NYC super commuters on their 5 hour round trip to the office

In Wilton, a small farming town in Connecticut, Zach Kaminsky gets up at 5:30 am and pours himself a cup while watching NBC News. The 24-year-old PR account manager travels by train and multiple subway lines to his office in Lower Manhattan — 45 miles as the crow flies, but it takes two hours and fifteen minutes door-to-door.

In Neptune, a township on the Jersey Shore, Cathleen Crandall starts her car at around 6:30 am to go to the train. As a senior legal assistant, the 45-year-old commutes via NJTransit to the office of the investment fund group she works for in the city. It usually takes a total of two and a half hours, but these days she says, “It’s a crap shoot.”

In Mahopac, a hamlet of less than 9,000 in New York’s Putnam County, product marketing manager Chris Vennard wakes up his two teenage children, makes them breakfast, and takes them to school before heading to midtown Manhattan. “It takes an hour 45 no matter how I cut it,” says Vennard, 47.

A workweek morning resembles a flimsy Jenga tower; A wasted minute immediately decimates the balance. All three workers must commute two to three days a week, but the sheer amount of time that commute takes puts them in a rare society that makes up just 3.1% of American workers: super-commuters, who commute at least 90 minutes each way drive.

It’s been a burgeoning trend for decades, long before swathes of city dwellers fled to far-flung, breezy suburbs at the start of the pandemic, says Richard Florida, an economics professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management Wealth. But the practice would still be a tough sell for most people, especially given the extent to which remote working has ramped up the business landscape.

“In many American cities, it’s really hard to afford a family, but research knows one thing: The worst thing you can do to yourself is a long commute,” says Florida.

But in New York City, notoriously one of the most expensive cities in the US, the savings tradeoff is worth it for workers like Crandall and Vennard, super commuters for over a decade. And as NYC’s cost of living tightened amid inflationary pressures and skyrocketing rents in a pandemic world, super-commuting has given expensive young professionals like Kaminsky a cushion to save for their big-city dreams. While everyone conceded that there weren’t opportunities in their cities quite like their Manhattan jobs, it wasn’t without pain.

Super commuting offers New Yorkers both a career and affordability

Vennard and his wife bought their home about a decade ago and decided the larger property and robust local community was a worthwhile compromise; his wife stays at home, which means that commuting to work is his own sacrifice. “We could have gotten 20, 30 miles closer, but it would have saved me about 20 minutes. What do 20 minutes bring to my real quality of life? Not much,” he says.

Likewise, Crandall bought her home 15 years ago because she enjoys living on the waterfront. She sees her 15 hour commute—give it or take it—as necessary to sustain the lifestyle she’s been able to build.

In New York City, housing costs were a factor in super commuters long before the pandemic, said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University wealth. The 21st century is proving to be “the century of the super commuter,” he wrote in 2012. Between 2002 and 2009, eight of the top 10 largest U.S. metropolitan areas saw growth in super commuting, Moss noted. A separate study by Apartment List finds that the number of U.S.-based super commuters grew 45% between 2010 and 2019, more than triple the growth rate of the entire workforce.

Now, Moss says “distributed work has made it a lot more viable” for people like Kaminsky who can’t afford the city yet but still want a good-paying job. The 2020 college grad says he sees the super-commute as a temporary measure until he has a larger financial cushion that would allow him to afford rent in New York. The typical one-bedroom now costs $4,095 a month — 20% more than three years ago.

“I’ve been doing this for almost a year and a half. [I’d rather] Take another year to make more significant savings [instead of] moving to New York as soon as possible and blowing a lot of my life savings, which feels like a downward spiral,” he says.

His “amazing” colleagues and the euphoric energy of the city are worth the effort, he adds, but maybe that’s because he’s only in the office two days a week. “I knew what I was signing up for,” he says. “But I would never do that five days a week.”

But super commuting isn’t without its hassles

There’s something to be said for a commute that doesn’t involve driving, which all three workers have. Psychologists refer to a person’s transit period as a liminal space, a time when one can detach from work and recover without assuming one’s role at home. This was lost during the pandemic, leading to a blurring of roles and increased stress among workers. Just ask Crandall, who says she used to have a “relaxed” commute that allowed her to read a ton of books and watch movies on her iPad.

But the pandemic spoiled her experience. You’d think a hybrid super commute would be more manageable than the five-day commute she’s familiar with, but Crandall feels worse after not having a commute while working remotely.

“I spent almost three years not commuting and I realized how much it messed up my life,” she says, admitting that on days when she feels like it, she can’t cope sometimes call in sick. “I try to go in on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday just to get it over with. But now I hit Wednesday night and I’m just done. It doesn’t help that their train journey has only gotten longer as NJTransit added more stops and cut back on its express service during the pandemic.

The evening commute is just as bad as the morning commute. As each of the super commuters pointed out, a five-minute chat with the boss at the end of the day can mean an extra 40 minutes to get home. “And then your whole day blows up,” says Crandall, adding that there are very few benefits to commuting. “It’s expensive. It’s annoying, especially when you’re dealing with some of these absolutely horrible transit companies.”

Vennard describes having to “force” himself out of the office until a certain minute. Otherwise, if he were there, he would want to leave after the work was done. “I don’t have the luxury of just sitting at my desk until I’m ready. Impromptu drinks or after-hours bonding “just don’t happen to me,” he adds.

But his biggest problem is the ever-present worry that something will happen at home and he won’t be able to be there for two hours. It hasn’t happened yet, he says, but the thought of a double return trip — which he did for non-urgent purposes and means more than five hours of transit in one day — remains a constant concern.

“But it’s a worthwhile trade,” he claims. “I’m looking out my window right now and I have a big green lawn and a pool in my backyard.”

commuting for the community

Every commute longer than 20 minutes “affects” your life, well-being, happiness and contentment, says Florida, a Toronto-based professor. “In my opinion, long commutes – especially by car – are very harmful. It’s a lot of time wasted.”

But he concedes, “We need community; We need each other.”

Moss, the NYU professor, is of a similar mindset. He believes that despite the hectic pace and stress of a long commute and the flexibility we enjoy in a remote working world, the office remains vital. “We underestimate the desire for human contact,” he says. “More information is conveyed through your eyes and smile than anything that can be captured on Zoom, which doesn’t allow for attachment.”

Just ask Vennard. Though he says he “hates” his commute, he’s more productive, a more understanding manager, and feels his work is more valuable once he’s in the building.

And despite the five hours she spends commuting each day, Crandall admits she’s constantly making decisions. She doesn’t think she would enjoy living in the city and the ride is mostly passive. While she recently browsed housing listings in a handful of North Jersey towns that would make commuting easier for her, she says the property market has become prohibitively expensive. Feeling that a completely remote facility would never work in her industry, she has given up hope of giving up her commute anytime soon.

Three years out of college, Kaminsky insists he won’t be staying alongside Vennard and Crandall for long. His parents always worked in Fairfield County; He laughs that he’s a proud first generation super commuter.

“But I’m not jaded yet,” he says. “Super commuting is a rite of passage. Being physically in Manhattan is a huge motivator.”

And by the way, he adds, millions of people have been doing this every day for years. “It sounds totally crazy, but I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t even think twice about it.”