but that time is also not completely wasted if you can find something productive to do (e.g. listening to audiobooks, language lessions or relevant news).

wnight 15y ago
> He completely lost me when he said people could change jobs to reduce the commute. Isn't there usually a reason that people are working where they are? Sure, but that reason would probably evaporate for a large enough raise. Which not having to commute is, if you look at it rationally.
magamiako 15y ago
Yeah, he lost me when he said "JUST CHANGE JOBS!" haha. It's easy when you've been handed everything in life and the best you work for is a measily odd job here or there, but that's not doable when you're in a specialized field with a career path. Guess it's okay for the free floater, but not so much when you've planned out your path years in advance.

skrebbel 15y ago

I wonder how this story would apply to the situation in many European countries; in the Netherlands, companies typically pay commuting costs. Of course this money has to come from somewhere, so effectively everyone's salary is lower, but my salary won't increase when I stop commuting. This only leaves the cost of time, but IMHO that argument doesn't hold; most people consider their off time to be worth less, when expressed in dollars, than their on time. It's the same reason why many people with good incomes choose to paint their own house rather than work more and hire a painter. Finally, I think the author forgets about love. If my dream job is 30 miles this way, and my partner's is 20 miles the other way, the total commuting will be the same no matter where we live along that line.

ronnier 15y ago

I work in Seattle and have a one hour, one way commute. I live 15 miles away. Getting to the bus stop, waiting for the bus, and then walking from the bus stop to work really adds up.

potatolicious 15y ago
Seattle proper -> MSFT campus? That commute is the main reason I've never entertained any thought of joining MSFT. The choices are to live in comically stereotypical suburbia, or to suffer that commute daily. Amazon is hiring...
- ronnier 15y ago
  I live in Kirkland and work at Amazon.
  - bokchoi 15y ago
    Avoid the lake and move. I was much happier after I left MSFT and reduced my commute to 12 minutes.
    - ronnier 15y ago
      I prefer the east side for my two kids. My wife also likes it. If it was just me, I'd have no problem living in Seattle.

Hisoka 15y ago

The true cost of commuting is actually the stress that piles on you, bit by bit.. it can contribute to divorce, physical disease, high blood pressure, loneliness, etc. Just ask anyone that has to ride their car into NYC traffic, or even take the crowded subways on a daily basis.

timjahn 15y ago
In my eyes, this is the biggest cost of commuting, especially you're driving. It used to take my wife anywhere from 1-3 hours on her return trip (depending on rain, snow, traffic, people looking at flashing lights, etc. - it is Chicago after all). She doesn't do that anymore. Now she drives 10 minutes maximum each. The less stress is very noticeable, both for her and me.
smackfu 15y ago
Yes. Around here in CT, it's fairly common to have a one hour train ride commute to Manhattan. Sure it is better than driving, but it still is pretty soul sucking according to my friends who have done it.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
  It's even worse going the other way because the trains aren't as frequent - or at least they weren't back then. I used to commute from Brooklyn to Darien, CT. I'd leave home at about 6:00 am and get there just around 8:30. After about 2 months, I'd had enough...
  - iqster 15y ago
    Here here. I thought the reverse commute out of Manhattan wasn't too bad. Subsequently, I experienced first hand how utterly soul sucking it is. On top of that, it isn't cheap! When you commute out of grand central in the morning, you pay a peak fare.

barrkel 15y ago

I work from home, but I still "commute" to get a fresh breakfast every morning - by scooter. It is such a joy to ride a scooter in London traffic that I deliberately go to much farther shops just to extend the amount of time I'm zooming past the traffic... Quite frugal on fuel (I get about 70 MPG, but I ride a fast 300cc scooter and don't have a light throttle hand), and I can do most regular maintenance (oil & filter mostly) myself.

mahyarm 15y ago
Aren't you worried about the higher likelihood of death (4x) and injury (6x) on motorcycles?
- barrkel 15y ago
  Not really, no; for several reasons. You need to pick apart those statistics and look at risk factors (e.g. breaking limits, laws, alcohol) and also weigh up how much fun it is. Skydiving is dangerous but fun - I did it for a year, but ultimately it wasn't for me. Climbing mountains is dangerous, but there's a huge sense of accomplishment involved. Riding a motorbike is similar: there's less risk than the previous, but you can do it much more often, and the risk is scalable by how aggressively you ride. I've had a few ~30mph scooter spills in the past three years - a couple of lowsides from loss of traction owing to cornering too harshly in poor weather and poor surfaces (scooters exacerbate this owing to not having much lean angle to play with), as well as an 18 year old kid in a car who pulled out of a parked position behind a bus and did a u-turn as I was overtaking the bus - but none the worse for wear other than a scratched visor and a slightly scraped elbow (and an insurance payout to replace my bike). Ironically, I've travelled much further in total on my big bike (but over shorter time periods) with no incidents at all, yet was pushing myself through twisty mountain roads and much higher speeds. But I had the experience to watch extra carefully for road surface quality and dial right back in bad weather. You've got to die sometime. You only have a short time on this planet. Do you want to live fearfully and protect all that you have until your grave (when you'll lose it all anyway), or do you want to go out and live a little? At least on a motorbike you're more likely to hurt yourself than other people. I find driving a car, on the other hand, quite a scary experience owing to how large it is and how little vision you have of everything around you. It would be so easy to hit something small while reversing (a child, say), or clip something (like a cyclist) going around a corner. (I should add that I rarely ever go on my scooter without protective jacket, and almost never on my big bike without protective trousers and boots too. I never ride without gloves or full-face helmet.)

smackfu 15y ago

"For each of these miles, you waste about 6 minutes in the round trip..." This little line here has a huge effect on the computation, because it assumes you are only traveling at 20 mph on your commute. So all this only applies if you are in a heavy traffic area or commuting to a city center.

pib 15y ago
Some days I wish my average speed was 20mph on my commute. My commute is ~17 miles and it sometimes takes an hour or more.
- kgermino 15y ago
  My commute on bike is 13 and it rarely takes an hour :)

cschneid 15y ago

Funny. I drive from Ft Collins, to the same Broomfield he's talking about (yay Colorado). I love my 50 minute commute. I use it to listen to podcasts and music. It gives me time to unwind and think. And most importantly, it came along with a raise that more than makes up for the monetary costs of driving. I'd love a mass transit or car pooling solution, but I haven't run across a viable one yet. Anyway, I really like my commute. Although, we'll see how it goes in the winter as roads get gross sometimes.

saturdaysaint 15y ago
I agree that technology has eased the psychological pain (if not the financial impact) - between podcasting, audio books, streaming music, voice journalling and calling friends, my drive is something I look forward to.

cletus 15y ago

The problems with long commutes all revolve around home ownership. People want big houses on big yards. Most can't afford that close to work, which means they make the economic choice to trade the commute time for that "dream". That's fine but the problem is that government subsidizes that dream to a ridiculous degree. Urban sprawl has a huge cost in infrastructure, largely borne by the taxpayer. Low-density urban sprawl largely also makes public transport uneconomic (public transport works best in high density cities and countries). Lastly, home ownership decreases the flexibility of the labour market. People are less able and less inclined to pick up and move to find work opting instead for lower-paid employment or no employment at all.

FrojoS 15y ago
I would be interested in the history of that. Homeownership seems very American to me, but subsidizes not so much [1]. And books or links, that you can recommend? [1] I'm aware there are many subsidizes in the US, for instance in agriculture. Still, it seems to be less than in Europe. There are subsidizes for homeownership in Germany but more people live in rented accommodation.
- omellet 15y ago
  The single biggest subsidy for homeownership in the US is the mortgage interest tax deduction, where you can deduct interest payments on the first $1,000,000 of debt on your first or second home.
  - ahi 15y ago
    I imagine the homestead exemptions (terminology?) are a close second. Most places you get a property tax break on property you live in. Landlords, and therefor renters get to make up the difference.
  - mturmon 15y ago
    Agreed. Another one is Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, which work together to stabilize the home mortgage market, resulting in lower mortgage interest rates than would otherwise be the case.

d-roo 15y ago

I've often thought of the political cost -- frustrated drivers stuck in traffic listening to Rush Limbaugh.

ricksta 15y ago

I used to be all about driving. Then I did the same math this author did and realized how it doesn't work out. Then I invested in a data plan and a bus pass. It takes twice as long to bus, but now I get my two daily dose of hacker news on it. You would be surprised how fast 1hour 30 minutes commute feels when you are on hackers news the whole way.

evlapix 15y ago

I love arguments like this, but feel like they're useless in our culture. Specifically, the "value of time lost" argument. Most Americans take the hour or two that they gain and piss it away in front of a television anyway.

rbxbx 15y ago

A friend (and coworker) of mine is working on an app that allows you to calculate your true drive costs... consequently being http://drivecosts.com/ http://drivecosts.com/ If you're at all interested in this and would like to have a better idea what your commute is costing you (other than time) check it out :)

mathattack 15y ago

I abhor commutes. Walking to work is the greatest thing in the world. That said, I think he's stretching when he says: "But this misconception about what is a reasonable commute is probably the biggest thing that is keeping most people in the US and Canada poor." There are a lot of things keeping people poor. Bad education. Inequality of opportunity. Poor parenting. Commuting is only one of many. There article is definitely missing substitution effects. The commute may be reducing your working hours, but it's also reducing your TV hours. (And family hours!) I shake my head at colleagues with 3-4 hour daily commutes. I think both their careers and their personal lives suffer. That said, the article has gone a litte too extreme.

brianpan 15y ago

He's calculating the cost of commuting vs not commuting. That's not a real comparison for most people. And even if you do calculate the real cost differential, I think for many people, living somewhere you really like is similar to taking a job that you really enjoy. I would take decreases in salary for an awesome work environment. Call me crazy, but if I have the ability to "pay" for sanity, I will. It's priceless.

megaframe 15y ago

My commute is roughly 44miles each way (SF to MV)... but before moving to my new place I found public transportation that covers all but the last 5min of my commute. I also made sure I could tether and work remotely before starting this so I could count my 40min of train time as part of work; but I know people who drive the same route I do every day to avoid dealing with public transportation. I have little if no sympathy for them when convenient and fairly reliable public transportation exists. I also ran the math on the driving vs. commuting found my car is about $7.26/trip + my personal lost time. Train is roughly $4.53/trip and there's a subsidy I take that brings that to ~$1.20/trip

nhangen 15y ago

I drive an hour to and from work each and every day of the work week, and I hate it. It was great catching up on podcasts...until I ran out. I'm burning 2 hours of my life, each and every day...depressing. I will move closer when my lease runs out, but I won't sell the car. I enjoy being able to travel this great state of Florida.

artmageddon 15y ago
I feel your pain. It takes me 2 hours from the time I leave my garage till the time I get to the seat at my office. It's a mix of rail, car, and walking to NYC and back to central NJ, twice a day, 5 times per week. (Insert Reddit rage-face picture here) Edit: 20 minute drive to the rail station with a five minute wait to board, then a one-hour train ride, then a 25 minute 1.25 mi walk. Both ways. Sometimes in snow.

stouset 15y ago

It's amazing how many excuses people manage to come up with for how it's impossible for them to follow this kind of advice. Turns out, it's impossible up until the point that you just shut up and start doing it. Sweating is only a problem for most of you because you're unhealthy and overweight. You're overweight because you get no exercise. It's okay: I was too. Then I started cycling to work and lost 50lb. Now sweating's not a problem, and I can go significantly faster without showing up to work drenched. On my old commute (7.5mi), I ended up getting it down to 20 minutes once I got in shape. Time to drive? 20 minutes. Except instead of arriving to work tired and pissed off, I would show up alert, awake, and having enjoyed some time out in the sun doing something fun. It completely changed my mindset at work, and got me off to a much better foot every morning. Showering isn't a problem. Again, go slower until sweating is no longer an issue, then increase your speed to a point that you can still get to work without being drenched. If you still show up wet, or if you're wet from rain, bring a change of clothes. I infrequently had to, but it's not that hard to ride in wearing cycling clothing (which will, incidentally, keep you much drier) and bring a change of clothes with you. Go into the bathroom, change, and be on with your day. It takes less time than it would to find a parking spot for your SUV anyway. Weather is, again, not a big deal. We as humans have invented clothing for all sorts of weather conditions, intersected with the requirements of all sorts of physical activities. Cycling is no exception. There's cycling clothing for rain, for cold, and for rain _and_ cold. It costs equivalent to about a week's worth of driving for you 30-minute commuters. Less if your commute is longer. I mean, come on. Hacker News is a site supposedly full of entrepreneurial go-getters. And yet this guy gives you a way to save hundreds of thousands of dollars, your time, and your sanity, and all I hear is griping about how minor inconveniences make it completely impossible. Yeah, some of you are trapped between a rock and a hard place. Some of you are already owning impossible-to-sell property forty miles out in the 'burbs. But for the rest of you, quit making excuses and just give it a try — it's seriously not as hard or inconvenient as you're making it out to be. Who knows? Maybe the next time your apartment is up for renewal you'll find yourself moving closer to the city rather than farther away for once. And you won't ever look back.

abalashov 15y ago
Sweating is only a problem for most of you because you're unhealthy and overweight I don't know about that; body chemistries are very different. But more importantly, it sounds like you live in a place with reasonably cool, dry air. Some of us don't have that privilege. It's good advice, don't get me wrong. I myself lead a largely carless life in -- of all places, rather improbably -- downtown Atlanta, and walk about a mile and a half to work each way, and pretty much walk everywhere else too. But to think I could bike around here without getting sweaty is a practical impossibility, no matter what condition of fitness or body weight. It's extremely humid, though not quite as bad as the gulf coast. It's just not going to happen. So, I'd suggest for anyone in that set of circumstances to be pragmatic and bring a change of clothes and try to find a place where you can shower at work.

tomkarlo 15y ago

All of this assumes that a 30-something professional couple with two earners can actually both find (and keep) jobs within biking distance of a home they can reasonable afford. My experience, along with my fiancee, having lived and worked in 3 different major US cities in the past 5 years, is that assumption just isn't reasonable. It's hard enough to find two good jobs in a household in the same _CITY_ right now, much less the 10-15 mile radius of biking. In areas where it might be possible, the cost of housing is so high that it eats up that savings. Examples 1. New York: Lots of jobs in tight proximity and good public transport, but even in the "cheaper" boroughs, you're still probably paying $250K or more extra for a small family residence. 2. Los Angeles: Cheap housing. Owning less than two cars with two careers? Possible, but very, very difficult. Short commutes? Unlikely. 3. San Francisco: Expensive housing. Expensive car ownership. Jobs spread throughout the peninsula. Not to mention what happens when you have kids to transport. What we really need is to lift restrictions on new housing construction in dense urban areas like New York and San Francisco. The only way you can have both high job density and moderate housing prices close together is to allow enough vertical construction to reduce competition for housing to reasonable levels. Until you do that, you're inevitable going to see a large part of the population, especially younger / latecomer families, forced to live away from the job centers so they can reduce housing costs.

gensym 15y ago
Chicago. It's cheap and dense. It's difficult to go car-free with children, though. Some do, however: http://onelessminivan.tumblr.com/ http://onelessminivan.tumblr.com/ is about living car-free with kids in the city.
jquery 15y ago
> The only way you can have both high job density and moderate housing prices close together is to allow enough vertical construction to reduce competition for housing to reasonable levels. I think this is a pipe dream, unfortunately. How could you sell such an idea to the existing homeowner who comprise the voting base?
- xxpor 15y ago

wallacrw 15y ago

This is why we need the ability to fund biking infrastructure around the country ourselves...governments are too risk averse and short-term-focused to build this infrastructure by the time it's needed. CivicSponsor.org allows the people to fund it directly, circumventing the entire government process with more control and transparency.

rbranson 15y ago

Lest we not forget the number one killer of otherwise healthy people in the US -- the automobile accident. Curiously, drops in accident fatality rates[1] correlate with spikes in unemployment[2]. I'll let you draw the conclusion there. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in... [2] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html

vacri 15y ago

His numbers are absolute nonsense - $125k over 10 years is only possible if you were spending your wage commuting - it's far more than just the $19/day travel costs he cites. If you go from a 60 minute commute to a 0 minute commute, you don't suddenly get 2 hours of extra pay per day. It's like saying "You don't get paid for that hour of chores you do every day - which means if you stop doing chores, you'll get more money!"

keithpeter 15y ago
I'm glad you said that, I was having problems with that bit of the arithmetic myself. My time is precious to me, but only earns me money when someone wants to pay me for it.

languagehacker 15y ago

It's kind of funny this guy is couching his arguments in how much they could be saving on some house they should buy. It can be argued a house is a bad investment, too. And driving around in a used Kia means a lot less pleasure and comfort derived from doing your weekly trips to the store and what not. There's a degree of enjoyment you can get out of life that you can't necessarily quantify in terms of how it affects your mortgage.

gwern 15y ago

He's probably underestimating the costs; cf. the Commuter's Paradox http://ftp.iza.org/dp1278.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp1278.pdf And then there are the health penalties... http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1490117 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1490117

johngalt 15y ago

And I commute via air once a week. According to his math; if I could simultaneously live in five cities at the same time, I'd be a millionaire. Mobility matters. I'd rather take the highest paying work within 500miles vs. the highest paying work within 10miles. Also moving is not as trivial as he would make it seem.

robryan 15y ago

Parking is a big part of this not really mentioned, if there was reliable free parking in the city (Melbourne, Australia) then the commute wouldn't be nearly as bad. As it you either need to skirt the law in regards to time limits, be lucky to find that parking at all, pay high daily amounts or get an expensive permanent park. I don't think I would drive anyway (usually take the train) but on the off chance I want to the stress of finding/paying for a park puts me off.

thmcmahon 15y ago
The lack of parking in Melbourne's city is a good thing. It acts as a cost on the negative externalities of driving into one of Australia's biggest cities. It encourages you to catch the train, which is better for everyone around you, because you don't have to drive.
- robryan 15y ago
  Yeah I probably come off as if I was arguing for more, which isn't the case. Was just saying that it is another factor for those from the outer suburbs wanting to drive have to factor in and probably costs more than petrol or car maintenance. I definitely wouldn't want to drive, but on the off chance I do it is something I notice. It's interesting Melbourne now as the outer suburban fringes, places like Mernda, are so far away that you be almost crazy to think that buying a house out there and commuting to the inner city daily for work would be a good idea.
gensym 15y ago
Free parking increases congestion. Think about it - if it's a pain to park in a place, fewer people will drive to that place. Some will take alternatives (walk, bike, transit), others just won't go. More cars on the road -> more congestion -> longer commute times for everyone.

usaar333 15y ago

I'm a hater of long commutes (happily with a 1.5 mile one right now), but some of the analysis is flawed: 1) Commuting cost. The $0.17 as a minimum marginal cost per mile is reasonable. The IRS' $0.51 really can't be used as a margnal rate. Simply put, the operating cost of a car is not a linear function of mileage. There are exceptionally high fixed costs, namely depreciation, insurance, (some) maintenance and registration. Personally, as I only drive 7000 miles a year (well below car average), my car ownership costs per mile slightly exceed the IRS reimbursement rate. But my marginal rate is still extremely low - if I drove another 1000 miles a year, it'd cost maybe $200 more ($0.2/mile). Attempting to average a minimum marginal cost and an optimistic estimate of car ownership per mile does not produce a valid estimate for average marginal cost. 2) Mileage to time conversion: I have no idea how he concludes that 1 mile = 6 minutes round trip. Living father away generally implies freeway utlization, where a marginal mile would be closer to 2 minutes round trip. (Anecdote: I live in SF. Thanks to the lack of freeway system within the city itself, a commute may be shorter (and use not much more gas) living 20 miles away from work in the suburbs than 7 miles away within the city borders). 3) Value of time. On a long commute, I'm not necessarily wasting time. Whenever I had one, I deferred actual reading I would otherwise do to podcasts. I've always found the main benefit of a short commute is flexibility (go home and back in the middle of the day) and reduction of stress (traffic sucks). It is awesome to have a shorter commute, but in no way is it worth spending nearly $250k more on a house solely to live 15 miles closer to work for a typical person.

kelnos 15y ago
Yes, the 6 minutes per mile thing seemed weird to me. I live and work in SF now, but I used to work in Santa Clara, and I would do the drive in about 40 minutes -- just about 1 minute per mile. I drove at non-peak times, and my off-highway time was usually no more than about 10 minutes. Then I started working in San Mateo... half the distance, but usually 25-30 minutes. Off-highway time increased, and on-highway decreased. Still, though, a far cry from 6 min/mile. But I'm so much happier now that my commute involves only 6 blocks of walking and a 20 minute bus ride. I can even read on the bus! It's great, though the lack of control over my transportation still bothers me.

heresyforme 15y ago

I did a quick search through the comments, but didn't see anyone mention crime and schools. Believe it or not, there are start-ups in the Southern states and they tend to be in the cities (New Orleans, Baton Rouge LA, Jackson MS) where crime is pretty bad. If you have children, the public schools are pretty bad, so you'll want to send them to private school which will run you 6-10K per child. The only alternative is the suburbs. It's tricky, but I found a place about 20 minutes and 20 miles away, but we looked for over a year. The schools are relatively good and the private schools tend to be a bit cheaper. People don't want big houses (please show me the evidence that they want big houses), but big houses tend to cost more, which means the neighbors you'll likely have are people who are educated, well-behaved, friendly and have a good credit score. "Big houses" is a polite way of saying I don't want to live by people who can't afford a big house. ...I should also mention. Yeah, bus rides - you don't want to do that.

rbranson 15y ago
The lack of good urban schools and healthy mass transit is a self-perpetuating problem in southern cities, originally stemming from racism. Over decades, a near separate but equal environment within the framework of existing civil rights laws came to fruition.
cafard 15y ago
There are plenty of bad schools in the US, and always have been. As rbranson remarks, in some places this has to do with racism. In others, it has to do with generally low expectations. But yes, schools are a big deal, and often a deal-breaker on living close to work.

harshaw 15y ago

I have a 26 mile commute each way. As a biking nut this is nice because I can get 100 miles in per week if I want although with child care issues 50 miles is more likely. I usually leave the car over night and bike home and back in the morning. 1:22 door to door on average. Beats driving the mass pike and 128 :)

Duckpaddle2 15y ago

That's why I drive a 11 year old Toyota!

acak 15y ago

I live in Chicago. I am moving from the suburbs to downtown next weekend. The higher cost of rent offsets the savings in travel costs. It's not inconceivable that many people have their offices in a crowded area like downtown Chicago - so they'd be facing the same issue. But I'm doing it to save time and energy. Although, again, suburban areas tend to have cleaner air and bigger houses - much better for health than a studio apartment near a high traffic road. I'd say if you can telecommute, to live in the suburbs is a no-brainer. If you have to travel, car-pooling and public transport are better options than driving yourself to work everyday.

juiceandjuice 15y ago

I lived 7 miles from work in Menlo Park. I worked by the 280, and lived by the 101. It took me 20-30 minutes to get to work through 14 stoplights, depending on traffic. I didn't even like where I lived, but it was the closest, cheapest place I could find when I moved here. I moved to San Francisco, 32 miles away. I was commuting everyday at 9:30 and 7 and getting to/from work in 30 minutes flat. No stoplights. And I enjoyed living here much more. Now I have a roommate I commute with that works near me, except she wants to work at rush hour times, so we spend 40 minutes in traffic each way, which drives me nuts, but we switch out driving every other week so it's mostly worth it, and I love where I live now because I can walk places when I get home and drive less. It's not always black and white.

waqf 15y ago

I can't understand why everyone commutes at the same time of day. It would be of HUGE economic benefit if office activities were evenly distributed around the clock (and the calendar). There would never be rush-hour traffic because people came and went at all hours. Your favorite public place or activity wouldn't be crowded Saturday afternoon, because it wouldn't be Saturday for 6/7 of the population. Yes, there would be some large costs too, but the benefits are staggering.

donniefitz2 15y ago

First off, I really like this blog. Really well written and entertaining. He has good advice to boot. While I live within 10 miles of my workplace, there's no way I could bike it (a 25 minute ride all in parks). Reason being, I live in Arizona and it's about 105 at 9-10am in the summer. There's no way I'm going to peddle my way to work in that heat let alone ride home in it. I'm sure many people who live in cold climates (no idea what that's like) would object too.

cafard 15y ago

A point I would make is that employees are often at the mercy of the employer for the length of the commute. I knew a man in the Four Corners area of Montgomery County who had a quick commute to White Oak. The EPA relocated his office to the Crystal City area of Arlington County, changing his commute from 10 minutes to 45 minutes on a good day. BRAC just pushed a whole lot of jobs down to Fort Belvoir and quite a few more over to Bethesda Naval Hospital.

dlikhten 15y ago

I just calculated the cost of me owning my car. I don't commute to work via car, I pay a bit under 300/mo pre-tax for an express bus to/from work at about 25-45 minute ride. My wife has been doing bike commuting to work whenever possible. Hard to get my daughter to her pre-school without car. Ok so here goes, in 2 years when my lease is up: I will save $5500 on my car payments + insurance (NYC). I will then save probably another 3-4k or so on gas costs... So that's about 8-9k give or take. From 8-9k, subtract about 2k in car needs. We will have additional expenses that are met with a car like taking kid to doctor that is not easily reachable. So a cab here or there (eh its not expensive) and renting zipcar here and there. We already shop fresh direct so it wont change our shopping too much. So thats about 6-7k that I save per year. That means I can pay about 500-580 more for an apartment. Or just buy an ipad every month, or just save that money for future needs. Maybe spend an extra 1-2k on transportation needs a year. Basically cars are expensive. Incredible that people would work for minimum wage and still commute like this, its unthinkable.