I have a ten minute commute. I couldnt imagine having that kind of commute without public transit. Now Im going from Kingston to a small town in Surrey, and its nice to be going against traffic most of the time (the traffic is caused by schools or roadworks). not an area where long commutes are typical) and moved out of town to save money about 18 months ago. Work until 5-6PM When it should take 15 minutes and it takes 1+ hrs, thats when I lose my mind. Yes, staying on ones own side of the river is key. Most people who have those really long commutes are traveling farther than you, or so it seems to me. Even a 15 minute shift makes the commute better or worse. Much better. I got you beat. I do an hour drive to and from work every day and its fine so 2 hours once a week Im sure will be no bother. with no traffic, so 2 hours isnt a huge difference. MERCED? In my mind, it was a better commute. Your odds of staying safe on the road are probably not as good as youre assuming. I think it is very hard to understand LA geography without spending some time driving there (and you can spend decades there without seeing or interacting with 2/3 of it, depending on the corridors you frequent). severe financial hardship) or I could work during the commute and cut down time at the office. Without him around, I had to quit my job to take care of the baby. Because I guarantee you that 30 min is not an average commute for 30 miles ANYWHERE in LA at rush hour. LW I understand your struggle. I honestly didnt think less than an hour was possible in NYC. Oh, OP, I feel for you. And then the housing is even more expensive. Is it normal? Is it possible to break into the beauty industry as a remote worker, ie not living in NYC or LA? even that is on the higher end of what i would prefer. In LA, you have the option to pick a different location for either your home or your job. It was a contract job so it didnt make sense to move) and I hated every second of it. The city was definitely designed with cars in mind and commuting by bike would be a nightmare. I remember days it took over an hour of just sitting on Westlake to Mercer to the 5. If you get off the freeways and drive through the city, youll just get stuck behind red lights, pedestrian traffic and buses. After 2 hours of bumper to bumper traffic, 45 minutes of highway speeds is amazing and were grateful. God, that is a terrible commute. Ride share with a coworker and alternate driving days so that this time is your social time. A few of my senior bankers have 90-minute one-way commutes, and I just don't understand why people go through that. And Id complain about my commute from West Hollywood (On Palm @ Santa Monica Blvd) to Beverly Hills (Doheny @ Wilshire). For a while, my husband and I were both commuting in opposite directions from our house, each taking roughly an hour. Two hours by car in traffic sounds utterly vile. can bad employees and bad managers change? I dont see it as a red flag, I see it as an extremely valuable data point that he is providing her, namely this is part of what it means to live here. She needs facts in order to plan her life in a way that is maximally satisfying to her. Yes, exactly! Unfortunately, public transit wasnt a great option for me. My train service is fairly OK, and I always get a seat both ways. For context, Im in the DC area and my commute door to door is roughly an hour on mass transit. In 1990. Typical and normal are two different things. But 2 hours? Im in Northern California in the Bay Area and 30 miles would be maaaaaybe an hour in rush hour. I cant tolerate a life where I live 90 minutes from the things I like and/or need to get to. The trade offs were the unique work opportunities in my field and a 4 ten hour day schedule. This is my current reality. Instead were now spending billions of dollars trying to get our transit system caught up. OC or LB for me! Can you take public transit part of the way (I know thats a long shot in LA)? Now we live in a different state where distance is measured in minutes, and all our colleagues are amazed we would agree to a 45 minute commute. When I go home to visit, I wont even get behind the wheel any longer. Using surface streets cut the it down to about 35-40 minutes. Fullerton, Anaheim, Irvine and Santa Ana have Amtrak and metrolink as well as freeways. Definitely not normal here! On days where I have to drive through morning commute traffic to get to appointments and such, it makes me CRAZY. Lordy, I hope someone is watching. yikes thats awful. Waze does not work. On a bad day 2 hours. Currently Im at about 25 minutes depending on traffic. Some people do it, sure, but Id say around an hour to an hour and a half is the norm. 1hr 15 each way for me, but it is via train/walking. I did have a job with a two-hour each way commute once, but I only put up with it because one, no one else would hire me back then, two, it was temporary, and three, I didnt have too many reasons to hurry back home. Speaking as a lifelong Bay Area resident, I would never say that 2 hours is *normal* for the Bay. My commute (in the suburbs in the northeast) is 45 minutes in the morning, 60-70 minutes in the evening. Include the Commute Cost Calculator on Your Own Website! Thirty miles was an hour and a half commuting time on the bus in the HOV lanes and it was so stressful. Here in California, I recently (2.5 months ago) accepted a new job as an EA for a great company thats about 30 miles away. I was going to say in my comment above, I didnt mind an hour or even longer commute when I was on public transit and could read, but that would frustrate thefudge out of me! Even then, traffic here was pretty heavy. My folks, who now live in backwoods Michigan, laugh at me for complaining when it takes me (in the greater metro radius of a major city) half an hour to get somewhere, since thats pretty much their minimum drive to get to civilization but theyre thinking of 30 minutes on the M22 with nothing much going on, whereas Im thinking of battling Baltimoron traffic for 30 minutes! Its not about what a normal commute is, its about what the OP wants in her life and what shes willing to do in terms of her commute. It doesnt matter if its normal or not. I spoke to my manager, and he agreed to this and said I can commute once per week (when the office opens up again). If any of those were different, Id change jobs or areas for a better commute. And its even got the added bonus of freeing up the Pasadena parking lots because fewer people are leaving their cars there, theyre leaving them at the Azusa stop. OP, Im older than you by 20, so let me share my thoughts on a long commute. There are vanpools that leave as early as 5 AM to beat the traffic in, and most leave around 3:30 to beat the traffic home. No thanks! Ive done it 3-4 times a week for 20 years! The few times I drove in (a 45 minute drive without traffic), it was 1-1.5 hours each way. I could never do more than 30-35 minutes. However if youre going to go down that route Id get something written into your contract specifying thats its 1 day per week. I am borderline fanatical about not touching my brakes on the freeway for this exact reason. No need to do it all by one method. The commute from north/south might be different. I hope you find the perfect combination. LA is an entirely different level of traffic. The holidays also have the highway by my office all locked up during rush hour, and it took me an hour to drive 2.5 miles one year. For example, I lived by Sundet Junction/Silverlake and worked in the San Gabriel Valley (~16 miles), and my commute was 20-45 minutes because I was on a reverse-commute path. Just wanted to make the distinction re: commute norms :). Each individual needs to decide if the can live with it, quit, move, or suck it up for the paycheck. I used to do a 2+ hour commute for an internship, but it was because it involved multiple public transit connectionsit was not pleasant. Traffic IS horrendous, and many, MANY people commute 2 or more hours to work. I have been working at home for over 5 years now and cannot imagine going back to a job I had to commute to. Just try me.). The traffic was two red stoplights. They drive in early, do their gym time, and thus avoid traffic at its worst in the mornings. I pay at the top of my rent price range to live closer to downtown because not only was my previous commute causing me anxiety and road rage, but it is just more worth it for me to have extra time on the weekdays to get things done and unwind. Ugh. And Id be forever stressed about what time Id need to leave for work to make it on time, knowing theres no way Id know for sure because of the human factor. This is not a normal commute anywhere outside California or a handful of world megacities. Maybe try to find something closer to home? I think this is exactly the problem. Well done. Try to beat the worst of the traffic and have a leisurely breakfast somewhere/go to the gym/nap in the office? She calls friends. I lived in Tokyo for years and 90 minutes-two hours is common but that is by train so you dont have to pay attention. Remote work is the wave of the future, and eliminating 4 hour round-trip commutes are one of the many reasons why. If you were able to be close enough to work and be car free how much money could you afford to spend on housing to make that happen? That and sleep leave four hours of free time a day at most, if you call it free time when youre getting up, getting dressed, going to bed, cooking, eating, or going to an appointment. (And then for 2 more yrs, it was only an hr each way.) This is comforting, I am preparing to move to Malibu to live with an elderly family member and dreading the commute. I lived in Hollywood nearly 30 years ago, and would often visit my parents in OC. My east coast transplant friends cannot fathom how LA natives do this day in and day out. this is def normal for Southern California. With construction on I-5 and 99? 37 traffic lights, multiple school zones. My actual work commute is short (god bless flyover country), but Ive done long drives a lot and 2 hours of driving on a rural NM back road is *so* much less stressful than 2 hours of driving in Austin. And that was for the majority of my working career. The miserable part was just being completely uncertain on a day-to-day basis what it would be until Im actually out there on the road. The average commute in the U.S. is 26 minutes, according to Census data. It was an aggravating way to start the day anyway. I have a sister who lives in rural Washington state, and one morning while I was visiting, she warned that wed be stuck in traffic to go to the restaurant she had in mind. The commute is one of my top criteria in deciding whether or not to take a job. I used to do a similar commute. What was the most outrageously unwarranted bollocking you After the Hy-un-dai, sorry I mean, Hyun-dai, fiasco, what Press J to jump to the feed. I drive 30 minutes one-way and that is about my limit. 91 to 605 to 7th st. can I get my coworker to stop using awful corporate jargon? I once had a job where, about a month after I arrived, my boss decided instead of working on the main site (lovely building, 10-minute walk from my flat, in a fun, vibrant city), Id spend 80% of my time at an alternative site. I live in the SFV, two major freeways are short drives away. Did the research note distance? I know lots of people who work in NYC and have 1.5 to 2 hour commutes from Suffolk and even Pennsylvania because housing is way less expensive in those places. Its also better for the environment and limits your cars exposure to CA freeway road hazards, because we all know theyre not very well maintained and CA drivers can be Irrational. I work in Pasadena, where you need to earn about 2.5x the living wage in order to get by. Oh, I agree! And Id take a longer drive on residential side streets over a shorter one on the highway. I live/work in northern VA (just south of DC), and traffic is notoriously bad here, as well, though not as bad as in LA. I commuted from Huntington Beach to Burbank one timeit wasnt fun, but it was normal to me. I think the conclusion usually is that life is too short to suffer and waste that kind of time. Hope you dont mind me interjecting, but I can recommend something if you like smart comedy! It is not sustainable. Mine used to be 15 minutes each way; now its more like 30 minutes each way, part of which is walking time because my assigned parking is nowhere near my office. Im a slight woman, Asian, in my mid twenties and took the train from LB to DTLA for work. LA isnt great for that as far as Ive seen and I cant imagine drivers there being fantastic about sharing the road. It was horrid, really horrid. Just dropping in here to say that 45 minutes is astonishing for when you were living in New York. I used to have that. Exactly. Anything over than 30mins by car would be a nope for me. Also lived in LB, commuted to Newport/CDM. And there wasnt an accident or anything, just traffic. Its very specific to you. Im on the east coast and one of my previous jobs was a minimum 45 min. Good luck! Most of it is interstate driving. I used to drive from OC to Pasadena once a month to sell at the Rose Bowl flea market, but since that was at the literal crack of ass on a Sunday, there was NEVER any traffic! Decades ago, my family kept moving an hour in either direction each time my dad who worked one-year aerospace contracts got another job that was always in the opposite direction. *My cousin commutes from the edge of the surrounding New York Metro Area to the city. My husband and I are considering buying a house right now, and since we live in a city where walking is not common, our realtor seems bemused by the fact that we outright reject anything more than 2.5 miles from my office. There are people commuting from Sacramento to San Franciscono kidding! Hosted by people who live in SoCal. LA traffic was nowhere as bad as the 401 in the Toronto area. Plus after 8 or 9 am, the buses dont come as often. Yep. Im a huge fan of Seanan McGuire, but I never listened to her October Daye series in audiobook / wont switch at this point for that series. He works off-hours (starts at 6 am and leaves at 3 pm) so its not bad, but if he does hit traffic staying late it about 45 min-hour. Books Are Our Superpower. Sometimes I would take the commuter bus into downtown, then hop on the Expo line to work. Welcome to horrible LA traffic. Tracy, Manteca, Stockton, Merced, Sacramento, Vallejo. The trains are fine. So theres even MORE traffic trying to get there at 8 AM from all the far flung sprawling areas. According to google: the city extends for 44 miles (71 km) longitudinally and for 29 miles (47 km) latitudinally. Theres tons of people here in the same area disagreeing that 2 hours one way is normal. However *I* prefer the one thats a quick no-stops jump on the freeway, and he prefers the one thats a leisurely drive on surface streets. Everyone has to consider how much more theyre willing to spend to save time getting to work (or how much of a pay cut theyre willing to take to get a job closer to home). Commutes longer than 45 minutes are up 12 percent in that time span, and 90-minute one-way commutes are 64 percent more common than in 1990. I lived in downtown LA for 2 years and commuted to Culver City, about 12 miles away. At my last job, I had also had a ten minute commute on foot. I do think its more about what works for you than what the norm in your region is. Ive had an hour commute on the train before. Ill take my smaller midwestern city (metro population of about 2.5 million) where I can get to work in less than 30 minutes and I dont need to sell a vital organ so that I can afford to buy a house or rent a decent apartment. On google maps, its less than 10 miles, door to door. Some folks could handle this and would be fine, and others are not okay with this sort of commute. I live in Orange County and work in Burbank. Im ready to take a pay cut in favor of a better work life balance I pretty much made up my mind a day after sending in my letter that I am going to quit. 30 miles is very far for LA commuters. So maybe theyre shaving some time off to make the LA one seem even worse in comparison? Doh! Thank you everyone for your advice, it definitely played a part in my decision. Im looing at jobs in Santa Monica, so its good to hear the PCH is a nice drive. drive (one way). It usually takes 45 minutes each way with me coming in and leaving early. I vowed to never drive more than 30 mins each way (on a regular basis, there always can be exceptions) and have actually chosen to live really close to my jobs since then. There are a lot of jobs in OC. I have 20 min commute now. Two to three hours. Its not common but, sadly, is becoming more common. ), and though the traffic there isnt as bad as LA, its certainly giving it competition. They say the key to happiness in LA is a short commuteits totally true. mustang1 Guru Location London, UK 15 Jun 2022 #26 Yeah sure, why not. The Commute with Carlson. Yeah, if it was breezing through traffic at least but nope. It gets tiring fast. I live in West LA and used to live in Westwood those might sound like suburbs, but theyre actually LA proper (controlled by LA city council and mayor). Oops, I posted something else before I saw this. +1 Has nobody mentioned the total amazingness that is this stats website? Im job searching and having a hard time applying for companies that would put me in a car for longer than that or a bus for more than an hour. My biggest concern with many miles is what happens when your car is in the shop. I can definitely see where doing it on public transit would make this sort of commute much more bearable, as then what would be windshield time on a car commute can then be used for other more enjoyable/productive things. I took it just to go visit someone. Mind you the highway is 4-7 lanes wide at any given time plus 3 feeder road lanes! I didnt read most of the comments, but I did want to give advice on how to survive that commute while you have to do it (hopefully, not for long!). Possibly doing a trial period to see what he thinks. I think the issue is that you dont have a friend circle yet. I hope you find a great job that is closer. Its just a matter of life in a major metro area. I was stressed and tired and missed my family. Once or twice a week is fine. Im currently at my shortest commute- 15 minutes from inside my condo to inside my office. One hour for me, but that includes dropping off a kid at school. That said, when I relocated to the Northwest, I was adamant that I needed a much shorter commute. Even if the boyfriend or other people find it acceptable, they really dont have to give up trying to find another solution. Then Id get rid of my car and take the bus everywhere. People are busy going about their own lives no matter whether youre in South Central or Wilshire Blvd. Now. I absolutely dont want to live where I work, not just bc of rent but also bc I am at the point in my life where I do not want to live that city struggle life new gig it is.I was in my last job for 5+ years so Im not worried about looking like a jumper or anything. If I for some reason arrive at the park and ride after 8am, it can take forever to find a place to park and that will increase my commute. Most of my coworkers that live on the North/South Shore of Boston commute around that far. 30 miles in 2.5 hours. Stop arguing with your boyfriend. When I first started applying to jobs in LA from NYC, I applied to a job in Orange County even though my intention was to live with my best friend in Koreatown. That is normal for L.A., I am sorry to say! Traffic can be heavier in some areas than others. When its preferable to people to drive 2 hours over a mountain pass each way rather than live within 30 miles of work because its a less stressful commute with the same amount of time as living closer? I know most people would love that, but living that close to work would stress me out (not being able to disconnect, running into people after hours, etc.). A survivor of a 2-2.5 hour one-way commute who has sworn off long commutes ever since. It would take me only 15 min longer to walk, which I should probably start doing! If I hit traffic at the wrong time, it could take me 1.5-2 hrs to make what was normally a 25-30 minute drive. It once took me 3 hours to drive the 15 miles from west LA to Torrance. Where I live now? That said, the days where the commute gets over 1 hour are tough, and I definitely couldnt do that twice a day. But driving thats long. :(, If you give me some idea of what you like, I can make audiobook recommendations! Good luck! Like can they really not fathom that other people have different thoughts and feelings than they do. No, Im sure the drive time for that distance is completely normal. It feels so much shorter when youre actually driving a reasonable speed. It is doable for me, and Im not driving that entire time. I wont leave SoCal again til I shuffle off this mortal coil. It takes about 30 mins to go 30 miles to and from work. They followed on one with a 3 hour commute one way! He missed the birth of our baby. It can be normal just off of congestion. Lately, Ive started bringing my laptop and working, so perhaps Ill start leaving earlier and spending less time at the office. Too many people, too much traffic.even though I learned to drive out there, I cant do it any more. It would be one thing if they kept to themselves while riding the train (which is what most people do) but Ive seen them curse out other passengers for no reason. I now live 9 miles from my work and my commute is 45 minutes. 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