Like the title says, share something about your daily commute :)
What do you like about it?
What do you hate about it?
What kind of advice or insights would you like to share with the rest?
Etc.
I walk next door. I like that its close by and I can spend my lunchtime laying on my couch. I hate its close by so I'm practically always working. I would also want to listen podcasts during commute but all of them are too long for my commute. Overall I recommend living close to work.
(it's my own business, I'm not employee)
I recently moved closer to work, so now my commute is a 10-15 minute ebike ride. I really enjoy the ride, and (along with a small dose of caffeine) it really serves to wake me up in the morning. Basically my only complaint is that when it gets cold and rainy it can be hard to bring up the motivation to get on and ride. Honestly though, it's nothing that can't be overcome by some good rain gear. Honestly, I highly recommend going out and taking a nice ebike for a ride if anyone is on the fence about it. I was convinced pretty quickly.
I work from home, so I leave my house maybe a couple times a week. Good for not having to deal with other people, bad for never seeing or interacting with other people. You have to put in effort not to be a huge shut-in, which can be nice but not always all the time.
I work from home as well, but I have a dog which forces me to touch grass every day. I also blow the money I save on commuting by eating breakfast at a local coffee shop many mornings.
I work mostly from home, so no commute. I do pay for 2 days/wk at the co-working space either 7 or 30mi away (so 15-35min). I have an electric scooter that goes 65mph and an incredible view on my commute (see attached from Tuesday's drive), so I enjoy it and the chance to be social with the people at the cowork space.
I really like the 20 min walk to the train station, it partly goes through a park and it always feels very invigorating. It takes about an hour total to get to work or home but I don't mind at all since it gives me a clean break between work- and private life.
One thing I really hate is when the train is cancelled and I'm stuck with only a tightly packed bus as my alternative for getting home.
I would be happy with a train commute. I could get in some reading. I don't know why so many people have to get to where they're going so fast. Alas, no trains here. Not even a bus that comes within 2 miles of me.
Well, you got two kinds of cancellations. Sometimes it's just a single train because of... reasons.. I don't know. Those aren't so bad, you just wait for the next one to leave in half an hour. It happens maybe once a month?
The worse ones are when there's a defect in the rail system, knocking out the entire rail line going home. In those cases you have to travel extra to get to a bus that everyone is desperate to get on. Which causes a lot of shoving and squeezing and very uncomfortable traveling. The alternative is either to get a (ridiculously expensive) taxi or to wait it out for several hours, which is not an option for me. These kind of events only happen a few times as year thankfully, but they're really awful when they happen.
The thing is, I have to pick up my kids from daycare so I need to get back on time. A major cancellation puts me in an enormous stress mode.
About 45 minutes with car. I mostly choice my own times so almost never drive in "busy"(busy traffic where I live at most add 5 minutes to your commute). As it never soul crushing traffic I don't really mind.
Some weeks I work 5 days on site from 8:00 till 22:00, but some days I work 2 days on site for 4 hours a day and one day at home. So a extra 1,5 hours a day if I work on site I don't really mind.
Only thing I would love to change is being able to go with public transport. Most days I can arrive on my work on time. (Even if i need to got up pretty early if I start at 8) But the problem is I can't get home if I don't leave before 17:30 from work. That's mostly not possible. (Or at least I don't know at the start of the day which time I'm done)
I don't really care Public transport is a 30 minutes longer commute, or that it is more expensive (my work pays the full ticket price anyway). The problem is I just can't get home after work.
Since I moved into the nearest city, my job has been right across the street so I can walk to it and walk home for lunch.
This is so much better than even a 20 minute drive. And anything is better than a 2 hour commute from here to the Bay Area. Fuck the highways out there. Especially the Altamonte.
Work is about 20 minutes away, which is a very short commute for the state I live in. I ride a motorcycle whenever it's not raining really hard.
What I dislike is there is only one curvy section of road between home and work, and most of the time, I get stuck behind someone who is terrfified at the prospect of a road that isn't perfectly straight, and they will trundle along at 25 mph for the entire section.
Thankfully, I have an interview today that could reduce my commute to the length of my house.
Today it was painful, I recently moved here (because of job) and didn't take all my bike clothes from my parents house jet. So this morning was about 5C and I was in t-shirt and shorts.
I hate my commute. It's only 20 minutes but I can easily do my job from home, so going into the office half the time is a waste of my time. And i work 10 hour days, so having to drive into the office turns it into an 11 hour day. Plus, traffic is not great. The cost of gas is a pain. The only positive is I can listen to audiobooks on the way. I've heard some good ones. My most recent favorite was the Reckoners series by Brandon Sanderson.
Absolutely no traffic + taking toll roads: about 30 minutes.
Normal traffic + avoiding a toll road 50 minutes
Traffic: 1 hr to 1.5 or if it's really bad you just won't get home... seriously.
I like the time I have to listen to music or kinda rant to myself, I see a lot of interesting stuff.
I hate my commute, give me work from home I am a fucking IT dude who does everything remotely anyways.
I drive 20-25k miles a year in an ev that can "only" go 80 miles. My daily round trip is 66 miles. (I level 1 charge at work if you're curious)
It's wild how many of my coworkers will tell me "just buy a closer house lol" yeah sorry I can barely afford to rent where I live 3 counties away.
Leaving before 6:55-7 will save you as much as 20 minutes. Leaving after 7 people are generally going 5-10mph under the highway limit as I suspect many just woke up lol.
I live in the city center of a small Northern European city. I walk about 6-8 minutes to my job at a bakery. I like that I don’t pollute the air and I can get my body moving. I can get a feel for how busy the day will be based on what types and how many people are out and about, how the weather feels (if it is nice weather!) and such. I dislike when it rains AND is very windy. Or when the rain has frozen overnight and the cobblestones are extremely slippery.
If you move to a rainy city, invest in rain pants, rain resistant or waterproof shoes. and a high quality umbrella as part of your rain gear.
I'm only in the office once a week. Outside of the winter months, I ride my bike about 4.1 miles (6.6 km). It takes about 25 mins and I cut through a park and church parking lot. I do have to cross one of the busiest roads in my area, with the help of a light. That part is not pleasant. I recently got a phone mount, so now I can listen to the news on my commute as well. The worst part is getting to the office sweaty and having to change into nice office clothes in a bathroom stall. I am the only person who rides to work at my office.
Great question! I'm a woman. Generally my riding pants don't have pockets and when I wear jeans I can't trust the shallow pockets to keep my phone secure. I don't normally wear a jacket when riding.
Also, not that you mentioned this but I wanted to bring it up, I don't like wearing headphones in traffic for safety. I have worn wireless earbuds, but they fell out too many times and I'd have to go back and search for them.
A 30 minute walk through a beautiful but extremely rainy European city. When I lived in SF, it involved bike, Onewheel, and / or ferry, and no matter how I went it took about 50 minutes. I love walking in the rain though, so my current commute is my favorite.
I work from home now but when I did commute, it was 1.5hrs of bus from a suburb to another city across the river. In total I'd have a 3 hour commute a day and returning home, the bus would be so full I'd be pressed up against the window unable to move.
Very happy to not commute anymore, but even if I did have to again, I live downtown now so I'd be able to do a quick walk or bike.
I get up when I want, except on Wednesdays when I get rudely awakened by the dustmen.
I put my trousers on, have a cup of tea and I think about leaving me house.
I feed the pigeons, I sometimes feed the sparrows too, it gives me a sense of enormous wellbeing.
And then I'm happy for the rest of the day, safe in the knowledge there will always be a bit of my heart devoted to it.
I have to walk down to my basement office. It's rough, sometimes there's traffic as a cat might be walking down too. They like to stop and slow things down.
I'm in the rural Midwest, USA. I live in a small village about an hour from my office building. I'm mostly work from home, but when I do drive in, traffic is light, the road was recently resurfaced, and the driftless scenery never gets old.
On the plus side, it gives me two hours to listen to my current audiobook. I tend to err on the positive side and look forward to my commute; glass half-full.
Funny you should mention that series. I did just that and raced through books 1-5. I got to Lord of Chaos and was burned out at that point...might be time to revisit.
25 min by foot and then bus, pretty good. I prefer to not take the car which makes it a 10 min drive tops. I live on the mountains and the only downside is that I have to be very vigilant about bears when I leave home so I can't blast music in my headphones.
It sucks donkey dick. About 1.5 hours in the morning to work and 1 hour home. A lot of the company works from home but I am on a 3 month contract and they want me there. I ONLY support remote users.
It's a little over an hour long, though we plan on changing offices to a location that's 20 minutes closer to where I live, thankfully
Plus, I do get to work from home twice a week
Besides a few awkward zipper merges and one stretch of road with lanes that are far too narrow, it isn't the worst. The evening commute is mired by more traffic, but that's to be expected.
Cycling 4.5km averaging 12 mins at 5:00 and around 14 mins at 13:00
Best things about it are I like cycling, it is free exercise and about twice as quick as driving if not more in the afternoon.
Worst things about it are wind and cunts that can't drive their lumps of metal safely or predictably (particularly taxi drivers, fuck you cunts with razor blades)
Everyone should cycle if they could, it is much better for your physical and mental health and is a good wind down at the end of the day. Just kit yourself out properly for the weather.
I live next to my university so I just walk which is amazing, it's about 15minute long, the only part I don't like is I have to go through a very dodgy neighborhood, other than that it's great!
Daily average if I show up like 20 mins early: 12 minutes.
The worst part is that I can do 99.9% of my job from home. And if I were needed in a pinch, I could be in in about 15 minutes. But no, HR doesn't think it's fair because other people's jobs require them to be on site.
Well fuck them, we have different jobs. We don't need to have the same work life. 😡
I'm sorry to hear that, it really does sound awful having to spend time in traffic just to keep up the appearance of "fairness". I doubt your coworkers would really mind if you asked them personally. And you only add to the traffic and pollution problem with these kinds of practices.
Maybe you could suggest an option of working the first- and last few hours from home and spend 4-6 hours in the office? At least you'd be able to avoid rush hour?
The best lengthy commuting situation I ever had was when I lived in the Phoenix, AZ area going to community college and also working full time. I'd do homework on the bus to school, then on the light rail from school to work and back again. Total commute time was 2hrs per day, but it felt productive and like it added to my day instead of being a burden and a waste.
I am fairly happy with mine. It varies across the week, since I work at a number of different sites each week. Shortest is 10 mins, longest 40 mins.
I live rurally, the sites are all rural and the drive takes me through some beautiful (officially beautiful: designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) countryside: woodland, heath, farms and villages. It is enjoyable no matter what the season.
I don't think that hate anything about it. Getting stuck behind tractors is fairly common and is a bit of a slog sometimes, but it goes with the territory.
Sometimes I will have a podcast on (Philosophise This, In Our Time, Thinking Allowed etc) other times I am happy without.
Obviously it is driving. Usually just me in a car and there are all the pollution issues around that. The nature of the sites means that it is unlikely that there is going to be public transport at anything like the appropriate times anytime in the foreseeable future - there certainly isn't now. I could, sometimes, cycle to the closest one. But both the public transport and cycling options then make if difficult if and when I am called to one of the other sites during the day - which doesn't happen every day, but is unpredictable.
I ride 40mins, twice a day by ebike through mostly dirt/country roads. When weather is good, its great. Less so when rainy but still partially enjoyable. Only real concern is cars...and to be fair, deer. See them every morning, usually close up. Join me in the ebike revolution
The weather is finally cooling off so walking mostly.
I like that the office is so close, and we work half from home so commute immaterial. College age kid usually takes my car so they are doing the high school drop off now, which means I must walk but it takes not longer than the whole home-school-work loop did.
When I walk, I don't like not having a car with me, it's hard to get to yoga class after work, and I liked having it in covered parking. When I drive, I hate the stoplight to get out of the driveway as it is literally half the commute!
I think my insight is colored by my own sensitivity to commuting. My ideal would be to live above the shop, basically. I don't like being out in the edge of town and having to drive back and forth. If you have a job that can be done anywhere, for any company (IT, accounting, sales, etc.) then find a job near your home or a home near your job!
What I hate about it: The often delays and when there’s slight weather change, my country freaks out and busses, trains and metros won’t work.
What I like about it: You can be passive. Got to get the bus at 7AM and feeling shit? Aight, get the bus and then close your eyes for the next upcoming hour. Feeling decent and want to read? No worries an hour drive from A to B. I got to get out at the end-station so that’s a bonus.
I commute by car, I drive 18 miles and it takes about 24 minutes to get to work. I like the highway I take to get there, it leads out west to outskirts of the city and I like how the landscape changes from urban to rural. My workplace is in a commercial park surrounded by mostly undeveloped land. The only part I hate is that there are no bus routes in the area, having a car is a requirement for the commute.
Work from home much of the time but when I do commute into the office I cycle. 24 km one way, takes me about an hour ten to an hour twenty, I love the exercise, and I enjoy riding, except when it rains. And it has rained a LOT this year, has also been very windy and quite cold for longer than usual. On really bad days I take the ferry which takes about the same amount of time and costs about 8 bucks one way. It is somewhat quicker to drive on the way in, but considerably slower coming home in the evening, and we have no parking at work except on early start shift, so I have only driven in 2-3 days this year. I have music when I cycle which is great too now I have a Bluetooth bike helmet
I like - exercise, the pleasure of riding, being out in nature (much of my ride is along seafront) - and saves money. And now it is cycle paths just about all the way its as safe or safer than driving
I dislike - takes a lot of time, over 2.5 hours a day, but that would be the case whichever way I do it. Unpredictable wild weather, unreliable weather forecasts, has been very cold some mornings
For cold weather get some riggers gloves - inexpensive but really warm!
not much to share because it doesn't last long enough. three minutes, give-or-take, depending on how many assholes blast through the crosswalk on the highway i need to cross to get from 'a' to 'b'
I go to school from my dormitory by public transport (tram, bus, metro). There are three possible routes that all take 15–30 mins depending on the time of the day with 1–2 transfers, so I have a bit of variation.
I'm lucky right now because it takes the same amount of time by car as it does by transit. On a good day it might take 20 minutes, on a bad day it could be 30-40. The bad days only happen when there's terrible weather and the roads are at a standstill
About 25 min across the city by motorcycle, or ~35 min by subway, twice a week. I enjoy driving so I mostly do the former unless the weather is truly shitty.
What I like about it: splitting lanes in the morning traffic jam. Wheee!
What I hate about it: Nothing, but I'd prefer 25 min across the countryside instead of the city