….Commuting is Crazy
1. It takes so much time to commute back and forth to work. If you’re spending 30 minutes each way, that means commuting is consuming five hours/week, or 4% of the total time. According to the U.S. government, the average commute is 24.3 minutes/day or about 100 hours/year.
2. There are far too many bad drivers sharing the road who are changing lanes without signaling, stopping abruptly or speeding. Meanwhile, there are far too many in a hurry, which suggests they are chronically late or they love their jobs or they just enjoy driving like maniac during the busy morning commute.
3. There’s tremendous wear and tear on your car, especially if you drive in stop and go traffic. It’s estimated that the annual cost of operating a car is about $6,000 to $7,000 - probably more if you’re putting a lot of mileage on commuting.
4. It’s just bad for the environment as opposed to taking public transportation, walking, bicycling or simply living close to work.
More: According to Forbes, the worst commuting cities in the U.S. are Atlanta, Detroit and Miami. The best/easiest place to commute are Buffalo, Salt Lake City and Milwaukee.
Technorati Tags: Commuting
May 1st, 2008 at 7:06 pm
5. Have you seen the price of gas lately?
Also, why did you tag this post “puppy”?
May 1st, 2008 at 7:14 pm
#5 is right on. As for puppy, it’s a default tag for some reason in the publishing tool we use. Go figure.
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:46 pm
What’s really crazy is that many of the people I work with intentionally have bought houses in the nearly neighboring city. Now granted, it’s only about a 30 mile drive (but probably closer to 45 minute to an hour to drive) for most of them to get to work, but why would you opt for the added drive time, expense, inconvenience, and risk needlessly?
There’s a perception that Midland is nicer than Odessa, but that only holds true if you’re comparing dislike areas within the two cities. Likewise, there’s a perception that you can get more house for the same, money, but that doesn’t truly pan out either. All in all, there’s just a notion that if you live in Odessa, you’re not quite as well off. But my drive time to/from work is sometimes less than 10 minutes.