And most commuters know their train by the precise minute it departs; John Cheever, chronicler of the Grand Central commuter set, titled one memorable short story "The Five-Forty-Eight".
We then made some predictions about what the future of high-speed rail and autonomous cars could look like for the same commuter setting out in the middle of the Northeast corridor.
But a beverage-by-beverage, chip-by-chip breakdown of what riders consume offers an unusually detailed glimpse into the differences between two of the city's cocktail-swilling commuter sets — and perhaps a few hints at the cultural divide that separates points north and east of Manhattan.
Read more: How double-decker trains would improve UK railways Transport for London says commuter hate national rail trains In order to allow time for navigating London's streets, potential London Underground delays, and busy carriages, a quarter of commuters set off half an hour earlier each day – wasting around five days of spare time a year.
In the south, commuters were set to reap the fruits of a project so long in the gestation it was once called Thameslink 2000: a £7bn overhaul that included rebuilding London Bridge station, adding modern signalling and buying new trains so that dozens of services could pass per hour with automated, Tube-style frequency.
The government has promised to help, giving as an example "commuter hubs" set up by the Ministry of Justice in some London libraries which allow civil servants to work remotely.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is making a push to block state funding for new rail cars on the Metro-North commuter railroad, setting the stage for another city-versus-suburbs battle.
My plan had been to glide effortlessly to work on the revolutionary new Airwheel – a self-balancing electric unicycle that is, apparently, "the commuter's dream" and is "set to transform urban transport".
This summer, a well that Cuadrilla drilled in Balcombe, in the commuter country south of London, set off protests from environmentalists and local opponents that received enormous attention from the media; the fact that it was a conventional oil well, not a fracking well for shale gas, almost seemed beside the political point.
For city commuters who set off on foot, there was wind as well as the snow to contend with.
