What’s the Ideal Commute?

So it turns out that my latest company, which is a bike ride (3 miles) from my house, is being sold. That almost certainly means no more 5 minute commute for me!  Given that any commute is going to be longer, I’m left wondering what would be good and what would be bad.

I used to do 90 minutes each way.  Drive to train, train to city, walk from train station to office.  Repeat backwards at night.  That was awful…but at the same time, different.  I listened to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks, for example.  And I got to sit on the train with laptop and do real work sometimes.  With a 5 minute commute I don’t even get to listen to my shows anymore.

So a longer commute wouldn’t be so bad, as long as you can make appropriate use of the time.  How will it affect my ability to help my wife get the kids to school in the morning?  Will I be home for dinner?  Those are the important questions.  Whether I’m in the car for 5 minutes or 15 minutes isn’t really the most important question in the world. Some people like to fill up that time with music, some with talk radio. I like my audiobooks.

We shall see what I end up with.  Best hope is not to have to go into Boston again, and maybe keep the commute under 20-30 minutes or so.  That wouldn’t really be a bike ride anymore, but it’d still be short enough (while providing a wide enough area of cities where my new owner could put us).  Fingers crossed!

What Would A $446 Ticket Mean To You?

I bookmarked this article that asked whether LA’s new traffic camera system, which apparently generates very high priced tickets (that’s over double the highest ticket I’ve personally ever seen) made the streets safer, thinking it’d be some statistical info on answering that exact question.  Instead it’s the first person account from an author who got such a ticket, and then goes about arguing why the system doesn’t work.  Big surprise.

I still contend that I’ve never met anybody who’s looked me in the eye and said, “Yeah, I got a traffic ticket the other day – and it was totally my fault, I so deserved it.”

I have so little sympathy for this.  Every day I see people pushing their luck, supposedly within the limits of the law.  That “right on red” rule being one of my pet peeves.  Right on red does not, under any circumstances, mean “Oh, it just turned green going the other direction, and the oncoming traffic has not yet had time to accelerate, so I’ll go ahead and pull out in front of them.”  That, however, is what people do every day.  And if you ticketed them for it they’d say, like the guy in the article, “Fine, now I’m gonna be a d*ck about it and never turn right on red ever again, screw the people behind me.”

A friend of mine once argued, in apparently all seriousness, that you should not ever be ticketed for driving recklessly, only for actually causing an accident.  Because, he said, some people are just *better* drivers, and are capable of doing all that high speed lane switching stuff safely.  If they don’t cause an accident, they should be allowed to do it.

My favorite quote is the one that argues the cameras *cause* accidents:

Costa Mesa reported a 13 percent increase in total collisions and a 20 percent increase in rear-end collisions after cameras were installed. In 2008, a University of South Florida study found the same. “Red-light cameras don’t work,” says USF Professor Barbara Langland-Orban. “They increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections” after spotting the cameras.

Aw, what a shame.  Here’s an idea, maybe you should actually STOP and the STOP LIGHT whether there’s a CAMERA there OR NOT.  And so should the guy behind you.

Here’s my addendum to that study : A percentage of drivers on the road are bad drivers, and the only way they’re ever going to get caught is if they get a ticket or get in an accident. The cameras apparently identify these people.  Whatever works.