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United States24745 Posts
About three years ago, I blogged about my experience with the Washington DC metro (subway) system as someone living and working in the capital riverfront neighborhood. Later that year, I was moved to Pittsburgh for ~6 months (planned well in advance) and then moved back to work in DC again. For the past nearly two years I've lived in Northern Virginia (ten minute walk from Vienna Metro Station) and commuted to the Navy Yard / Ballpark Metro Station.
One user in the previous blog's comments mentioned that living in a metro area for a while, you learn the best ways to get around, best commuting paths, etc. While this is true, I've come to the conclusion that this metro area doesn't match up well with my housing desires. I know for some readers, the immediate response is something along the lines of "oh boo hoo you can't have exactly the type of housing you want at the price you want, in the location you want with the commute you want, in a very safe neighborhood with top-notch ammenities nearby. Boo f-ing hoo #firstworldproblems.
On the other hand, DC really is an unusual beast. It offers one of the worst commutes of any city in the country. Housing prices are ludicrous (not the highest in the country but again, close to it). Some areas are incredibly sketchy to live in. With my improved knowledge of the area compared to when I blogged several years ago, I will write out the profiles of a few fictitious people who won't have too much difficulty settling for the type of housing they would want to buy while commuting into DC:
1) Wants to live in the city; doesn't mind living in a relatively small condo
2) Wants to live in the city; doesn't mind living in a relatively old and decrepit townhouse; makes pretty good money (probably at least $80k/yr needed as an estimate)
3) Wants to live in a house with a yard, driveway, and garage in a safe and comfortable nearby suburb of DC to keep the commute reasonable. Parking is actually available at work. Dual income couple bringing in $250k/yr.
Unfortunately none of those describe me or I'd be formulating a decent plan. My preferences most closely line up with #3 but some of the barriers to me getting exactly what I want are:
1) Parking is limited where I work (as is the case in much of DC). There is a parking garage but you have to come in early in order to get a spot or it fills up. If that happens you have to drive around the neighborhood finding an available and rather expensive pay lot.
2) Even if the parking issue is resolved, vehicle traffic into and out of DC is terrible. Most of my outside-of-work life is in Virginia, and the only ways to get into DC are a very small number of very congested bridges which eat up a lot of time crossing. If you live somewhat further away, there is much more traffic beyond the inner suburbs.
3) Housing in the closest-in suburbs is extremely expensive. A somewhat standard 3 bedroom house with a 2 car garage is going to run you at least a million. You need to be well into six figures to afford a mortgage on a house like that, not to mention you should get a sizable down payment.
4) Mass transit exists, but it is slow. Also, many stations don't have an easy way to get to/from them (e.g., a big parking garage) and all the housing near the stations is even more expensive than the overall area.
5) One of the major highways to get to/from DC is HOV 2+ (can't drive on them if you are alone) during rush hour. Despite that it still has significant traffic.
In other words, to get the type of house described in #3 you need one of the following:
1) A very large income
2) Be willing to commute from very far out
3) Be willing to live in a dangerous neighborhood
4) Work somewhere else
While I'm writing this from my perspective, this is a problem for many people (of course, DC is far from the only city with this problem, but it's a fairly extreme example). Personally, I can rule out #1. The type of work I do, without going into details, pays relatively well but won't result in suddenly making $200k/yr or anything like that. I'm kind of experimenting with #2 right now and I've decided I wouldn't be able to deal with a bad commute long term. Some people are more sensitive than others, but after a few years of a traffic-heavy long drive each direction every workday, someone will find me hanging from the 14th street bridge.
A long commute on mass transit and/or a commuter train is less stressful but it's so inefficient that it may as well be ruled out too. Part of the problem is that there is no direct way to get from where I work to commute neighborhoods, and transfers are a huge pain. The other problem is, when your commute takes a long time, even if it isn't directly stressful and you can read or do something else, you are sort of burning the candle at both ends with regards to your time after work. Your long commute requires you to get up pretty early, then when you finally get home after extending your day by 3 hours of commute time you are too tired to do much during your last ~3 hours of time other than eat something and collapse on the couch. I'm sure many of you have experienced this feeling.
Don't get me wrong, weekends can still be awesome (productive, fun, rewarding, what have you). But I don't even have any dependents to take care of and I already feel like my weekdays provide zero opportunity for anything other than work, travel to/from work, eat, workout, shower, and sleep. In an ideal world nobody would feel this way, but in reality many people do.
My ideal situation (have the house like described above, commute 20-30 minutes each way tops with little to no traffic, mortgage+taxes is no greater than ~30-35k/yr) would be super achievable in most places in the country, but not here. DC has some serious issues. Hopefully the current administration will make good on their promise to move a large portion of the government out of DC (one can hope!)
 
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Ugh the dreaded DC commute...everything about the area is great except for house pricing and commute options.
I get around commute hell by living and working in the suburbs. Probably won't last forever, but I'm rolling with it for as long as possible. I need to be downtown for work maybe once a month or less and I always dread those days. Could take 30 minutes(usually only before 6:30AM) or an hour and a half (if I leave my place at 7:30 or later) depending on traffic.
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My father lives in the Vienna area so I am quite familiar with how expensive that area can be, particularly Fairfax County.
The only suggestion I can offer is to try to find affordable housing somewhere in Prince William County that isn't too far from the Beltway. Loudoun is another option but I'm not sure that would much better than Fairfax compared to 20 years ago when Loudoun was sparse.
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You seem to have thought about this problem extensively. I hope you find the answer you are looking for.
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This problem doesn't seem very unique, except for maybe the scale of the numbers. I live in ny and we have the same issues. I imagine Most major cities it's the same with the only differences being the salary levels, and the mass transit quality
That being said, it was a good summary of the choices and trade offs. And, like all you ur blogs I enjoyed this one. Glhf and let us know how the situation progresses
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Canada13389 Posts
is there a way to 50/50 the commute?
If I was to full on commute with the public system in Toronto it would take me a total of 4 hours a day.
If I drive it takes me 45 to work and 1:15 to get home. But thats all down time.
If I drive to the subway it takes an hour of driving total and an hour of subway (assuming no delays) plus about 20 mins of walking (which is no different from the walking distance to and from affordable parking).
So i spend an extra 20-30 mins commuting vs pure driving, but I can read on the subway and listen to the news while driving.
I also COULD use a commuter train then subway which takes about as long as driving, but commuter train commute ends up costing me 110 Canadian dollars a week.
Which is ridiculous.
Drive/Subway costs me 3/4s of that. So I dont mind saving 110 a month (even accounting for gas costs etc)
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United States24745 Posts
On July 08 2017 23:05 Chris_Havoc wrote:
My father lives in the Vienna area so I am quite familiar with how expensive that area can be, particularly Fairfax County.
The only suggestion I can offer is to try to find affordable housing somewhere in Prince William County that isn't too far from the Beltway. Loudoun is another option but I'm not sure that would much better than Fairfax compared to 20 years ago when Loudoun was sparse.
Prince William County would indeed have affordable housing but... it's pretty far from DC! The best I could do is probably slug from Woodbridge to the Navy Yard... I'm considering that. You can get a nice house or townhouse for ~300-500k near the commuter lot in Woodbridge. The VRE train is not really worth it. Loudon county is also pretty far out there.
On July 09 2017 11:42 ZeromuS wrote:
is there a way to 50/50 the commute?
If I was to full on commute with the public system in Toronto it would take me a total of 4 hours a day.
If I drive it takes me 45 to work and 1:15 to get home. But thats all down time.
If I drive to the subway it takes an hour of driving total and an hour of subway (assuming no delays) plus about 20 mins of walking (which is no different from the walking distance to and from affordable parking).
So i spend an extra 20-30 mins commuting vs pure driving, but I can read on the subway and listen to the news while driving.
I also COULD use a commuter train then subway which takes about as long as driving, but commuter train commute ends up costing me 110 Canadian dollars a week.
Which is ridiculous.
Drive/Subway costs me 3/4s of that. So I dont mind saving 110 a month (even accounting for gas costs etc)
Possible... but there are problems considering the exact location I commute to. The office is 10 minutes of walking away from the nearest Metro station. The places you can get without any transfers are poor (either the really 'bad' part of the city,or pass through whole city center to get to the other side which is slow and not a great area either). Therefore, I need to transfer to another line in order to access other commuter corridors. Add to that the fact that the closest in parking garage equipped metro stations are already a pretty long train ride away, and any 50/50 type solution is quite long despite having the benefit of avoiding the heavy vehicle traffic getting across the river in/out of DC. Some people do it but it's not fun.
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Well one 50/50 idea would be living in Sterling, driving to the Reston Metro station, parking, and taking the metro to the Navy Yard. The ride shouldn't be much further than Vienna, but I have no idea what the parking situation is in Reston since I haven't been there since probably 2003.
The other option is Manassas, but I know exactly how long that drive is to Vienna, and traffic that way can get pretty gross at rush hour.
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United States24745 Posts
On July 10 2017 13:25 Chris_Havoc wrote:
Well one 50/50 idea would be living in Sterling, driving to the Reston Metro station, parking, and taking the metro to the Navy Yard. The ride shouldn't be much further than Vienna, but I have no idea what the parking situation is in Reston since I haven't been there since probably 2003.
The other option is Manassas, but I know exactly how long that drive is to Vienna, and traffic that way can get pretty gross at rush hour.
Commuting from Sterling would be over three hours a day of commuting... beyond what I am comfortable doing long term (plenty of people seem to do it amazingly).
Manassas would be two hours a day of commuting before even accounting for the rush hour traffic.
Both are great solutions if I care deeply about expanding my options for housing and don't mind a long daily commute via train or car.
As of now the best solutions I can think of are either to slug from Woodbridge or to buy a house/townhouse with a two car garage in Arlington and drive (will most likely request to shift my work hours forward if this happens).
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Caught in the "Cost vs. Convenience" conundrum.
I was thinking Sterling based on it being adjacent the county line, the Reston Metro, and the nearby Dulles Access & Route 7. But in thinking it though traffic out that way isn't fun even on a good day and going from Reston to the Navy Yard by Metro would likely take at least an hour each way, not to mention any parking costs.
And Manassas, well that's all about surviving I-66... 
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i'm having the same crisis. lease it up in oct and so i'm looking to move somewhere near the gaithersburg line to save some money for a future down payment. but realistically (for now, and assuming i could save up a 'realistic' down payment) is like near the 400k mark?
unfortunately even saving during my entire next 2 year lease i don't think i'll manage to get the down payment i need. housing in this area is rough. i'm definitely skirting the long commute option, it's about 30 minutes today (and for non DCers, this is a less than average commute 😵. i'm sure this is true for many places.) but i can't stand long commutes it's just not what i live for.
unfortunately my job is not in a place where i have options for living, in fairly stuck in the montgomery county area unless i want my commute to go to an hour in a real hurry.
i hear 270 isn't total garbage in the early AM hours so i might go up that way.
yea, idk. i hear ya.
have you considered the greenbelt area? from what little i know it's not quite as nice as NoVa in general but its not terrible, and it's green line so that's a small bonus (so you've probably considered it.) super far from you now, though. i imagine there may not being anything walking distance from the metro that you'd be interested in though so you're back to the 50/50 idea. so the commute doesn't actually get any nicer.
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I chose my neighborhood in DC based on low commute time lol. So now I can walk to work. At one point I lived in the MD suburbs are drove to the red line metro stops. I personally would prefer to ride the metro from the end of the line if I lived outside the city.
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I hate commuting, some of my coworkers that got hired with me chose to live in arlington. I don't think its that bad if you have 3 people sharing the commute/driving but i couldn't spend 2 hours a day driving to get to reston. Though when tripadvisor says the 6th best thing to do in herndon is a shuttle service you gotta wonder if the commute is worth...
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United States24745 Posts
On July 11 2017 01:06 brian wrote:
have you considered the greenbelt area? from what little i know it's not quite as nice as NoVa in general but its not terrible, and it's green line so that's a small bonus (so you've probably considered it.) super far from you now, though. i imagine there may not being anything walking distance from the metro that you'd be interested in though so you're back to the 50/50 idea. so the commute doesn't actually get any nicer.
The drive between Greenbelt and the Capital Riverfront area is gutbusting on 295 during rush hour. The neighborhood IS on the green line as you said, but that's still along commute. Aside from these problems which you already identified, Greenbelt isn't really near anything else that I do.
On July 11 2017 02:16 Doodsmack wrote:
I chose my neighborhood in DC based on low commute time lol. So now I can walk to work.
I considered doing something similar, but the housing in DC (in particular that part) is super expensive as well and doesn't generally have the type of housing I want.
At one point I lived in the MD suburbs are drove to the red line metro stops. I personally would prefer to ride the metro from the end of the line if I lived outside the city.
That's what I do now and it's a pretty long commute.
On July 11 2017 05:49 MysteryMeat1 wrote:
I hate commuting, some of my coworkers that got hired with me chose to live in arlington. I don't think its that bad if you have 3 people sharing the commute/driving but i couldn't spend 2 hours a day driving to get to reston. Though when tripadvisor says the 6th best thing to do in herndon is a shuttle service you gotta wonder if the commute is worth...
Yeah carpooling with others is one of the best solutions, but only if you can arrange it. Also, it has some other drawbacks, like being forced to work the exact same hours/days as your coworkers, and lack of a fallback if your carpoolers drop out in the future.
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