Poll: What percentage of your total career commuting days was done in a car?

[jjquantz]

OK, since today seems to be rather poll happy day and there was a thread on how your kids get to school, here's another poll on a somewhat related topic.

Since there has been some discussion on some of today's polls about methodology, I'll try to be complete:

1) I'm talking about your post-education w*rk commute experience,
2) The gold-standard methodology would be to consult your complete commute log for your entire w*rking life (we all keep one, right?) and divide the number of days you drove to your w*rksite divided by the total number of days that you traveled to your worksite.
3) Acceptable alternative methodologies include wild-a$$ guesses based on your fast fading memories of what it was like to go to w*rk.

Remember, these are "commute-days" so one 2 hour drive in a car is equal to 1 commute-day and a five minute walk to the office is also 1 commute-day.

Computing....

I'm pretty firmly in the 10-25% range. I really only had 3 or 4 years out of 30 where I was regularly driving to w*rk. A few other years I drove some fraction of the time, but for half of my career I was able to walk/bike/public transport to work essentially all the time.

 

[Sarah in SC]

I have never in my life not driven at least 20 miles to work. And there is no public transport options here that could have gotten me to any of those jobs.
I'd say that is completely normal for nearly every person I know locally.

 

[Ronstar]

I'm about 99.8%. I did ride my bike about 15-20 times.


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

 

[easysurfer]

I took a commuter train for the majority of my commute so voted 0-10%. In fact, just happened to take the same train today to meet with a lawyer for my will. Was fun for awhile seeing my old stomping grounds until I thought about the stress of the old j*b . Funny though how some stores, 8 years later didn't change much at all.

 

[MRG]

Twenty nine years minus the six months I lived 3 blocks away. For ten years my daily commute was 125 miles round trip. Rest of those average a 50 miles round trip. There's a lot of land around here.

 

[Rambler]

Most of my 27 year career was in Japan...21 out of 27 years. Of those 21 years, I rode public transit for 10 years. The US portion of my career was all driving, 1.5 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the evening. For 11 years of the Japan portion of my career, I had a company provided car.

 

[RunningBum]

I telecommuted the last 11 years or so of my 27 year career, so I drove nearly early day for 16 years except for the rare work-at-home day, and then didn't commute at all except for an occasional trip to the office the last 11. Not sure if you meant for that to be 100% since I wasn't even commuting those last 11 years, but I put 50-75%.

 

[38Chevy454]

I have always drove myself to work. Never lived where public transportation worked out. Plus I view the freedom having my car to do other things on way home or at lunch as worth the slight expense.

 

[HFWR]

As others have noted, polls aren't accessible on iOS, but I rode a city bus for a few months, carpooled on and off for a few years, but mostly drove solo, during 44 years of w*rk life. Probably >90%, and no, I didn't keep a log...

 

[HillCountry]

99 percent of time I drive or carpool. I rode bike during the bike to work week in the Silicon Valley. I run a few times from my home to the office in Austin. I only run to office (11 miles), but took ride back home.

 

[scrabbler1]

I used commuter trains and subways and PATH trains (a small subway system between Manhattan and New Jersey) nearly the entire time of my working years. For a few years in the 1980s I had to use my car to get to the train station or simply move the car from an overnight parking spot to a daytime parking spot. A few times overall I drove partway to work so I could have my car available away from where I lived, or there were public transit service issues (i.e. strikes). And I HATED the commute; it was the #1 reason I ERed.


I answered 0-10% but it was probably around 1% tops.

 

[harley]

I really need to learn to read the descriptions before voting in the polls. I answered 11-25%, because I thought the question was what percentage of your work day was spent commuting in your car. I drove 2-3 hours/day, so 8 hours working plus 2 hours driving is a 10 hour day, of which 20% was driving.

Answering the actual poll question I'd be in the 90+% percentile.

 

[braumeister]

Mostly by car because there was no other option.

But I was lucky enough to avoid the traffic hassle by commuting via bus a couple of times.

Once, I was able to commute by public bus. It took about the same time as if I had driven, but was so much less stressful.

Another time I commuted by express bus, which took considerably less time than driving since it used the HOV lanes (this was in the DC area).

Total bus commuting years were about 15% of my career.

 

[MichaelB]

My mind is fading along with the memories of w*rk, but I'll venture a guess. According to my spreadsheet, my commute was around 40% me driving, 4% bus, 28% plane, and 28% in a car someone else was driving.

 

[rodi]

I answered wrong... When I first read it I thought it said company car.... not your/company car...

I never had a company car - so I voted 0%. Should have voted 91-100%.

I carpooled - but used my car (coworker was a 1 car family - so this allowed his wife use of the car and he gave me $ towards gas.)

San Diego's public transit system is pretty lousy. I looked at taking the bus. To go the 6 miles (by car) I'd have to
- walk 3/4 mile to the bus stop. Ride 5 stops then change to a different bus. Transfer time was about 30 minutes. Then walk 3/4 mile from that bus stop to my work. I estimated it would take 90 minutes minimum.

 

[Music Lover]

I drove to work almost 100% of the time for 33 years...in that time I lived in 3 different homes, ranging from 3 to 5 miles from the office. Commute time never exceeded 10 minutes, but at 2 of those locations transit would have taken an hour due to route layout and transfers. Parking ranged from free for 20 of those years to $34 per month by time I retired.

 

[Meadbh]

As a physician, a lot of the time I was on call. The bus just doesn't cut it when there is a medical emergency. As well, for most of my career I worked at locations that were not safe to walk through, especially at night. I also did medical transports.

So I would say 95% of my commutes were by car, 4.99% by plane and 0.01% on foot.

 

[imoldernu]

The middle ten years of my 30 years of after college employment were spent as a district manager, with car travel averaging about 35,000 mile/yr. Other than that, first ten years as an in-place manager, and the last ten years in upper level management, with short commutes.

For the first and last part of my employment, commute was 16%.

Don't know how to figure the middle 10 years.

 

[MBAustin]

I chose 91-100% then realized I forgot about the first 4 years of w*rk that was a 4-person carpool, so I only drove about 30% of the time. 3-person carpool for the next 2 years, and bus for 2 years a few years later. So for 23 years I was a solo driver. Probably averages out just under 90% but I don't feel like doing the math right now.

 

[FUEGO]

Almost always drove because I would occasionally need my car to run errands for work (visit clients, drive to job site, go to meetings, etc).

I worked right across the street from my apartment once and walked there almost every day (about 2 minutes walking when I cut through the woods for about 15 seconds versus 2-3 minutes driving). Later I worked about 2.5 miles from home and walked there once (and never again ).

For the last few years of my career I worked downtown. The job provided a free bus pass. I took transit 1-2 days per week if I was sure I wouldn't need my car to visit the construction site or attend off-site meetings. The bus was actually quicker than my car since my parking space downtown was a bit of a walk from the office, whereas the bus dropped me off at the back door of the office.

 

[rbmrtn]

100%, ~70 miles round trip commute.

 

[W2R]

Even though I only lived a mile and a half from work, I always drove because it was necessary to take a bridge over a freeway to get there. The bridge did not have any shoulders to walk or bike on, had 50+ mph traffic on it, and had onramps and offramps taking up most of the bridge, so no sane person would have walked or biked over that bridge. There was no other option within a reasonable distance.


Also, it's no fun to arrive at work drenched and knowing you have a formal meeting later that day.

With an average annual rainfall of 64 inches and an average of 56 rainy days a year, New Orleans ranked third among U.S. locations,

New Orleans ranks 3rd in most rainfall, rainy days, says weather data firm | NOLA.com


No problem, really, because in real life most peoples' opportunities to walk or bike are not limited to just going to work and coming home.

 

[HFWR]

Even though I only lived a mile and a half from work, I always drove because it was necessary to take a bridge over a freeway to get there. The bridge did not have any shoulders to walk or bike on, had 50+ mph traffic on it, and had onramps and offramps taking up most of the bridge, so no sane person would have walked or biked over that bridge. There was no other option within a reasonable distance.


Also, it's no fun to arrive at work drenched and knowing you have a formal meeting later that day.
New Orleans ranks 3rd in most rainfall, rainy days, says weather data firm | NOLA.com


No problem, really, because in real life most peoples' opportunities to walk or bike are not limited to just going to work and coming home.

Biking or walking in 100+ degree temps also results in drenching...

 

[DrRoy]

I have always driven to work, or to a customer, or to the airport.

 

[kcowan]

My best job involved taking to train to work and then the subway/taxi to appointments.

All the others involved driving to work and to customer appointments.

Averaging the two would be pretty meaningless.