"1 hour away" was distance to my brother, not to work. 1 hour would have been going around DC - probably south to Annapolis and then west to Alexandria - on the weekend.
Work would have been near College Park, and I would have lived in another suburb in that quadrant. So I would have been traveling perpendicular to most of the traffic. The neighborhoods with $400k houses were... not great but could have been worse. Lots of chain link fences but not security doors or barred windows. Still nowhere near as nice as our neighborhood and at double the price.
No way am I think I was getting *into* DC via car in those time frames.