Commuting Tools

It may seem a bit silly to think of needing special "tools" to drive to work and back, even if your drive is long. In fact, you can make that commute with nothing but a reliable car, but there are things that can make the commute more pleasant, and even easier or quicker.

Air conditioning, heat, and a radio are basic. I've spent summers without functioning air conditioning, and in this part of the country, with a long commute, that's miserable. I'd like to say that a heater isn't really necessary here, but the one winter I spent without one was pretty cold, especially since I ended up being out after dark quite a bit that year, not something I usually have to do in my "work car". The radio is what makes the commute a good part of the day for me, as it's really the only time I get to listen to music.

I have a couple of recently acquired "tools" that help the commute in other ways. One is a solar-charged bluetooth hands-free unit. It sticks on the windshield with suction cups and keeps itself charged. It was easy to pair with my phone, and it sounds... it sounds okay. I've had a bluetooth headset that sounded very good, but occasionally I'd have to take it in the house and charge it, and the battery might run down at inconvenient times. Of course, I don't use the phone much in the car, perhaps once or twice a week for about 3 to 5 minutes, just to figure out where to meet my wife for dinner. Having the hands-free device keeps me from having to fiddle with the phone when she calls.

Another tool doesn't go in the car at all. It's the "traffic website". I can check the Houston Transtar weather map for a quick view, and used this website for several years. More recently, I've found traffic dot com to provide a better service. I've saved several "drives" on the site comprising the various routes I may take to and from work, and it shows me the delay and total travel time for each route. This helps me decide very quickly whether to follow my usual route or to choose one of the alternates.



More recently, I bought a Garmin Nuvi 255WT GPS unit specifically for commuting. How odd does that sound? Don't I know the way to the office after 16 years? Well, yes, but I've seldom ventured off of the freeways, and since there are limited ways to get back on the Interstate after getting off, having the Nuvi has allowed me to find some new ways around traffic jams. More importantly, though (and the reason I got it), it has a lifetime traffic subscription.

I had doubts about how well this would work after reading online reviews, but my brother purchased one and assured me that it works quite well. In the couple of months I've had it, I've been amazed at how well it works. The traffic receiver is built into the lighter plug cable. Once turned on, it begins gathering local traffic information via Clear Channel Radio's FM traffic network. This model came with a free, lifetime traffic subscription, though some models may require a subscription. Certain XM and Sirius satellite systems have traffic services, as well.

Once it gathers the information, it tells you the estimated total delay on your route (two minutes in the image on the left), and color codes the delays along your route. You can see a very slow (red) section in this image that begins just before the entrance ramp, and that turns to "slow" (yellow) shortly afterward. Because it does take some time, it doesn't always have all of the information by the time I reach the freeway in the afternoon. For this reason, I always check traffic.com to make a decision about my route. In the morning, however, it's generally 15 or more minutes before I encounter traffic, so the Nuvi saves me from having to turn on a computer to check the traffic before I leave the house. If there's a major delay, it directs me to take loop 610 instead of staying on I-10 all the way to my exit, making the decision easy. The traffic signs on the freeway typically have not been that reliable.

And, as I mentioned before, it has allowed me (encouraged me, actually) to get off of the freeway in the downtown area to avoid traffic jams. If it "discovers" a problem on the route you're taking, it announces "severe traffic ahead; recalculating" and tells you which exit to take. While you must still use your own judgment, based on your experience as to what traffic normally does along your route, I've heeded it's instructions and saved myself 30 minutes or more on several occasions. That's a quick payback, in my opinion.

Speaking of using your own judgment, I have followed its instructions with doubts a couple of times. One of those times, it led me to a long wait on a train. There's its biggest drawback: It doesn't know what's happening off of the freeways. It will often direct me to remain on the frontage road through several lights before entering the freeway in the afternoon, but I know that if I stay in the right lane of the freeway I'll get home more quickly than if I deal with the backup at the traffic lights. It also doesn't know about entrance ramps that are closed temporarily due to construction. But it's a tool, and must be used properly, not blindly, and it truly has saved me a great deal of time in the short time I've been using it.

It also gives me a glimpse of the future... someday, and if the current state of the art is any indication, that someday isn't far off, we'll have routing information that takes all of the traffic, on and off highway into account, and will be smart enough to route different cars different ways, saving us all a lot of time and gasoline. Two years ago, I would not have believed we'd really have a device that gave us real-time traffic in our cars. Most exciting gadget I've bought in a while!