Man travels 800 miles to work by plane, bus and train because it’s cheaper than living in US city
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: FOX 29 Philadelphia/YouTube
You may think that you have a nightmare commute, but one man has taken things to another extreme entirely.
Despite many still clinging on to working from home, many of us have returned to the daily commute.
Now we once again spend hours of our day nudging forward an inch at a time in rush hour traffic, or staring directly into a stranger's armpit on public transport while someone blasts out their music with no headphones.
Let's just say there's a reason that 'travel' and 'travail', meaning something unpleasant or laborious, come from the same linguistic root.
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But for most of us, at least our commutes are within the same city, or at least a satellite town or suburb of it.
One man, however, has a commute of a different magnitude altogether.
Meet Daniel Rodriguez, a 'super commuter' whose journey to work takes him on some 800 miles to get from his home in Philadelphia to his job in Atlanta.
Daniel, 34, works as a project manager at an urban design business and started his 'super commute' in May this year.
While living in Philly with his wife, Daniel was struggling to find a job in the city, so he began expanding his job search to an ever-wider area.
Eventually, he was able to land a role in Atlanta.
At this point, you're probably wondering why the family didn't just move to Atlanta, after all, you go where the job is.
However, in an absurd economic quirk, they realized that the high cost of living in Atlanta meant that it would actually be cheaper for them to continue living in Philly, with Daniel making his super commute to Atlanta once a week for his hybrid home and office role.
Typically, he will spend 2-3 days a week in Atlanta and then the other days back at home in Philly.
The commute isn't just one thing either, consisting of a train, a bus, and a plane each way.
“I’m working from the airport, I’m working from the plane,” he told CNBC. “I try to fit as much life into this as possible.”
On a morning when he commutes, he will wake up at 3.30am and catch the train to the airport in time to catch a flight at 5.30am, before a train from the airport into town and a walk to the office, bringing him to work between 8am and 8.30am.
Altogether, his weekly transport costs set him back about $240, and he also pays $400 a month to stay at a friend's place in Atlanta.
He says he even prefers the commute to driving in, saying it's 'less stressful overall than committing to driving to work every day, stuck in traffic, angry'.