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An eight-hour commute, no joke

By Justin Rocket Silverman, amNewYork Staff Writer | jsilverman@am-ny.com

May 10, 2007

Some commuters exaggerate and say they spend more time getting to and from work than they do toiling at the office. Kimberly Twist does not exaggerate.

"Leaving work, people sometimes talk about their plans for the night and invite me out, but I have to remind them that it's going to take me four hours to get home," says Twist, 23, an editorial staffer at Cambridge University Press in TriBeCa.

This Extreme Commuter's ride home consists of four separate trains, across two state borders. First, Twist takes a 15-minute subway to Penn Station. Then it's a 75-minute ride on a New Jersey Transit train to Trenton, where she boards a SEPTA train to downtown Philadelphia, which is another 50-minute ride. Finally, she transfers to a local SEPTA train for the last 45-minute stretch to a suburban station called Ambler.

Then it's a 15-minute drive home to her parents' house in Blue Bell, Pa.

If she makes every connection, the trip can be done in less than four hours. If any of her many trains are late or delayed by even a few minutes, the commute can become a five-hour-or-more ordeal.

Since her paid workday is only seven hours long, Twist truly does spend more time commuting than she does at her desk.

"I have systems to keep myself sane," she says, gazing out the SEPTA train window at the same post-industrial landscape she's been watching since she moved back home last summer, after earning an master of arts at NYU.

"I read, I eat, I do crossword puzzles or listen to my iPod. But sometimes I'm so exhausted that even that is too much effort and so I just sit and stare out the window."

The commute is perhaps even more labored for Twist because she knows all about the convenience of Manhattan living. While at NYU, she enjoyed a seventh-floor studio apartment on Union Square West.

Living at home means she is able to save money and pay her student loan debts, even if the commute ends up costing about $550 in transit and parking passes every month. A direct Amtrak train leaves regularly from Penn Station to Philly, which would save Twist the long detour through Trenton. But at $1,079, the monthly Amtrak pass is not much cheaper than a shared apartment in Manhattan.

"Sunday nights are the worst," Twist says. "I feel like there is no way I can do another week of this commute. But I do it because I have to and I'm not the kind of person who shuns challenges."

On the weekends she doesn't like to leave Pennsylvania--although she still works, eight or nine hours a day, at the local Gap store.

The Extreme Commuter can be anyone who takes more than the average ride to work. Whether it's a complicated bus and subway transfer, an extra long ride, or just something that requires the person to get up really, really early, amNewYork wants to hear about it. Email your suggestions to jsilverman@am-ny.com