Maybe you walk a few miles to work.
Perhaps you bike it in using trails and paths. It’s possible you’ve cooked up a CTA commute so complicated that even agency President Richard Rodriguez would scratch his head. If you do any of the above, you could be ahead of the get-to-work game for a local car-free challenge this month.
On Tuesday, the Active Transportation Alliance is partnering with agencies including Pace, Metra and CTA for the “Car-Free Day” pledge, part of a daylong world initiative to “X” out autos. The impending hooptie holiday gave RedEye the notion to take a closer look at quirky commutes that don’t involve cars.
We took to Twitter and e-mail to track down commuters who crossed state lines, took multiple buses and trains, ran and even paddled during a one-time kayak ride. Check out how these locals travel to and fro, then let us know if you can top their trips. Twitter responses to @redeyechicago or e-mail us at ritaredeye@tribune.com. Let the commute-off begin!
State your business
Grad student Jasenko Badic actually crossed state lines for his most recent job, even though he didn’t have to travel too far for the trip.
Until late August, Badic held a summer architecture internship that required him to travel from Milwaukee to downtown five days a week. His commute time: approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes each day door-to-door. The toughest part was his evening trip, according to Badic, who is studying at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. If Badic missed his 5 p.m train, he would have to wait another three hours for the next available Amtrak, he said.
“I love to work in Chicago,” Badic, 24, said. “The commute, not so much.” To make it less tedious, Badic said, he worked, read four or five books and did a lot of sleeping on the train. “You’d be surprised how many people do this,” Badic said of the Milwaukee-to-Chicago ride and reverse commute. “After a while, I noticed a little community of commuters forming. We were like a family, greeting each other every day.”
Badic says next time he works in Chicago, he’ll try to live there too. Can you blame him?
Transfer students
It takes up to two buses, an “L” trip, and a Metra train just to get Matt McCall to work. The Lakeview resident, who works in Naperville in the insurance industry, boards his first train by early in the morning. He endures an intricate commuter combo that includes a No. 77 bus, the Brown Line, a Metra train and a Pace Bus. Door to door, the trip takes approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes, McCall said.
“I find that I hardly ever watch TV anymore in the evenings,” McCall, 25, told RedEye of the daily commute he started in December when he sold his car. “It just kind of falls by the wayside.”
To cope, McCall spends his bus and train time Twittering, e-mailing, listening to music and, as one might expect, sleeping. “I try to be as productive as I can, but there is a limit,” McCall said during an evening interview that lasted from his Metra ride to the Brown Line transfer. At one point, a tunnel cut the conversation short. “I also do some freelance video production, and it’s hard to get that off the ground,” McCall said when the interview resumed. “But it’s tough to take on anything new when your day is almost entirely eaten up by your commute.”
Burbank’s Ryan Kiefer should be able to sympathize. The Illinois Institute of Art student, who commutes downtown to school, rises by 5:30 a.m. to catch a Pace bus to the Orange Line. He then transfers at the Brown Line before arriving at school sometime around 8 a.m. “I was planning to move, and this is definitely helping my decision,” Kiefer, 18, said with a laugh. “It’s just nightmarish, and the ride back is even worse.”
But where to? Kiefer guesses the more affordable apartments won’t exactly be a straight shot. “I don’t care about that,” he said. Currently, he is looking into neighborhoods along the Brown Line. “If the move kills one transfer and most of the walking, I’m fine with it.”
Walk it out
Don’t be shocked if you are in Humboldt Park and spot a woman walking while speaking Italian to herself.
Every fall since 2004, Samantha Mattone has walked the approximately 4 miles from her Humboldt Park home to downtown, where she works at an environmental agency. As soon as the weather cools, the 29-year-old stores the bike she rides in spring and summer in favor of walkabouts that start around 7 a.m. and take approximately one hour.
Mattone described the walk as long, but a more “relaxing option” to the CTA. “It’s also productive,” Mattone said. “I was preparing for a trip to Italy once, and during my walk, I got in at least two of these language lessons. It worked, but repeating the phrases helped me learn Italian.”
I’m on a boat
There was a bright blue kayak in a corner of Colin McKenzie’s cube space at Arc Worldwide on Wacker Drive overlooking the river. And it’s not because the ad director dreams of replicating Andy Samberg’s viral video hit “I’m On a Boat.”
McKenzie, 39, once traded his hour-long Metra ride for a three-hour kayak commute as part of a companywide “Try Something New” contest. McKenzie, who lives in Des Plaines, paddled from an area near Addison Avenue over to an area near the Merchandise Mart, where he climbed a fence and tossed the boat over before transporting it to his office on a freight elevator. For his trouble, McKenzie won nearly $2,100 according to a Leo Burnett spokesman.
It took McKenzie approximately three hours to take the watercraft — borrowed from a neighbor — downtown, and it took more than a month for him to get the boat back. Why not row it back, RedEye wondered? “That’s easy for people to say who didn’t row it here,” McKenzie said, laughing.
The running man
A Glencoe marathoner could give Humboldt Park’s Samantha Mattone a run for her money. Bob Herskovitz runs 20 miles from his suburban digs to downtown at least once a week, sometimes twice. It requires him to hit the trails by 5 a.m. and takes three hours, but is worth it for an “incredible commute,” Herskovitz told RedEye.
He said he runs whether there’s rain, sleet or shine. He wears a head lamp and special non-stick accessories on his running shoes to keep his commute convenient.
“I’ve been running to work, no matter where I’ve worked since the mid-’80s,” Herskovitz, 52, said. “This is the longest commute, but I truly love it.” The run is especially important to Herskovitz, who works for the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, because of his ongoing battle with a nerve disorder he acquired during the Gulf War, he said.
He won’t stop, he said, even when the harsh winter weather kicks in. “When I run I think about being blessed with two arms, two legs and the ability to do this,” Herskovitz said. “Some of my brothers and sisters in the armed forces come back from war without those blessings. I think of them almost every time I run.”
