We know you don’t like the traffic in Houston. You’ve complained about it for years. And when you find out how much you spend in your life just to go to work it might make you spit up your coffee.
New numbers show you spend more than a year; 408 days commuting to and from work. That's what the average American puts into his commute. Add up the mileage, that’s 173 thousand miles. But in Houston that number shoots up to 274 thousand miles. Tim Lomax with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute says we know what we get into when we buy those houses in good neighborhoods for that great price.
“A lot of times folks are willing to drive farther than they would if they didn’t have a nice house and good schools for their kids to go to,” Lomax said.
So while the average American will spend $108K on their commute, the number for a Houstonian driving an SUV shoot up to $212 thousand.
“Houston has a spread out environment. The commutes are longer because we have not constrained where homes can be built,” Lomax stated.
At the end of the day, when you add up all those miles, that's like driving around the world at least seven times.