Your average commute time

[golden eagle]

For all you working stiffs, how long does it take for you to get to work each day? It's usually no more than 10-15 minutes. I don't have to get on any highways unless I just really want to. I normally don't unless I have to stop at the CVS on the other side of I-55. 

[Alex]

My commute times have varied over the last few years. From last year's horrid 1 hour 5 minute 48-mile commute to 2007's 30 second walk from the house to work!

[Alps]

15-20 minutes.  Same distance as before (about 10 miles), but a lot fewer signals and two freeway/near-freeway stretches.  It feels so close that I went back ths evening just to get dinner out of the fridge (OK and to photograph an old bridge on NJ 159). 

[corco]

It takes 28 minutes for me to get from my apartment to campus via combination driving and bus. If I could drive and find parking, then it's more like 8 minutes

[Chris]

4 minutes, 1 mile.   

[Scott5114]

5 minutes or so on I-35. It helps that I go into work at midnight!

[SSOWorld]

5-10 minutes - just across town.

[Michael]

Currently, it's about 20 minutes from home to college (Weedsport-Auburn).  When I move into Auburn, it'll be about 15 minutes across town.  Like corco, I have trouble finding a parking space that's in the same zipcode! 

[Bryant5493]

Well, when I went to school, down at Georgia State, my commute time varied. Downtown Atlanta from where I live is about ten mile or so. It could take about fifteen minutes, depending on traffic and which route I decided to take.


Be well,

Bryant

[hbelkins]

For all you working stiffs, how long does it take for you to get to work each day? It's usually no more than 10-15 minutes. I don't have to get on any highways unless I just really want to. I normally don't unless I have to stop at the CVS on the other side of I-55. 

About 35 minutes. It's a 25-mile drive on a two-lane rural hilly-to-mountainous route but much of it is along a river valley.

[UptownRoadGeek]

10-15 min. from Uptown NOLA to Mid-City

[mightyace]

the Republican party and the oil benemoths were taking advantage of the communter society.

We've had the Democrat's in control of everything for 8 1/2 months now, and what have they done.  <crickets>

___________________________

Back to the actual question.

I have a 32-40 mile commute that takes 50 min to an hour depending on the route I choose and traffic.  Unlike the poster I quoter, my commute is entirely by choice.

<rant>
I had to get that far away from Nashville, to get away from all the crap that is a modern American city and where the local politicians aren't trying to regulate my life. (about 95% of the Dems and 60% of the Reps)
</rant>

[FLRoads]

I work exactly 30 miles away from the house. But it can take up to an hour to get there, because there are no expressways/freeways for me to travel on, and I have to deal with military traffic from two military bases. Plus the fact that with limited east-west roads my choice of which way I take to work is very limited. But hopefully that will change soon...

[deathtopumpkins]

Takes me about 10-30 minutes to get to school on the most varied types of roads ever, including several expressways and somewhat rural 2-lane roads.

The time varies so much due to the large amount of school buses stopping to pick up kids and all the lights.

[Hellfighter]

usually half an hour to get to school, but I've have made it in 12 minutes.

[Duke87]

Morning commute? 45 minutes.
Evening commute? Can also be done in 45 minutes but it averages longer since I tend to take unnecessary detours and go poking around.

[WillWeaverRVA]

Generally takes me about 20 minutes to get to work (Downtown Richmond), but it can vary up to 45 minutes depending on traffic or whether I take I-95/I-64 or I-/VA 195.

[akotchi]

I have an 18-mile commute that takes about 25 minutes, most of which is on a three-mile section of U.S. 1.

[74/171FAN]

10 minutes to get to/from school depending on if I wait for the parking lot to be clear afterwards 

[froggie]

11 miles.  Almost always within 20-25 minutes, regardless of time of day or day of week.

[J N Winkler]

I have had a number of commutes over the years.  Undergraduate years were generally foot-only (fifteen minutes maximum) since I lived on campus.  But as a graduate student at an university which has no campus, strictly speaking, I have generally relied on a bicycle and all of the places I have had to visit regularly have been within a fifteen-minute, one-way cycle ride.  To do research at archives, however, I have had to take a train (one hour) and then change to a metro system (another thirty minutes to an hour, inclusive of walking within stations and to final destination).  This is grueling, so I try to avoid doing it on back-to-back days.

I also had, for three summers running, a job in Greenbelt, Maryland, so to make life easy on myself, I lived close in to DC, so that I was always moving in the direction opposite the peak traffic.

It is certainly true that we are a commuter society, but I attribute that particular change more to increasing urbanization than to the motor car and the advent of "autopia" per se.  Before cars were common and city dwellers came to see a freeway commute almost as a God-given right, it was possible to have really nasty commutes on streetcar systems and poorly integrated underground railway lines.  There are some ongoing social changes also which I think will make the problem of long commutes even worse.

First, as noted, foreign competition makes some sectors of our existing production economy unprofitable (think farming and many types of light manufacturing), and the sectors that are left are those which are more likely to pursue agglomeration advantages by relocating to large cities.  It has reached the point where I find it difficult to imagine living in a small city unless I were in a business or profession which could be considered to be commoditized in some way--think big-box retail, general law practice, general internal medicine, elementary school teaching, etc.

Second, job tenure is now gone.  This already leads many people to choose long commutes rather than forgo the opportunity to build equity in a home.  We will continue to see home ownership as a social good not just because it leads to stable communities, but also because there are significant switching costs involved in moving house to maintain an easy commute with every change in job.

There are some countervailing trends, of course, which tend to promote the dispersion of economic activity.  To start with, costs go up per capita the more people you pile into a city, and in theory at least a point is reached where marginal benefit is less than marginal cost and the population stabilizes.  Moreover, the technological possibilities inherent in teleworking will expand, and this will allow increasing numbers of people to be located productively and meaningfully in small towns where short commutes are cheap and easy to provide.  But I don't see those coming to our rescue anytime soon.  Big cities have a knack for finding ways to drive down the cost just enough to keep pulling in new people.  The trouble with telecommuting is that it is hard to convince bosses that you are present and working, and because you are not physically present on the boss' premises, you can't protest unfair labor practices by going on strike or staging a sit-in.  It's not just a question of inventing machines that can be used--it's also a process of renegotiating the social structures that govern their use, and it can take a painfully long time for that to result in a situation where companies can make a profit while their employees have a decent quality of life.

[algorerhythms]

20 minutes, one mile, walking. Would be faster if I rode a bike, but then I'd have to buy a bike and learn to ride it without injuring myself.

[Alps]

Mod note: A little bit of politics is okay.  We don't want to be fascists here and cut off free speech.  But, if you want to rant, I've set up a political ranting thread.  Catch is, it's locked.  Every time someone rants, I'm sticking it there and keeping it locked.  That oughta cut down on the back and forth we've been having.