Any way to determine commute times

[saganista]

Used to allow 45 minutes for a door-to-door morning trip into Tysons from Vienna. It was about 6 miles. For those of you who are jealous, the secret was not to get on 123 except by doing so off of Old Courthouse while laughing at the miles of traffic backed up to the west from the light.

[JD984]

Originally Posted by tysonsengineer

In this region, because of the huge number of smaller job centers, and the strange dynamics between Fairfax, Reston, Tysons, Arlington, and DC for jobs you never know what you'll get. Also if you plan your commute based on what you typically will get, you will likely be late 20% of the time around here. I would say atleast 1 time every week there is an accident or other issue on roads most people drive on their commute that throws off their normal timing.

This area is a really difficult place to figure out your first day commute :P I would say, take the mileage, assume 35mph average speed one way or another, add 5 minutes for startup and end, and then multiply by two for traffic/accidents.

So a 20 mile commute from western Fairfax(herndon) to DC becomes 30 minutes for for milage (based on 35), plus 5 minutes for start and end (ie parking yadayada), multiply by two and you get 80 minutes.

Thats pretty damn close :P

Lets test it on a drive from Burke to Arlington, 15 miles becomes 25 minutes plus 5, times 2 is 1 hour. It works again (atleast i would accommodate 1 hour if I were doing that drive)

DAMN I AM A GENIUS! Patent pending!

Before you file for patent protection, you may want to adjust the map feature. Herndon is more like 27 miles from DC and 28 miles from downtown. It's about 20 miles from downtown to Vienna. But 80 minutes for 20 miles around here isn't too uncommon during rush hour, and sometimes the traffic within NoVa is worse than the traffic from NoVa to neighboring jurisdictions.

[tysonsengineer]

Originally Posted by JEB77

Before you file for patent protection, you may want to adjust the map feature. Herndon is more like 27 miles from DC and 28 miles from downtown. It's about 20 miles from downtown to Vienna. But 80 minutes for 20 miles around here isn't too uncommon during rush hour, and sometimes the traffic within NoVa is worse than the traffic from NoVa to neighboring jurisdictions.

Yea I was joking. Anyways, downtown to me is Farragut/Foggy Bottom region of DC anyways.

Google Maps

Lets call it 23 and say its in between us.

[dkf747]

Originally Posted by Grsz11

I'm wondering if anybody can help out with determing commute times from points around DC, for example say Montgomery County, MD to Loudon County, VA. I can plug locations into Google maps and get a distance and time but I know traveling anywhere in the area you need to take traffic into account. Do you think there is a distance that is too far to commute?

Montgomery to Loudon is too far and too long for me. I do Montgomery County (Gaithersburg) to Arlington quite often. That takes 40 minutes at 6:30 am, and an hour at 3 pm. That's my limit.

[CapsChick]

This question makes me smile, because when I briefly moved to L.A. and had to take meetings all over L.A. and O.C., I was told by my co-workers that the formula was: Mapquest it, double the travel time, and add 15 minutes...that's how much travel time you should allow.

I'm thinking the same ahould hold true in the DC area.

[saganista]

Probably a pretty good rule of thumb. But it will be little like a rule for how to conjugate verbs in the English language -- there will be a lot of exceptions to it.