The Problem of Commuting – or Getting Your Life Back
When I started this blog, I really intended to avoid writing stuff about personal experience, preferring instead to use more of a “hard research” approach. But as I begin to write about how to live better in the suburbs I simply can’t avoid my own experiences with commuting, and how mostly eliminating our commutes made our lives better.
I’ll start with the best piece of advice I can give someone: Live close to your work. Or Work close to where you live.
This may seem simple, but it is so often not the case, especially for home owners/buyers. I think there are a lot of factors that drive people to live far from their workplace. In some cities, average people simply can’t afford a reasonable house near their work. Prices are too high, and people are forced to go out to new developments out in the exburbs. Some people are seduced by the ability to get a huge house far away from their work, rather than a more modest one close by. And of course, layoffs, company relocations, etc, can always screw up an otherwise nice setup.
In our previous city, we were in the first category. Austin, Texas is an expensive town and when we wanted to buy a home it simply wasn’t feasible for us to get a house in Austin-proper. So we went out to a small town about 20 miles southeast of town – Lockhart.
The non-monetary price of living so far from our jobs? 40 hours a month of our personal time, spent commuting. I don’t think this is uncommon in our country, but think about it. Every month — an entire work week of time — spent driving to and from work. Time for which you are not being paid.
Luckily, this was before the price of gasoline started getting really high.
I guess that like many people, we simply didn’t realize how much of our lives would be wasted driving to and from work. That is not to mention the cost of gasoline, wear and tear on our cars, stress, or the fact that we were city people in a small town on the weekend — had to drive AGAIN into Austin to find anything to do.
About four years ago we moved to the Dallas area, to an inner-ring suburb. We have made it a point to live close to our jobs. At first, this meant an apartment, and later we purchased a home in the same area. One of us is 5 minutes from the office (or an easy 20 minute walk), the other 15. By moving to a less expensive city and living close to our jobs we have regained 40 hours of time a month — time that was once spent behind the wheel. In those four years, my wife has used that extra free time to get a 2nd Masters Degree. I have used it to take art classes, Spanish classes, and 3 years of martial arts study. We’ve started growing our own veggies. I ride my bike to work several times a week – combining my exercise with my “commute” (if you can even call it that, it is so fun). We have time to cook our own meals. Best of all, life is less stressful because we don’t have to rush around all the time.
Normally when discussing commuting and our car-culture in relation to sustainability, we focus on the environmental impacts. Fossil fuels burned, roads required, etc. But on a personal level, excessive commuting is even more destructive in people’s lives.
Unfortunately, the work-home commute problem can be very hard to solve. If you are in situation where your mortgage simply can’t be paid without the income your commute provides, you have a problem. And this is where the interrelated nature of many other issues gets involved: energy use, consumerism, debt, time management, etc.
However, this is also a problem with a very, very high payoff if you can work it out.
After my own experience, I would recommend no more than a 15 minute commute to work (by car, at least). This is worth shooting for. Best case scenario — find a modest but good home and pay it off. Once the home is payed off, if your job situation changes for the worse (company moves farther away, etc.), you don’t have to go. In all probability you will have the freedom to take a lower paying job still close to home, and probably won’t even notice much difference.
If you can’t afford a home close to work, simply don’t buy one. Rent. Think you need a massive home for all your stuff? Begin reading this.
And if there just aren’t any homes you can afford in the city, move. We loved living in Austin, but “cool” doesn’t pay the bills. You can create a good life in other places. When you reclaim that 40 hours a month, you will have much more time to connect with friends, make new friends, and create the scene you want, rather than trying in vain to buy into one that has left you out.
The only bigger waste of time than being in a job you hate is the time you spend driving to that job.
Update. This article got featured on Streetsblog.net! yaaaaaaay! I’m somebody now!
April 2, 2010
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Bob · 
2 Comments
Tags: Commuting, time mananagement · Posted in: Cars, Commuting
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Streetsblog.net » The True Cost of a Miserable Commute - April 2, 2010
[...] a dead and even toxic part of our day. Today on the Streetsblog Network, the author of member blog Suburban Shift writes about how commuting was sucking the life out of his family — and what he did about [...]
Suburban Shift » Blog Archive » Benefits of Living Close to Work - April 28, 2010
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