No chance
An hour in winter traffic is bad enough - that could easily be more like 3 hours....each way..... in January...4 days a week.
How far is your commute to work?
- Thread starter The_One
- Start date
No chance
An hour in winter traffic is bad enough - that could easily be more like 3 hours....each way..... in January...4 days a week.
Soldato
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- 10 May 2004
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- Sunny Stafford
20 mins bus + 15 mins walk both ways.
I don't see the point of commuting 90+ minutes both ways on top of the 8 worked hours. Surely some of this can be eliminated via hot-desking, local / satellite offices, working from home with the company laptop etc? Also, working a paperless office. It would be greener too, both paper and on car exhaust fumes. Less traffic on the road so that buses actually arrive on time and free-for-all for emergency vehicles. Granted it's different if you work in retail or in another job that is physical (like in a factory), but surely taking us admin monkeys off the road (admin monkeys like me!) would shorten commutes of other workers.
I don't see the point of commuting 90+ minutes both ways on top of the 8 worked hours. Surely some of this can be eliminated via hot-desking, local / satellite offices, working from home with the company laptop etc? Also, working a paperless office. It would be greener too, both paper and on car exhaust fumes. Less traffic on the road so that buses actually arrive on time and free-for-all for emergency vehicles. Granted it's different if you work in retail or in another job that is physical (like in a factory), but surely taking us admin monkeys off the road (admin monkeys like me!) would shorten commutes of other workers.
Soldato
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- 26 Aug 2003
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- 24,288
24 miles, takes about 50-55 minutes. All country or minor roads, not really any 'proper' a-roads the way I go. When I go by the main roads it takes around the same time but I hate it, it feels like it takes twice as long.
Soldato
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80 miles a day. 40 miles each way from North Kent to Central London. I spend between 4-6 hours a day commuting via commuter coach and traffic can get really bad. I leave the house at 05:40 each morning and don’t get home much before 19:30-20:00.
It’s a long day, it’s soul destroying but it’s the cheapest option at 3k a year. After doing it for 7 years, I’m now trying to get my bike licence so I can ride in which should take an hour each way.
I WFH one day a week, to help ease the pressure.
The reason I do it is so that mrs HB has a 2 min commute via car, so she can pop home a lot and tend to our many animals.
Before we moved here, I always had a commute via train which was between 20-45 mins. Over the years the coach has got worse, just sheer weight of traffic on the A2/M25 and Boris did a good job of mucking up London by filling it with super cycle highways that only half the riders use. It doesn’t help that we go through the Blackwall tunnel, one sneeze in their and it closes.
Sometimes, normally a Friday I’ll treat myself to the HS1 train from St Pancras International to Strood and mrs HB picks me up. Because it’s high speed it does it in 32 mins but it’s £22 one way.
It’s a long day, it’s soul destroying but it’s the cheapest option at 3k a year. After doing it for 7 years, I’m now trying to get my bike licence so I can ride in which should take an hour each way.
I WFH one day a week, to help ease the pressure.
The reason I do it is so that mrs HB has a 2 min commute via car, so she can pop home a lot and tend to our many animals.
Before we moved here, I always had a commute via train which was between 20-45 mins. Over the years the coach has got worse, just sheer weight of traffic on the A2/M25 and Boris did a good job of mucking up London by filling it with super cycle highways that only half the riders use. It doesn’t help that we go through the Blackwall tunnel, one sneeze in their and it closes.
Sometimes, normally a Friday I’ll treat myself to the HS1 train from St Pancras International to Strood and mrs HB picks me up. Because it’s high speed it does it in 32 mins but it’s £22 one way.
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(I WFH mostly)
2 to 3 hours is harsh, I did a brief stint at Canary Wharf (walk > southwest trains > tube > walk) and it averaged around 2.5 hours... however at least 1 of those days, usually 2 - everything would turn to **** at Waterloo and that 2.5 hours turns into 3-6 hours, leaving the office at 5pm to get in at 11pm, to get up again and go back in 7 hours time, totally awful - never doing it again.
No way in hell would I commute 90 miles each way to work every day, unless it was for a huge amount of money. So much opportunity for the journey to go horribly wrong and take hours more than it should.
My last job was exactly one mile from my front door to work, my longest commute over the last 30 years was 7 miles, and that was bad enough!
My last job was exactly one mile from my front door to work, my longest commute over the last 30 years was 7 miles, and that was bad enough!
I have done 90 minute commutes (via Car) for a number of jobs and whilst on paper it sounds doable what I found is that you need to consider and accept that travel time is almost certainly variable. Also depends on the road type, A roads vs Motorway etc on what kind of journey experience you’ll likely have.
I personally found that especially on Fridays my 90 minute commute went from 90 mins to 2 or 2.5 hours on the return trip. On one of them which involved a section of A roads the journey was often sole destroying due to being stuck behind agricultural vehicles for 10+ miles.
Some people can cope doing it but I would often arrive home physically exhausted and it made me feel burnt out. Now I work 12 minutes away and my quality of life (and petrol bill) is significantly improved. You don’t get that time back once it’s gone.
My advice, ok for the short term but it will eventually wear you down. It might be different if you commute via train, that being said when I have been to London on business the long trip morning commuters all look as exhausted as I was driving! Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
The way I deal with it is you turn into some kinda robotic mode, you have to otherwise you lose it, I've seen so many people broken by my job travels and moved on to other things, the worst is Friday's, pure body bags every single week without fail
Interesting. I had no idea that things like the weather/road closures/public transport delays/cancellations didn't affect out of hours of travel.
Anyway, even in your perfect world of 3 hours day, it's far too much for me. Disclaimer: I'm a lazy git.
Deleted member 651465
Deleted member 651465
I used to commute 53 miles each way, 5 days a week. My house is approx 500m from the nearest motorway on-ramp and the hospital was about 2 miles from the off-ramp so probably as “best case” as you could get.
A good day took an hour, a normal day took 1hr 15 mins and a Friday took 2hrs each way.
Then you get the Friday before bank holiday, at a pathetic 3hrs and the occasional shunt, costing you 4hrs. Not to mention the record 7hrs when the M4 was closed due to a fatality.
At nearly double the distance I think I’d want to top myself. I used to listen to so many podcasts to pass the time that I found myself constantly running dry and looking for things to pass the time.
These days my commute is 10 miles and it takes 25 minutes by car or 15 minutes by motorbike
A good day took an hour, a normal day took 1hr 15 mins and a Friday took 2hrs each way.
Then you get the Friday before bank holiday, at a pathetic 3hrs and the occasional shunt, costing you 4hrs. Not to mention the record 7hrs when the M4 was closed due to a fatality.
At nearly double the distance I think I’d want to top myself. I used to listen to so many podcasts to pass the time that I found myself constantly running dry and looking for things to pass the time.
These days my commute is 10 miles and it takes 25 minutes by car or 15 minutes by motorbike
Every Monday I travel to Warsaw, either from Vienna or the UK, depending on where I spend my weekend.
Vienna weekends: Leave the apartment around 5, take the U3 subway (16 mins) followed by the train to the airport (20 mins give or take) then catch the flight to Warsaw (1hr 15 approx) then taxi to the office (40 mins)
Through the week I commute to and from the hotel and office via taxi (25 mins each way)
Thursday PM I fly back to Vienna (same routine as the first but in reverse)
If I'm having a UK weekend the first and last commutes are longer - instead of subway and train I need to drive to Luton airport which is around 90 minutes each way.
There are exceptions, I'm only in Warsaw until March, after that it will be somewhere else.
Vienna weekends: Leave the apartment around 5, take the U3 subway (16 mins) followed by the train to the airport (20 mins give or take) then catch the flight to Warsaw (1hr 15 approx) then taxi to the office (40 mins)
Through the week I commute to and from the hotel and office via taxi (25 mins each way)
Thursday PM I fly back to Vienna (same routine as the first but in reverse)
If I'm having a UK weekend the first and last commutes are longer - instead of subway and train I need to drive to Luton airport which is around 90 minutes each way.
There are exceptions, I'm only in Warsaw until March, after that it will be somewhere else.
I used to drive 74 miles a day to Essex and back from London; used to take 1 1/2 each way at a minimum and often more if the M25 was broken or any accident along the way... I wouldn't recommend it. I did it for two years and it was enough; left before it went light and got home after dark through winter
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3 miles, varies between 8 and 30 minutes by car (Swindon traffic is that bad) depending on shift plus 5 min walk from staff car park. Occasionally use the bike which takes around 13 mins inbound/16 mins outbound (steep hill), but not really a committed cyclist. Can be dodgy riding home off late turn watching for the scrotes out to cause trouble and trying not to inhale the weed fumes as you pass by their little huddles. Tried it a couple of times for Nights but while riding in okay trying to find the physical effort going home another matter!