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James Robertson's remarkable commute

GlennB

Loggerheaded, earth-vexing fustilarian
GlennB
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Detroit resident and factory worker Robertson, 56, has done 46 miles per day, 5 days a week, for the last 10 years. Some of this is by bus, but he walks a remarkable 21 miles a day.

Article

A GoFundMe campaign to help him out is now pushing $300,000.
 
Since reading an article about urban blight in Detroit, I've become quite interested in it. I checked the guy's address, and I can see his problem. He says he lives where he does because his girlfriend inherited the house. Normally, one would sell up and move rather than endure a journey like that every day. However, he lives in a blighted area. Their house will never sell.

I've spent some time browsing Google Streetview round there, and looked in detail at some of the properties. You'll see a house occupied and looking normal one year, then the next time-stamp it has a for-sale sign, then the next the sign is gone and it's looking derelict, then the next it's burned-out as a result of arson, then finally the county has demolished it and the site is joining the spreading urban prairie.

The only way to keep a house intact and habitable there is to live in it. And to go on doing that even while your neighbours are moving out and their properties are going down the spiral to the prairie. Your chances of selling are zero. And without a house to sell, I don't imagine there's any way this man would be able to secure any sort of accommodation near where he works. If he can't afford to run a car, how would he afford rent?

The population density goes down and down, and the services disappear. Shops close because there aren't enough customers remaining. The city was built for the car, and if you don't have one of these, you're screwed. I don't know what the answer is, since you can't simply relocate the remaining people into geographically rational population centres and return the rest to farmland.

The empty plots and empty blocks even close to Detroit city centre are jawdropping. Further out, some areas are very nice, but others are grass and fields with a grid pattern of roads and pavements and street lights and fire hydrants, peppered by the occasional house - often two or three houses surviving cheek by jowl as the original plots were narrow and the houses closely built.

It's a whole other world, and I became quite fascinated by it. This little vignette of its effect on one man's life makes it even more fascinating. I'm so glad to hear people are chipping in, and I'll go and donate myself. For the warm fuzzy feeling of actually interacting with something I've only seen courtesy of Streetview.
 
And to think I only clicked on this because I know someone called James Robertson.

Goodness, what a heartwarming story. And the banker who often stopped to give him a lift is going to help him manage the capital fund he now has.

I suppose with that sort of money he could move closer to his work, and to a nicer area. But it's an easy enough daily drive with a car, and he may want to stay where he is if there's still a good community there.
 
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Call me a skeptic but I can't help thinking something about his story just doesn't sound right. I think it is the 2 hours of sleep a night for over 10 years.
Funny though I once worked at an injection molding factory also and there was a middle aged man there who walked several miles to and from work. In his case it was drunken driving arrests that kept him from driving. We made $2.60 an hour which was around minimum wage at the time and yet most everyone had a car somehow.
 
If the story is true, it's remarkable.

A lesser man (i.e. me) would have bought a cheap bicycle years ago.
 
The story seems well enough researched to be true. Some people can manage on surprisingly little sleep, and he says he sleeps a lot at weekends.

The trouble with the bicycle idea seems to be that despite the distance he walks, most of his journey is in fact by bus. If he used a bike he'd have to cycle the entire distance.
 
I saw the thread title and thought "HA! I have the worst commute ever, I'll bet I beat that guy!"

I lose.

:(
 
Rolfe said:
The story seems well enough researched to be true. Some people can manage on surprisingly little sleep, and he says he sleeps a lot at weekends.

The trouble with the bicycle idea seems to be that despite the distance he walks, most of his journey is in fact by bus. If he used a bike he'd have to cycle the entire distance.
Click to expand...

I've done a split commute, in Detroit as a matter of fact. You lock the bike up near where you catch the bus. I recommend a cheap bike and a good lock.

ETA: A few times I did ride the whole way. Turns out you can ride a bike in the city just about as fast as the bus travels anyhow.
 
Rolfe said:
The story seems well enough researched to be true. Some people can manage on surprisingly little sleep, and he says he sleeps a lot at weekends.

The trouble with the bicycle idea seems to be that despite the distance he walks, most of his journey is in fact by bus. If he used a bike he'd have to cycle the entire distance.
Click to expand...

Motor scooter?
 
Detroit is petty amazing. I, too, have gawped at pictures of the place in disbelief. Only in America. In my grandfather's day and before, in Dickens's time, people walked many miles to and from work every day, right across London in many cases. My grandfather (born 1906) at the age of about 6 had to walk a couple of miles to buy yesterday's unsold bread from the back of a shop in Fulham and another couple of miles home. Before school, rain or shine.
 
He lives close to here.

https://goo.gl/maps/wIB7S

It doesn't look nearly as blighted as some areas, and the empty plots seem quite well tended, but then you scan around and you see the boarded-up house, and the one next to it in very poor repair....

I don't know why he wouldn't try a small motorbike. Maybe someone has asked him.
 
Rolfe said:
The story seems well enough researched to be true. Some people can manage on surprisingly little sleep, and he says he sleeps a lot at weekends.

The trouble with the bicycle idea seems to be that despite the distance he walks, most of his journey is in fact by bus. If he used a bike he'd have to cycle the entire distance.
Click to expand...

Buses around here often have bike racks on the front of them to put bikes on for people who ride the bus part way and bike part way.
 
Rolfe said:
The trouble with the bicycle idea seems to be that despite the distance he walks, most of his journey is in fact by bus. If he used a bike he'd have to cycle the entire distance.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. Some buses have bike racks. A coworker of mine got tired of the rack being already full when the bus arrived and bought a folding bike which he carries onto the bus. He was riding a couple of miles from home to the bus stop, riding the bus about 30, and then five or six on the bike to work. He does that because he likes it, not from any real necessity.
 
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Rolfe said:
The story seems well enough researched to be true. Some people can manage on surprisingly little sleep, and he says he sleeps a lot at weekends.

The trouble with the bicycle idea seems to be that despite the distance he walks, most of his journey is in fact by bus. If he used a bike he'd have to cycle the entire distance.
Click to expand...

I don't know about where he lives but the buses where I live have a bike rack in the front.
 
I'm not really understanding the gofundme part, on many levels.

What really makes people donate to these?

25000 for a car? I have a good job/salary and my car cost 17k used. And I felt that was expensive. A friend bought a used Yaris on Craigslist for 6500 cash. It works great.

Once it reached 25000, people kept donating? Enough to get it to almost 300k? Wow.

Good for him though. It just seems so weird you can raise that kind of money for having a slightly sad story. But he's not living on the street, or saving people's lives, or dying of a disease and has a last wish. So strange. To me,anyways.
 
anglolawyer said:
Detroit is petty amazing. I, too, have gawped at pictures of the place in disbelief. Only in America. In my grandfather's day and before, in Dickens's time, people walked many miles to and from work every day, right across London in many cases. My grandfather (born 1906) at the age of about 6 had to walk a couple of miles to buy yesterday's unsold bread from the back of a shop in Fulham and another couple of miles home. Before school, rain or shine.
Click to expand...

My dad had to walk barefoot in the snow 6 miles each way, uphill and into the wind, in the blazing summer heat to get to school.

ETA That was after he woke up at 3AM to deliver milk when he was 9. (This part of his story is true)
 
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Max_mang said:
I'm not really understanding the gofundme part, on many levels.

What really makes people donate to these?
Click to expand...

He's got a solvable problem. If I give money to the abstract poor, or for dog rescue, or for Alzheimer's research, I'm not going to see any of those things go away. Most charities are like that - a black hole you can throw money into. But here we have someone with an interesting story and something fixable.

At least, that's my guess. I didn't donate.
 
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