A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her To Work by 7 AM (nytimes.com) 588
From a report on The New York Times: Sheila James starts her Monday, and the workweek, at 2:15 a.m. This might be normal for a baker or a morning radio host, but Ms. James is a standard American office worker. She is 62 and makes $81,000 a year as a public health adviser for the United States Department of Health and Human Services in San Francisco. Her early start comes because San Francisco is one of the country's most expensive metropolitan areas. Ms. James lives about 80 miles away in Stockton, which has cheaper homes but requires her to commute on two trains and a bus, leaving at 4 a.m. Plenty of office workers get up at 5 a.m. or a bit before, but 2:15 is highly unusual. "Two-fifteen is early enough that some people are still having their evening," she said on a (very) early morning. But she likes to take her time and have coffee. She keeps the lights low and the house quiet and Zen-like. "I just can't rush like that," she said. When the second alarm goes off at 3:45 -- a reminder to leave for the train in 15 minutes -- her morning shifts from leisure to precision. It is a seven-minute drive to the station, where she catches the Altamont Corridor Express train.
And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:5, Interesting)
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Having children is a choice, in most circumstances, and rearranging your life accordingly is one of the costs that should be accepted.
Re:And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand we wouldn't exist if someone didn't "have" us.
Re:And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:4, Insightful)
That's basically our problem: We're aging, we're not repopulating at a sustainable rate and our economy does its best to make having kids as impossible as it can be.
Re: And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah it's not like you benefited from an education or anything. Fucking Randroids.
Re: And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:5, Informative)
The US population continues to grow every year.
US population growth is entirely due to immigration. It's the same story in the entire developed world. The USA is almost treading water as far as internal population growth with a total fertility rate (births per woman) of about 2 (replacement is about 2.1, as birth rates are skewed slightly male). Canada and the EU sit at about 1.6.
When people have the option to control their fertility, by and large, they opt to not have children.
Every year new Americans are born.
And every year, more Americans die than are born.
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I don't see the problem with population dropping. I see it entirely as a good thing. Housing prices can come down and we'll use less resources as a group. Children will be seen as more valuable as there are less and less of them born. If at some point we stop producing entirely, then it will just be another step in our evolution as a nation.
Re:And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, having children does benefit the childless as well. Or would you like to live in an area where everyone chose to be childless and now that everyone's retired there's no staff for... well.. anything? No hospital staff, cops, restaurant workers, store workers, etc. Just look at Japan and their oncoming worker-to-retired ratio slow motion train wreck.
That's one of the reasons that responsible governments understand people having children is vital to society's health and encourage the choice to do so with services and financial incentives. Other governments... not so much.
Re:And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:5, Insightful)
The Earth has plenty of humans on it. Indeed, perhaps too many and a reduction in population (rather then a continuing increase in population as we are experiencing) would be best in the long term. Of course, the only way to have a reduction in population is either via some "pruning" process (probably politically infeasible) or people just having less kids. Yes, in the short term it causes some economic imbalances, but in the long term it's probably a good thing.
Few people propose that society move to a situation where the birthrate is 0 (well, perhaps the Shakers do, but that's not working out so well for them).
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Re:And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:5, Funny)
Hopefully future generations are fewer pedantic.
Re:And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:4, Insightful)
Pruning is currently in effect. We send poor white kids down into some countries to gun down poor brown kids. Don't worry, the system works.
Re:And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:5, Insightful)
And we (the United States) want to cap legal immigration at ~50,000/year, so good luck making that argument while avoiding a long slide into depopulation, as currently exists in Japan and Russia.
SOME economic imbalances? Have you actually thought about the social and economic circumstances of depopulating midwestern cities and towns, or is that beyond your attention horizon, living in California as you are? Ah yes, the reason why you favor "less people" is certainly apparent... you want less people where you are. As if people are going to stop migrating there due to a drop in birth rate.
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Way to ignore the argument, numbnuts. The US dropped below static replacement fertility in 1972 [google.com]. All population growth since then has been due to increasing lifespan (whoops, that's going away [theatlantic.com]), and immigration.
Now what happens after you build a fortress wall (wasting tens of billions of dollars) and drop legal immigration to 50,000/yr? Oh yeah, a population drop! We're already at 0.7%/yr and falling [nytimes.com], and we haven't even implemented Tru
Re:And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:4, Insightful)
That is both an idiotic and racist statement.
Why not help the women who are fertile and having children be better mothers? Provide a strong, effective support system so their children become doctors, engineers, scientists rather than fodder for the industrial prison complex? Optimize them as bearers and nurturers of the future generations.
Let the working women continue with their careers, let them optimize there since there is no reason they should be burdened with children. They can then provide the highest value where their skillset lies.
Win-win. No idiotic racist policies required. Awesome-sauce!
Re: And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:3)
Few percent homosexual people is a boon for the species.
They can never become majority anyway, Nature takes care of that.
If you think that any 'promotion' by whoever in whatever manner can turn people gay you need your head checked.
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Tell me, has that promotion of sodomy made you gay?
There once was a man from Nantucket
Whose dick was so long he could suck it.
And when he turned queer
He spread open his rear
And used his own dick to fuck it.
If that doesn't get you horned up, you're dead inside.
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Someone will have to clean up after you when you become unable to care for yourself.
I'm just about certain that self-removing yourself from the planet will become a new normal for older people. In my great grandparent's generation, a person once the bell tolled would last a few weeks at most. My grandparents took a month or so. My Parents - born in the 1920's, took a long time to die once they got to that point. To the point that the final pecuniary extraction of your wealth can take years. 10 years in my Mother in law's case. A shell who spent those years racking up an amazing amount of b
Re:And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:5, Funny)
Having children is a choice...
One that you don't have to wory about.
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Yes, it is.
I chose to have children because (my now ex wife) said the doctor said she couldn't have kids (she didn't lie about this AFAIK).
Now, I "did the right thing" and we got married, etc.
had another kid.
I accept the life I have, and I love my kids, but yeah, AMs are a bitch with school. Drop your kid off at 7:45 (because that 15 min seriously is the difference to making it to work on-time or not) and the school has the worlds biggest shit fit.
I, fortunately, had a single mom as a boss when I started h
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If everybody had to plan having children according to worst-case scenarios, no one would have children, and you wouldn't exist.
Choices (Score:3, Insightful)
Having children is a choice, in most circumstances, and rearranging your life accordingly is one of the costs that should be accepted.
Being an inconsiderate jerk is a choice, in most circumstances too.
People have kids and that's a good thing. Refusing to acknowledge that reality is just you being a selfish inconsiderate jerk. Your parents made sacrifices for you just like everyone else's parents. Cut them some slack. Someday it might be your turn. But with an attitude like that hopefully not soon...
Re: And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:5, Funny)
low and behold even using condoms AND the pill she still ends up pregnant.
Perhaps you should do a paternity test on "your" kids.
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Sit in a clock and make hourly appearances?
Re: And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:4, Funny)
you loyally accepted that she was pure and honest and it was yours
Well, not OP, but... I have two kids myself, and have never had paternity tests done. I'm fairly certain I don't need to, though, because if she did cheat on me, she cheated with a guy that looks and acts exactly like me, and made two kids that look and act exactly like me. If anything, she ought to be the one asking for a blood test to make sure those kids are really hers...
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Re:And she's one of the lucky ones (Score:5, Funny)
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And before anybody claims that you could just choose to not have sex, this is a state in the Bible belt. The Bible is very clear on the fact that a woman has to put out for her husband (I Cor 7:5).
Last I checked, forced marriage was illegal even in the bible belt.
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And before anybody claims that you could just choose to not have sex, this is a state in the Bible belt. The Bible is very clear on the fact that a woman has to put out for her husband (I Cor 7:5).
Last I checked, forced marriage was illegal even in the bible belt.
The forced part comes after marriage.
Fun fact, in some states it's still perfectly legal to beat your wife, so long as you do it a certain way.
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That would be accurate if things like "shotgun weddings" no longer existed. But they do.
Heck, in some states, a parent can still legally arrange the marriage of their underage children. In Arkansas, you can marry off a child as young as 14 by signing the right paperwork.
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> And before anybody claims that you could just choose to not have sex, this is a state in the Bible belt.
I must have missed that part during my days being forced to attend Sunday School at an evangelical congregation.
I'm willing enough to bash Xianity as much as the next atheist but I also detest bullshit in any form.
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Imagine if you had young children you were trying to get to school. I live in north Texas, where it's not nearly as bad (although it's creeping that way), and I have to drop my kids off at school no earlier than 8 AM - which means I hit the freeways at the worst possible time, which means I'm lucky if I'm in by 9 AM.
*Have* to drop them off? There's no buses, bicycles or feet they could use? I was required to get myself to school starting at first grade, where my only option was feet because I hadn't learned to ride a bike yet (unless it was pouring rain or dangerously cold).
I also live in North TX, and the traffic here always goes from bad to horrific on the first day of school, apparently due to everyone "having" to individually drive their kids to school.
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I've always felt this is a bit deranged myself and so does my father-in-law but the wife and mother-in-law are Hind-D territory.
How is this "News"?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Lots of people have long commutes to work....Who cares?
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You cared enough to comment. When I see a topic that I'm not interested in I just keep on scrolling.
I took the bus once (Score:4, Insightful)
The one time I took a city bus, it made a half hour drive into a 3 hour adventure, never even considered public transportation ever again.
Re: I took the bus once (Score:5, Insightful)
You add to the fact that it takes her an hour and 45 minutes to get ready in the morning and you've got about the least efficient person in the world serving as a political prop about high rent.
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She's probably working on tasks many of us complete after the workday is done and before bed and/or not using the first hour of her paid workday to finish waking up.
Re: I took the bus once (Score:4, Insightful)
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Squeezing into a shirt the size of a pup tent that's still too small is probably what takes so long.
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How in the hell does it take 90 minutes to get ready? It doesn't take that long even with two young kids! Unless you are sitting around reading or something, which is not "getting ready". That's called "reading".
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How in the hell does it take 90 minutes to get ready?
Wake up, take my vitamins and allergy meds, brush my teeth, shave my jowls, take a dump and piss off trolls on Slashdot via iPhone, weigh myself, take a shower, splash Old Spice on, put my clothes on, take care of any last minute errands like making lunch or taking out the trash, and leave.
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I just don't understand. I wake up at 7:45, shower, shave, eat a bowl of cereal, make kids lunches, make my own lunch, and herd the kids out the door by 8:30 (8:45 when things go badly wrong). Are you taking a 45 minute dump or something?
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At least he combines that time with pissing off trolls on slashdot with is iphone.
I'm just surprised his bowels are that tuned into his schedule. Mine never make a problem until three minutes before I planned on walking out the door.
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holy shit, I'm out the door within 20-30 minutes of rolling out of bed.
90 minutes to get ready? (Score:2)
I get up at 4:30AM to catch the 6AM bus outside of my apartment complex. It takes me 90 minutes to get ready and out the door. Some of us had put our college days behind us and no longer roll out of bed wearing the work clothes from yesterday.
Are you getting ready for the prom or something? 90 minutes to get ready? Seriously? I can roll out of bed, shower, dress, feed and bathroom three dogs, grab my lunch and be on the road in under 20 minutes. If you are taking 90 minutes you are Doing It Wrong. And I haven't been an undergrad for over 20 years so don't give me the age excuse.
Re: I took the bus once (Score:4, Interesting)
how is this insightful? she specifically states she doesn't want to be rushed in the morning. Some people *enjoy* relaxing before work with some coffee.
Also note, that when her second alarm goes off she has her commute to the train station mapped down to the fucking minute.
Re: I took the bus once (Score:5, Insightful)
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[...] is coming in very early.
Most federal jobs on the West Coast requires that employees start work early to keep up with the East Coast. If you start work at 9AM, the day is half over on the East Coast. Starting early also avoids the nastiness of the commute.
Re: I took the bus once (Score:5, Insightful)
You add to the fact that it takes her an hour and 45 minutes to get ready in the morning and you've got about the least efficient person in the world serving as a political prop about high rent.
Indeed. Her behavior makes no sense. If she is going to be on the train for two hours, why doesn't she use that time to do her prep? Or sleep?
Also, you don't have to go to Stockton to get away from SF rents. Oakland (20 minutes by BART) is far enough.
Better headline: Crazy Woman Lives in Stockton.
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Lots of people can't sleep in moving vehicles, and having a night's sleep partially interrupted by a run for the train isn't exactly conducive to really quality sleep later.
I personally fall asleep on planes and trains just fine, but the quality of the sleep is so low I count it for about half of what I manage to get. She's going to work, not back home from a trip; a good night's sleep is going to be important to doing her job properly for the rest of the day.
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You add to the fact that it takes her an hour and 45 minutes to get ready in the morning
Yes, the mind boggles. At the very least that's not something she should factor in, because it will always be a problem for her. Does she expect her job to provide a service with someone fetching her sleeping body and put it on a train, so she can do her extensive wake-up ritual while commuting?
I think the overwhelming majority of people would be able to take a shower, get dressed and have a cup of joe in 45 minutes. And even then, that time is not something to blame the city/state for. Even if you liv
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Public transit quality varies quite a bit. Here in the suburbs of Portland OR my 7.5 mile commute choices are:
Drive: 25-35 minutes, all on city streets (can't zone out)
Bike: 35-40 minutes, plus 10 minutes extra for the extra shower each evening
Light Rail: 50 minutes if I catch it right (one leg comes only every 30 minutes)
Run: 1 hour 15 minutes, though only only practical one direction 2-3 times a week
Driving is fastest, but my least favorite due to all the stopping and traffic on busy city streets. 90+%
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I take the bus everyday to work. Well, first a train, then a bus. It takes me about 45 minutes to get to work. But I live in Philadelphia, where we have a pretty robust transit system.
I guess the point is: It all depends on where you live.
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I used to drive to work (at UW in Seattle) every day, five days a week. Did this for years... it wasn't much fun, but you get used to it after a while.
Then, about 14 years ago, we had two cars die in rapid succession. My wife's job takes her to multiple work places on a regular basis, so she really does need a car (in our area, at least) - but I decided to try taking the train.
It did take some time to adjust; and yes, the commute was a bit longer time-wise than driving (because busses share the downtown roa
Build more housing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Build more housing (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution is to stop centralizing things. It can work great for information but not for physical things.
Make more smaller cities and flee the megapolis mentality.
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Centralization does enter into it, at least partially. If there were more smaller cities to work in, people would have more choices about where they'd like to live.
Want to work for Apple, Google or any other giant corporation? Nope, only one fucking place for each on the entire planet. That's insane. The other problem is the paperwork. Companies like paperwork so much that having more of smaller units cost more to run, which is the opposite of how biology works. Giant animals? Extinct or on the verge of ext
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I know a bunch of people who work for Google and none of them do it in SF.
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The problem with smaller cities is that you end up with a complete relocation to another city to find a new job. Unless your industry sector has a large enough supply of employers, being an engineer becomes like Logan's Run. Then you end up with people commuting 50+ miles between smaller cities. This happens in England in the South East (Reading, Basingstoke, Oxford, Cambridge, Southampton).
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Face Time [Re:Build more housing] (Score:4, Insightful)
It worked too well, actually. It made it far easier to outsource work to Timbuktu for $2/hr. The remaining jobs require "face time" in order to be competitive with $2/hr Timbuktuians. It's one of the few advantages a physical office worker has over them.
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I dunno man, I live about 8 hours from my job... by air.
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San Francisco is a megaopolis in denial. Allow more high density family housing while taxing the hell out of cars to pay for more subway lines. San Francisco is currently a giant suburb that needs to evolve more towards a dense city to satisfy housing demands.
Re:Build more housing (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution is to stop centralizing things.
Big cities have higher productivity. NYC has 60% higher productivity than the American average. Centralization is good.
There is no shortage of space in SF. They just need to go vertical. The problem is that the people living there have a vested interest in keeping property prices high, and the people that want to live there but can't afford to don't get to vote.
How Zoning Laws Exacerbate Inequality. [theatlantic.com]
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No centralizing works fine. Decentralizing also works fine.
What doesn't work is the suburban sprawl level of centralization and decentralization. You get none of the benefits of centralization (ie. effective public transportation) and none of the benefits of decentralization (ie. more open space).
Re:Build more housing (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think that's really the solution. I agree that SF et al. are BANANA hells and have impeded development and caused prices to explode and all sorts of other distortions but, ultimately, carpeting the land with skyscraper apartment buildings to house all these people would just alleviate one pressure point in a dysfunctional system.
Sheila James is a bureaucrat. She writes stuff and reads stuff and participates in conference calls. Is there any actual reason Sheila James needs to be in SF proper to operate her email inbox in 2017? Why must all the Sheila James of the world converge on a couple coastal CA cities by the millions? Probably 90% of the people working in SF could just live somewhere else with no noticeable loss of capability.
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carpeting the land with skyscraper apartment buildings to house all these people would just alleviate one pressure point in a dysfunctional system
Skyscraper apartment buildings don't "carpet" the land, exactly the opposite. The current strategy results in carpeting the land with low-density housing for a hundred miles in every (non-ocean) direction. Skyscraper apartment buildings are far better. They're by far the lowest-footprint, least-impactful way for humans to live.
I think that sort of living sucks, myself, but there are a lot of people who like it.
Is there any actual reason Sheila James needs to be in SF proper to operate her email inbox in 2017?
Sure, telecommuting is also a good option. I do it myself -- and love it because it allows me to
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Suburbs and exurbs are an almost uniquely American thing.
There's a bunch of bunk. I lived with coworkers in a suburb of Lyon in France. The minute people have the means to leave your treeless urban hellscapes they do it; nothing uniquely murican about it. The fact that it is harder to get the means in Europe making it less common is orthogonal; when they can they do. Full stop.
IBM did that for most of a century
Arguing with success right there. IBM dominated its field for most of that century and is still a mighty force offering full stack solutions from chips to bodies. When you get above t
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Re:Build more housing (Score:4, Insightful)
The solution to the problems is really simple: build more housing. How do you get more housing built? Well, for starts not having some of the most restrictive zoning laws in the country, and having people fight back at any housing that is less than ideal would be a major aspect. Unfortunately, there are people who are advocates for the poor who don't get this and have gone out of their way to block housing that doesn't have affordable housing built into it, which just results in total fewer housing.
Actually, the problem is the US's dreadful public transport network.
Here in the UK, a train journey of 80 miles is easily accomplished in 1.5 hours, 2 hours at a stretch. That means you can leave Winchester at 5:15 and make a starting time of 07:00 in Central London and I'm including a short tube journey from London Waterloo to somewhere like Bank.
That being said, a 2 hour journey is still not ideal but the money in central London is often worth it. Much like central San Francisco, no one lives in central London unless they're a multi-millionaire. For popular business hubs, one should be able to live outside it and get in relatively quickly.
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Unfortunately, there are people who are advocates for the poor who don't get this and have gone out of their way to block housing that doesn't have affordable housing built into it, which just results in total fewer housing.
Actually, it's the existing homeowners that are the problem.
If you start building skyscrapers with condos in San Francisco, the value of the property of the existing homeowners goes down as you alleviate scarcity. They'd really like the shack they rent out to continue to be worth $1M. And they will use plenty of excuses to prevent re-zoning to keep their property values high.
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Here's an interesting exercise. Use Google Street View to compare a virtual walking tour of the residential neighborhoods of Tapei [google.com], and compare them to San Francisco [google.com]. In this case we're looking at two neighborhoods of single family dwellings.
In general single family houses have a smaller footprint in Taipei and are a bit taller, and streets are much narrower. There are also more streets of low rise apartment blocks [google.com]. There are obviously some high rise apartments, but apparently earthquake regulation disco
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We don't need houses, we can all live in yurts and share the environment with the snipes, hoop snakes, drop bears and other creatures of the Earth.
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commuting (Score:2)
meanwhile in Korea and Japan... (Score:4, Interesting)
A friend returned from recent vacation in S. Korea and Japan was amazed by the rail systems and speaking of bay area Caltrains, "It is so 3rd world country."
I saved this from one of you posters here on slashdot, worth a mention as I was talking with someone who said high speed rail and other such things are guvmint boondoggles. For me I use a car but then I've moved here in the 20th century so I don't have to commute hundreds of miles.
“give out surveys where people rate the relative importance of things.”
That’s likely not going to get you anything useful. What it gets you is a survey of what people think is best for them. And they’re not right a lot of the time, because few people are investors and visionaries. Most people are short-term practical people.
As an example, traffic is getting worse and worse in my little city. Everyone is talking about how we can improve the roads and highways, we’re widening some, improving intersections at others, but nobody is really talking about public transportation. What we need are a couple of light rail lines from the growing suburbs to downtown and the job hubs. That would likely fix a lot of the traffic problems. But that requires people to think longer-term, and rethink how they go about their daily life.
Instead of spending 25 minutes, now 30, now 35 minutes in the car commuting, they need to think about catching a 5 min bus ride, then sitting and checking email for 20 min before getting off near work. But that’s far harder to wrap your head around than “I wish I could shave 10 minutes off my drive to work.” Survey people, and they want less traffic congestion and a better drive to work. That frankly can’t happen without public transportation, but nobody wants that.
Hmmm, our featured person already spends a lot of time on the train. Oh wait, this has been debated before but it was about cars! https://www.c-span.org/video/?... [c-span.org]
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Indeed.
This person travels 80-90 miles. Here is an example of someone who travels 120 miles per day (scroll down to the comment by Sprinterguy) [railforums.co.uk] and it him takes 2 hours door to door.
The issue isn't the distance, it's the poor state of public transport in the USA.
"Her"? (Score:5, Interesting)
What is it with 3rd-person pronouns in clickbait headlines these days?
- "She totally did a thing, now you totally want to click, right?"
- "What he did next will make you click!"
- "Five cocktails and seven martinis get her through brunch!"
At the risk of sounding ancient; who's "she", the cat's mother?
I mean, good manners don't cost nuffin' now, do they?
I don't get it. (Score:2, Redundant)
So she chose this life style. If waking up at 2:30 isn't her thing, she could Drive and avoid public transportation and leave at a more reasonable hour.
She doesn't have to use public transportation she can drive further (she already seems to have a car because she drives to the train station)
She doesn't need to live so far away she can choose a smaller home, or choose to get some roommates to split the cost.
She can probably find a job closer to her home.
Sure cost of living in such areas have skyrocketed to
Not a great story (Score:2, Informative)
...but the comments here are an absolute shit-show of whiny, self-centered assholes who can't resist telling the world how much they don't care about other people.
Re:Not a great story (Score:4, Insightful)
Quality of life in the Silicon Valley (Score:2)
Pick your solution to this problem: (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a few solutions to this problem, pick one or more:
1. Reduce the need for people to show up for work at a physical office
2. Make transportation, both public and private, hyper-efficient
3. Pop the housing bubble around Northern California (and other large metros) by popping the Second Dotcom Bubble
4. Add more housing in the area so people aren't desperately waving sacks of money around saying, "PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me pay $4000 a month for a 1-bedroom apartment!"
I live near New York City and back before I had kids I used to commute on the train for work; did it for a couple of multi-year stints before I had had enough. I'm about 60 miles away, and it was easily a 1.5 hour train and subway ride each direction when everything was going perfectly. There are plenty of stories like the one in the article, and I remember hearing tales of multi-hour commutes from places like Stockton and Sacramento as the First Dotcom Bubble was about to hit its peak in 1999. I did my crazy commute for financial gain; I was getting paid a New York salary and living a comfortable distance away. Sheila James, being 62 and a government employee, was most likely priced out of the San Francisco market and is trying to hang on a few more years, as federal pensions are calculated based on final average salary and years of service. These days, you'd really have to offer me a crazy amount of money to go back to doing it...even with cutting my day short and working part of it on the train, it's a life-eater. I work at a place that's closer to home, pays less, but lets me be home more which is more important to me lately.
Housing bubbles suck. Permanently overpriced real estate markets suck more. Metro NY is a perfect example...not nearly as bad as California once you leave the city, but prices are permanently high just because so much wealth is concentrated here. You have everything from "old money" to celebrities to CEOs to hedge-fund Masters of the Universe, and if they're not living in Midtown Manhattan, they want to live right outside of it. It makes it difficult to find good housing a reasonable distance from work.
A friend of mine does this (Score:3)
I have a friend who lives in Livermore (living close in was not affordable) and commutes into the city [1]. Driving the bay area freeways during rush hour is out of the question, so he only drives as far as the nearest train station, takes the train most of the way there, and then gets into his second car and drives the rest of the way to work. Part of the reason for the two car solution was that there wasn't a train/bus solution that didn't involve him leaving the house at 0-dark-thirty and hoofing it for much of the distance.
It works for him, I guess. Myself, I moved to an area with less traffic and more affordable housing.
[1] To old time bay area residents, San Francisco is "The City". Never its full name unless you're talking to out-of-towners, and never ever "frisco".
In the late 90's (Score:3)
I got a job at a local ISP. It took me two buses and a sky train to get to work. Left home at 6:45 and got to the place 34Km away at 9:20. This was in the Greater Vancouver area from Maple Ridge to Burnaby BC.
Causes: (Score:5, Insightful)
1 - Proposition 13. An anti-tax measure that may have been necessary at the time, but went way too far to the point where Bay Area cities are incentivized to approve more business developments but less housing because of the amount of revenue they bring in. The result is a massive jobs-housing imbalance as cities gain more jobs but not enough housing to keep up, resulting in long commutes from out of town.
2 - A strong NIMBY lobby. Established residents are vocal in their opposition to more housing in "their" town. Councils feel pressured to resist new developments.
3 - Induced demand. Caltrans has an unbelievably wasteful policy of widening highways in the hope that it'll alleviate traffic congestion despite a mountain of evidence that this does not work and that more highway lanes just causes more traffic as people move out to cheaper suburbs to get a bigger house for the same price and a (temporarily) reasonable commute time. By the time everyone has the same idea, highways are jammed again.
4 - Anti-transit sentiment. Roads are less efficient than rails, but it's a lot easier to get funding for them.
5 - Single-use-zoning. Putting daily needs out of walking distance of each other forces nearly everyone to drive throughout the day. The result is massive car ownership and demands for more facilities to accommodate private cars.
6 - Fragmented local government. It's very hard to get region-wide transit developments done when each city is only focused on its own interests.
She made a deliberate tradeoff (Score:5, Informative)
She chose to move 65 miles further away from San Francisco so she could live in a larger place and save $600 a month in rent (on an income of $81,000, keep in mind). FTFA:
Ms. James used to live closer, in Alameda, Calif., about 15 miles across San Francisco Bay from her work. But three years ago, after a developer bought her building and evicted Ms. James and her neighbors, she moved to Stockton.
Stockton has more for the money: Ms. James pays $1,000 a month in rent for her three-bedroom house, compared with $1,600 for the one-bedroom apartment she had in Alameda.
There are plenty of options [apartments.com] a lot closer to San Francisco, for less than what she was paying before, and with more space than she had before. And looking at her old rate of $1600/month (which is still less less than 24% of her income) opens up the possibilities even more.
So call it what it is: she made a deliberate lifestyle/money/time tradeoff. We all do that sort of thing all the time, and don't get dramatic write-ups in the Times for it.
Re: (Score:2)
So long and thanks for all the fish.
Re: (Score:2)
What do you mean? European 11:00AM or American 11:00PM?
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If you're waking up at 11:00PM, then you're probably late for work, no matter what shift you're on.
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The United States Department of Health and Human Services probably has a pension plan. If I were her, I'd absolutely work another 3 years until I'm 65, and retire. It's worth it even if I'm spending 6+ hours a day commuting.
If I were 25 and in the same commute situation, I would do everything I could to get out of the situation. Sell the house, rent an apartment closer even if it means having roommates, move in with my parents, find a lower paying job closer but pays enough that I can still make my mortgage
Re: (Score:3)
Live cheap, retire early. Those with a decent salary could prioritize savings over shiny stuff and be able to retire well before age 65.
Most US workers don't even save 10%, and instead rack up debt well into their 40's. Living within your means and saving 30-50% of you after tax income lets you retire at that same lifestyle in a 20-25 years.
Re: (Score:3)
> Why should all places of work be placed in high price areas?
I think you might have cause and effect reversed. Areas become high price because that's where the work is.
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