4 hour commute to work, $1500 spent a month

[FAH1223]

Commuter Idle: Nearly 4-hour commute costs D.C. worker $1,500 a month - WTOP.com

PERRYVILLE, Md. - By the time Roseline Gorantla gets into her office each day, she has already had a full day.

She wakes up each morning at 4 a.m. and makes breakfast for herself and her husband, Hari.

"I start from West Chester, Pa. Me and my husband work. He works in New York City and I work in D.C.," she says.

He works at Standard & Poors on Wall Street, and she works at the Nuclear Energy Institute in downtown D.C., which offered a more manageable commute when she lived in Vienna, Va.

But when the couple married recently, they compromised on a location halfway between their jobs and ended up in the Philadelphia suburbs.

For seven months she has made the almost four-hour, one-way trip. The stressful commute leaves her tired and provides little time to spend with her husband.

"We literally don't even have time to talk enough. We just say, 'Hi. OK. Fine.' That's it," she says.
Instead, they rely on text messages to stay in touch throughout the day.

The 24-year-old doesn't have any children yet. But Gorantla says she plans to stop making the commute to D.C. long before she and her husband would start a family.

Gorantla usually gets into her car around 4:45 a.m. or 5 a.m. to make the one-hour -- or more -- drive from West Chester, Pa., to the MARC station in Perryville, Md. Perryville is in Cecil County.

"I usually listen to Christian music on the radio," she says. "I also have my coffee. Without it, I wouldn't be able to get to my car in the morning."

By the time WTOP meets Gorantla in Perryville, it's just after 6 a.m. and she is purchasing a $14 MARC ticket to Union Station. From there, she'll pull out her SmarTrip card and go to Metro Center.

While that doesn't seem like too much, when you add up her costs for fuel, MARC and Metro trips, the price climbs quickly.

"It's around $1,500 for me and $1,500 for my husband per month. So $3,000 for both of us," she says.

Do the math, and that's $36,000 per year — more than some Americans' annual salaries.

"We are cutting down on all other costs to put it on this commute," she says.

"Wow, if you're telling me the big number, it's sounding more distinct. But, I don't think we're going to do this for more than a year."

For Gorantla, the easiest part of the commute is the drive to MARC.

She says there isn't much traffic at 5 a.m. in Pennsylvania or northeastern Maryland. Even the MARC train is usually reliable. Parking isn't much of an issue because the Perryville station isn't too crowded on most days.

The most difficult part comes about three hours into her megacommute.

"The biggest challenge is Metro. If there's a problem on the Red Line, that can make a huge difference. And it seems like once a week there is an issue," she says.

But as she approaches Union Station at 8:06 a.m., Gorantla sees no emails from her office about Red Line delays, nor any warnings on her iPhone from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's website.

After a short walk from MARC to Metro, she just misses a train. But no worry, another Red Line train is just two minutes away. Before she knows it, the train has arrived.

At 8:20 a.m., Gorantla arrives at Metro Center and the final sprint is on to her office. She is due in at 8:30 a.m., so every minute counts.

"I am going to take a shortcut to the office, a shortcut inside Metro," she says as she goes up the escalator, then down the escalator on the other side of the tracks and exits at the farthest point from where she arrived.

Gorantla tells WTOP that shortcut saved her five to seven minutes because she didn't need to go outside and cross several busy D.C. streets during rush hour.

She opens the door to her office at 8:27 a.m., just three minutes before her morning staff meeting begins.

"Every day it's like that, just in the nick of time," she says. "Everyone is getting to work with a fresh mind and I'm already tired."

Her total commute this particular morning took three hours, 42 minutes. She calls it a good day.

Unfortunately for Gorantla, she must do it all over again in eight hours.

 

[Notorious 1 E.Y.E.]

somebody gotta get transferred or something wtf

 

[ThugLife]

Retards

 

[dallastexas]

dumbasses

 

[The Bilingual Gringo]

People are stupid

 

[ahomeplateslugger]

how much does the couple make a year?

 

[MikeBrownsJob]

they better be making at least 200K a year.

 

[JoseLuisGotcha]

biggest problem in America we live to work instead of work to live.....that sounds like they are married to their careers and not each other....

my boy lived in spain for a while he said you can know someone for months and not even know what they do for a living......cause they are too busy living life......here it's what's your name what do you do? I have to decide if talking to you is worth my time...

this story is sad more than it is stupid....makes me think more and more about moving overseas

 

[ThumpDaddy]

Ain't no way I would do that. Someone would have to move or something. That much money just to get to work, there has got to be a cheaper way around this. Just imagine the money they would save if could find a cheaper way around this.

 

[MikeBrownsJob]

biggest problem in America we live to work instead of work to live.....that sounds like they are married to their careers and not each other....

my boy lived in spain for a while he said you can know someone for months and not even know what they do for a living......cause they are too busy living life......here it's what's your name what do you do? I have to decide if talking to you is worth my time...

this story is sad more than it is stupid....makes me think more and more about moving overseas

You probably don't contribute much to this society so you should go ahead and do that.

 

[AlwaysLurkin]

My dad leaves at 3:30 AM to get to work for 6AM,don't think he would have more money if he lived in DC to be honest

 

[Ego Noir]

Ain't no way I would do that. Someone would have to move or something. That much money just to get to work, there has got to be a cheaper way around this. Just imagine the money they would save if could find a cheaper way around this.

**** the money. That can be replaced.

But a FOUR HOUR COMMUTE each way? That's EIGHT hours every single day fighting through hoards of people.

You burn 8 hours on some bus/train, 8 hours at work, then u got sleep. What is the point of being alive living like that

 

[Ego Noir]

You probably don't contribute much to this society so you should go ahead and do that.

you probably consider it an honor to burn your live away slaving in some cubicle making the OTHER man rich dont you.

Brainwashed help.

 

[ThumpDaddy]

**** the money. That can be replaced.

But a FOUR HOUR COMMUTE each way? That's EIGHT hours every single day fighting through hoards of people.

You burn 8 hours on some bus/train, 8 hours at work, then u got sleep. What is the point of being alive living like that

It's a couple of people in my building that commute for a little over an hour to get to work. To tell you the truth I thought I had it bad because if you count me dropping my daughter off at school and then coming to work, it's about a 40 to 45 min drive. But like you said, 4 hours is too f*cking long. That's a 1/3 of your day gone and you still have to work, go home, eat or do whatever. That's just too much.

 

[MikeBrownsJob]

you probably consider it an honor to burn your live away slaving in some cubicle making the OTHER man rich dont you.

Brainwashed help.

You probably consider it an honor to be a smart, broke, dumb nygga who die with the lent in his pocket and a dikk in his ass