There’s always a toll.
I have lots of time to think about this when commuting between northwest Vancouver and downtown Portland, because getting somewhere on time means leaving 40 minutes earlier than usual, and driving home takes an extra 20 minutes on average.
To calculate a personal toll from numbers like these, multiply your extra hours spent commuting times your hourly wage.
I think my extra hour is typical, putting the daily toll for the average I-5 commuter at $25, the median hourly wage in the county. That’s $5,500 for a year with 220 workdays, and $33,000 each in the six years since Republicans derailed the CRC. You could do a lot with that.
There is always going to be a toll for rush-hour commuting. But there’s a toll for fixing things and a toll for doing nothing, and more of the high cost of nothing seems the gist of Jaime Herrera Butler’s recent comments. Just some empty populism that will leave voters staring at each other’s bumpers and paying tribute to the oil companies. Just the same old, same old for the local GOP. Not front page news for this commuter. Nothing to cheer about.
