There was a great article in last week’s New Yorker about the commuting habits of American workers. The article says the average American spends 51 minutes in transit each way.

(The prize for the longest journey to the office goes to an engineer at Cisco Systems, who travels 372 miles each day to get to and from his job.)

Barring a radical new commitment to public mass transit and a reversal of urban flight, we can expect average commuting times to increase. Further, we can assume that more and more people will use their driving time as an extension of the work day—a scary thought given the data on cell phones and driver distraction.

How long do you spend commuting each way? If your commute is lengthy, what rationale do you use to justify the lost time in transit? What do you do in your car (besides pick your nose)?

Read the New Yorker article.

Leave us a line or two (or as many as you’d like) with your story.