Clown car commuting to the extreme

[NorCal]

I'll just leave this here.  It's the sad reality of the SF area that people are choosing choosing 150+ mile commutes just to afford a house.

Personally, I'd leave the area WAY before making those compromises in life.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_28902894/bay-area-commuting-nightmares-jobs-city-affordable-homes?source=infinite-up

[zephyr911]

I would literally rather kill myself than live like that for any substantial amount of time.

JUST. NO. NO. NO. lol

[trobertson79]

There's probably an optimal amount of people to cram into a space which is also dependent upon the architecture.  NYC seems to have passed the optimal point to the point of being silly crowded and expensive despite having the architecture to handle huge population.  The bay area never developed the infastructure for population the way NYC did but the people have come regardless and it seems to have crossed the silly threshold long ago (for some reason they're afraid to build up in CA, maybe because of earthquakes?).   Moving away to more balanced metros seems to make sense.  It's not so bad here in Boston and in my old home of Raleigh it was downright cheap to live as long as you don't mind being car dependent.

[TheGrimSqueaker]

NIMBY is a huge problem in parts of California and other states, and it's one of the factors that makes housing so scarce.

There's a huge opposition to building large-scale housing, not solely because it's expensive to make it quake-resistant but also because there are significant environmental and homeowner lobbies that have decided multi-family housing is Very Bad. It's not that "everyone" wants to live in a McMansion or a single-family house out in the burbs, but that's definitely how the zoning ends up.

There's also a pervasive belief that having people in one's community who maintain a significantly lower standard of living than the current norm are a danger to that community, because of increased crime or reduced property values. Everyone wants to live in a neighborhood surrounded by expensive houses, instead of having the most expensive house on a street full of (gasp!) rentals, apartments, or condominiums. So, even in run-down parts of some cities, if a developer wants to buy up condemned or low-quality housing and build even a modest 5-storey apartment or condo complex, the NIMBY crew comes out in force and the project gets killed or held up. Or, a handful of homeowners hold out for several times more than the property is actually worth, and the developer can't successfully buy enough contiguous land to build on.

[MrMoneyMaxwell]

I would rather live in an RV with my 2 dogs in my employer's parking lot. This is the most absurd thing I have ever heard.

"Los Banos to San Francisco (240 miles)"

GET A NEW JOB IF YOU WANT TO BUY A HOUSE. THIS IS 60000 MILES ON YOUR CAR EVERY SINGLE YEAR!

[Gen Y Finance Journey]

Well I guess I feel a little better about my San Jose --> Palo Alto commute now...

I recently lost my carpool partner, and it's awful now. I can't imagine putting myself through an even worse commute. As it is, I'm trying to ease my boss into the idea of me working from home a couple days per week.

[Threshkin]

This is not new in the bay area.  I had a guy working for me in the early 1980's that commuted from Vallejo to Sunnyvale, roughly 70 miles one way.  He would come in early and leave late just to avoid the traffic.

[gimp]

The problem is, of course, that the SF bay area is the absolute best place to be - career-wise - if you're an EE/CE/CS/etc kind of person. You won't get the same opportunities or pay anywhere else.

Which is great when you're young and single and can make do with somewhat subpar living arrangements, or old and well-paid enough that you can dictate where and how you want to live.

For everyone else - well, yes, a lot of people are leaving for greener pastures. Not greener for work, but almost certainly greener for live.

With that said, I know a lot of people who live far from work, but very few people drive 150 miles per day. Nobody drives 240 miles per day. Some folks work from home a lot. I know some people who fly in (with their own plane, of course.) A lot of people live quite far but take the bus.

If I ever do the whole family thing, I am going to have to think very hard about where and how I want to live.

[cloudsail]

Wow, and I thought Mountain View to SF was far.  I wouldn't have taken the job if they didn't have a great WFH policy, so I only make the commute two to three days a week.

[GuitarStv]

1 hr of commuting each way has a significant negative effect on your life in time lost, general anger at being in a car, miserableness, etc.  I figured that out when I was in my 20s, and set 45 minutes as my breaking point . . . any more time spent and we move or change jobs.  Since having my son time is even more precious and the number probably should be revised downwards.

I can't imagine how soul destroying a 150+ mile commute every day must be.

[NoraLenderbee]

When I worked in San Francisco, there was a woman who commuted from the Tracy area--2.5 hours each way.

OTOH, I used to work with a guy who commuted from Tracy to Cupertino. He worked at home 2 days a week, he could afford to have his wife stay home with their young kids, and he just retired in his late 50s. So for him, it was worth it.

Everyone in that new story took on a long commute so they could buy a house. Or a bigger house:

"If we were living closer to my job, we'd probably be looking at a little 1,000 square-foot townhome and squeezing into three bedrooms," Levers said. Instead, he and Danielle are considering a move from their four-bedroom house — purchased in 2010, in the downdraft of the 2008 crash, for $325,000 — to a nearby $600,000 place with four or five bedrooms, larger yard and a pool.

[PaulMaxime]

I moved to San Francisco in 2007. I commuted on the Google Shuttle for 9 months to Mountain View and it was terrible. At least I didn't have to drive but I was spending 2.5 hours a day on that damned bus.

Thankfully I found a job up here in the city. Yes, San Francisco is expensive but we've managed to make it work and still have a short commute and a decent savings rate. The long commute is just not worth it. I'd rather have a smaller place and less stuff anyway.

A lot of these long commutes are because people think they need 2000+ Sq Ft and a yard. What kids need is time with their parents, which they won't have when Dad or Mom is commuting several hours in each direction and also has a demanding job.

[meg_shannon]

Happy to here it can be done in the Bay area. My husband really wants to move to the Bay area, says it's his favorite place. He grew up in Sacramento. Currently we live in central NJ (well, we'll be back there in 2/2016), which also has a high cost of living - mostly because of Princeton and people commuting to NYC.

I'm unsure. I would rather live in a lower cost of living area. Of course, I grew up in western Michigan so the housing prices in HCOL areas are always shocking to me.

[ShoulderThingThatGoesUp]

Building enough housing to fix the Bay Area would probably lower a lot of existing home values. So zoning will always be orchestrated to perpetuate the problem.

[slugline]

Naturally, I thought of MMM's True Cost of Commuting post:

In other words, a logical person should be willing to pay about $15,900 more for a house that is one mile closer to work, and $477,000 more for a house that is 30 miles closer to work. For a double-commuting couple, these numbers are $31,800 and $954,000.

I guess that's why the median SF house runs seven figures?

[acroy]

There's a Mustachian on the board recently, living in his Volt in the Bay area (IIRC) just to avoid this exact silliness!

[FatCat]

If I had to endure this much commuting to get to my job, I would find another home or find another job. A lower paying job that has affordable housing nearby is better. What does it matter how much money you're making or how nice your house is if most of your "leisure time" is spent stuck in commute. If this were a temporary situation it would be more understandable, but they seem to be planning to live this way for the long haul.

[Marus]

I moved to San Francisco in 2007. I commuted on the Google Shuttle for 9 months to Mountain View and it was terrible. At least I didn't have to drive but I was spending 2.5 hours a day on that damned bus.

Thankfully I found a job up here in the city. Yes, San Francisco is expensive but we've managed to make it work and still have a short commute and a decent savings rate. The long commute is just not worth it. I'd rather have a smaller place and less stuff anyway.

A lot of these long commutes are because people think they need 2000+ Sq Ft and a yard. What kids need is time with their parents, which they won't have when Dad or Mom is commuting several hours in each direction and also has a demanding job.

This.  Why would anyone think it's a good idea to have kids if you can only spend an hour a day with them?  Those kind of people aren't even qualified to have dogs.

[FatCat]

I moved to San Francisco in 2007. I commuted on the Google Shuttle for 9 months to Mountain View and it was terrible. At least I didn't have to drive but I was spending 2.5 hours a day on that damned bus.

Thankfully I found a job up here in the city. Yes, San Francisco is expensive but we've managed to make it work and still have a short commute and a decent savings rate. The long commute is just not worth it. I'd rather have a smaller place and less stuff anyway.

A lot of these long commutes are because people think they need 2000+ Sq Ft and a yard. What kids need is time with their parents, which they won't have when Dad or Mom is commuting several hours in each direction and also has a demanding job.

This.  Why would anyone think it's a good idea to have kids if you can only spend an hour a day with them?  Those kind of people aren't even qualified to have dogs.

They think having a yard is making their children happier. Just live closer to work and use the leisure hours you regained from the commute time to take your kids to the local park which is probably nicer than the yard anyway.

[Leftside]

This is not new in the bay area.  I had a guy working for me in the early 1980's that commuted from Vallejo to Sunnyvale, roughly 70 miles one way.  He would come in early and leave late just to avoid the traffic.

Randy!

[gillstone]

I've encountered people who will commute 90 minutes to work even in Montana.  And 90 minutes of driving here is like 120 miles one-way.  I can't imagine doing that daily, especially when winter sets in.

[Indexer]

She lists the pros of maintaining this grinding daily routine: the backyard, the shady trees, the children's happiness. The mortgage in Manteca is $2,000, less than the $2,600 in rent that she and Albert would have paid had they stayed in their old apartment in Pacifica.

Someone is bad at math. You have $600 a month so you can drive for over 100 miles EACH way. The gas, depreciation, maintenance, your TIME, etc. are worth more than $600/month.

[MgoSam]

She lists the pros of maintaining this grinding daily routine: the backyard, the shady trees, the children's happiness. The mortgage in Manteca is $2,000, less than the $2,600 in rent that she and Albert would have paid had they stayed in their old apartment in Pacifica.

Someone is bad at math. You have $600 a month so you can drive for over 100 miles EACH way. The gas, depreciation, maintenance, your TIME, etc. are worth more than $600/month.

Not to mention is that a house costs more than just a mortgage, you also have upkeep and other things that can add up. Trust me, as a homeowner for only 6 weeks, I know*!

*Nothing major or unexpected, but I am wary...knock on wood.

[rob in cal]

   Anytime I see these articles about long commutes, the high costs of housing etc, my first thought is the SF Bay Area. Go figure. We know someone who lives with his wife in our Sacramento suburb town, and who works in SF during the week.  He rents a small apartment or room, not sure which with his son who also works with him on a long term construction project, and comes back on Friday night, goes back Monday morning.  He's one of the managers of it, so I'm sure he's making good money.  They moved to our area originally to be with an ill family member, and came to like the area.   

[Jack]

As a CS kind of person, I say the Bay Area is for suckers. Sure, I don't make as much money here in Atlanta as I would there, but I could afford to buy my 3-bedroom house with a yard immediately after graduating college, have a relatively short commute, and work for 8 hours a day (as opposed to the large amounts of unpaid overtime that I keep hearing about being "normal" in the tech industry). Considering all that, I wouldn't be surprised if my real hourly wage is higher than it would be if I were there... and my standard of living certainly is!

[nobodyspecial]

Not saying SF or silicon valley is for everyone but there are advantages beyond the salary:expenses ratio

You work for a large corporate in Atlanta/Washington/Raleigh etc - in a few years you might be considered for promotion to an office.
In the valley you jump ship every 9-12 months and get a 20-50% pay rise.

In midwest megacorp land - Cisco/IBM/SAP close their local office and now 5000 of you are all looking for work. 
There you can find a new job by pressing the wrong floor button in the elevator.

Want to start your own business? Guess where the VCs are? Where the talent is, where is the talent? Where the VCs are etc etc
I have started companies in Silicon <insert local geographic feature> all over the world and the difference in the valley just isn't funny. There are literally 1000x as many VCs and many times more money than in other markets.

It's not a place for a career (unless you are mad,driven or very lucky) but it is a good place to stick away a stash for a few years and it's better odds than the lottery of "winning" a $M
   
 

[Jack]

Not saying SF or silicon valley is for everyone but there are advantages beyond the salary:expenses ratio

You work for a large corporate in Atlanta/Washington/Raleigh etc - in a few years you might be considered for promotion to an office.
In the valley you jump ship every 9-12 months and get a 20-50% pay rise.

In Atlanta, I've worked for three different companies in a little over three years, all of which were between 50 and 400 employees in size, and during that time I've doubled my salary.

You Silly Valley people have this idea that you're special, but (other then the VC) you're really not.

[UnleashHell]

I knew a guy who would commute from Big bear to Century city 4 days a week. 3 1/2 hour drive each way. he'd set off at 2.30am to avoid traffic....

screw that.

[nobodyspecial]

You Silly Valley people have this idea that you're special, but (other then the VC) you're really not.

I'm not, can't stand SV and don't want to live there.

I'm trying to run a startup in a city where the few VCs think that $1M is an unimaginably large sum of money.
Which is a little frustrating compared to an area where there are 1000 funds with >$100M on the same street.

[gimp]

I don't think a lot of people jump ship ever 9-12 months. Unless they're going from startup to startup or consulting. Most people stay at least a year, usually two-three in their earlier years, and a bit more in their later years.

Also, a 90 minute commute in Montana is not remotely the same as a 90 minute commute in the bay area. I'm not saying I would want to drive 120 miles each way in Montana, but it would not destroy me at all. It's really quite pleasant if you enjoy driving, which I do. For me, it's a zen activity - albeit an expensive one - to drive in the boonies. I'd prefer a ~half hour commute, but if given the choice to drive a half hour or walk two minutes, I might prefer the drive... wide open roads, no traffic, a good way to unwind or to start the day. But commuting here in the bay area is just stressful as fuck, though admittedly I tend to drive home around ~10pm when it's very pleasant in comparison, but nowhere near as nice as empty roads in Montana are.

[seanc0x0]

Also, a 90 minute commute in Montana is not remotely the same as a 90 minute commute in the bay area. I'm not saying I would want to drive 120 miles each way in Montana, but it would not destroy me at all. It's really quite pleasant if you enjoy driving, which I do. For me, it's a zen activity - albeit an expensive one - to drive in the boonies. I'd prefer a ~half hour commute, but if given the choice to drive a half hour or walk two minutes, I might prefer the drive... wide open roads, no traffic, a good way to unwind or to start the day. But commuting here in the bay area is just stressful as fuck, though admittedly I tend to drive home around ~10pm when it's very pleasant in comparison, but nowhere near as nice as empty roads in Montana are.

I also enjoy driving when the traffic is light. I used to (pre-MMM) just go out and drive around the highways from time to time. Now I only do highway driving for actual reasons, like going camping or visiting family. 

I'd imagine Montana is pretty similar to Saskatchewan in terms of light traffic and weather conditions. It's great to drive in the summer. However,  I've never felt stress in traffic as bad as the few times I've been forced to drive in near whiteout conditions, with blowing snow crossing the highway at close to 90 degrees, completely obscuring the road markings.  The motion of the snow makes it extremely difficult to stay on the road, and makes for some pretty intense driving. Those conditions happen fairly often here, and since my employer refuses to even consider the thought of teleworking, I live in town.

[cloudsail]

You Silly Valley people have this idea that you're special, but (other then the VC) you're really not.

I'm not, can't stand SV and don't want to live there.

I'm trying to run a startup in a city where the few VCs think that $1M is an unimaginably large sum of money.
Which is a little frustrating compared to an area where there are 1000 funds with >$100M on the same street.

This.

I moved from Seattle, which is also a big tech hub, to Silicon Valley and the difference is huge.  If you're in tech, nothing can compare with environment here.  It frequently feels like millions of dollars are just flying around in the air.  That being said, unless you're trying to run a startup or growing your career rapidly, I'm not sure that anything is worth the high COL.

I do enjoy the sunshine though.

[paddedhat]

I moved to San Francisco in 2007. I commuted on the Google Shuttle for 9 months to Mountain View and it was terrible. At least I didn't have to drive but I was spending 2.5 hours a day on that damned bus.

Thankfully I found a job up here in the city. Yes, San Francisco is expensive but we've managed to make it work and still have a short commute and a decent savings rate. The long commute is just not worth it. I'd rather have a smaller place and less stuff anyway.

A lot of these long commutes are because people think they need 2000+ Sq Ft and a yard. What kids need is time with their parents, which they won't have when Dad or Mom is commuting several hours in each direction and also has a demanding job.

This.  Why would anyone think it's a good idea to have kids if you can only spend an hour a day with them?  Those kind of people aren't even qualified to have dogs.

We raised our family in Monroe County PA. This is on the eastern border of the state and roughly 80-100 miles straight west of NYC, depending on what rural location you pick. Keeping in mind that commuting this distance involves crossing the entire state of New Jersey. Over the past thirty years the region has been featured many times in the national news for being one of the largest, and most distant, "exurbs" of a major city. The situation throttled back a bit immediately following the great recession, but the most recent figures I saw stated that 11,000 commuters leave the county to commute to the NYC metro area, ever day, and 4000 of them work in the city itself. A typical commute for one of my neighbors was leaving the house at 5:15 AM to take a 20 minute ride to the local bus parking lot. If the traffic gods were cooperating, this was followed by a 2-1/4 hour bus ride to downtown Manhattan, then another bus, subway, or walk to your employment. The return trip often ended after 8PM.
There are countless thousands of locals in the area that spent decades, or even full careers commuting 50K miles and 1500 hours a year. As you can imagine, in many cases your comments about quality of life and the lack of time to raise a family, are correct. My wife was a school teacher and frequently found issues with parents who kept the family in the area, but gave up on the commute, and found a housing arrangement for themselves in the city. It's not unusual to find a situation where a child in their mid-teens is actually raising siblings while the parent is in the city, five days a week. Sadly, as a retired builder, I can say that the biggest driving force behind all this is the desire to own the POS, cardboard McMansion on a acre, in a nice "development".  My wife, OTOH, would point to all the troubled families who sat in her office,  mystified by the mess their kids had become, since they moved here "for a better life". The fact that the parents didn't have the time to spend engaging in this mythical better life always seemed to elude them.

[ShoulderThingThatGoesUp]

The Census now considers the entire Lehigh Valley a suburb of New York.

[Seppia]

She lists the pros of maintaining this grinding daily routine: the backyard, the shady trees, the children's happiness. The mortgage in Manteca is $2,000, less than the $2,600 in rent that she and Albert would have paid had they stayed in their old apartment in Pacifica.

Someone is bad at math. You have $600 a month so you can drive for over 100 miles EACH way. The gas, depreciation, maintenance, your TIME, etc. are worth more than $600/month.

Same thing I thought.
Spectacularly bad though. Even if the commute cost zero, a three hour each way to save $600 values your time at less than $5 per hour.
She could just stay close to work and add a few extra McDonalds hours (less than 6 per day) and she would have a net positive.
Again assuming the impossible fact that her commute has no cost.

[electriceagle]

NIMBY is a huge problem in parts of California and other states, and it's one of the factors that makes housing so scarce.

Exactly.

In most places, developers can build up to what a location is zoned for. In SF, everything requires neighborhood approval, which quickly devolves to political approval.

Here in SF, the building regulations and political rancor surrounding development are so severe that we added fewer than 300 housing units per year for a long while, all while the economy expanded.

The new political balance on the Board of Supervisors is pro-development, so cranes have been popping up all over. If things continue on the current path, the number of housing units in San Francisco will increase by over 10% across the next 7 years.

However, for this upcoming election, SF's only contested race is a blast-from-the-past anti-development guy against a slightly weak pro-development Supervisor. If the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors changes, anti-development is in again.

One more note: Economists keep saying that rich homeowners keep development out in order to inflate their property values. That's not the case in the bay area. Here, representatives of poor people (or folks who claim to be so) oppose new housing on the theory that rich people would move into it.

Then all the poor people get priced out. So the activists get more admant that there be no new housing, lest rich people move in. Vicious cycle.

Know what else is on the ballot this time? A ban on new housing in one of SF's most popular neighborhoods. Sigh.

[Jack]

The Census now considers the entire Lehigh Valley a suburb of New York.

By some measures, the Atlanta metro area extends all the way to the Alabama state line.

[Kaspian]

"The commute is cray-cray," Turner said. "It's a drainer. It sucks the life out of you."

It can literally suck the life out of you.  Five or six hours on a highway at rush hour filled with other pissed-off, exhausted commuters probably increases your chances of getting in a fatal accident about a billion times.  The busiest highway in my province is a giant death machine.  Every single day it thins the heard by one, two, or six heads.  In California there are even highways nicknamed "Blood Alley" and "Death Trap Highway".  At 3,000 fatal crashes a year for the whole state, I'd spend the least amount of time possible on those roads.

[Marus]

"The commute is cray-cray," Turner said. "It's a drainer. It sucks the life out of you."

It can literally suck the life out of you.  Five or six hours on a highway at rush hour filled with other pissed-off, exhausted commuters probably increases your chances of getting in a fatal accident about a billion times.  The busiest highway in my province is a giant death machine.  Every single day it thins the heard by one, two, or six heads.  In California there are even highways nicknamed "Blood Alley" and "Death Trap Highway".  At 3,000 fatal crashes a year for the whole state, I'd spend the least amount of time possible on those roads.

I'd also be worried about the stressful effects of driving.  I'm just speculating here, but I'd imagine that putting yourself in " Blood Alley" type environments where you're constantly worried about getting cut off or hitting the car in front of you would lead to elevated cortisol levels, but since you're stuck in your stupid clown car you don't have the natural release that usually comes after the fight or flight response kicks in. 

In the long-term, elevated cortisol levels will shave years off your life.  And while there are ways to combat this, I don't see how anyone driving five hours a day is going to be able to get all the sleep, exercise, and family time they need.

[Kaspian]

^^ Very good points!  The stress alone would make me "cray-cray" after a week.  ....And my ass would be so sore it'd probably fall off in the shower.

Do you think people would enter a shopping mall knowing that the front doors would randomly guillotine 3,000 people a year even though they'd probably be fine?  And if you were a long commuter you'd have to go back and forth through the doors five times before allowed to pass?  Hell, no.

[GuitarStv]

I've seen some Black Friday videos that would suggest the mall guillotine thing would probably be OK with most shoppers.

[snowball]

People have this weird thing about accepting traffic deaths as just...background noise.  Too frequent to pay attention to.  If you could culturally normalize the mall guillotining somehow, then yes, I think lots of people would still go, knowing that they're playing Russian roulette.  Black Friday actually already seems like a good try at that, like GuitarStv said.  :P

(I know we only hear about the worst parts of it, but Black Friday is just horrifying.  I hope it never really takes root in Canada, but the retailers are certainly trying to make that happen.  I refuse to buy anything in protest.  But then, at that time of year, I try not to enter stores until January anyway...)

[TheGrimSqueaker]

People have this weird thing about accepting traffic deaths as just...background noise.  Too frequent to pay attention to.  If you could culturally normalize the mall guillotining somehow, then yes, I think lots of people would still go, knowing that they're playing Russian roulette.  Black Friday actually already seems like a good try at that, like GuitarStv said.  :P

(I know we only hear about the worst parts of it, but Black Friday is just horrifying.  I hope it never really takes root in Canada, but the retailers are certainly trying to make that happen.  I refuse to buy anything in protest.  But then, at that time of year, I try not to enter stores until January anyway...)

When I first heard about the Black Friday tradition, I thought the guy was telling me some kind of sick joke. It turns out it's real. The orgy of holiday spending has to be one of the oddest things I've had to adjust to, living in the States.

[paddedhat]

People have this weird thing about accepting traffic deaths as just...background noise.  Too frequent to pay attention to.  If you could culturally normalize the mall guillotining somehow, then yes, I think lots of people would still go, knowing that they're playing Russian roulette.  Black Friday actually already seems like a good try at that, like GuitarStv said.  :P

(I know we only hear about the worst parts of it, but Black Friday is just horrifying.  I hope it never really takes root in Canada, but the retailers are certainly trying to make that happen.  I refuse to buy anything in protest.  But then, at that time of year, I try not to enter stores until January anyway...)

When I first heard about the Black Friday tradition, I thought the guy was telling me some kind of sick joke. It turns out it's real. The orgy of holiday spending has to be one of the oddest things I've had to adjust to, living in the States.

It certainly isn't a recent stain on the American culture either. My step dad was an electrician at an inner city department store, forty years ago. Back when the place was a cultured affair with a fine dining room, featuring models on the runway, and elevator attendants in white gloves. He would always comment on the brawls that happened as they opened the doors on Black Friday, with racks knocked over and "ladies" throwing punches. I'm with you on this, hell will freeze over before I ever get involves in that mess. If UPS can't bring it to the door, from Thanksgiving to Jan 1st, I can do without it.

[Papa Mustache]

The Census now considers the entire Lehigh Valley a suburb of New York.

By some measures, the Atlanta metro area extends all the way to the Alabama state line.

People drive from Chattanooga to Atlanta too. All the exits in between feed to Atlanta as well.

[Jack]

The Census now considers the entire Lehigh Valley a suburb of New York.

By some measures, the Atlanta metro area extends all the way to the Alabama state line.

People drive from Chattanooga to Atlanta too. All the exits in between feed to Atlanta as well.

Daily, as a commute? Atlanta sprawl is bad, but I haven't heard of it being that bad! I could maybe believe someone [stupid] commuting from (e.g.) Dalton to Kennessaw, but not all the way from Chattanooga.

The worst plausible Atlanta-area commute I can think of would be something like McDonough to Alpharetta.

[markbike528CBX]

People drive from Chattanooga to Atlanta too. All the exits in between feed to Atlanta as well.

I should hope that no one who considers themselves Southerners would follow in the hoofprints of Gen. Sherman, every day.

Personal disclosure: A Yankee, but big fan of Shelby Footes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Civil_War:_A_Narrative