Commuting Traffic - Oy!

[Evergreen]

I commute 3 hours a day and have done for 36 years, this is one of the reasons I intend to get out early next year. It is becoming more stressful every day and can't be healthy at all.

 

[W2R]

People of ER: DO NOT MOVE HERE! IT STINKS!

OK, gotcha! I won't.

I don't really believe that it stinks, though. Raleigh has a very good image and reputation. Actually, in my case I don't plan to ever move anywhere until they take me out of here feet first, or until I until I decide to sign up for a nearby CCRC.

 

[Texas Proud]

Commute is a state of mind....

I have had 45 minutes to an hour commute most of my life... but I remember when I was living in a small town between a big city where I worked and another town where I went to college (both about an hour away), I used to get upset when I had to wait for lights and my 5 minute commute someplace turned into a 10 minute ride...

Remember the commercial where a guy in Africa was on a bike and complaining about all the traffic and they zoomed back and all that was in front of him was a bus Yep, perspective....


Some people accept or like or whatever you want to call it their commute because of their own personality... I have a sister that lives a LONG way from anything... her and her husband love living on 40 acres with very few neighbors around.... they enjoy driving (at least they say they do).... and traffic is not bad for them... it just takes awhile to go 40 to 60 miles to get where you want to go... I would get tired of it eventually... my commute was broken up as I took a bus to a park and ride...

 

[fh2000]

"The report identifies the 50 worst bottlenecks in the country, and six of the top 10 are in Los Angeles. The Southland scores 12 of the worst traffic stopping choke points overall."

I tortured thru LA freeway for many years. Tried driving, train, or bus from suburb to downtown. I had to spend almost 90 minutes one way no matter what transportation I use. I finally gave up and got a job close to home. I now commute from my bed to home office in less than 10 seconds.

 

[rodi]

Not surprised that the 405 in LA is at the top of the list... It can be 10 at night and it will jam up inexplicably around the I-10/405 interchange.

I had a 6.5 mile commute. I went into work early - so it wasn't so bad... about 10 minutes. But coming home was always longer. Used to be a 15 minute commute on a good day... but it kept creeping long and longer and pretty soon it was 30 minutes most of the time, with 45 minutes becoming almost common... Part of the problem was that the interchange near work was part of a major construction project... DH used to laugh that it would complete the day after I retired... When I saw that it wasn't due to be done till 2019, I decided not to wait.

 

[jim584672]

I started at Megacorp with a 10-15 minute commute. Great for 15 years, then they decide to move everyone to the big city. So that made it a 1.5 hour commute each way. So glad I am out.

 

[MichaelB]

Amateurs and rookies, I say. The authors clearly aren't well traveled. Traffic in cities like São Paulo and Caracas gives new meaning to rush hour.

 

[braumeister]

I don't plan to ever move anywhere until they take me out of here feet first, or until I until I decide to sign up for a nearby CCRC.

One of my neighbors, up in his 80s, has a nice line.

"I can't move from here until I get my toe tag."

 

[FUEGO]

I was in the traffic engineering then toll road building business, so let's just say that traffic jams meant job security and it meant business was always good. Death, taxes, and traffic - 3 certain things in life.

In my personal life, I never liked driving that much. I turned down higher paying jobs with a long commute in favor of <10 minute commutes (we live in the city). Yeah, sometimes it takes 3-4 minutes to cross the main road if you just miss the light, but we're close to everything so it doesn't take long to get there on average.

The downside is that driving 20 minutes to the other side of town seems like a big road trip for me.

There's really just a few horrible areas in our city that get clogged up. Whenever someone inquires about moving to the other side of those horrible areas such that a commute through the horrible area would be required to get to work, my professional advice is that they make the drive at 7:45 am and 5:15 pm a couple times before making an offer on a house way out yonder.

 

[W2R]

One of my neighbors, up in his 80s, has a nice line.

"I can't move from here until I get my toe tag."

There you go! That's exactly how I feel, after moving last summer. That's it, I'm done, that's all she wrote. Not moving again, nope, no way no how.

Luckily my present home is my idea of heaven so it's all good.

 

[stepford]

The slowly worsening commute many report is unsurprising. Not only does population everywhere tend to grow over the decades of one's career, but mobility often declines.

In my case when I was young and single I would move to minimize my commute whenever I changed jobs. No big deal when you rent and don't have much stuff. Then in my early 30's I bought a house - an easy 2 minute drive or 10 minute bike ride from work. A few years later I found a wife to move into said house. When that job finally went away a few years after that moving was no longer so simple.

Still the 30 minute commute each way I found myself with in my 40s wasn't so bad. Traffic jams were rare and the commute didn't really impact my schedule much. Then, that job went away as well in my early 50s, and I had a choice: RE or commute from hell. Sadly I was a coward and chose door number 2. I've described that multi-hour commute monstrosity elsewhere, but suffice it to say the last 4 years have been the most physically punishing of my life and the primary reason for my retirement.

My point though, is that while the details may vary this general theme is repeated by many workers everywhere. Job stability is largely a thing of the past, but residential inertia is not. Once we have homes and families it is more likely than not that our commutes will all slowly worsen as we age.

 

[harley]

Where I grew up was a moderately sleepy town outside Washington, D.C. and it was a nice place. By the late '70's though, it started to go downhill with the traffic and by now it is absolutely insane.

I worked in MD and lived in VA. Traffic was sucky but not usually horrible. But if something happened it could go to absolutely insane very quickly.

I once got stuck on the Beltway for 6 and a half hours in a snowstorm because the Cabin John Bridge froze over and the accidents created gridlock. I was past the last exit and couldn't go anywhere. From that day on I left work the moment the snow started. My nickname at work was "Snowflake".

 

[FUEGO]

I once got stuck on the Beltway for 6 and a half hours in a snowstorm because the Cabin John Bridge froze over and the accidents created gridlock. I was past the last exit and couldn't go anywhere. From that day on I left work the moment the snow started. My nickname at work was "Snowflake".

My wife once got stuck in 9 hours of gridlock coming home from work when the roads iced over. She was 8.5 months pregnant. And that was the day I happened to take her cell phone to repair it. Fun times.

She learned to pee before leaving work because you never know how bad traffic will be.

 

[JoeWras]

I lived for a while right off 540, in the Leesville area, so I remember it well. I-540 was the more pleasant part of my commute because traffic was so light on that stretch of highway! They must have build a lot of new neighborhoods in North Raleigh since then.

Many apartment buildings went up. Also massive development in the "Wakefield" area, south of Wake Forest, but annexed by Raleigh. The big kicker was they finished it out to US64, so now it is a shortcut route from Greensboro to points east.

OK, gotcha! I won't.

I don't really believe that it stinks, though. Raleigh has a very good image and reputation. Actually, in my case I don't plan to ever move anywhere until they take me out of here feet first, or until I until I decide to sign up for a nearby CCRC.

I forgot my . You know people, cough, cough, this place is terrible. Don't come here.

I was in the traffic engineering then toll road building business, so let's just say that traffic jams meant job security and it meant business was always good. Death, taxes, and traffic - 3 certain things in life.

Every night while I'm forced to take 1/4 of a mile worth of 540 to avoid the 40/540 mess, I curse FUEGO's name as that automatic toll rips 72 cents out of my account.

 

[W2R]

I forgot my . You know people, cough, cough, this place is terrible. Don't come here.

I got it and took it as similar to the Texas jokes on the forum. I probably should have included a or or in my post too. Oh well!

 

[Zathras]

It isn't just work commutes.
We are building right now. Our new house will be 15 miles closer to middle of town.
My wife works part time. Based on her commute alone that will be 6000 fewer miles a year. With my driving and her non work driving it should add up to a total of 9000 fewer miles each year.

At an average of 45mph, that is an extra 200 hours each year.
That will also save us about $300/year on fuel costs. The time savings for us is the bigger factor.

 

[Nodak]

Reading through these reminded me why I left Minneapolis many years ago. For the entire last 30 years of w*rk my commute was 18 miles with one stop sign and took 25 minutes from backing out of my garage to sitting at my desk.

 

[scrabbler1]

As I have written in this forum many times over the years, the main reason I ERed back in 2008 was the commute. While it didn't involve my car for most of the 23 years I worked, it did involve the trains, the Long Island Rail Road and either the NYC Subway or the PATH trains, a small subway system connecting Manhattan with nearby areas of northern New Jersey.


In my early years of commuting on the LIRR and the NYC Subway in the late 1980s, it was a barely tolerable commute taking about 1.25 hours each way. For a short time, I had to drive to the LIRR station's parking lot and sometimes have to transfer LIRR trains before taking the subway. But after I moved around LI a few times, I was able to reduce the trip to a one-seat ride on the LIRR and eliminate the parking issue. Still, it was a tiring and often sickening ride as I was often rushing to catch my train in the morning and gradually losing my social life on weeknights because I got home so late and worn out.


I was faced with late trains, no A/C in the summer, no heat in the winter, labor issues such as the awful 2-week strike in January of 1987 (3 blizzards in those 2 weeks) which put us LIRR riders on the roads with everyone else, causing huge traffic jams. Thankfully, I had just moved a little closer to NYC so my car trip to the subway was not terribly long and mostly on some back roads.


The commute began to burn me out as the 1990s wore on, so when my company announced in 1999 that they were relocating from lower Manhattan to Jersey City, New Jersey, in 2001, I knew this would be the beginning of my ultimate undoing. Instead of a fairly smooth transfer from the LIRR to the subway, I would now have to exit Penn Station and go all the way to the street, walk a long, crosstown walk, then enter the PATH system before another long exit to the street at my new destination. My commute time would increase slightly, to nearly 1.5 hours each way.


Another thing which was worsening my commute was the rapid increase in the use of cell phones on the LIRR trains. What had been a mostly quiet and peaceful ride on the LIRR leg of my trip was now becoming a noisy, more annoying trip with the nearly endless barrage of loud phone conversations from my fellow riders. It would take only 1 loudmouth to ruin the ride of dozens of riders within earshot of these rude people. The train crewmen were useless so it became anarchy as we either had to suffer in silence or confront the rude riders if we could find them. Sometimes the confrontations worked, sometimes they did not. The rudeness and selfishness of these loudmouth cellphone yakkers never ceased to amaze me. (The LIRR has since introduced "quiet cars" but they came way after I ERed.)


I did switch to working part-time shortly after we relocated to New Jersey in 2001, starting with a mostly telecommuting gig. But that ended in 2003 and I had to return to the horrors of commuting, even only 3 days a week. I got that reduced to 2 days a week in 2007 but I needed to reduce that further - to ZERO. And in late 2008, I ERed and achieved that goal. I remember telling the HR flunkie in my exit interview that my top 3 reasons for leaving were #1 the commute, #2 the commute, and #3 the commute.


It was also becoming expensive to commute. In 2000, the last year I worked full-time, I paid about $2,000 in commutation costs. In 2008, my last year of working (2 days a week), I paid about $2,000 in commutation costs (only about 100 days, less than half the ~220 days I worked in 2000). I used the savings from the loss of commutation expenses to pay for some my health insurance premiums once I lost that benefit at work.

 

[FUEGO]

Every night while I'm forced to take 1/4 of a mile worth of 540 to avoid the 40/540 mess, I curse FUEGO's name as that automatic toll rips 72 cents out of my account.

Bwahahahaha!!!

You're welcome that I cut 10 minutes off your commute. And apologies for the excessive toll.

Just be glad that they fired me when they did, otherwise I'd have figured out a way to charge you a few nickels to pull into your driveway.

If it makes you feel any better, my wife paid the same $0.72 toll each way for the same 1/4 mile stretch of 540 when she was still working full time and commuting to the office. Yeah it sucks but her 20 minute reduction in commute time is worth at least $1.44.

I just told her most guys build their wives a taj mahal at best. I built her a billion dollar freeway with high tech tolling systems.

 

[Sarah in SC]

You better not come down here to SC with that toll nonsense, mister! We want new roads, damn it, and we want the rest of the state to shoulder the bill! And throw in a couple of more expensive bridges!

 

[FUEGO]

You better not come down here to SC with that toll nonsense, mister! We want new roads, damn it, and we want the rest of the state to shoulder the bill! And throw in a couple of more expensive bridges!

No worries. I'm retired!

But seriously, you wouldn't pay a buck or two to get home 10-15 minutes quicker and save $0.10-0.20 in gas plus a little more in car maintenance?

 

[Sarah in SC]

This is how you traffic engineers get us, isn't it?
Actually I'd be happy to subsidize the cost of mandatory zipper merge training classes. They'd pay off more than a toll road for my mostly rural commute.
I just figured you missed the part of your job where people complained, so I thought I'd oblige. That parking spot has to cost you "something"

 

[JoeWras]

This is how you traffic engineers get us, isn't it?
Actually I'd be happy to subsidize the cost of mandatory zipper merge training classes. They'd pay off more than a toll road for my mostly rural commute.
I just figured you missed the part of your job where people complained, so I thought I'd oblige. That parking spot has to cost you "something"

Instead we get this.

"Oh gee, I am merging on a high speed road. I better slow down!"

"Oh gee, that's scary, I better stop and wait for a gap."

Meanwhile, behind this guy Sarah and Joe are going crazy as we're stuck in a slug of traffic that now can never merge properly and will just hose up traffic badly and send a shockwave of stop and go backward.

Nice, one person starts a traffic jam. This is not theory. It happens.

Apparently, some of FUEGO's associates are working on metering ramps on the previously mentioned 540 (non-toll section). This will help, IF PEOPLE LEARN TO USE THEIR GAS PEDAL.

OK, I'll stop shouting now.

You ER'd people not stuck in OMY? Count your blessings.

 

[harley]

Instead we get this.

"Oh gee, I am merging on a high speed road. I better slow down!"

"Oh gee, that's scary, I better stop and wait for a gap."

Meanwhile, behind this guy Sarah and Joe are going crazy as we're stuck in a slug of traffic that now can never merge properly and will just hose up traffic badly and send a shockwave of stop and go backward.

Nice, one person starts a traffic jam. This is not theory. It happens.

Apparently, some of FUEGO's associates are working on metering ramps on the previously mentioned 540 (non-toll section). This will help, IF PEOPLE LEARN TO USE THEIR GAS PEDAL.

OK, I'll stop shouting now.

You ER'd people not stuck in OMY? Count your blessings.

Nominee for the worst invention ever - the stop and go lights on merge ramps to an interstate. I understand the theory which is to push the backup a little further up the merge ramp as opposed to at the merge point, but they never work. And even when they do, nobody pays attention to them. Plus they assume the traffic is actually moving on the highway so there can be a smooth merge. Like that happens.

 

[Bestwifeever]

Sort of ironic that Chicago took first considering the great options for public transit here:

Interstate 90 around Chicago O'Hare International Airport is considered the worst traffic bottleneck in the country, resulting in 16.9 million hours of wasted time. That's an estimated $418 million of lost productivity a year, according to a new report from the American Highway Users Alliance