How long a commute is too long?

amother

Taupe

Sun, May 03 2015, 10:11 pm

I am considering a move from Brooklyn to an area of NJ that has cheaper housing.

My job is in Brooklyn and kids schools are in Brooklyn. I'd like to keep them in their schools.
Ages from 1st to 5th grade.
The commute would be over an hour each way, actually 55 minutes acc to google maps but I don't know how much you can rely on that.
Is that reasonable?
Yes there are closer schools but not the best fit for my kids, plus unaffordable tuition.

amother

Goldenrod

Sun, May 03 2015, 10:29 pm

55 minutes in your dreams. On bad days it could be an hour and a half. In bad weather and heavy traffic, longer still. Friday afternoons in May and June? Fuhgeddaboudit. I'm with MY. It's hard on an adult, brutal for a kid. I wasn't in love with my kids'school but it was a six-minute walk from home. That's why they went there.

seeker

Sun, May 03 2015, 11:17 pm

I considered something like that (different details) and the costs of commuting (including hassle, conveniences that we'd need to use to make up for the time, etc) outweighed the savings on housing. I didn't find a big enough housing cost difference in any nearby part of NJ to make it worth it.

doctorima

Mon, May 04 2015, 9:57 am

Staten Island you can get for around $400K, and the commute is night and day compared to NJ. I don't know about prices in Bayswater, but that may be an option. Possibly also farther out in Marine Park or Mill Basin, though again, I don't prices in those areas.

amother

Ivory

Mon, May 04 2015, 10:11 am

We are checking out Manalapan nj. I work in brooklyn and can technically speaking keep my job or get a new job in nearby lakewood. There are also good schooling options for the kids there, either local basis Yaakov (for girls) or nearby highland park/Edison for boys (until they open a boys yeshiva ). We are actually going for a shabbos to check it out. I spoke to the rav on the phone and he literally answered all questions very willingly and honestly.

Amarante

Mon, May 04 2015, 10:30 am

I had a commute that was theoretically 45/55 minutes - but that was with no traffic. Coming home at night, it was easily an hour or an hour and a half and if there was any kind of problem - holiday, bad weather - it could stretch longer than that.

I had books on tape - caught up with friends and family on the phone but really nothing could alleviate the sheer awfulness of the commute. I would dread it and looking back I don't know how I did it because I was just in zombie mode.

I could try to run some errands at lunch around work but basically I had to take care of everything on Sunday. By the time I got home, I was fit for nothing except microwaving some dinner and doing whatever was necessary to prepare for the next day.

I didn't have children at that time and my life consisted of working and doing what was necessary so that I could work. I can't imagine doing that commute and having children - I.e. needing to take care of needs - emotional and physical beyond my own since I was able to conk out on the weekend if necessary.

nyer1

Mon, May 04 2015, 11:07 am

it would concern me that my kid's school friends wouldn't live near us. playdates etc would definitely be a challenge.

but also, I duno. I guess it depends on the age of the kids, but a long commute like that is EXHAUSTING for ANYONE, especially kids. what about homework?1

Ruchel

Mon, May 04 2015, 11:20 am

People who want a certain hashkafa may have the kids take subway or bus(ses) for one hour, one hour half each side.

NO, I don't recommend. Yes, sometimes it's this or nothing.

For work, one hour each way unfortunately is a classic. I knew ppl with 3 h each way, the shomer shabbs ones didn't work on Friday.

My mom often had 1h15 or so each way.

Scrabble123

Mon, May 04 2015, 12:04 pm

Up to 1.5 hours is fine in my opinion, but again, where I grew up that was considered entirely normal. My school started 7:45am which meant that I had to be out of the house by 6:00-6:30 due to traffic (without traffic it would have taken 20 minutes). In middle school we moved closer to my school, but commuting was and always will be in my mind normal. Play dates are for the weekends, not the middle of the week. In NY where commuting for school is not very common people would judge you immediately, accusing you of not caring about your children and making bad decisions. As long as you feel the choice is the right one, then you should feel confident with it and disregard their comments.

seeker

Mon, May 04 2015, 5:47 pm

Ruchel wrote:

I think there is a world of difference between an hour on a subway and an hour in a car. True, subways get squishy at rush hour too. But when I commuted by subway I could almost always fairly easily study/read, do homework, socialize with friends going the same way, and stretch my legs. I wouldn't have been able to do much if any of that in a car where you have to sit often squashed up in relative darkness and the ride quality is much different. Could just be personal preference.

Scrabble, why would people judge you for commuting to school? I know families who live in Flatbush and send to school in Boro Park (or the other way) and their kids are in transit for over an hour! (between waiting for/boarding schoolbus and going the whole route up and down each block with stops all over and fifty thousand other schoolbuses to navigate around)

amother

Taupe

Tue, May 05 2015, 8:14 am

My kids have classmates who commute every day from Long Island. Is that better or worse than nj? (Btw elizabeth is the area we're considering.)

And it's true that the school bus route can take over an hour even within the same neighborhood!

doctorima

Tue, May 05 2015, 8:23 am

I would think LI would be better than NJ. Anytime you have to deal with SI or the city, the odds of a nightmare go up much more. The highways from LI can be bad, but the streets can always be an alternative.

nyer1

Tue, May 05 2015, 8:37 am

aren't you also paying a lot of money in tolls every day to commute from nj to brooklyn? we were looking into elizabeth due to low housing cost and that the community sounded so nice, but the taxes were still high and the commuting cost was high as well. it was enough of a deterrent. I also felt that MOST of the people in elizabeth send to JEC… we would have sent there too, I think. so if you DON'T send there, you're a bit of an outsider… harder to meet ppl and feel involved etc.

Raisin

Tue, May 05 2015, 8:38 am

As kids get older and there are more after school activities it can make life difficult. Playdates with school friends will also be hard, although you could arrange shabbos sleepovers. Hopefully there are kids locally your skids can play with on shabbos or sunday.

I know people who do commutes like this and it is very hard.

amother

Lilac

Tue, May 05 2015, 8:50 am

My kids spend 2 years commuting to school. The commute was one hour and fifteen minutes to school and a little longer on the way home. It was a nightmare. Remember, after school there is homework, maybe an activity, dinner and oh yes, family time to just be together. We were lacking in all of that. We loved the school, but the lack of time together and the constant rush rush rush and stress was not worth it. I now homeschool and if they go to high school, I hope it will be local, because I will not do that again.

Scrabble123

Tue, May 05 2015, 9:56 am

seeker wrote:

Scrabble, why would people judge you for commuting to school? I know families who live in Flatbush and send to school in Boro Park (or the other way) and their kids are in transit for over an hour! (between waiting for/boarding schoolbus and going the whole route up and down each block with stops all over and fifty thousand other schoolbuses to navigate around)

Unfortunately, people are very judgmental in certain communities about "commuting" to school. They say that it means that something is wrong with your family and/or children which is why they could not be in a local school or that you do not care about the well being of your children. I of course do not agree with this garbage, but I hear it quite often. When I point out that some children are on the bus close to an hour even with a local school they seem to not hear. It's not really about the time in their eyes, it's just about................ "doing what everyone else does."