When2Leave.com

[Darrell KSR]

I follow LifeHacker, which has some pretty cool articles daily. One of them was on this new website. My son was starting a new job today downtown, and I thought it would be kind of cool to plot the time necessary to commute the house to his job. I also did that for both of my offices, the school and which I sometimes teach, and my children's high school.

I don't know that it is all that different from Google Maps and Google now, but they claim it varies in some small respects and eventually a nap will be billed for it. It is ideal for those with a flexible schedule, as it has a feature where you can be alerted when the commute time reaches a certain point. Anyway, I thought it was kind of cool.

This morning it took 34 minutes for him to commute to work at 7:30, but it was 26 at 7:00. At 7:11 it was still only 28, which seemed to be the prime time to beat. (After that, the minutes started increasing quickly.) At 6:49 it was 25 minutes.

My office today was 7 minutes at 6:49, 7:15, 7:30, 8:00 and every time in between I checked. Nice to work close!

[Critter]

I know people in Atlanta and other large towns that say you'll arrive at the same time with an hour to an hour and half leave window just because of traffic.

[Darrell KSR]

I used to say that when I worked downtown, I had to leave before 7 or after 8. I didn't put in my old office address, but I suspect that hour would be the worst of the day, easily, headed that direction. But I used to say it would take 20-25 minutes before 7 or after 8, and an hour in between. That was probably a little exaggeration, but whatever time it did add, made it a miserable, miserable drive.

[MickintheHam]

I remember the days of working in The ATL and living in Birmingham. Sometimes I would commute on a daily basis. Other times I stayed in Midtown Atlanta and walked 6 blocks to work. Many times I would hold a 9:00 am meeting with a group of my peers to discuss progress on completing a large special project for our common supervisor. Whether I drove 150 miles or walked I was always on time. But it always amazed me how people would drag into the meeting between 9 or 10. (posted work hours began at 8:00am) No one thought anything of it. It was very normal in Atlanta. But I suspect few of them ever thought of adjusting their commute schedules to be on time. That's one of many things I hate about the ATL.

[Darrell KSR]

Bless your heart for working in Atlanta. I had a job interview there coming out of school and declined the job offer when it took me 90 minutes to make it to the interview. When I mentioned the transit time to one of the guys during my interview process, they acted like that was normal and I knew it wasn't for me.