{"id":15268,"date":"2016-04-01T03:06:36","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T03:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/?p=15268"},"modified":"2016-04-01T03:06:36","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T03:06:36","slug":"my-long-term-relationship-with-commuting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/my-long-term-relationship-with-commuting\/","title":{"rendered":"My Long Term Relationship with Commuting"},"content":{"rendered":"

My relationship with commuting started roughly 3 years ago after I graduated from university. I relocated to Houston where my commute flying up and down the toll road of I-10 was roughly 30 minutes each way. (<\/span>To put this in perspective, this stretch of I-10 is one of the largest freeways in the world spanning 26 lanes: 2 main lanes, eight lanes of access roads, and six mid-freeway HOT\/HOV lanes, not including access road turning lanes<\/span>.) That being said, coming to Detroit to travel the I-75 corridor from Detroit to Troy four days a week felt like it should be a relief. \u00a0A highway that is generally a 6 lanes with a maximum of 10 lanes, piece of cake. Right?<\/span><\/p>\n

Wrong. There isn\u2019t much of a difference. My commute in Houston was 19.8 miles each way, which is comparable to my 19.5 mile commute here in Detroit. With 16 more lanes, logically my commute in Houston would be shorter. Not the case. It takes me the same amount of time. This is partially due to the fact that Houston boasts a population of around 2.2 million people making Detroit\u2019s population of 688,701 appear small in comparison. (If you include the metro areas of each: \u00a0Houston \u2013 6.4 million; Detroit – 4.2 million.) \u00a0This relationship has exposed me firsthand \u00a0to the phenomenon that a sprawling highway does not equate to a faster, less congested, stress-free commute. (If you want to read more about the state of transit in Detroit, fellow Rory Lincoln wrote an excellent blog on it. \u00a0Read it <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>!)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I recently calculated how much time per week I spend in my commute to and from work Monday – Thursday. It averages between 4.6 hours and 5.3 hours per week. Do I love this pursuit? No. It is expensive to maintain a car being driven on ill maintained expressways and roads that my own driving contributes to. It is expensive to fuel the car. It is detrimental to the environment. It is a huge stressor, full of road-rage and distracted drivers paying more attention to the phones in their hands than\u00a0the\u00a0vehicles surrounding\u00a0them.<\/p>\n

This relationship appears to be all take and no give. What positive value does commuting add to my life? It leaves me angry, stressed, and plain tired. Commuting via automobile is the definition of a toxic relationship. I look forward to the future when I hopefully will able to bike, walk, or take public transit to work. I would dump vehicular commuting with no hesitation for public transportation initiatives like the <\/span>M-1 Rail <\/span><\/a>and the <\/span>Detroit Bike Share<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0Needless to say, commuting and I will not last forever.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My relationship with commuting started roughly 3 years ago after I graduated from university. I relocated to Houston where my commute flying up and down the toll road of I-10 was roughly 30 minutes each way. (To put this in perspective, this stretch of I-10 is one of the largest freeways in the world spanning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":15281,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[456,63,457,458,450],"class_list":["post-15268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-live-detroit","tag-commuting","tag-detroit","tag-houston","tag-transit","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}