Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

Come to New York, then. I have sad news for you.

DC was even worse.

No, most people in NYC are not commuting 2-3 hours each way. That's insane to say.

I know a couple people who have done it -- living in deep Brooklyn far from the subway and teaching in the Bronx, or living deep in Staten Island and commuting to the Upper East Side -- but it is extremely uncommon.

The average NYC commute is 40 minutes. And only 10% of NYC workers have a commute longer than 60 minutes. [1]

[1] https://www.geotab.com/time-to-commute/

When I worked in NYC a few years ago, I was living in an apartment on Long Island, the LIRR was 1h30m on average, plus 10 minute drive to get to the train station, plus another 20 minute walk from Penn to 3rd ave where I worked. On rainy days I'd take the subway but there isn't a direct route so I'd have to change at times square so it always ended up taking longer than walking.

Easily 2+ hours each way from door to door. And let me tell you, the LIRR is vastly overfilled during peak. You're lucky to get a seat for that 90 minute leg of your trip, and if you didn't, you were probably sardine packed in the aisle.

I assert that most of the folks that claim insane large commutes have been bitten by what happens if you don't adjust how you commute to a place. This particularly bites people that move to a city, as they want to keep their car commute all too often. Similarly, it bites folks that move out of the city, as they want to stay on transit, but that drops in effectiveness as you leave the density.

I knew someone who commuted from Philadelphia to Manhattan every day. Worked in a museum, so it was her dream job but didn't pay much. Longest commute I've know someone to do daily.

I'm in NJ- my commute into the city is an hour. Most people that I know of have commutes in the 30-90 minute range, throughout NJ, NYC, and Connecticut

I live in Western Suffolk County. I never commuted to the City, but many of my friends do.

Driving is 90 minutes, if you leave at 5AM. Train is 2 hours (including in-city time).

Many folks commute from even farther East.

Please don’t tell me that I’m “insane.” I would never have done that commute, myself, but have lived here for over 30 years, and have seen (with my own little eyes), people doing this every day.

I did not call you insane- that was another commenter.

I also don't doubt there are long commutes. However, I will assert that that is not the typical experience in New York, or elsewhere. No one in my at-work peer group has a commute that long, and no one in my outside-of-work friend group has a commute that long.

Does your peer group have kids and earns enough to buy a house in a suburb of NYC?

Without kids, there is no reason for the commute. But putting kids in an upscale suburban neighborhood with other kids of similar earning parents is the reason that I saw people put up with that commute.

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio..., page 7

Average commute time in NYC MSA is 37.7 minutes, longest of any major MSA in the country. DC MSA is 35.6 minutes. Only ~23% of NYC have commutes longer than hour, and ~18% in DC.

(Note: statistics are using 2019 data, so doesn't account for anything COVID related, and people who don't commute are excluded from the statistics.)

Must be nice to own a place in Dumbo or Nassau County.

Out here, in the affordable section, it's not as easy.

When I lived in the DC suburbs, 32 years ago, I lived in Gaithersburg, MD. I worked in Rockville (1 exit south, on I-270). Six miles, as the crow flies.

My daily commute was 45 minutes.

I-270 is a charming bit of tarmac. It's a 12-lane parking lot, that stretches from Frederick, to the Beltway.

I have no idea where those stats come from, but they sure as hell don't reflect the reality, around here.

Reality has a nasty way of not caring what the stats say.

I grew up in the DC suburbs (VA side). There's definitely a lot of people who have 40-minute commutes or the like... but 20 and 30 minute commutes are not reasonably uncommon. When I had to cross the river on the Woodrow Wilson (in the era they were building the new one, no less, so perma-construction), my commute was regularly about 20-30 minutes long, although morning was routinely shorter than afternoon (295 just crawls trying to get back onto 495).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com