NationStates Jolt Archive

I just had an horrible morning. 80 minutes from my house to my workplace - and that's about 5 km; average speed 3,75 km/h, slower than walking! The underground was kaputt. A suburban train was cancelled and I had to wait 30 minutes out in the cold for the next train. No benches to sit on.

****heavy insults against the transportation system of the city of Milan and the Lombardia region:mad: :upyours: :mp5: :gundge: ****

Normally it takes me 45 minutes: 5 minutes with the trolleybus, 15 minutes with a suburban train and then 10 minutes with a regional train, plus 10 minutes waiting.

Ok, now, tell me about your commuting life.

The municipal transportation authorities are nicknamed Verspätungsbetriebe for a reason! :upyours: They are especially annoying because there are 2 trams going in my direction and one ends one stop before I need to get off. When I lived at my parents, things were worse! the bus a really, really long journey of 40 minutes for a distance which is 20 minutes by car.

Walk the whole 5km then.

I commute by car, and it is hectic in the mornin' when it seems like all 2.8 million residents here are all traveling at the same time. I swear, it takes 40 minutes for what should take 20. Average speed is about 35mph. :mad:

I generally walk.

I used to catch the tram to work, but my office moved from the city to an outlying suburb. Now I drive & it takes me about 20 minutes.

I bus it to work. Since it's anywhere from 10 minutes early to half an hour late, I spend more time standing around waiting for it than I do sitting on it travelling. It only takes about 15 minutes to get where i'm going.

I commute by car, though I much, much, much prefer the subway I had in new york, here in little rock the public transportation practically doesn't *exist*. I get on and off of work at unusual hours though, so my commute is either after 10pm or before 8am half the week, and after 2pm and after 11pm the other half. particularly the late nights, I'm nearly the only person on the road. rush hour traffic is bumper to bumper, though, and would probably take twice as long. little rock is horrible..."urban planners from hell" seems to be a fairly popular phrase around here - to top it all rather than revitalising the old parts of the city or building more densely, most of the city just grows *west* - so there's a 15 mile stretch of suburbia with a historical district and a bunch of slums at the far eastern end of it. I heard on the news that the entire metropolitan area (if you can call it that when the whole shebang doesn't even have half a million people) is about to get in trouble for being over legal greenhouse gas emission levels...the fact everybody has two cars and drives 30 miles a day to and from work doesn't help a damn bit.

88 miles on a Honda VFR800, mostly on one wheel :upyours:

Normally it takes me 45 minutes [to go 5km]: 5 minutes with the trolleybus, 15 minutes with a suburban train and then 10 minutes with a regional train, plus 10 minutes waiting.

5km is a little over 3 miles... That's a 45-minute walk. Why not just walk it? Or get a bike? Then it'd be 15 minutes tops.

My morning commute is long and arduous. I have to go from my bed all the way to my living room. That's got to be six or seven metres. I do walk though.

Working at home is ace :)

I used to commute to Edinburgh five days a week. This consisted of walking the mile into the train station and the 1 hour on the train and a 1/2 mile walk to work. repeated on journey home.

it was rubbish. i hated it.

now i work in Stirling. I'm 2 km from work and walk there and back everyday (except when the weather is raining very heavily then i'll get the bus to work, but still walk home). its nice. time to clear your mind and be nice to friends and family when you get home.

it would take a massive payrise to make me commute again!!

Risottia you should get a bike or walk.

i don't commute far at all - just to the other side of this part of the city over by the docks. depending on the traffic it takes anywhere between 10 or 30 minutes.

however i think we're moving offices to a place 12 miles away by motorway, the M3.... which is horriffic for traffic and jams :( so it'll probably end up taking at least 45 minutes.

Wait, shouldn't there be some kind of definition as to when you're actually "commuting" and when you're just "getting to work"? I mean, "commute" is usually used for people who work in a town other than the one they live in, or, like in the US, in a business district far removed from the suburb they call home.

I take the car to get to work and it takes me about 25-30 minutes (20 without any traffic) for what I think are about 12-15 kilometers, but that's all inside the city proper, so I don't really think it counts as a "commute".

As a train conductor I move commuters from the Kent coast into London every day. The commuters going to Victoria station are generally ok, but the ones going to Cannon Street (the city types) are generally miserable bastards. They seem to take offence at the fact that I want to do my job and see their ticket. And of course if the trains are more than 30 seconds late I am personmally responsible for this...........

by bus, each day i spend 2.5 - 3 hours on average travelling between my house and university (waiting included). that sucks really hard, especially because a lot of my friends rent a room near the university, and when we go out i always have to ask someone if i can sleep in their room.
i also hate busses, its full of annoying people. today i sat next to some children who were constantly fighting and making noise etc.
:(

88 miles on a Honda VFR800, mostly on one wheel :upyours:

what's with that thing at the end.

sitting on it travelling.

What? Sitting on a bus? I've had dreams about it...:(

5km is a little over 3 miles... That's a 45-minute walk. Why not just walk it? Or get a bike? Then it'd be 15 minutes tops.



Sadly biking through Milan is an hazardous option.
No bike lanes at all, terrible pollution, tramway tracks and lots of ugly paved roads (no asphalt, stone slabs!), plus pedestrian crossing the street whenever and wherever they like, and crazed motorists... and I'd arrive soaked in my sweat.
I used to go to the university by bike, but a jerk of a taxi driver slammed his bloody <a href="http://forums.jolt.co.uk/archive/car">car</a> door into my arm. Got a nice <a href="http://forums.jolt.co.uk/archive/scar">scar</a> there.

And did I mention bycicle thieves?:(

added: and walking through the centre of Milan is nightmare. People walk too slowly and jam the pavements. Also too many Japanese tourists moving around in crowds and feeding the bloody pidgeons in Piazza del Duomo.

Normally catch the train. Today I drove my car.

A power-cut had taken out all of the traffic lights near my office, traffic was at a stand-still for over half an hour.

Sadly biking through Milan is an hazardous option.
No bike lanes at all, tramway tracks and lots of ugly paved roads (no asphalt, stone slabs!), plus pedestrian crossing the street whenever and wherever they like, and crazed motorists... and I'd arrive soaked in my sweat.
I used to go to the university by bike, but a jerk of a taxi driver slammed his bloody car door into my arm. Got a nice scar there.

And did I mention bycicle thieves?:(

I used to cycle around London, so I know the sort of thing... Not many paved/cobbled roads there though, fortunately.
The trick is to ride just as you'd drive, not let the enemy vehicles intimidate you, and not stop for pedestrians apart from at the proper crossings (just aim for the biggest gap - if you hit them they get hurt more; you're armoured).
They can sense fear, don't show any!

Edit:
added: and walking through the centre of Milan is nightmare. People walk too slowly and jam the pavements. Also too many Japanese tourists moving around in crowds and feeding the bloody pidgeons in Piazza del Duomo.
Yeah, the Legions of the Damned are incredibly vexing :(

I don't commute anymore!!!

Up until a few weeks ago I would take the subway an hour into Manhattan every day. Now I walk for fifteen minutes...:)

my journey into uni and/or work is about the same distance as yours. generally takes me about 25 to 30 minutes. 7 or 8 minute walk to the bus stop then 15 minutes or so on the bus, then about a five minute walk from the bus stop to where i'm going. it would take me about 45 minutes to walk but it isn't a pleasant journey (my nose and sinuses are always tingling unpleasantly from the fumes by the time i get in) so i usually get the bus. more often walk back though cuz it's all down hill and i can just amble rather than power walking. when the weather gets a bit better i'm going to get my bike fixed and cycle in, hopefully get fitter from that cuz the journey in is all uphill.

I take about 15 mins on the bus, then walk for another twenty minutes to get to uni. Although I intend to get another bike soon, but a crappy one that isn't worth stealing. I hate having to get the bus at this time of year. There are too many Christmas shoppers so I have to stand up and sometimes the buses just go right past because they are completely packed. :mad:

I run various businesses out of my house, when I do have to go somewhere (like to meet a client or teach a class) I just drive.

I used to have to walk down, catch the ferry into Central, walk to the subway, catch a train for 5 stops, change lines for 3 stops, change train stations (different lines completely - as in different companies) for 2 stops, change lines for 3 stops and then walk to school.
All-in-all, it'd take me about 80 minutes from door-2-door.
Home, I could take a bus that would take me right to Central. That alone would take an hour though. Add in another 45 minutes for the ferry (assuming I got there on time) and it was close to 2 hours getting home.

Now, however, I'm teaching on the island I live on. This means an 8 minute walk to school. Which also means an 8 minute walk home a nap during lunch time.
Or snog with the g/f, as what happened today.:D

So much happier with my new job for many reasons, the above being one of the big ones.


That said, the subway here is awesome. Average wait time between trains through-out the day is a little over 2 minutes. 99.9% error-free rate, too. In two years of using it, I've had to wait more than 5 minutes twice (10 minutes once, 12 the other time). This is about average for the typical commuter here.

I drive, by myself, about 2.5 miles each way. Takes, oh, 15 or 20 minutes door-to-desk. I should take mass-transit but I'm lazy and it's a lot easier to hop in the car (and faster).

Bicycle. It takes me about 20 minutes to get to work, mostly downhill, and forty minutes to go uphill back home later. Unless I feel like going quickly, but in the snow, that gets dicey.

It would take me at least 40 minutes each way in a car or a bus (most likely more), and an hour each way by metro (subway/underground).

Jesus I'd walk. That's only like 3 miles. It'd only take 45 minutes to walk it. I have a 10 minute drive to work, it's roughly 5 miles from home to work. I could walk it, but it'd take me well over an hour to walk that far. Besides walking down highways is not particularly healthy.

I drive 2 miles in a very old Honda Civic that begs for death every inch of the way (well most of it does... engine's still going strong =)). My average speed is about 45 mph, which I'm pretty sure is over 50 km/h.

Jesus I'd walk. That's only like 3 miles. It'd only take 45 minutes to walk it.
To be fair to the OP, what you're suggesting is good in hindsight. I'm sure if the OP knew that the subbie was going to be crap and he would be stuck there for 1/2 an hour, he would have walked.
But you never know how long you'll be stuck in such a predicament so invariably resign yourself to waiting. And then realise that you've been there so long that you can't do anything else but continue waiting.

I know, I've done that. Stood and waited for 45 minutes for a bus that normally had a 10 minute schedule. Ended up having to get a taxi ($15US) and still missed my ferry home (meaning an hour's wait for the next one).
If I'd known it was going to not turn up, I'd have taken a different bus that took a longer route but ended up in the same depot.
Hindsight can be a bitch.

Wish I had a job to commute to. Although all the jobs I apply for I'd walk to, or get a bus in bad weather. Even if I had a car.

These days I have given up on the whole mass transit mess around Washington DC.
I drive – simple as that. Straight from the driveway in front of my house to the parking garage of the office building I work in, all in a measly 80 minutes (presuming no additional delays from accidents or construction or whatnot). Half is on the highway, half going through stoplights.

Fortunately I rarely have to drive during rush hour. On the unlucky days when I do have to drive in rush hour, it takes me about 150 minutes. Yup, 2 and a half hours – once again, this is assuming no accidents or broken down cars in the middle of the road, which happen on an almost daily basis.

Now if you want to talk about the drive home on Fridays during the summer… well I just don’t bother for a while. If I left at 5 pm on a Friday during the summer, it would take me a bare minimum of 3 hours to get home (once again, not including any additional delays from accidents). For some stupid reason thousands of people decide they want to sit in traffic for several hours so they can go to the beach for the weekend.

I used to try to take the bus, it is actually very convenient.
A 20 min drive, followed by an 85 minute bus ride, and a 10 min walk. Not too bad.
I would take it except that I cannot be sure I can make the last bus. It is at 6:43, so the timing is perfect, but once in a blue moon the bus is full. If the bus is full, you're stranded in the city for the night.

They stopped a later bus because few people took it, so this last bus started loosing passengers, so they see no reason for putting the later one back… they simply cannot grasp that people like having one more bus behind them so they won’t get stranded in the city. Without that later bus, people won’t risk taking the earlier one just in case they can’t make it or it is full.

These days I just try to have a social life – if I have a couple drinks with people after work not only do I get some fun social interaction, but I miss the traffic on the way home.
Unfortunately I am fairly well stuck living where I am for a while, but am hoping to be able to mostly work from home soon.

I commute by train in, i must admit, the railway line that goes through the nicer parts of the city. I generally don't have any trouble at all, neither with the service nor with any other factor which could cause a potential problem. My friends find it surprising that in the ten years i have been travelling by train, I haven't faced any muggers or pickpockets.

I come back home by bus, generally with half the seats taken by old ladies falling asleep on their grocery bags.

c'est la vie.

I travel by train usually, its a nightmare. what would be a 30 minute journey by car takes 3 hours by train, or 5 on a sunday. Not been mugged so far though. And I saw an awesome coke machine at the station. instead of just dropping the bottle it used a robot arm to take it to a little lift and then opened a door at the bottom for me to get it. costs 50% more but damn it was worth it.

I commute by ten minute walk. Or sometimes by the bus which is free to the university students. But then again, this town has pretty much the university, a couple of bars and corn/soybean fields.

I don't commute, as I rarely work in the same place twice in the same year. :p