Philadelphia designer becomes internet star over his 800 MILE commute via public transport to work in Atlanta
Philadelphia-based urban designer Daniel Rodriguez voluntarily super-commutes over 800 miles from Philadelphia to Atlanta twice a week.
There is no mountain high enough, valley low enough, or river wide enough to keep Daniel Rodriguez from getting to work.
The 34-year-old Philadelphia-based urban designer commutes over 800 miles from Pennsylvania to his job in Atlanta, Georgia.
Rodriguez takes on three forms of transportation for his six hour commute: Two flights, two trains, and a bus.
The unusual set up came about after he was laid off twice and had no luck applying to hundreds of jobs in and outside of Philadelphia.
He eventually managed to secure a role with AECOM but realized that it made financial sense for him to stay rooted in Pennsylvania and travel the huge distance twice a week.
And now he has racked up millions of views and followers on social media documenting his mammoth trek.
'I was doing the commute for two months before I filmed the trip and shared it with my friends on Instagram as a way to show how wild this was,' Rodriguez told the Daily Mail.
'It went viral with four million views across Instagram and TikTok. I only had 300 friends—people I knew. But now almost 20,000 people joined in to see the journey.'
Daniel Rodriguez, 34, commutes 800 miles to his job as an urban planner
Rodriguez's commute can take roughly four to six hours, and he has to take two flights, two trains, and a bus
Rodriguez says he uses other forms of transport to avoid rush-hour traffic and the pesky cost of owning a car.
The 34-year-old lives with his wife and zips back and forth from his home in Center City to midtown Atlanta.
Rodriguez previously studied Landscape Architecture and was working on his dream project in Puerto Rico after taking out loans and uprooting himself to get there.
'For two years, I really believed this was the moment I had worked for my entire life. It felt like I was preparing to set myself up as a landscape architect that would bring real solutions to my people back home,' he told Daily Mail.
'But that was a brief and blissful fantasy. Because out of nowhere I was laid off.'
He had recently met his now-wife and they went from a 'honeymoon phase to survival mode'.
'That layoff forced me to confront how fragile everything was. I did not want to uproot our life so I locked in on doing anything to keep our lives where they were.'
Constantly searching for jobs, Rodriguez pivoted to the tech industry, enrolling in a bootcamp and Google UX certificate that put him 'seven thousand dollars in the hole.'
'I sent out more than six hundred applications. I barely got three interviews. Every rejection chipped away at my confidence. I felt humiliated,' he told Daily Mail.