Commuting

I think I spend an average of about 8 hours per week in my car commuting to and from work.  How depressing is that?  That’s a whole (American) working day.  And it’s only getting worse.  Seattle has been consistently climbing up the rankings as one of the worst commutes in the country (6^th worse now I believe).  And I’ve definitely noticed the difference since returning to Seattle, even in just a year away.  I mostly blame the booming economy of Seattle – which has increased the population, and hence also the traffic, in the greater Seattle area.  You could argue that it’s a victim of its own success.  Just in the vicinity of where I work, there is absolutely loads of construction going on (business and residential) that is just going to make things so much worse.  And just down the road is the ever expanding Amazon headquarters, I think home to something like 225,000 employees now.  When I first came to Seattle, that wasn’t even there.  All of this adds up to horrendous traffic, and I’m just relieved that we’ve got a garage at work because finding street parking is almost impossible.  On top of this, I chose to live in Bothell – a suburb about 12 miles NE of Seattle proper as the crow flies.  By road,  that is a commute about 20 miles one-way each day, with most of that normally on the notoriously busy I-5 freeway – the only freeway that goes through Seattle.  If there is a crash, then that can turn my commute into an absolute mess.  With the quality of driving and drivers round here, invariably there is a crash during most commutes – just yesterday there was a big pile up that happened just in front of me that I had to weave around.  Honestly, I think it’s just a matter of when rather than if I’m going to be involved in an accident – I don’t think I’m a bad driver by any means, but someone else is going to do something stupid that invariably I’m going to get caught up in.  I’ve tried adjusting my work day slightly – I tend to arrive later and leave later.  And I have started to check Google Maps before every commute to tell me the quickest route – which has helped.  If I was to commute during peak rush hour every day I could easily spend more than 10 hours a week in traffic, so I have managed to shave some time off that.  But most days it’s still a nightmare and I hate it.  I don’t know when exactly we’re supposed to be getting driverless cars, but they can’t come soon enough for me!