That's why I drive a 11 year old Toyota!
The True Cost of Commuting
131–140 of 178 posts
Re: The True Cost of Commuting
#132All of this assumes that a 30-something professional couple with two earners can actually both find (and keep) jobs within biking distance of a home they can reasonable afford. My experience, along with my fiancee, having lived and worked in 3 different major US cities in the past 5 years, is that assumption just isn't reasonable. It's hard enough to find two good jobs in a household in the same _CITY_ right now, muc…
> The only way you can have both high job density and moderate housing prices close together is to allow enough vertical construction to reduce competition for housing to reasonable levels. I think this is a pipe dream, unfortunately. How could you sell such an idea to the existing homeowner who comprise the voting base?
Simple, don't let people vote on it.
Re: The True Cost of Commuting
#133I live in Chicago. I am moving from the suburbs to downtown next weekend.
The higher cost of rent offsets the savings in travel costs.
It's not inconceivable that many people have their offices in a crowded area like downtown Chicago - so they'd be facing the same issue.
But I'm doing it to save time and energy.
Although, again, suburban areas tend to have cleaner air and bigger houses - much better for health than a studio apartment near a high traffic road.
I'd say if you can telecommute, to live in the suburbs is a no-brainer.
If you have to travel, car-pooling and public transport are better options than driving yourself to work everyday.
Re: The True Cost of Commuting
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing about commuting by bike/transit in the Bay Area is that it is doable, largely because there is critical mass with regards to enough people doing it that the facilities exist. In many cities, you cannot bring a bike onto a rush hour train. Here? 2 bike cars per train, packed to capacity. This summer, I was commuting from SF to Stanford. 10-minute bike ride on one end, 5-minute bike ride on the other end, 37…
Have to disagree here. The limited mass transit system that exists in the South Bay is ridiculously slow.
Compared to what?
Re: The True Cost of Commuting
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but you will very selldom have clear sidewalks and even if they have been cleared you still risk falling on some piece of ice.
Get a pair of Kahtoola microspikes and you won't have to worry much about falling on ice or snow. I run all winter in Montana with these. They handle streets or mountain trails without a problem. http://www.kahtoola.com/microspikes.php
Thanks so much for this! I have almost wiped out innumerable times here in the winter. Ordering two pairs of these today.
Re: The True Cost of Commuting
#136It's amazing how many excuses people manage to come up with for how it's impossible for them to follow this kind of advice. Turns out, it's impossible up until the point that you just shut up and start doing it. Sweating is only a problem for most of you because you're unhealthy and overweight. You're overweight because you get no exercise. It's okay: I was too. Then I started cycling to work and lost 50lb. Now sweat…
Interesting. Everything I've heard, and my own experience, indicates the fitter you are, the more readily you sweat. One example, from the guy who coaches Lance Armstrong: http://www.trainrightblog.com/2011/03/28/chris-carmichael-bl...
Re: The True Cost of Commuting
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a couple of places in the US where there is enough population density to make mass transit work. Unfortunately no one wants to spend the money to improve it. Train and bus travel is painfully slow. Commuter rail travel, for example, averages about 30-40 mph, at best. If that doubled, people could commute from "great distances", or simply live 40 miles from a major city and have a 30 minute commute. Is the p…
It's false that "no one wants to spend the money to improve it", as proven by the voting for recent ballot initiatives to fund high-speed rail and BART expansions in California, to cite just one example. A LOT of people would MUCH rather have large amounts of public dollars spent to improve transit than to, for instance, fund wars, bail out bankers, etc.
According to Wikipedia, BART is currently 104 miles of rail. That's probably less than half of the NYC subway. While the expansion is great, I think I'm talking about being even more ambitious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit_expansio...
The HSR is CA was funded in 2008. It looks like the first leg through Fresno might happen in a year or two. China went from no subway to the biggest subway system in the world in 15 years. They have 5000 miles of HSR. We have zero.
If you really want to get people off the highways, mass transit needs to be made more convenient, not the lesser of two undesirable choices.
Re: The True Cost of Commuting
#138I lived 7 miles from work in Menlo Park. I worked by the 280, and lived by the 101. It took me 20-30 minutes to get to work through 14 stoplights, depending on traffic. I didn't even like where I lived, but it was the closest, cheapest place I could find when I moved here.
I moved to San Francisco, 32 miles away. I was commuting everyday at 9:30 and 7 and getting to/from work in 30 minutes flat. No stoplights. And I enjoyed living here much more.
Now I have a roommate I commute with that works near me, except she wants to work at rush hour times, so we spend 40 minutes in traffic each way, which drives me nuts, but we switch out driving every other week so it's mostly worth it, and I love where I live now because I can walk places when I get home and drive less.
It's not always black and white.
Re: The True Cost of Commuting
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only way you can have both high job density and moderate housing prices close together is to allow enough vertical construction to reduce competition for housing to reasonable levels. I think this is a pipe dream, unfortunately. How could you sell such an idea to the existing homeowner who comprise the voting base?
Simple, don't let people vote on it.
For the politician who wants another term, whether she votes on it or the public does makes little difference when the opposition can claim, "She caused your house prices to go down 20%".
Re: The True Cost of Commuting
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have to disagree here. The limited mass transit system that exists in the South Bay is ridiculously slow.
Compared to what?
Any vehicle. Even when going from station to station, VTA light rail is often less than a third the speed of driving. Biking is often faster.
Coverage is also really poor, especially in the southern areas (Cupertino, Campbell, etc.)
(Just to clarify: Biking in the Bay Area is really good. Public transit, at least in the South Bay, not so much.)