The Daily Commute

  • Just to add to the misery 🙂

    1 litre of diesel here (UK) cost £1.33 ~ $2.58 give or take a cent

    That makes an Imperial gallon [4.546 litres] cost £6.04 or $11.73

    The US gallon [3.7854 litres] would cost £5.03 or $9.77

    Thank God my car does 55 mp(i)g

    Drive safe.

    K.

  • Karma, i know how you feel.

    To be honest, i have decided to look at other possible roles...even as far as going back to my first place of work to do the same job! All be it for better money than when i was their, but it would still be a pay cut for me. But taking in the cost of fuel at the moment (and its definately going to keep going up) i would save £4,000 a year!!!

    Matt

  • I do think especially in the UK these fuel prices are here to stay and its going to start affecting how we work .. more WFH for example where possible etc

  • WFH...Hmmmm the Xbox360 is there - bad idea.... 😛

    But yes, the price of petrol is a killer...As I catch the train, I rarely use the car these days, but I had to fill up this weekend and it came out at £65 ($120 roughly)...

  • Clive Strong (7/9/2008)


    WFH...Hmmmm the Xbox360 is there - bad idea.... 😛

    just have to resist that temptation 🙂

  • Hi,

    I've done the work from home bit- only a couple of days a week - and remote office working on my own neither of which i enjoyed. For the most part i like working in an office environment, in the thick of things.

    I couldn't do my current job remotely as it's a split between Business Analysis, DBA, Development and User support which needs me here during business hours.

    I think that i'll be looking at moving closer to home quite soon, partly due to the travel and partly because i want to do an MBA which will need me to be free in the evenings as much as possible.

    K.

  • My current drive is 7 miles, with 2 4-way stops, one roundabout (yes I live in the US!) and 5 stop lights. Takes me about 15-20 minutes, depending on when I leave the house.

    And whoever said come in early and leave early is spot on. When I lived in Dallas, if I hit 635 at 7 it could take me 20 minutes to get to work, at 7:15 it could easily take me upwards from 45 minutes.

    Of course, unlike Houston, Dallas has a light rail system. So whenever I had jobs downtown I would drive to the closest rail station and ride in. Free parking, 1 dollar fare.

    Think the worst drive I had was when I lived in eastern part of Dallas, and worked at MS in Las Colinas. Got to the point I would ride 2 completely different routes back and forth on my motorcycle..... Due to the location of my house I could go either south or North of down town, so I took South to work to be on the HOV lane most of the way, and North on my way back for the same reason.

  • Clive Strong (7/9/2008)


    WFH...Hmmmm the Xbox360 is there - bad idea.... 😛

    But yes, the price of petrol is a killer...As I catch the train, I rarely use the car these days, but I had to fill up this weekend and it came out at £65 ($120 roughly)...

    Curious, how many US gallons was that? My wife complains about filling up her Envoy (gas guzzling SUV). I put in $75.00 dollars worth the other day (pay at the pump using Visa stopped at that point, after about 18.5 gallons).

  • Lynn Pettis (7/9/2008)


    Clive Strong (7/9/2008)


    WFH...Hmmmm the Xbox360 is there - bad idea.... 😛

    But yes, the price of petrol is a killer...As I catch the train, I rarely use the car these days, but I had to fill up this weekend and it came out at £65 ($120 roughly)...

    Curious, how many US gallons was that? My wife complains about filling up her Envoy (gas guzzling SUV). I put in $75.00 dollars worth the other day (pay at the pump using Visa stopped at that point, after about 18.5 gallons).

    Petrol = Gas, Petrol in the UK ~£1.19 a litre that gives you 14.4 US gallons for £65 ($120)

    K.

  • Lynn Pettis (7/9/2008)


    Clive Strong (7/9/2008)


    WFH...Hmmmm the Xbox360 is there - bad idea.... 😛

    But yes, the price of petrol is a killer...As I catch the train, I rarely use the car these days, but I had to fill up this weekend and it came out at £65 ($120 roughly)...

    Curious, how many US gallons was that? My wife complains about filling up her Envoy (gas guzzling SUV). I put in $75.00 dollars worth the other day (pay at the pump using Visa stopped at that point, after about 18.5 gallons).

    I think it works out to about 14.5 US gallons...It was just under 55 litres.

  • I used to drive 65 miles one way to my job, but I was going against traffic so it usually took me only about 70 minutes to get there, even though 20 miles of it was on local roads. (I confess I was speeding on the freeway portion.) I had that job for 4.5 years, but every now and then I could work from home (once I upgraded to DSL at home). Before that I had a 45 mile one way commute which took about 50 minutes; I also worked there for ~4.5 years. Both of these jobs had a 7:30 start time, which meant rising at 5:30, grabbing a quick bite to eat and getting on the road as fast as possible.:pinch:

    Now my job is only 6.2 miles from home, and they consider arriving at 8 being "one of the early arrivers", so I don't even need an alarm any more and can take a shower, eat breakfast, and run a quick errand before going to work.:cool:

  • Clive Strong (7/9/2008)


    Lynn Pettis (7/9/2008)


    Clive Strong (7/9/2008)


    WFH...Hmmmm the Xbox360 is there - bad idea.... 😛

    But yes, the price of petrol is a killer...As I catch the train, I rarely use the car these days, but I had to fill up this weekend and it came out at £65 ($120 roughly)...

    Curious, how many US gallons was that? My wife complains about filling up her Envoy (gas guzzling SUV). I put in $75.00 dollars worth the other day (pay at the pump using Visa stopped at that point, after about 18.5 gallons).

    I think it works out to about 14.5 US gallons...It was just under 55 litres.

    I guess I should let the wife know we still have it better than others when it comes to gas prices. What you paid works out to approx 8.33 per US gal. That is twice what we are paying right now. If we had to pay that, I'd definately look at seeing about working from home one or two days a week.

  • It really depends on where you're driving to as well as the distance. I used to commute about 30 miles down I-90, the Massachusetts Turnpike, and it took about 1 hour at 6AM (2-3 hours at 8AM). Now I drive 35 miles down Route 146 and it takes about 45 minutes (there are a couple of traffic signals).

    Driving on the Mass Pike is like being a Mad Max movie, every single day. It's just a Mad Max movie that for no apparent reason comes to screetching halt every few miles.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

  • I guess I should let the wife know we still have it better than others when it comes to gas prices. What you paid works out to approx 8.33 per US gal. That is twice what we are paying right now. If we had to pay that, I'd definately look at seeing about working from home one or two days a week.

    It seems a lot of people drive to work in the US compared to here in the UK. Is this because of a lack of decent public transport, or is driving simply preferred?

  • A bit of both really. Plus, if you haven't been here, you might not know. This place is kind of big. There's a lot of empty space and we tend to move out into it. I sacrificed an easy commute on public transportation for 15 acres of woods. Most of the time, it was worth the trade.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

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