The Signal has a good story today on a Stevenson Ranch woman who commutes 90 miles each way to her job in a mental hospital in San Bernardino:
The sun’s not up yet, but Bonnie Joseph, 27, of Stevenson Ranch is.
Bonnie works as a clinical social worker at Patton State Mental Hospital.
She commutes to work four days a week – to San Bernardino.
She starts her 2005 Nissan Sentra, puts her Bluetooth in her right ear and begins her 90-mile commute to work.
Bonnie says she and her husband spent up to $500 per month in gas during the summer of 2008, when gas hit $4.00/gallon in the SCV, but now she only spends about $250 per month. Overall, she spends 12 hours per week in her car, which by my math, works out to a little less than 9% of the total hours in a week (168).
To me, that lifestyle is crazy. Illogical. Certifiably nuts. But I get why Bonnie does it: she has a job she enjoys and excels at, the expense of commuting that far is tough, but not impossible, and there exists a lack of alternative transportation methods.
At least in this country.
I was listening to PRI’s The World program tonight and they profiled another long distance commuter. But this woman lived in Brussels, Belgium. She commuted 160 miles each way to Paris, France for her job. Her commute took about an hour and fifteen minutes aboard a 190 mph high speed train system. You can hear her story -and the prospects for an American system like it- here.
Both of these commuters make me feel like an intolerable whiner for complaining about my post-college job commute to Brentwood. That commute was about 26 miles, but it included one of the worst freeway interchanges in the country/world (405/101) and involved two passes, one of which, the Newhall Pass, is now almost as bad as the other, the Sepulveda Pass. Driving that everyday for almost three years really changed my outlook on planning, transportation, and how Southern California was designed.
I was fortunate enough to eventually find work in the SCV, but many aren’t. I hope that will change; traffic is only going to get worse on Interstate 5 and Highway 14, and there’s really no other way out of town (though eventually, I hope, the CA High Speed Rail system will roll through the SCV with a stop in Sylmar).
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