Husband commutes 220 miles a day, wife commutes 160, and they complain about gas prices

http://www.mercurynews.com/columns/ci_8600357

Q: Prices are outrageous for diesel fuel. I cannot believe that it has passed the $4 a gallon mark. I commute 220 miles a day from Los Banos to Palo Alto and my wife drives 160 to Fresno, driving around 9,600 miles a month. Gas has made a huge impact on our lifestyle. Just five years ago when I purchased my car, diesel was $1.15 a gallon or about 25 cents a gallon cheaper than gas. I get 45 miles a gallon in my VW Golf TDI, but with the difference between gas and diesel I might be better off driving a 35 mpg Honda. In February our fuel cost was a whopping $1,019. And that was before the big price climb the past couple of weeks. I am in for a brutal ride with these prices and cannot wait for them to go lower or at least level off.
Rick Roberts
Los Banos

Not all of us can afford to live near where we work, especially not in California.

God knows I got out while the getting was good.

I'm here until I die or it falls into the sea.

I lived in San Francisco in the city, but if living in CA meant I had to commute 3-4 hours a day, then forget it. Totally nullifies the whole point of living in CA. People with commutes like that live in shitholes like Stockton & Bakersfield anyway. Believe me, Austin is more California than Bakersfield will ever be.

It's nice, I miss some things about it. I couldn't stay though. It's more about people for me than place.

Of course, I walk 30 minutes or take the bus 10 minutes to work maybe once every two weeks, so I'm not a typical Californian.

I live in a rural area and commuted to Dallas for work. I spent 6 years working 4 days a week driving 280 miles a day.

I got paid $25 more an hour to do this. Yes, it was worth it.
No, I don't do it anymore because it is too tiring.

and my husband commuted 71 miles (going west).. we lived in the middle of both jobs..

It's how californians live..

Our house cost us $81K in 1982...houses back then, where my husband's job was STARTED at 150K..and that was a P.O.S. house..

when you have 3 kids & pets, you buy a house where you can afford to live...and then you commute..

It's ugly..but it's the way it is out here..

where housing is "affordable", jobs are low-paying..no benefits, for the most part

I live with higher rents in the city so I can walk to work. Overall, I am saving money like you wouldn't believe.

I hope you never need help .... or even understanding.

The assumption that gasoline would be cheap forever does not deserve care, concern or understanding, and the willingness to pump several pounds of toxic chemicals into the air every single day they commute deserves nothing but contempt. I have more compassion (not much, though) for people who signed these balloon mortgages; at least they can admit to having been hoodwinked. This couples and others like them don't even have that excuse.

and it was a good point. living in the city, close to work, is the answer for many.

but ain't nobody gonna listen to you when you come across like an asshole. you might wanna change the title of that post.

I'm just sayin'

you suggest the rest of the people do? Compassion noted.

I have lived in both the Central Valley and the Bay Area, and I have family still in both regions; I have been travelling through Los Banos for years when I travel from one part of California to the other. In my experience, the kind of people for whom Los Banos is a bedroom community for cities 80 and 110 miles away are people who preferred to live in a big McMansion and face a 3 hour one-way commute to work than live in a smaller home within a half-hour's commute by public transit. They are the kind of people who have no concern at all with the environmental impact of their decisions. They are the kind of people who believe with utter sincerity that cheap gas and no responsibility for their actions is the birthright of every American.

I will concede that the letter does not provide enough information to see what kind of person wrote it; they might very well be loyal Democrats who work a janitor and a school teacher, priced out of even the rental market in the cities where they work. However, I think the huge time and expense of the commute, plus the fact that they work in totally different parts of the state and so make two commutes a day rather than at least commute together, makes that highly unlikely.

If we must be compassionate about greed, and go "Tsk, tsk" when people are called to account for their greed, then there is no hope left for America.

people want larger houses, bigger yards and fewer 'urban problems' (read: minorities) and design their lives around commuting. well, guess what? sometimes life is just a bitch, you can't actually have it all, and in no country in the world does public policy pretend that you can.

by the way, for monthly fuel payments of $1,000, this family could have added about $165,000 to their mortgage (before tax deductions) and lived closer, if not as grandiosely, to their jobs.

it is time to seriously begin to tailor your lifestyle to the reality of fuel prices.

by the way, for monthly fuel payments of $1,000, this family could have added about $165,000 to their mortgage (before tax deductions) and lived closer, if not as grandiosely, to their jobs.

Tripe that and you're starting to get into the ball park of a house in the Bay Area proper.

that it is not possible to live in the Bay Area paying $3,000/month for housing? really? sure, you may not own a house, but I know a lot of people living in the bay area who pay a lot less than that.

sorry, but not everyone can own property, and in an urban environment, maybe not everyone should. just because our tax laws are biased in favour of those who do. I never will, in DC at least, and that's fine.

The median family income in Los Banos is one third of what it is in Palo Alto. One third. And half of what it is in the city of San Mateo. You can't buy a house, of any size, in the inner Bay Area on the median family income for Los Banos.

Rick works in Palo Alto, his wife works in Fresno. Correct your figures accordingly.

They reside in Los Banos.

I don't think the median income of Los Banos applies in this situation.

Statistics about income are generally reported based on the earner's address of record. If they are Los Banos residents, then their incomes are reflected in statistics for Los Banos no matter where (or how, if everything is legal and above-board) that income is earned.

The median is irrelevant when we are looking at one specific example. Of course, we have no details as to the total combined income of Rick and his wife or the size of their house or the monthly mortgage. Once again we are in the dark but arguing anyway. :-)

I had a similar choice to make, but not as extreme. When we were home hunting, we started on the 30+ mile journey up the 14 toward Palmdale, where we could have purchased a 2500+ sq.ft. 4 bdrm, 2 bath three car garage home for less than what we bought our closer in 3 bdrm, 1 bath, 2 car garage "starter home" for. I only made it 10 miles up that trip when I decided that it would be madness. I've changed jobs five times since we bought, and found a good job nearer the house. That was a long-term goal when we bought.

There are always alternatives, even if there isn't Metrolink. Always be looking.

Pick any 99 incomes at random, and order them highest to lowest. Remove the 49 at the top and the 49 at the bottom; you now have the median income of that group of 99. The top ten incomes could be over three million a year and the bottom 30 could comprise mostly of Social Security benefits, and it won't matter: the middle one is still the median.

As for my experience, I have about 30 years of travelling through Los Banos and watching how, in the last two decades, it exploded from a tiny farming community of about 300 with a single stoplight, to a Silicon Vally bedroom community of almost 40,000 with lots of strip malls and McMansions. In the last ten years alone, the population of Los Banos has increased by almost 15,000; most of those are well-to-do commuters with the rest coming in to staff the chain restaurants.

I also have the comments made by my parents, who live in the Central Valley and travel through Los Banos several times a year to visit my mother's parents in Redwood City. My mom has commented several times over the last few years how the town has exploded with very large, expensive homes. One of her co-workers moved to the Central Valley several years ago to work as a teacher in Tulare; she had lived in Los Banos all of her life but had been priced out because of the tremendous growth (and rising prices) brought by Silicon Valley commuters.

I'm just saying that you can't assume that these people are McMansion people, as there are plenty of people who live & commute from those areas who certainly aren't.

I assert that the evidence provided in their brief letter indicates that they are far more likely to be "McMansion people" than not; see post #39.

Many people commute this way because of changes that have happened while they were employed. They literally have no choice.

The letter-writer mentioned that they had been commuting like this for at least five years. Consider: two very long distance commutes to different parts of the state would have cost hundreds of dollars a month even when gas was $1.50 a gallon. Los Banos has been a boom town for more than a decade; local jobs would have been available, and while that might have meant a drop in income, that drop would be offset by no longer spending so much time and money in the commute. At the very least, they could have found jobs in the same city and eliminated one of the commutes, or found jobs and a home in a single city and eliminated the issue altogether.

Instead, the two commutes have gone on for at least five years. I don't see how it could have been a real problem for them until now.

and housing in California means that some people can't afford to live close to their jobs.

It's not as if he's driving a Hummer 220 miles per day.

Sid

That was a bear. Now I live 2 miles from work, and drive about 2,000 miles a year.

:wow:

Babelfish says the English for "Banos" is "Banos."

(probably a natural hot spring/spa sort of thing in the area; like Bath in England or Baden in Germany)

n/t

1. They "can't afford" a house closer to their jobs--although they probably neglected to factor in the amount of money they would spend on gas even at $1.15 a gallon if they commuted those distances. An additional $1,109 per month applied to housing costs would allow them to live closer to their jobs.

2. They wanted to "give their children a better life," even though such long commutes mean that they hardly ever see them.

I remind you that this is the nation where half the electorate was deluded by Bush, and it is the suckers who swallowed the whole suburban dream who voted for Bush in the largest numbers.

I sold cars for about three years... just got out of it a couple of months ago.

I can't tell you how many morons would talk about their 3 acres of land and living the peaceful life with their 2hours of commuting each day. Then they'd buy huge trucks that they almost never used, and could barely afford the payments for. Then they'd whine about gas prices.

I don't have any sympathy either. Pay with your wallet. I will pay with my life when the world goes to shit because people like you just had to live in cupcake land with your monster trucks and your four wheelers, so your kids could roll around in the grass instead of riding their bikes in a culdesac.

Cry me a river. Add it to the torrent that's going to swallow 1/3 of the worlds landmass.

I live 100 miles from my job. My home is paid off and I'm not giving it up. I reacted to the high gas prices by buying a small,used travel trailer and placing it in an RV park about 4 miles from the job. I make the trip down on monday and home on friday.

The wife, kiddo and the dogs come down and stay at the trailer with me about every other week. It's a little cramped in there at times, but we manage.The weather is warming up again so I will start making the trip on my motorcycle as much as I can.

She spends 3+ hours a day in a car going to/from work, he spends 4.

That has got to be the shittiest "lifestyle" I've ever heard of, even if gas was 25 cents a gallon they would be idiots to live like that.

But so many do... I met them every day selling cars. Drove me freakin insane.

It happens when you're working a job making $45k / year and houses cost three quarters of a million dollars.

1. Americans seem to labor under the delusion that cars are free. I've run into that when Americans living in Japan complain about having to "pay to go everywhere" on public transit. How much do people spend on car payments, gas, insurance, and repairs? In the case described in the OP, enough to afford a house closer in. $1000 a month added to one's housing budget is significant.

2. Did they really "need" as much house as they were buying? Houses on the margins seem to come in only one size: supersized McMansions. Do they need a house at all, or could they get by with an apartment? In this day of dropping real estate prices, buying a house may no longer be a good investment.

3. How much did they affect their health by sitting in their cars, enduring the stress of traffic, and breathing in air full of contaminants? (Studies have shown that the air inside a car traveling on the freeway is very polluted.)

1. Americans seem to labor under the delusion that cars are free. I've run into that when Americans living in Japan complain about having to "pay to go everywhere" on public transit. How much do people spend on car payments, gas, insurance, and repairs? In the case described in the OP, enough to afford a house closer in. $1000 a month added to one's housing budget is significant.

I think part of the point is that until recently they weren't paying that much, and obviously the increase is hurting them, so it's likely they don't simply have an extra grand a month to move closer in without it hurting them. But we have no idea of their living situation other than what's in the brief graf in the article, so anything we say is pure speculation.


2. Did they really "need" as much house as they were buying? Houses on the margins seem to come in only one size: supersized McMansions. Do they need a house at all, or could they get by with an apartment? In this day of dropping real estate prices, buying a house may no longer be a good investment.

There are plenty of "normal" sized houses on the outskirts in California. Again, a lot of people moved out that way from the bay area simply so the could by a house - any house, not a McMansion. We have no idea if these are McMansion people. As I said downthread, the median family income in Los Banos is 1/3 of what it is in Palo Alto, where the husband works.


3. How much did they affect their health by sitting in their cars, enduring the stress of traffic, and breathing in air full of contaminants? (Studies have shown that the air inside a car traveling on the freeway is very polluted.)

Who knows? Again, it's just one data point. We have no idea how they live the rest of their lives.

Think my boss will give me a raise this year?

Than I use in a month. And I drive a full-sized GMC Suburban.

I turned it down because I didn't think my car would make it and the job was only temporary and fairly low-paying, and the recruiter from the agency told me "well we have people who are commuting that far or even farther for work". We are indeed going to move if we can swing it, but when you live some place where there aren't a lot of jobs and you don't have a lot of immediate resources to make a major move, sometimes commuting long distances to work is a necessary evil.

10 miles one way to work, the fuel prices are effecting them. I travel 17 miles one way and over an hour's wages of my part-time job, each day I work, covers the cost of simply driving to and from work. And that was last week before it went up another 20 cents a gallon.