I left my apartment at 6:07am, this morning, and drove to the new house. That reip was 17 miles and took 23 minutes. Unless you're travelling during rush hour traffic, or on a busy mall weekend during the morning and/or afternoon, that time should be about average for anyone making that trip at any time of day. It's possible you could do it a bit quicker if you managed to get more green lights (maybe at 2 or 3 in the morning).
I left the house at 6:31am. The trip was 35 miles and took 58 minutes. I went down lots of little 2 lane (one in each direction) roads with lights. There's quite a bit of single passenger traffic that early in the morning, which makes those roads very slow. I'd guess that if I left a half hour earlier, I could shave 10 or 20 minutes off of that time. The little roads delayed it quite a bit. There were many intersections where I had to make a left without a light and had to wait for lots of traffic to pass. There were many other times where traffic was backed up far enough that you couldn't see the light you were waiting at despite the road being straight as far as I could see. I-35E south was also a bit busy in the usual places (the George Bush junction and 635 junction). An extra half hour might really help all of those problem areas. A second option would be to take 380 West to the edge of Denton. It doesn't seem like there was a lot of traffic going in that direction. It's about 8 miles, which would put me on I-35E at about 6:40 (if I left at the same time). I can't imagine it taking me 20 minutes to get from Denton to 121 and I-35E in Lewisville (which is where I picked up I-35E this morning), therefore, it's possible that this route could put me in that area a bit sooner and shave off some time. Maybe 10 minutes or so, tops. I'm not sure that I-35E traffic would be much better 10 minutes earlier, but, it might help me shave off 5 more minutes, bringing my commute down to 43 minutes. It's all about the trial and error.
That being said, my commute from my apartment takes about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Of course, that's leaving at 7:30ish. That also costs me about $75/mo since I'm on the tollway quite a bit. Leaving at 6:30am from my apartment, which I've done before, takes about 30 minutes and still costs $75/mo. If my estimates about time savings are right, my commute from the house will take about 15 minutes longer than that, but will save me $75/mo. Everything considered, that's not too bad.
Leaving at 6:30 instead of 7:30 isn't THAT big of a deal. As it is, I'm usually up by 5:30 every morning now. And I'm certainly up by 6:00. I just don't bother to leave until 7:30am or 8:00am because I sit at the computer and check email and catch up on news for an hour or so.
On my way home this afternoon (leaving work at about 4:00pm) I'm going to try taking I-35E almost all the way to Denton, and then cutting back, just to see what kind of time I'll make going that way.
Regardless of my findings there, the commute is certainly doable, and not nearly as bad as I was anticipating. I imagine that, even if I left at 7:30 (like I do now) my commute wouldn't take more than 1 hour and 30 minutes. Of course that's just a guess, but I think that's pretty close.
