Thinking of relocating to Colorado Springs, but will be working in Denver... (Arvada: houses, job transfer)

[martinmomma33]

I have a job transfer we will be taking in February to move from tulsa, ok to the denver area. Denver is obviously pretty expensive and we've been to Colorado Springs many times, which we love. Would it be unheard of to make that commute to work from there? If so, what are some other options for living about 30/60 mins outside denver? Would snowfall be an issue living that far out?

[beezle1]

I would not commit to that kind of commute, at least not as a permanent plan. For long commutes, you have to consider: time spent driving (which you are not paid for), wear and tear on your car, extra time off for appointments near or at your home, the affect of weather on your drive time, etc. Maybe to Denver from Castle Rock, but only if you are working on the south part of Denver.

[dr.frog]

While that kind of commute is not "unheard of", I agree that it would be insane, especially if the job requires that you work fixed hours on site every day. Your life will be a whole less stressful if you can live near your job and minimize your commute.

[AdiosDuluth]

I live in Monument and commute only twice a week to the office on the north side of downtown Denver. Morning traffic isn't too bad as long as you leave early and try to get to the office by 7:00. ( I can usually make it in under one hour) The afternoon drive however STINKS if you aren't on the road by 3:30-4:00. Sometimes it takes almost two hours to get home with the majority of the slow traffic being the stretch from downtown to about the Lonetree area. The location of your office in Denver is relevant to your commute time for sure. If it is south of downtown, Castle Rock or even Monument aren't a bad commute if you're willing. If I had to commute 5 days a week to my current office, I'd for sure not want to live in Monument. As far as snow.....the entire front range seems to get about the same amounts. Monument maybe a bit more. But snow doesn't last long enough in any of cities that I think you should even worry about it.

[Mire]

You think Denver is expensive, what do you think that 120+ mile commute is going to do for your bottom line? Why not look at Castle Rock, Centennial, Arvada, Thornton, Broomfield, etc?

[PA2UK]

I really, really, really would not advise you to commute from the Springs to Denver. It takes at least an hour which may not sound too horrendous but that's the minimum when there's no traffic. For a few weeks, my husband was doing the opposite and commuting from Denver to the Springs and it normally took him an hour and a half. The other day, there was an accident on I-25 and it took literally 2 hrs 30 mins to get from Briargate (Colorado Springs) to Center City Denver.

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by Mire

You think Denver is expensive, what do you think that 120+ mile commute is going to do for your bottom line? Why not look at Castle Rock, Centennial, Arvada, Thornton, Broomfield, etc?

What he said, exactly....Colorado Springs will be right there south of you!
Congrats on the job.

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by dr.frog

Your life will be a whole less stressful if you can live near your job and minimize your commute.

But, think of all the languages he could learn!!!

[Mire]

Originally Posted by PA2UK

I really, really, really would not advise you to commute from the Springs to Denver. It takes at least an hour which may not sound too horrendous but that's the minimum when there's no traffic. For a few weeks, my husband was doing the opposite and commuting from Denver to the Springs and it normally took him an hour and a half. The other day, there was an accident on I-25 and it took literally 2 hrs 30 mins to get from Briargate (Colorado Springs) to Center City Denver.

This, right here. One bad accident on 25 (which is not unheard of, at all) or a slow deployment of CDOT plows when it's snowing (again, not unheard of), and your commute is FUBAR.
On the subject of snow, you may have been told not to worry about it so much, but I'd have to say the opposite, especially on the matter of snow removal by each respective city. My experience with it in Denver is a bit limited, but I can tell you the Springs sucks at it. In 2010 - the year I moved here - they hardly deployed plows at all. The end result of that was a Youtube video of vehicles trying to get up the hill on South Carefree, only to slide back and run into other vehicles. It was an embarrassment for the City of Colorado Springs (especially the Streets Division), and so, fast forward to the 2011 - 2012 Winter season, when I was working for the Streets Division (via a staffing agency... how dependent this city is on staffing agencies - namely, Remedy - is a separate conversation in itself). We hardly saw any snow, but they deployed plows at nothing. Didn't matter if the roads were mostly clear - if you worked a complete shift, they expected you to throw down at least 20 tons of anti-skid (I'm not sure what the expectations were of trucks carrying Ice Slicer).
And then it was all forgotten afterwards, and snow removal went back to being absolute crap. They do get somewhat diligent about Academy Boulevard, and Powers and US83 are done by El Paso County, but, as soon as you turn off either of those roads, forget it.
Monument Hill has a bad tendency to become congested for no explicable reason... a lot of people blame the scalehouses, except the southbound jam starts well past the scalehouses, and traffic going into the scales pretty much has its own lane up to the County Line Road exit (Exit 163 - not the County Line Road at Exit 195 in Centennial - which is the IKEA exit, by the way - or the one between CS and Pueblo).
Centennial gets pretty badly backed up, and the last few miles south of I70 tend to get pretty bad, as well.
One more thing I find particularly offputting about the Springs - but let me clear something up before I go further, because I know what I say next is going to cause someone to get a serious case of the butthurt. I was a Combat Medic for eight years -four years in the Regular Army from 98 - 02, and the next four years in the National Guard (with a bit of active duty time during those four years). I did a tour in Kosovo with 10th Mountain Division, spent a year in Korea with 2nd Infantry Division, did a tour in Afghanistan with 82nd Airborne, and a tour in Iraq with the Mississippi National Guard (as an attachment to 10th Mountain Division). So what I'm about to say isn't a **** take on the military, but the simple truth of the matter. The military community in the Springs is, in my opinion, perhaps the most offputting thing about that city. No, I'm not pigeonholing every soldier, airman, and cadet at those installations, but you have a bunch of Private Joes from Texas who 1: think that, when 25 is slick and covered in ice, they should be driving 80 down it, and 2: are continuously being told, "YOU'RE THE DUKE OF HARLEM! YOU'RE A-NUMBER-1!" (let's see if anyone can figure out what movie that line is from), "You're so wonderful!", "Everything you touch is gold because you defend freedom!", and all that crap, and it goes to their heads. The end result being that you have these 18, 19, 20 year-old kids who get inflated egos and this extremely entitled mentality running around CS, thinking they can do no wrong. And if anyone is even more annoying than them, it's military wives. Yeah, I said it. They're some of the most arrogant and self-absorbed people you'll ever meet in CS. Again, not all of them, but a substantial enough portion of that demographic that you're going to take notice. "Oh, my hubby's serving as a PAC clerk in Yemen right now for your freedom, so you owe me something! Don't you dare complain when I swerve in front of you, not paying attention because I'm yapping away on my cell phone! I'm HH6!". I'm not sure if they were a bigger annoyance when I was in the Army or a bigger annoyance when I was living in CS as a civilian.
Military towns are like that. I saw it in Watertown and the other towns surrounding Fort Drum, I saw it in Fayetteville, and I knew before I moved to Colorado that I could expect more the same in the Springs.
And if what I just said offends members of either group, here's a suggestion - instead of getting irate with me for pointing out the obvious, how about you try policing your own?
That aside, back to the commute.. if you're living at sea level, you'll notice a bit of a drop in fuel mileage here, so anticipate spending even more on gas than you do now (I say this with the notion that you're not currently commuting 60 - 80 miles to work daily. Air is much thinner here (but don't worry - you'll get adjusted), gas engines are extremely strict about the correct stochiometric ratio for the fuel/air mixture in order to run optimally, and you're not going to get it here.

[Maltee]

If the job is in Denver, live in Denver, and just visit Colorado Springs on the weekends. If you took that horrible, long commute, it's not as though you'd have much time to enjoy Colorado Springs during the work week anyway.