D.C. Area Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Your maximum commute tolerance?
If you were looking for a new job or a new place to live (or both), what would be the maximum commute time you would consider having? What's the point where your commute goes from tolerable to stressful?
Re: Your maximum commute tolerance?
I think 45mins.... I had a commute of 45mins and it slowly got worse and worse until it was about 55mins and it was getting really frustrating! This was before pregnancy/kids. I remember being pregnant with DD (and working in another building by that point) and wondering how I would've survived my old commute with having to pee so much! Honestly, I'd pee right before leaving the house, and pee 1st thing upon entering the building 25mins later!
Because my kids are still so young and need so much sleep at night, 45mins woudl be the very very max I am willing to do, as it would not give me much time to see them during the week. It'd have to be a really great job!!
Basically this. I think my commute to close-in Arlington was a little over an hour when I was taking Metro and bus, but it wasn't so bad because I could read or stare out the window. Driving for an hour is significantly more stressful than taking an hour in a combination of train, bus and walking and waiting around for the train and bus.
1 hour. Life is too short to spend all your time getting to work.
Although, currently, it takes me 15-17 minutes and I get stabby when it takes more than 20. lol. but this is mostly because I don't think it should take 20 minutes to drive 3 miles.
We make the rockin' world go 'round.
Yeah, actually I get a ton of reading done on the Metro and almost consider it "me" time. (Is that sad?). My current commute is 45 min and I don't mind it in the least. A breeze to get to metro and then a generally pretty delay-free metro ride in.
it definitely depends but after a decade of long and sometimes insane subway commutes in NYC, shorter/easier commutes are a priority for both DH & i. currently, DH works five minutes from our apartment and i have a 20-25 minute walk. this was a dramatic change in our life - we've gained 1-2 hours/day each.
i am not sure i'd even consider a commute that involved driving because the expense and headaches involved with owning a car just isn't worth it to me. i get really stabby in traffic. if i can read my book/kindle during train issues, i am generally ok.
when it's time to move or consider a new job, we'd probably shoot for no more than 30-45 minutes. anything longer just cuts into the work/life balance a little too much.
My commute is about a 20 minute drive now, and that is lovely!
My max car time would be 30. I would go up to about 45 minutes if I took subway.
45 minutes if on Metro, 30 or so minutes driving. (That's with traffic. The distance for me now is only 10 miles. I wouldn't want a 45 mile commute since that can go from bad to horrific too easily.)
That being said, I'm looking at housing where we may be trying to move soon, and where I want to live could be 40 minutes and 25 miles from hubby's job. He'll just have to deal with it because we'd be walking distance to the beach, so that trumps a lot of commuting issues!! (Note: we haven't actually discussed this sacrifice of his...)
30 min or so. Maybe a little bit longer if I didn't have to sit in traffic.
That said, my commute now is 10 min, and I love it. When I changed from a job that had a 60-90 min commute the amount more time I had seriously astonished me.
Stand up for something you believe in.
I have a 45-60 min commute now and I would not want any more - mostly bc I cannot get up any earlier than 5:45 and be sane. Days like today, where it took me 35 mins, tops, are a dream. (I am 30-ish miles, door-to-door.)
My H works about 10 miles from our house and it can take him 20 (or more, dep on lights) mins. So it's not always distance that's the issue as much as time of day (as SSW said, it shouldn't take 20 mins to go 3 miles).
"What is a week-end?"
Same here. We don't own a car now, but even when we do, I never want to have to drive to work (unless maybe if it's in the suburbs... and that's a huge maybe). My commute now is about 45 minutes (about 7 min. to get to the metro via shuttle bus, then about 30 min. metro commute- I'm including wait time too). I wouldn't want to go over 45 min. for the metro part of my commute.
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i'm kind of spoiled because i've never commuted more than 15 minutes. on a bad day, at a previous office, it would take me 20+ minutes to get to work and i'd be kind of pissed when i got there (but again, accustomed to a 15 minute drive).
i don't think i would consider a commute longer than 30 minutes.
Pretty much all of this. I find Metro commuting so much less stressful than driving. Door to door, my commute's about 50 minutes on a normal day, hardly ever varies unless there's a major Metro problem. When I've had to drive it takes me 25 minutes without traffic. With traffic it can be anywhere from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours, so that just does not work for me. I'd go insane.
Walking/Metro - 45 minutes
Driving - no more than 20 minutes
My current door to door commute is 45 minutes (walk to Metro, 20ish min Metro ride, walk to my office) and it is the most I can do. The time on the Metro is great since I get tons of reading done.
By car: 45 min (my current). When it gets up to an hour on bad days, I get punchy. I can't sit still for very long.
By Metro/car: 1hr 15min, apparently, which is what I did for five years. 30 min drive (which was alarmingly only 6 miles... gotta love 66), 30 min Metro, 10-15 min walk. But it was by necessity so I sucked it up. I could only (ever) be promoted if I moved from our office in the 'burbs to downtown. What was I supposed to do? I agree that Metro was "me" time. I would often nap or do some overtime work so that I wouldn't have to work OT at home.
p.s. I always thought it'd be awesome to have a Metro car full of gym equipment so I could elliptical on my way home.
That would bring "stinky Metro riders" to a whole new level!
Scout
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No kids so that may cloud my view.
My commute in the morning is 35 mins, evening commute at 3:30 is ~50 minutes, at 4:30 about 1 hour 15 minutes. My threshold is somewhere around 1 hour. However, its the flexibility my job gives as far as working hours that makes the random days I have a 1.5 commute manageable.
One hour. Because that's what it is now. I really wish it was shorter. That's a lot of time out of the day spent getting somewhere.
"Commute" has taken on a whole new definition with three kids going to two different daycare locations. With drop offs and pick ups added in my "commute" is one hour each way.
On days that DH and I are both headed into DC (his destinations vary depending on the day) In the mornings we leave the house in our minivan at 7:15, we drop off DS at his DCP, then drop off the girls at preschool, get on 395 (sucksass traffic - it's awful) and DH drops me at my around 8:10 then heads to his client site.
On days DH isn't going downtown, we leave the house at 7:00 in the minivan, he drops me at the bus stop, then he does all the dropping off of kids. I get to work around 8:15 when I have to take the bus to metro train.
In the evenings I leave my desk aroun 4:20 or 4:30, take the metro to the burbs, DH picks up DS in the van and then they drive to come and get me at the station, then we drive to the preschool to get the girls. We usually walk in around 5:30 pm.
It's very complicated now that I type it all out. In case it's not obvious, my DH spends most of his life in the minivan dropping us all off and picking us all up. Also driving during the day from client site to client site.
You can see why I was so happy when I got approved to telework two days a week!
This.
I walked to work for years, which I loved. I've also taken the subway or bus, which were fine. I've had only three commutes by car in the last 14 years -- the most tolerable was a solid 30 minute drive in Boston, reverse commute on back roads. It was a very reliable half hour. Then I drove from Silver Spring to Woodley Park, which wasn't terrible, but I had to time it right, otherwise, it took 45-60 minutes.
Last year, I made the mistake of taking a job in McLean and commuting there from the city. Minimum of 40 minutes in the morning; if I left after 4:30, it was a minimum of an hour, but often more. The worst was 3 hours. Because it rained. Wtf.
In short, I could do a reliable half hour somewhere, but the traffic around here is so unpredictable that it stressed me out too much. I teach yoga, and the days I was trying to get from my day job to a class that was a fixed time was very stressful. I can't imagine trying to get to a day care and being stuck in unpredictable, miserable traffic regularly.