This past weekend, I was in Northern Virginia for a wedding. I observed and discussed the lifestyle of people in that area. Yes, there are jobs there, and good jobs indeed, but at what cost. Traffic and commuting time, cost of living (housing), the inability to get connected to the community; and not being able to take advantage of the leisure opportunities in the region contribute to a costly lifestyle.

(1) Traffic and Commuting Time - One person I talked to said that they must wake up at 5 a.m. and be at work by 6:30 a.m. because of traffic. Another spends 2 hours and 15 minutes a day in car commuting. That is over 11 hours per week. Perhaps, the worse thing about traffic is road rage and the trait of impatience that slowly creeps into one’s personality.

(2) Cost of Living - With unstable gas prices, how much do you think a person pays for gas who commutes 11 hours a week (not including weekends)? The cost of housing is so high that some people who have bought houses year ago and have sizeable equity cannot sell and buy another house. These people feel trapped in their current living arrangement.

(3) Inability to Get Connected to the Community - I just did not sense a spirit of community because I could not differentiate between communities. It was all one big community. It is so vast, it’s overwhelming. However, I did experience a unique and friendly religious community on Sunday morning at a Lutheran church. Perhaps that is where community relations are in Northern Virginia.

(4) As a result, of the first three points, it seems that folks who live in Northern Virginia do not take advantage of the plethora of cultural and leisure activities that a big city provides. The time to commute, coupled with the high cost of living, and not having a lot of people to connect with to do these things, cancels out any advantage of living in the larger metropolitan area.

Finally, we drove in Northern Virginia for one hour to get to the wedding and another hour to the reception. That is common in the Northern Virginia region. Yet, for some reason, a 45 minute drive over a mountain with beautiful scenery from Roanoke to the New River Valley and vice versa is a trip too long to take. That paradigm must change for our region to grow and prosper.