Average work commuter distances in Germany

I had an interesting discussion today about how people seem to be commuting more KMs (to work) now, than they were say 10 years ago - admittedly it was sparked by a UK HR website auto email, but relevant all the same.

Maybe it is just the office I work/have worked in, but hardly anyone there lives locally. When I tell people back in the UK about my daily commute they seem to have to travel shorter distances if they're single. The big commute in the UK seems to happen when kids are concerned e.g because of the "catchment area / radius" mentality of popular schools, and that's even if you already have siblings in the same school, go to church regularly and are involved in all the community activities/PTA (don't get me started) and meet all the other criteria just to get a foot in the door.

I do a good 120km commute twice a day, taking anything from 1hr20 to 1hr50 door to door depending on train connections. It hardly raises an eyebrow amongst my German friends (single no kids or parents), but my UK friends are horrified, even though I protest it is my choice to do so. I have German friends with families who are commuting from Bonn to Duisburg and others from Köln to Wuppertal each day and it all seems perfectly normal in Germany.

To me it seems quite normal too, and despite Germany's attempts to curb the generous tax return KM Pauschale, they obviously have negligible impact on my commuting habits, as I am waaay over the first 20 KMs anyway, so I'm literally laughing all the way to the bank despite their futile efforts. Maybe the (better) tax public transport system is the driver for why people commute further in Germany. Or maybe it's just that we're all becoming too picky about where to live/work, and obviously the availability of jobs & housing...

1.5 hours seems ok to me, especially if you have flexible working and don't drive a car so you can do your work on the train. I once worked in Paris, and that is a good 1 hour from one edge of the city to the other, and as for London - door to door... good luck with that one...

So, how many KMs do you/your friends commute in Germany?

1.6km (one way)

make it a poll!

Or just check Commuting time to work?

I ride my bike, takes 20 minutes to do about 6km. I think you can get away with longer commutes by public transport in Germany because it's pretty reliable. Not so in Britain.

What pisses me off is this pendlerpauschale. I wish they'd just get rid of it for car drivers, double it for bus / train / bike commuters.

Hmmm... my commute is about 20 seconds, 1 minute if I make a side trip to the bathroom first.

Home office is a wonderful thing.

600m door to door. About a 6min walk from locking up my door, waiting for the elevator, walking to the office.

Big difference between time and distance. Although my distance stays the same I can take twice as long on Mondays driving in and Fridays driving out.
Used to be 7km, now app. 20km.

Can someone explain this pendlerpauschale, tax relief (?) thingy??

I know of colleagues who commute 200 km each way everyday. I think it's crazy but when the travel bugs hit you, you're stucked!

Used to be 27kms into Hamburg. Now Its home office


There are a few snags:

1. Have to be careful not to be still sat in pajamas when the kids come home from school.
2. Neighbours think you are either Frührentner or unemployed.
3. You eat too much as the wife keeps handing a piece of cake etc round the door.
4. Some claim that their wives believe you now have time to run errands etc.

Amen to that! I normally work from home. On the rare occasions when I do actually have to go into the office, with no traffic, it takes about 12 minutes. Since I have to drive on the Ring, it has taken me up to an hour-and-a-half to get to the office. Simply ridiculous.

On the rare occasions I do drive into office I know why I work from home...

About to increase my 3 minute drive to a 10 minute drive but looking forward to the extra chillout and thinking time in the mornings and evenings - I think it will be a good thing. No traffic, open roads and pressure free. But how anyone can waste 2 hours a day commuting is beyond me.

60 Km round trip. Takes me approx 25 mins to get to work. One hour 15 if I take the train

I commute about 5km each way, so 10km round trip. Takes 10 min on ze U-bahn each way.

8km, so about 20mins or so in car... 25 on bike... (it's cold out there, so car atm!)

round trip 16km.
one way, 15 min drive.
Used to be a 35 min train journey.(one way)

100k round trip.

28km each way. Can take anywhere from 15 minutes (middle of the night) to 2 hours (with bad weather). Average is 30 minutes both morning and evening.

Why people subject themselves to 2 hour travel times (each way) is beyond me. I have better things to do in my non-working hours than commute. I also value my sleep too much

i fall out of bed and im at work. The joys of being an au pair!

ah yes, this thread probably should be merged.

my commute each morning is around 2 hours all together. anything longer than that and I would move closer to work. if i had a car i'd cut that time to half, but then i'd not be reading as much. i get in a good hour each day if I don#t talk to anyone on the train.

1st job in Berlin it was abut 16-20 which took me about 55 mins each way (with waiting time, I had to change twice). 2nd about the same, with 1 change. 3rd, approx 10km 40 mins depending on the shift I was working (early sunday is not a good time for the M2 and U2 to meet at either Alexanderplatz or rosa luxemburg platz (they changed the route of the M2 during this time).

This is door to door, I had to get to to my office and logged in etc so in effect it took a little longer.

In Dresden, well, I would say 4km round trip. Takes me 25 mins from leaving the house (5min walk) to sitting at my desk this includes the insane 5 mins it takes to cross 1 street using the amples.

How do those that are commuting over a hour each way have any time to buy groceries and such? Or are you strictly Saturday shoppers?

My commute is only about 15 min. by bike or 25 min. by public transportation and I still barely have time to slip into the shops before they close at 8:00.

I usually leave work at 6.45 p.m., getting into Mannheim at 7.30 p.m. (barring any delays) and the Lidl or Plus is open until 8. It's enough to get the bare necessities. If I want a good salad and am desperate, then it's luck of the draw if I get any lettuce that day, otherwise it's a tomato salad. you make due with what they have. saturday's are reserved for fresh fruits and veggies which usually last me the week.

Agreed. And trucks should pay tolls

I haven't found Germany to be much different to anywhere else I've been - I think lifestyle is more relevant, as you mentioned. My friends without kids tend to prioritise the location of their home in terms of proximity to work or city centre and might compromise on space/leafy surroundings to get this; my friends with kids, or outdoorsy interests which need space, often prioritise the nice, safe surroundings, larger homes and local amenities - it's a trade off.

My commute is around 2km, takes 10 mins on the bike, 35 to walk. I commuted about 2 hours each way for years, involving busses, trains and still a good mile on foot. I do not miss charging around the supermarket at the last minute, arriving home feeling totally worn out and basically living for the weekends, which are then crammed with shopping, cleaning, running errands and socialising. I have made job choices around the impact the commute would have on my quality of life and will continue to do so, though I doubt I can get away with 10 mins forever!

According to Google Earth, three days a week my commute is 2.65 km by bike, 30% of which is spent cutting across the English Garden. The remaining two days it's 6.70 km by bike, with 11% in the English Garden and 25% in the Olympic Park.

For the shorter of my commutes the bike is much faster than public transport, and with my ultimate-geek-commuter-wrap-around-the-back-of-my-head earmuffs I'm fine in just about all temperatures. Not a fan of biking in the rain, though.

For the longer commute the time by bike and MVG is roughly the same, so it depends on how I feel that day.

2 kms (one way). Sometimes, by bike and sometimes by car.

I would prefer staying close (not too close - aint good) to work place. It would be worse if you are staying far off, have to ride a long way to work and gettin' stuck up in the traffic jam. I guess its worse for people travelling from suburbs of Munich, into munich and gettin' stuck up in the jam and by the time its clear, you lost all your day at work.

Trucks do pay tolls. A fortune was spent installing an automatic reading system on the autobahns. Toll Collect.

Bella was looking for something similar but she was looking to fall into bed to do her work.

Hubby used to commute 11km to work. It took 1.5 hours by walking+public transit, or 15 minutes by car. Now we've moved, so the commute is 28 km, and he's given up on using buses.

Mmm...

Roundtrips at the moment:

120 km for university (public transport, 80 mins each way).
14 km for Job 1 (public transport + walking, 20 mins each way).
10-30 km for Job 2 depending on location (by car, 15 mins each way).

For university, just the gas would cost me more money than my ticket. And as for job 1... well, there's no free parking around there. And no way do I pay €1.50 per hour for sitting in traffic after work.

4 and a half minutes to the University for myself, however the lady of the house has to do the big commute of just over an hour. Including using her bicycle, the train, subway and tram. She doesn't really like the commute however the cost of living in Freising makes it worthwhile. Plus we have the lovely small town feeling

Urghh - I know... that is actually a bit of a pain... Flexible hours does help though. Otherwise, sometimes picking up things from the train station en route, and sometimes the dreaded Saturday shop.

I guess my big shop is near the weekend: Fri/Sat opening hours until 22:00 thing makes a big difference for me. If something can't wait until then, I usually do it in my lunch hour and schlepp it back with me, because I hate losing free time at the weekend running around like a headless chicken / taking the side-alleys & backstreets to avoid the crowds...

Deli stuff is easier to shop for. Sometimes I'll kind of do my general shopping from Delhaize and then go to work (they're open from 07:00 anyway) or stop off at Standa Supermercati since they seem to be open until 21:00 permanently and it's totally stress free at that time.

As for anything dentist / bank- or Amt- related in the Mon-Fri hours - there's no solution there.

When I first started work here, my daily commute from Augsburg began at 6.15am then went...

Walk
Tram
Tram (or walk )
Train
Sbahn
Bus.
Walk.

on a good day, i would get in to work about 8.30am. it was usually longer on the way back.

I did this for about 3 months until we found a nice place here. then we moved out to the country 50 k away.

Did I read you right?!

You must live in some magical, far-off place outside Bavaria. I wonder, has the moral fiber of society and civilization as we know it collapsed since the introduction of such obscene opening hours?

I think the relaxing of shopping hours trend is probably going to continue. Sure, I mean that whole kurzer langer samstag, langer langer samstag, normaler kurzer Samstag thing was totally confusing and not even worth getting out of bed to do your shopping because the times changed so much. I can barely remember how that worked out - only that it was annoying for everyone concerned.

I'm pretty sure that before long the "nach Ladenschluss" workers rights to %Zuschlags will be the next thing to go, if you're meant to be working past 20:00. The 22:00 thing has only been around a year here, so I'm pretty sure people are still getting their Zuschlags for the moment - but from an HR standpoint it's obvious you wait for the old contracts to go and then any new recruits aren't entitled to the % any more unless there's Betriebsrats - which there usually aren't in the stores on the high street.

Sunday shopping though - I'm not so sure... It would make my life easier, but since between Gerling Konzern and the Church, they pretty much own Cologne, and they aren't going to be agreeing to anything Sunday related anytime soon.

It depends on where I have to go each day... a daily roundtrip can vary between 30 and 900 km. But I don't suppose you can call that a 'commute'...

... and diesel should be taxed to square up with gasoline. And Firmenwagen should be banned.

50 klics door to door ... 5 klics each way by car to the train station, 20 by S-Bahn. 35 minutes total (including train wait time and de minimus walking). Arrive at work fully FTed, FAZed and Blackberried.

Diesel drivers are taxed extra, just not at the pumps, they pay much more road tax and more insurance, which incurs more insurance tax. Unless you drive a lot of kilometers diesel can actually be more expensive.

What a strange article. I have only lived in Germany for six months and my husband drives to work in 35 minutes. He chose to live relatively near his job. I cannot understand the mentality of people living so far away from their workplace.
I have to say that the trains/underground are far superior in Germany than in the U.K., so perhaps Germans don't mind commuting. In the U.K., especially London, there are constant delays and breakdowns - it was real torture when I lived in Wimbledon (south west London). It took me sometimes 1.5 hours to get to the centre of London, mainly because there were horrid unecessary delays.

It takes about 7 min for me to get into work. That's the great thing about living in a small town but I do miss the city. But we work long hours and it has been a godsend since the local supermarket Boni (subsidary of Rewe) started opening til 21:00 weekdays and til 22:00 on a friday and saturday. Still, have to do the major shop on a saturday which I hate

It takes me about 2.5 hours to get to work on Sunday evening, 210km drive, and about the same back on Friday afternoon however during the week it only takes me 10 minutes from hotel to workplace. Thats the current job, the previous few years was home working (still do it occasionally) with trips to customers EMEA wide.

33 km one way only because we found a good place to live.The km i drive i lay off on my tax 7 cents a km. Is what i get back when i do my tax.

Reading some of these other entries I have possiby one of the most pleasant commuter journeys. I live in Neumagen-Dhron (Mittelmosel, middle of nowhere) and work in Zell (Mittelmosel, Wiles of Wannie). It's 65 km each way along the river; but I don't go that way*. I drive the Eddie Waring "Oop-n-over" route and cut the distance to 52.5 kms. This takes me through some of the Mosel Valley's most spectacular coutryside, and just recently, with super sunshine up on the heights and dense mist on the valley floor, it's been a therapy just making the journey. On one of the best driving stretches, along the top of the ridge from Ürzig to Reil, I can crack along an isolated road while viewing the caterpillar of mist in valleys to either side. See
www.welcome-to-germany.de

* The expression "I don't go that way" reminds me on North-East (of England) comedian Bobbie Thompson:
Wife: (to Thompson, still in bed) Come on, get up, it's time to go to work !
Thompson: I can't go to work, it's foggy !
Wife: (Looks out of window) I can see the roofs of the houses.
Thompson: I don't go that way !