Last week I took Thursday and Friday off work to participate in the Texas State Republican Convention. It was being held in Fort Worth, while I live in downtown Dallas.
I thought about getting a hotel room and staying in Fort Worth for the 3 days of the conference, but I couldn’t bring myself to pay over $60 a night to stay in a hotel 35 miles away from where I live.
I figured I would have to drive back and forth from Dallas to Fort Worth in rush hour traffic. It would cost me at least $10 a day in gas, plus I’d probably have to pay for parking. This is all in addition to having to spend who knows how long in my car sitting in traffic.
Then it hit me: There has to be some kind of public transportation that goes from Dallas to Fort Worth.
And sure enough, I found the Trinity Railway Express.
Public Transportation is Wonderful
So instead of spending a bunch of money on gas and time in my car, I hopped on a train and used that time to write this article.
It’s a wonderful thing to take time that would have been devoted to driving and turn it into time that can be productive.
Sure I’m saving money on this deal, but more importantly I get an hour of my day back. I used the time to write posts and work on my new website that might make me a bunch of money one day.
The train was smooth, clean, safe, quiet, and basically perfect for being productive. If I had a daily commute on this train, I’d probably have 3 or 4 blogs and I’d write all the posts when I was on the train.
It had never occurred to me before, but I’m insanely jealous of people who have a commute on public transportation. To have an hour a day or uninterrupted productivity is blissful. I’m jealous of anyone who gets that time on a train.
Readers: Do you have a commute on public transportation? If not, is there any way you could use public transportation? What would you do with the extra time?
Carnival Links
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie at My University Money
Carnival of Financial Planning at Intelligent Speculator
Festival of Frugality at The Frugal Toad
Yakezie Carnival at 20s Finances
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Carnival of Retirement at Finance Product Reviews
Totally Money Carnival at Young Family Finance
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
I live in central Long Island, and about 20 years ago took a job in midtown Manhattan. (This was after the only period of unemployment I’ve ever had, which lasted about six months.) I had to get up by 6 AM, drive to my local train station by 7 to catch a 7:10 which arrived at Penn Station by 8:25, and then I usually walked 15 minutes to my job to be at work by 9. And the reverse each night, getting home by 7, not to mention a $200 monthly ticket.
I did a lot of reading on these trips, including the complete works of Shakespeare over a period of 8 months.
Close to a year later, the company relocated to Jersey City, which meant a subway downtown from Penn Station to get to my desk by 9 if I was lucky. In other words, four hours commuting each day.
I now drive 15-20 minutes each way to my office. Public commuting? no thanks.
Yes, I admit that a 3 hour commute where you change from walking to train to bus to walking is not great. I was just really excited for my easy train ride (and my gf dropped me at the train station, so no walking involved from my door to the train, and on the other end the train stopped right where I was going).
How expensive is the train?
I live near a commuter train and it’s super expensive. I think it’s about $300/mo to take it every week day, and you’d still need a car if you wanted to do errands or have a life besides work (lol). But, it’s a great idea because your right – it does increase productivity. all the time that you would be in a car driving, you can do other things while on the train.
It was $10 for the round trip. For reference, parking in downtown Fort Worth is $8 to $10 a day.
I commuted for a little over a year from Plano to CentrePort (Ft Worth). In order to get to work at 7am, I would get up at four, walk 1/4 mile to the nearest bus stop to catch the bus to Parker Road Station, then catch the first train out of there, a few minutes after 5am. About an hour later, I would get off at Union Station in downtown Dallas. I would then get to wait about 15 minutes at Union Station before getting on the TRE for the 25-minute trip to the CentrePort stop, where I got to walk the remaining 1/4 mile to work, getting there within a couple of minutes of 7am.
The trip home, starting from work at 4pm, took slightly longer, due to the slight schedule difference. So, I’d get home around 6:15.
If I hadn’t been able to arrange a 7am to 4pm shift, the transit time would have been about 15 minutes longer each way, and more than twice as crowded. As it was, I had to stand most of the way from Union Station to Plano on the way home, which would completely pre-empt any attempt to use my laptop.
The only leg of the trip that had WiFi was the 25-minute segment on TRE. With 5 minutes to set up, and about 5 minutes to pack up, that left about 15 minutes to do something productive. If you can actually do something like write a blog post in that amount of time, you are doing way better than I can. I generally just spent the time on TRE reading and replying to email.
The DART rail portion of the trip was painfully noisy, so I would listen to audiobooks using active noise-cancellation headphones.
The upside is that my employer heavily subsidized the year DART pass, so I did actually save enough on gas and tolls to come out ahead after only about 3 weeks.
Then I found a job 4.5 miles from the house, and got about 4 hours/day of my life back. Was nice while it lasted (nearly 3 years), but now I’m driving 30 minutes each way to a job in Irving. I could take public transportation here, but the transit time would be 3 hours each way, mostly on buses with no WiFi, with multiple layover stops (occasional bad weather is a major problem). Since I have a side business teaching violin students in the evenings, a 6-hour commute on top of a 9-hour shift is a non-starter.
Public transportation has a LONG way to go before it is truly useful, at least in the DFW ‘burbs.
One last problem — my current employer does not allow me to carry a gun at work, and there is no way I’m going to go on DART unarmed. Since there is no secure place to keep my gun unless I have my car with me, that’s another non-starter.
The TRE was nice, but the DART is another story. I think I’d want a concealed weapon on the DART too!
And yes, it has a long way to go to be useful for most people, but it was perfectly useful and convenient for me in this particular situation.
Public transportation in my city is a sad sad unfunny joke. The busses have a schedule, which they don’t seem to follow, and there is not light rail or anything like that. From what I estimated on the bus website it would take me 2 to 2.5 hours to get to work when I can drive there in 20 minutes.
So as a result I don’t use public transportation.
I wouldn’t give up 4 hours each day just to do public transportation. You are doing it right. Hopefully things get better in your city, not only for you but for all the other people who might want to ride it (or even more, for those who do ride it)
For a while I was living in Denver, working in Longmont (36 mi). I got so sick of sitting in traffic that I decided to start taking the bus. At first it was hard to get used to being out the door at a specific time….I like to just be on my own schedule, and my boss doesn’t care when I show up. But after about a week it became my new normal. I got exercise walking a few blocks to the bus stop, and then when I was on the bus it was really an hour of awesome productivity! I could read, write, listen to podcasts, even just zone out! And most importantly, not care about the idiot that just cut me off. 🙂 It was also great on the ride home… I had enough time to cool down from the work day, and really not bring any bad feelings home with me.
Now I live close to my job, and it was actually kind of hard to give up that nice veg time.
It sounds like your experience was a lot like mine! I’m glad it worked out so well for you, and it’s too bad you don’t have that time anymore.
The subtle irony in taking public transportation to a Republican convention makes for a great mid-morning laugh.
Public transportation is virtually nonexistent where I live. Subways? Only if you want a sandwich.
Not that I’m a big fan of tax dollars supporting a train, but I’m not going to ignore it when it’s convenient. Even though I don’t like it, the fact is my tax dollars are paying for it so I may as well use it.
When I was growing up in NYC, PT was great. We walked a couple blocks to the bus and it let us off (depending on which one we took) either right around the corner from the school or 3 blocks away. We would use it to get around all the time before cars became a factor, and even then , the ferry was a much better option most of the time.
Now, in South Florida, PT is an option they are trying to push, but if you don’t live or work downtown, it could be a royal pain. For me, I don’t even know how many times I would have to transfer busses, since my job isn’t a straight shot from home. Even if there was a viable option I don’t know that I would be very interested. You lose a little bit of freedom when you depend on another to get around, and you would always have to keep to a pretty strict timetable, and plan in advance quite a bit. Not some of the things I enjoy doing very much.
I’m with you. I only like public transportation when it’s convenient.
I started commuting when my car broke down, and now I’ve been doing it for two years and I kind of love it!
My work is only a ten minute drive from my house, but it is straight uphill so it’s a challenging bike ride (not one that I’m able to do yet). The bus station is a 5-minute bike ride from my house, as is the bike shuttle pick-up (an awesome commute option for bicyclists). I ride my bike to either the bus or the bike shuttle and take my bike with me, and spend the next 20 minutes catching up on personal finance blogs (yours is read every morning on the bike shuttle), or email, or pleasure reading.
I then have my bike at work so during my lunch I take a long, strenuous ride in beautiful California weather through pastures and forest– Much more rewarding to me then the gym. At the end of the day, I ride my bike home down the mountain and get there faster than when I drive.
Just as the morning commute gives me a chance to catch up on [fill in the blank], my bike ride home gives me a chance to exercise and get fresh air. It’s nice multi-tasking! I would hate to drive home and then have to carve out extra time for exercise.
Wow, you have a pretty great situation. I wish I had built in time for exercise every day. And I’m honored to be a fixture on your daily commute. Thanks for reading and always sharing your comments.
Public transportation in my city is great, but unless you have to pay for parking, it is cheaper to drive.
That’s the key. Public transportation needs to be more convenient and cheaper for most people (myself included) to consider it. It’s hard to do, but wonderful when that happens.
I used to live in the Seattle suburbs and commuted to downtown Seattle for work. It would take me an hour on the bus each way, which only cost me $10 a month due to company subsidized transit pass. Like others have mentioned, I’d still need my car to have a life outside of work, so the bus didn’t always cut it. As for productivity… I sleep very well in moving vehicles (probably better than in my own bed), buses, cars, trains… I’m out like a light. So unless catching up on sleep counts as being productive lol.
A few years ago I moved within a 10 minute walk of work and now have 2 more hours in my daily life back to use as I please. I feel like I’m more productive now because I’m not as stressed and rushed during my day. I rarely bring work home with me now because I’m actually getting things done at work lol. I get my daily “exercise” in and still get plenty of sleep.
There’s nothing like living close to work. Congratulations.
I also agree that unless you’re in NYC, you need a car even if you can commute to work with PT. It’s too bad though. Can you imagine how much money you’d save by not having a car payment or insurance?
I used to commute on the DC Metro for about 75 minutes each way, which my employer paid for. It was an unsustainably long commute so I moved after a few months, but I was often quite productive on the Metro (that or trying to sleep!). Back then I read lots of books – now I agree that I would probably write blog posts. Aside from the length of time, I really loved it.
75 minutes is a long time, but if you have something to keep you busy then it’s nice. It’s just hard to come up with over 2 hours of stuff to do when you consider a round trip. I don’t blame you for moving closer.
When I took public transportation, I could catch up on my reading or work. It was also great stress reducer. The best part was not driving in typical Los Angeles traffic.
YES! Traffic is about the only thing in the world that can consistently cause me stress. That’s why I work from home so often and live close to work; I can’t handle traffic!!!
When I was in DC I would often read books while on the metro to one of our company’s clients. It is nice sometimes but during rush hour it is super crowded. Where I live now we have basically no public transportation worth mentioning so it isn’t really an option for me.
When I used to commute to work in DC via the Metro, I got a lot done in those 15 minutes. I beat all of Angry Birds. Now I drive 40 minutes each way and listen to sports radio, and I really enjoy it. It makes the time go by way faster.
I am lucky. The hospital I work for pays for every employees bus fair. My car sits all week and I save a lot of gas.
I am lucky. The hospital I work for pays for every employees bus fare. My car sits all week and I save a lot of gas.