When Home Seems To Be on the Road
As Commutes Get Longer, Manufacturers Pack Comforts and Diversions into Vehicles

By Annie Gowen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 17, 2008

Thirteen-year-old Danielle Mangrum loves her new room. It has two TV screens, so she can watch the Disney Channel while her 9-year-old sister, Diamond, watches a DVD on the other. It has an elaborate stereo system, new leather furnishings and a table where she can hunker down and do her homework.

It also gets about 20 miles to the gallon.

A few months ago, Danielle's parents invested in a high-end Dodge minivan to "enhance" -- as her parents put it -- their time on the road. The busy Bowie family can spend up to four hours a day shuttling up and down Route 301 to church and school activities, including dance practice for Danielle and soccer games for Diamond. They wanted their commute to be as comfortable as possible.

Danielle calls the van her "house on wheels."

As drivers spend more time in their cars, manufacturers are giving them more of the comforts of home. Increasingly, cars are being marketed as destination points rather than as ways to get from place to place.

Ford has a car coming out this summer that has a refrigerator. Dodge minivans have cartoon channels on satellite TV. Radio systems have not just ports for favorite music but room for slide shows of family photos. There are electrical outlets for hair dryers and laptops -- even a cheap router that can turn a car into a mobile Internet hot spot.

Transportation planners and sociologists say the car-as-home trend is an outgrowth of the increasing burdens of long commutes and congestion.

"We're spending more and more time in our cars . . . and instead of addressing the terrible experience of commuting, we just do more and more pleasant cars," said Andres Duany, an advocate for walkable communities and the author of the book "Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream."

"Cars are wonderfully comfortable these days," Duany said. "They cocoon you; you can sit in them for hours and work from them. But it doesn't address the fundamentals about why we need nicer cars. The issue is that we are spending too much time commuting and too much time driving."

Experts in driver safety say they fear that the new bells and whistles could become as distracting as cellphones. Some parents, though, say the best safety device is an entertainment system that keeps the kids quiet in back.

A wide-ranging 2006 federal study showed that inattentive driving contributed to almost 80 percent of all crashes and near misses. Researchers at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute equipped 100 cars with cameras and saw drivers engage in a variety of risky behavior -- changing shirts behind the wheel, putting in contact lenses and eating.

But consumers' love affair with roomy luxury vehicles persists, particularly in the affluent counties that ring the Beltway. The Washington region is the No. 2 market for minivans in the country, according to Chrysler.

The New Kitchen Table

Drivers in the Washington area spend more time in their cars than other drivers across the country -- an estimated 100 minutes a day, compared with an hour nationally, according to transportation planners at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

The average resident of the region spends 60 hours a year stuck in traffic jams, a number that has almost doubled since 1988, according to the Texas Transportation Institute.

Time spent in a car is expected to increase as traffic congestion worsens, even if the number of miles traveled doesn't, said Ronald F. Kirby, director of the Council of Governments' department of transportation planning. Congestion may worsen as drivers move more slowly because they are using cellphones and fancy new Global Positioning Systems -- the very conveniences designed to make long commutes more palatable, safety experts say.

A few weeks ago, Madeleine Mueller, a 45-year-old stay-at-home mom, decided she would try an experiment. She began resetting the odometer to zero every time she jumped in her Suburban to shuttle her five kids to Catholic school and activities, just to see how many miles she drove on an ordinary day. She knew it was a lot. She discovered it was 50 to 80.

Turns out she drives more than her husband, who commutes 24 miles from Centreville to his job as a development director for the Catholic Diocese of Arlington.

"I felt like I was driving huge amounts of time, and I just wanted to quantify it," she said. "The days I'm in the car more I can actually feel it in my body. I could feel it if I had a 50-mile day versus an 80-mile day. . . . I'm more tired out, a more kind of stressed feeling. Like a mental tiredness."

She could join a car pool but chooses not to. Sometimes the car is the only place she can get the full attention of the kids, who range in age from 4 to 16. In the Suburban, they're a captive audience.

Last week, her 14-year-old daughter was clamoring to change the radio station to Hot 99.5, but Mueller wanted them to listen to a news analysis of the upcoming presidential primary. They ended up having a lively discussion of each candidate's views.

"It's one of those things where if I can catch them in the car, we can have those conversations more than I would have with them at home," Mueller said. "So the car time can be beneficial, if you use it the right way."

Ronnie Lesley, a 64-year-old retiree from the Fairfax County section of Alexandria, also thinks the best time to have a family discussion is when his family -- his wife, two grown daughters, a son-in-law and grandchild -- is in the car. Recently, they had a searching debate about whether the elder Lesleys should move to Florida to care for an aging relative. The consensus was ultimately no.

"That's the beauty of the van; it captures everybody in one spot," Lesley said.

You'd Be Home by Now

Jane Lemmerman, a 40-year-old Leesburg resident, says her Toyota Sienna minivan is both closet and pantry for her family of four. It's packed with snacks, sippy cups, strollers, extra clothes, even a trash can.

But she recently started thinking about it in a different way: as a prison for her daughters Lyndsey, 2, and Sydney, 4. The commute between their townhouse in Leesburg and her part-time job in Fairfax takes a toll on the family, she said.

A wistful comment made by her daughter drove that point home. They were leaving Lemmerman's office when Sydney pointed out the car window. "Mommy, if we lived in that house, we'd be home by now."

Lemmerman was recalling this on a recent afternoon as the two girls clambered through the play area at Fair Oaks Mall. She mimed a knife in the air, demonstrating how the comment cut right to her heart.

"It's about quality of life. I'd rather have time with my family than spend time in the car," she said.

When she was growing up, she freely climbed over the seats into the "way back" of her family station wagon, a far different experience than her children have, immobilized in safety seats.

"That is another guilt factor, having them strapped in for hours on end," Lemmerman said.

She and her husband finally decided they'd had enough of commuting and put their Leesburg townhouse on the market last week. They dream of finding a home closer to their jobs in Fairfax.

Road Trips

One recent Saturday, the Mangrums -- Daniel, wife Sabrina, and daughters Danielle and Diamond -- piled into their Dodge minivan outside the parking lot of the family's church, Cornerstone Peaceful Bible Baptist Church in Upper Marlboro, where the Mangrums are co-pastors.

Once they were buckled in, Diamond reached for the remote and clicked on the Disney channel. At the same time, she flicked on her portable Nintendo DS. She was soon immersed in the go-cart racing game Mario Kart. Danielle dialed classmates on the bright-fuchsia Razr phone that she calls "her best friend." There was a mini-heartbreak situation involving a rude remark by a classmate that needed to be dissected.

"I was crying last night," Danielle said into her cellphone. "Everyone was like, 'You okay?' I was like, 'No.' "

In the front, her parents, separated from the children by a video screen, were quietly going over the day's church service while gospel music streamed from the radio.

"This is family time," Daniel Mangrum. But the Mangrums were already in their own bubbles -- in their own rooms -- by the time the minivan began sailing up the road.