What's your commute time/routine?

[Poppetcat]

I just applied to two grad schools (masters programs), and am now moving about 15 min drive away to be closer to the school of my choice. It feels like a bit of a rash decision, since I haven't actually been accepted yet, but the apartment I'm moving to is bigger, prettier, and a little cheaper.
When I was deciding whether or not to move, I asked friends about their commute time/routine, to establish if what I was signing on for was reasonable as an everyday commute. I got a lot of really interesting responses, and it made me want to learn more about everyone's commute routine. How they travel, how they spend their time waiting if they're taking public transit, how they deal with bad weather if they walk or bike. I'd love to hear more about everyone's commute (or future commute, if you're still in transition).

Mine is going to be an 11 minute walk to my bus stop through a nice neighborhood, but some of it will be uphill unfortunately. I don't currently bike, but I'm considering starting since it might cut down the time a little (although maybe not, since there's hills). Once I get to my bus stop, I'll have about a 13 min ride to my stop on campus. Once there, I think the main building I'll be in will be about 4 min walk away. The only thing I worry about is the walk through the neighborhood after dark. It's a nice neighborhood, but the section with my apartment complex is not so nice, and the lighting right at my complex isn't great. :S That's what I most worry about.

This is all depending on what program I get into (if any). But this is my ideal future situation assuming I get into my first choice...

What's yours?

 

Edited February 11, 2018 by Poppetcat

[lilchow]

I currently go to school in San Francisco and I live in Oakland. Currently my commute is about 1.5-2 hours each way. I leave my house and drive to the BART (transit) station (15minutes) then I take a train to San Francisco (45min - 1hr  15min depending on delays). I know many people who go to school at my campus and commute even further (2 hours driving each way). My commute can be pretty brutal because the trains are so packed that you can't really do much while you're on the train besides pray that the people standing around you have showered and put on deodorant.  

I used to live in SF and I had to walk about 1.5 miles to my apartment (which was on the top of a hill) and the neighborhood was not great. Keep in mind the lighting, are there lots of street lights? Also don't make yourself a target - never wear over-ear headphones, and never wear earbuds in both ears at night. When I was walking at night I would call someone on speaker phone so that if anything happened someone would know right away. Also think about getting some personal defense things like pepper spray and etc. Overall, it's probably not that bad, but just be prepared! 

[TakeruK]

Here are my commutes at various times of my life:

Undergrad, first few years: 90 minutes each way on two buses (including time built in for transfers)
Undergrad, later years: 60 minutes each way (drive to a park and ride, take one bus)---had to change because the bus routes changed 
Masters: 15 minute drive+walk or 15 minute bus drive (same time because have to park further away from campus to get free parking lol)
PhD years 1-3: 10 minute bike ride
PhD years 3-5: 15 minute drive
Now (postdoc): 15-20 minute drive (no public transit available to work site). However, considering a move to a different area of town which might make the commute between 20 minutes to 60 minutes, depending on traffic (would have to drastically change work schedule to make it more like 20 minutes).

[rising_star]

Here were/are my commutes.

Undergraduate: lived on campus except during study abroad when I walked about 15 min to class
MA program: 10 min drive or 20-25 min bus ride (bus stopped directly in front of apt complex I lived in and right next to the building where I had my office and classes)
PhD program, years 1-3: I lived in three different places but all were within 2.5 miles of campus. I walked or commuted by bike. The longest bike commute was like 15 minutes assuming I didn't have to stop at every red light (I lived in a place with a lot of bike paths so that helped a lot)
PhD program, final year: about a 10 minute drive
Post-PhD: 18 min walk from home to office

That said, I'm probably now moving further from where I work, largely due to rising real estate costs where I live. It's going to suck because, as you can see, I've never had a long commute. Once I move, I'll probably be a 20-30 min drive from work.
 

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

I currently have an hour or so drive to and from work, but will be switching to a bus route (same time, but wifi and I don't have to drive) soon. Not sure what it will end up being wherever I end up, but hoping to not drive unless absolutely necessary.

[ZeChocMoose]

Here are all my commutes are various points:

Undergrad - lived on campus; so fairly simple and straight forward

First Professional Job - 10 min drive

MA - 1-1.5 hrs walking/metro/bus.  Way too long for me personally and shaped all subsequent commutes to make them shorter

Second Professional Job - 5-10 min drive for year 1; moved and then had a 30 min drive for years 2-3 

PhD - 20-25 min walk for year 1; moved and then had 15 min walk for years 2-6

Postdoc - 15 min walk

I now preference shorter, walking distance commutes because it works best for me personally.  It also gives me a minimum amount of daily exercise.

For walking at night in poorly light areas, I would attach one of those blinking lights to your bag/jacket if cars are going to have a hard time seeing you.

[TK2]

I moved around different apartments for undergrad/MA in the same city:

• 25 minutes, one bus direct to campus, the stop right in front of my apartment
• 30-40 minutes, stop five minute walk away
• 60-80 minutes, bus-LRT-bus connection
• 90-120 minutes, walk-bus-train-walk, two-three times a week to a different city (great commute though - always empty train.)

A couple things to keep in mind with commute-satisfaction (this is actually kinda what I study) is the number of transfers - waiting time feels subjectively longer than time moving, and transfers add a layer of mental and physical effort. The effects of traffic and crowding at peak times, and your ability to travel off-peak (flexible academic schedules?) - even for road-separated transit (ie, metro or BRT line) crowded hours mean everything moves more slowly just due to masses of people getting on/off at each stop. The availability (and your own tendency) to take advantage of, say, free wifi on a bus or a table on a train (if it's crazy crowded, you're not going to get much done and get where you're going tired and miserable.  On the other hand, I had a 90+ minute commute for a while that included an old and inefficient train route which had wifi, power, tables, great views, cheap coffee at the station and was so little used I had entire carriages to myself a few times. It was by far the pleasantest and most professionally productive hour of my day.)

There's also something called Travel Time Tolerance, which suggests that there's a lower boundary on people's ideal commute as well, or a point below which it becomes all the same. Ie, living in the same building as your job, for example, might be a negative - people need and indeed, enjoy, having a commute to break up their day and physical environment and mentally and emotionally separate home from work (maybe not an issue for grad students...) Many of the commutes mentioned above I actually find a touch alarming . It's generally estimated - I think, I'd need to check properly to see where the research stands - that 30 minutes or so is the sweet spot, where reduction doesn't gain much in terms of quality of life...start going towards an hour though, and it's an active contributor to misery. Personally, the jump between the 60 minutes to the 25 minutes was a huge improvement for me and radiated out to pretty much every element of my life -  social life, stress and energy levels, physical health, productivity, quality of sleep - even though I managed pretty well for about five years on the longer commutes. Trying to get my door-to-door time to under 30 minutes and minimizing transfers is a big point for me now a move is coming up.

Edited February 18, 2018 by TK2

[MarineBluePsy]

Here are my commutes throughout school:

Community College - 10 minute non freeway drive.  I would have preferred to take the bus, but I had to be to work across town immediately after class and wouldn't have made it.

University - 10 minute non freeway drive + 10 minute walk or 5 minute walk + 15 minute bus ride.  On days I had to work I drove, parked far so that was free, and then walked to class.  On days I didn't have to work I took the bus (also free) which stopped a couple blocks from my house and went right to campus.

Master's - 2 hr freeway drive one way.  Commuting was much cheaper than moving so I made the best of it.

PhD 1st year - 10 minute walk + 5 minute bus ride or 20 minute walk.  If I had to be on campus late I preferred walking the well lit route and catching the bus, but on early days if the weather was nice walking the whole way was fine.  The bus is free so that helps.

PhD 2nd year - 5 minute walk + 10 minute bus ride.  I moved to a nicer place that is farther and am on campus later so taking the bus is easier.  If the weather is bad I still take the bus.

[TakeruK]

8 hours ago, TK2 said:

There's also something called Travel Time Tolerance, which suggests that there's a lower boundary on people's ideal commute as well, or a point below which it becomes all the same. Ie, living in the same building as your job, for example, might be a negative - people need and indeed, enjoy, having a commute to break up their day and physical environment and mentally and emotionally separate home from work (maybe not an issue for grad students...) 

During grad school, I kept fluctuating between whether I liked living close to campus for convenience or whether I liked the physical separation to help with the mental work/life separation. The majority of grad students at my campus lived in graduate student housing, which was built right next door to campus, so depending on where you worked on campus, it was a 2 minute walk or at most, a 10 minute walk from home to office/lab. For other reasons, I didn't live in this housing unit but sometimes I wish I had that short of a commute!

Although physical separation is nice, it's also nice to be able to come home right at 5pm and get dinner started etc. and then go back to work again from 9pm to 11pm, (for example) if I really needed to get things done at a deadline. With a long commute, even a "short" one like 30 minutes, that would mean that I would likely have to stay and work the extra two hours (to 7pm) lest I waste another 2 hours commuting back and forth. Also if I had to work a 10 hour day, I find it much more pleasant to work for 8 hours then a break then 2 hours than to work 10 hours straight.

In addition, my partner also worked on campus, but isn't an academic so they have a regular work schedule. I think the mental switch of working at my desk to meeting up with my partner and commuting home together was a nice way to break up the day and enough of a mental switch that it helped to separate home/work. (Plus also as soon as we get home, I get started on household work such as cooking dinner which is pretty different from my work-work lol). If I ever had to work late, I would always go home first and have dinner and come back since we only have one car, which would make coordinating our commutes more difficult. So, in this sense, the convenience of the commute creates a much larger positive contribution to quality of life than the physical separation does.

And, right now, with a small child at home, I would love to live right next to my work if I could! I'm back on the "prefer short commute" side of these fluctuations. My 40 minute total commute time is my least favourite time of the day because I would much rather be spending that time with my family (or, sleeping, or working so that I could spend other time with my family). Unfortunately, like rising_star, considering real estate prices, I might end up with that longer (up to 60 min each way) commute out of necessity...  

[TK2]

Yeah, its definitely an average, and it evolves as people's lives evolve as well - the time constraints of being a parent to a young child, long work hours, etc, compared to extra value for a larger home just as a family is growing and kids getting older and needing more space and so on. Its a useful concept in big-picture planning, because it counters that assumption that all else being equal, people will always choose to minimize travel time (for example, your innocent transport planner of yore thought that if we make the train faster or highways bigger, people will spend less time commuting. People turned out to be sneaky buggers. They kept their commute time and moved further away and built bigger houses. The former has positive externalities, the latter negative. Pity city planners.)

It does also become relevant on the micro level (a bit) precisely at institutions like universities, where people might actually be living in the same building as work, entertainment, and everything else - this way of looking at commuting emerged as a critique of hyper-rationalistic, modernist assumptions about behaviour, back when they were actually into building massive complexes that would somehow house all of everyone's needs under a single roof (especially popular in communist countries, but the west saw its share of experiments of this kind as well), but which for some reason never seemed to work out. Those have fallen seriously out of fashion, for the most part - except, for example, at universities. Anyway, it turns out that all else being equal, that 5-10 minute walk is something of a preference (on average), and the 30 minute commute largely an indifference.

This is probably not terribly useful for someone trying to decide how close to campus to live. (You can imagine how tortured my analysis of potential commutes has increasingly become...)

[kyjin]

Undergrad: Lived on campus

Language school: 5 minute walk, 15 minute subway ride, 10 minute walk through shopping district. The subway was usually packed, but I got a ton of reading done. 

MA: 15 minute walk across campus to office. (I lived just off the edge of campus in university housing.)

PhD (current): 5 minute walk to transit, 30 minute subway ride with a transfer or 30ish ride on bus depending on traffic, 5ish walk to office. I occasionally drive down, which takes 20-25 on average, and then walk about 10 minutes from parking to campus since I utilize street parking. 

Research Year abroad: 50 minute walk from house to campus(!). Biking was about 20, but I liked to listen to audiobooks or podcasts and enjoy the neighborhood. (Walked through a whole district of temples.) Transit was possible, but would have been 25 minutes walking total, plus a crowded subway ride. I much preferred my walk.  (Plus it saves money- and my waistline!)