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Commuting

11:10 / 05.09.05

Curiosity thread: how do you get to work? How long does it take you? Do you always go the same way? And what do you do on your commute - do you read, or listen to the radio or music, and if so, what programmes, what sort of tunes?

To kick off: I take the train from the stop down the road (5-8 minutes walk depending on sleepiness), which gets me to central London in about 15 minutes. My office is just over the road from the station, so it's all a very last-minute thing. I almost always take this route, unless the trains are down, in which case it's a bus to/from Brixton and then the tube. That takes longer, about 30 minutes. I often listen to my iPod - always whole albums, never random, and will either read whatever paperback I'm ploughing through, or work on my laptop - catching up on email, writing it for later, reading stuff I have open in browser windows, or maybe just hacking code.

What about you? And most importantly: do you enjoy commuting, or is it a chore?

11:29 / 05.09.05

I walk - the first twenty minutes from my house down uber hip Brick Lane. This is quite convenient as I get to eye up all the hipster chicks on my way home sometimes. This is the bit of the journey I enjoy, not just because of this, ut because it's a nice walk through an interesting environment. See the latest stickers or street art, dodge bits of samosa and curry house touts. Followed by the tube, which is not normally too crowed, and then 10 minutes walk at the other end. Time on tube is occupied with nose in book.

11:35 / 05.09.05

My journey is very similar to Paleface's (do you live in Streatham Paleface?) except that I have a 10 minute tube ride after I get to Victoria station. I read the paper.

11:39 / 05.09.05

If I'm working at my base, it's a brief stumble to the bus and about twenty minutes to my office. If I'm working off site, I like to take tubes, trains (and trams) and try to avoid long bus journeys.

Bring back Routemasters! How I hate the bendy buses and how I hate the new two-tier buses more. Stop at every stop and wait while four hundred people pile on, all waiting till they're by the driver before they realise they're getting onto a bus and then starting to look for a fare or their oystercard. No more leaping on and off at irregular intervals to suit your time and travel plans.

On a fine day, I walk. Forty five minutes, usually more, because I'm always getting lost.

I listen to the radio on the way in and I listen to the iPod on the way home. Usually podcasts, with just occasional singalonga shuffle.

I like the journey home better than the journey in, though it's not a great chore either way.

11:44 / 05.09.05

I crawl out of bed, shuffle sixteen paces along corridor and voila I'm at work!! (As I type I'm still in pygamas)

11:46 / 05.09.05

and as you can tell I'm not paid for my accuracy in the spelling department.....

lord henry strikes back

11:54 / 05.09.05

The bus stop is so close that you can see it from the bedroom window. Having covered the 16 or so steps from front door to bus stop I then read in an almost militant fashion, often missing things like the fact that the bus has been diverted, that fact that the car spraying place down the road had burnt down, and on one occation the bus I was on being hit by a van. The first I knew of this was the driver having to ask me to get of the, by now, deserted bus.

It's a choice of two buses which means either a 30 min. ride followed by a 5 min. walk or 20 followed by 15. I almost always get a seat but this is more because I'm pushy than because the buses are quiet.

Tryphena Absent

12:22 / 05.09.05

The overground and then the Victoria Line. Around 5 minutes once the train has arrived and then a further 15 but my total journey time tends towards about 45 minutes. The first part of my journey tends to be standing though there is the occasional seat, the second part usually involves a walk to the end of the platform. In the morning I tend to be too wound up to do anything and just stare at people for a while, on the way home I read my book.

12:24 / 05.09.05

I cycle, from a lovely little suburban oasis known as the Gipsy Hill/West Norwood borders, through Dulwich, Camberwell, Kennington, Southwark and the City to its northern reaches. It takes about 30-40 minutes, depending on traffic lights and general energy levels. I don't read or listen to the Ipod, as I consider both of these to be potentially hazardous. I love my commute and wouldn't have it any other way, though as commented in reading thread I consider the silver lining of Growing Large to be the fact I shall have to start getting the train to work and can then read books. And/or listen to music.

12:40 / 05.09.05

I usually walk both ways - it's just under an hour from the house to the office (Hackney Rd to Bloomsbury). I don't have a walkman or ipod so I just look around me a bit. It's not exactly a scenic route, though, and sadly there are relatively few hipsters to eye up (except the ones outside the Foundry, but I cross on the other side of the road...).

12:49 / 05.09.05

My commute is about 35-40 mins, depending on traffic. One minute walk to the bus stop, wait for a few minutes, then about 25 minutes on the bus, then five minutes walk at the other end.

I always read while on the bus (it's a very rare day that I don't get a seat), looking up every few minutes to enjoy the view as we shuffle across beautiful Edinburgh. As commutes go it is pretty hard to beat and I enjoy the chance to read, though if I had the choice I'd rather a ten minute walk from home to office or indeed working from home. It's all about the extra time in bed.

14:35 / 05.09.05

I cycle, mostly - 15 minutes, uphill and usually into a headwind, so I get to work a bit pink and damp. It is a bit of a dull ride, up a busy main road, but once I'm crossing North Bridge and see the city to my right and Salisbury Crags to my left, that's just lovely. The ride home's great, too!
If I can't be arsed cycling or if I'm going out after work and don't want the bike, I get a bus up the same route - 15 minutes on a burgundy double decker. I always go upstairs - there's something odd about the lower floor of buses.

14:40 / 05.09.05

I got kinda lucky with my last move and ended up in a one block vicinity of where I currently work now. 3 months after I moved in, I got laid off but I found a place to work down the street. So 20 minutes or so from the moment of waking to the time I'm sitting in my desk chair.

Goodness Gracious Meme

14:44 / 05.09.05

When I work, it's involves:

1)stagger across the room to the computer.
2)15-20 minute walk, which I usually do, unless I'm running hugely late, in which case 3-5 min bus ride.

My last full-time job was a 15-minute walk. Along the seafront. Bliss.

16:55 / 05.09.05

My morning/evening commute is a cherished part of my daily routine -- I love this part of the day because it's when I can listen to music or read and just get mentally prepared for my day (or at the end of the day, unwind). This is *my* time. I prefer to have this private time to myself than to share it with other people.

I take the subway directly to work every day; and each way it's 30 minutes. Usually in that time I can listen to a new album on my iPod, or get through a few crossword puzzles or a book chapter. Given the choice, I would never drive or bike to work -- I like to have a handsfree commute where I can just zone out and concentrate on my own stuff.

18:25 / 05.09.05

Three minute walk. Downhill. With an extinct volcano to look at on the way. Yes, I do like my job.

18:51 / 05.09.05

My city is not very transit-friendly, forcing me to commute by car. Fifteen to twenty minutes each way, depending on traffic. The alternative is a ninety minute ride across two buses.

The stupid part is that I work at a university, which by rights should have the best transit access. But it doesn't.

19:00 / 05.09.05

My current commute is wonderfully short - literally a 6 minute walk from flat to office - enough for two short tunes on my iPod...

19:08 / 05.09.05

Mondays are horrible. Mornings are horrible. Monday mornings therefore double so. I find myself stuck behind stupid and slow people when I'm commuting into work in the morning and I could kill. They find themselves in front of a fat, flustered, grumpy old bloke, muttering to himself.

The journeys to work and back from work are good buffer zones, giving you the chance to turn from Mr Grumpy (You Can All Go To Fuck) into Mr Hunter Home From The Hill (I Aim To Please) in time to prosper domestic harmony.

I also never go to the part of town in which I work unless I am at work. I like having that cordon sanitaire between me and the workaday persona.

19:48 / 05.09.05

Schizoid. Moi?

19:58 / 05.09.05

Ahem. Maupin said nothing about commutes. You're still OK.

20:27 / 05.09.05

I usually walk to work, which at the moment is a about 45-minute walk from Clerkenwell, and then through Holborn, and then I wander right through Covent Garden, and then I cross the Strand and then I'm at work. And I *LOVE* my little walk. The only time I don't do it is when it's pouring down rain.

Other times it's a 25 minute walk to Bloomsbury, which is also nice.

And other times it's a 45 minute walk to Piccadilly circus, which is equally lovely.

On the way home, I'm usually feeling lazy so I'll catch a bus home, which goes past the Royal Courts of Justice and St. Paul's cathedral.

I always have my iPod and am usually listening to podcasts or the occasional tuneage.

I must admit, I love my commute.

20:53 / 05.09.05

I work from home. So I usually take my blackberry of silent at nine. Then commute to the living room whenever I feel like getting up.

Either that or my commute involves a flight...like this week.

20:58 / 05.09.05

Bike, 2 1/2 hours each way. Need a vespa.

22:07 / 05.09.05

jack, get a 'bretta... you the face!

like others above, i love my commute! (well, up to when i recently had a home to commute from, but i drive to ex-home at the moment and then continue as below, so read on...)

i live[d] in a suburb up on the side of one of the hills surrounding canberra, so i cycle through a leafy suburb, down to the lake foreshores and then on paths through lawns and gardens, past australia's national monuments and its new museum right into the leafy grounds of the anu campus - mostly i listen to the i-pod and regularly my ride home is a longer loop round the lake, or parts thereof, so i get exercise too!

regular ride takes between 15-25 mins, depending on [downhill] to work or [uphill] back home but the loops take up to an hour or so. and no suburbs! canberra is brilliant like that. at the moment we are in the throes of an early spring and the lake and suburbs are bedecked in blossoms.

then i get to work...

11:01 / 06.09.05

I usually take a 15 minute (and reasonably mundane) bus ride into central Edinburgh. Sometimes I walk (c.35-40 minutes) but never if I have gone for a run in the morning - it's all uphill and no matter what the temperature, I'll always arrive at work a soaking, sweating mess!

I'm considering a new job on the other side of town....dunno how I'd get to that. Two buses probably, or one and a long walk!

Having left London because I hated the commute from Ealing to Holburn (one reason anyway) I now find myself (despite the recent bombings) strangely missing my daily 2 hours on the tube. I think I miss the amount of reading I managed to get through....

11:47 / 06.09.05

It takes me about half an hour to get to work - walking to the bus-stop and then taking the bus. I am unsure whether I am excited or pre-emptively annoyed that in a few weeks, the buses will be full to bursting and I will be squeezed against random students, who will look extremely young and will initially lack the understanding of the bus system.

When I'm not reading, I like to write about the people on the bus. The characters are not as regular as the characters on my previous bus, but I have grown to recognize some of them now.

wembley can change in 28 days

12:02 / 06.09.05

8 minutes on foot, one and a half minutes by bike. It just worked out that way. Mind you, getting anywhere from my workplace is a pain in the arse as it's essentially out by the shipping yards, and I live on the edge of civilized Helsinki.

If the winter winds are ripping off my frozen eyelashes, I usually take one of the 2 routes that are less windy. In any other meteorological (sp?) circumstances, however, I walk from my house down to the coast and enjoy the view.

12:50 / 06.09.05

Brunner, brunner, brunner. You have a lovely bike. Ride to work! Not that that solves the sweaty problem, I know, but you just stop caring!

13:34 / 06.09.05

Kit-Cat Club:

"I usually walk both ways"

Forwards and backwards? Ho ho! Sorry.

I smile broadly every morning as I decant from the bus, for it stops *right* outside the front door of my office and it is only a matter of 2 or 3 heroic strides - or a half dozen dolly steps if I'm feeling so inclined - before I'm in. I like to imagine my ex-fellow passengers gazing enviously at me and thinking "lucky bastard" as they see how easy the bus-to-office-doorstep journey is. Ha! It could only be better if someone in uniform were to pick me up off the bus and carry me across the threshold, tipping their forelock and saying "beggin' yer pardon ma'am" and all that.

That's the exciting bit. Before that comes a 30 - 40 minute bus journey, during which I read improving literature, and before that is a 10 minute scurry from house to bus stop, via one of two routes through suburbialand. Reverse all that for the return journey, but replace the improving literature with music, which is mostly obscured by the roar of the bus engine as the driver goes full throttle down the motorway, so it generally has to be noisy music, or music I'm so familiar with it makes no diff.

I also do a fair bit of looking at stuff on the way home, the best stretch being the motorway bridge over the wet bit between Portsea island and the mainland, which gives brief but commanding views of the Pounds scrapyard - often full of old ships, subs and military vehicles.

One curious thing - I don't like it if certain regulars don't get on. I wonder what it is they're doing that's so bloody special; probably something terribly exciting that I'm missing out on.

14:17 / 06.09.05

If I walk it is a 35 minute walk, or a 40 minute walk if I go through the park. To avoid being a sweaty mess for the rest of the day I only walk home and only then if it is a) a nice day & b) I can be arsed.
As I live in Glasgow & am lazy I therefore find myself taking the subway nearly all the time. This involves a 5 minute walk from home to subway and a 10 minute walk from subway to work while the subway itself takes 10 minutes. This is just long enough to read the Metro in the morning and do a mild Times Su-Doku in the evening. All of this is done to the soundtack of my MP3 player on shuffle. It's a good commute as it's not too long & nice & varied. The only problem is that is that the subway bit is too short to get any real reading done.