Lexington to Boston Downtown Commute (Winchester, Acton: house, rent, lease)

[mvtransplant]

We just moved from CA to the Boston area. We have a pending contract on a house in Lexington, and I am about to accept a job in downtown Boston. I "tested" the commute from Lexington by driving to the Alewife station and taking the T to Downtown Crossing. Parking at Alewife wasn't a problem even at 8:30, but the total commute time was 1 hour and 15 minutes. I'm thinking driving to the Winchester (Wedgemere) commuter rail station might be faster and less of a headache, which is a 15 minute drive from Lexington. Does anyone commute this way?

[puffle]

When you find out please let me know. We lived in Lexington two years ago up by Katahdin Woods and Hartwell Ave. You will love it there. Hope you live closer to Mass ave than we did. If you have kids, the Rec Center is wonderful and the schools have ski trips in the winter on Fridays afterschool. Enjoy and hope the commute issue gets resolved.

[Parsec]

wow, 1 hr 15 min? the trip from alewife to downtown crossing only takes 20 min, plus the trains leave every 9 minutes from alewife in rush hour. Does it really take 45 min to drive from lexington to alewife and park in the mornings? sounds pretty bad! the express bus should be even faster than that, but the only one i know near lexington departs from waltham and the drive there would be pretty bad too.

if your workplace allows for flexible hours, the commuter rail would be a good idea since it's probably only about a 15 min trip from wedgemere to north station. the downsides are, it doesn't run that often and parking might be hard to find at the commuter rail stops closer to boston (like wedgemere is). also, the lowell line takes you to north station, but if your job is at downtown crossing, you'll have to wait for the transfer since a mile is probably too far to walk.

[puffle]

There are buses that pick up in Lexington to Alewife all over, in the town center, on Katahdin and Hartwell, just check the schedule.

[LovelyBoston]

Really?? An hour and fifteen minutes? Yikes. That was the size of my commute from way out in Acton into downtown Boston, years ago, and of course Acton is farther away than Lexington ... Are you sure that was a representative day? Was there some kind of accident somewhere on Rt 2 that gummed up traffic? Was it really rainy or snowy? I'm just really curious about that, because my experience was a lot different.

The train from Wedgemere takes 16 minutes to get into North Station, according to mbta dot com; and then you'd have just two or three stops to get close to Downtown Crossing. If the commute to Alewife has got so bad lately, that might be a good way to commute.