10 ms·

Stress That Doesn't Pay: The Commuting Paradox (2004) [pdf]

140 points by ptd 7y ago

findmyway 7y ago
Not all commutes are equal. Self driving will change many aspects. You will be able to do recreational stuff while in the car.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  That's already available today on trains and airplanes. I don't find that time particularly useful for recreation or for working.
- shakezula 7y ago
  Mass transit also plays a huge role. An hour on the train is vastly different than an hour in the car.
- Jagat 7y ago
  I was quite bullish on self driving cars about 5-6 years ago. As time passed by, and venture funding and media optimism seems to be drying out in silicon valley, I've been increasingly thinking level 5 is not going to happen in the next 20-30 years without significant legislative changes (e.g., dedicated roads or some other means of lowering the entropy for self-driving cars).
- michaelgrosner2 7y ago
  That is absolutely wrong. I take a train for ~50mins and walk ~10mins. I used to just do the ~10min walk. Work/Life was so much better when I just did the walk. Sure I can read and listen to podcasts and play phone games, but what I'd really like to be doing is be with my wife and son, or really just not in transit.
  - findmyway 7y ago
    Train is a public environment. Train and self driving is totally different things.
  - Grangar 7y ago
    I'll offer a contrast. For me 10 minutes wasn't enough because it made me feel like I lived at work. Now that I travel 45 mins the increased physical distance results in mental distance as well and feels incredibly liberating.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Self driving will let you do things you can do while sitting down in traffic. Since I get carsick that means stare out the window. Basically, if you can't do it on the bus you can't do it in a self driving car either. With the bus you can talk to a stranger (which can be good or bad...). A self driving car if anything makes congestion worse: people will send their car back home for free parking thus using much more road space.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    > "Since I get carsick that means stare out the window." Judging by the number of people staring into their smartphones on the bus every time I ride, only a negligible minority of people would have that disadvantage.
ptd 7y ago
From the paper: An individual with a 60 minute commute has to earn 40 per cent more money to be equally satisfied with life as an individual who can walk to the office. I found this very interesting, given the fact that I know a lot of people who work in major cities but live outside the city for financial purposes. Might make more sense to bite the bullet and pay high rent to live next to your workplace. This is complicated for couples though, because it is hard for you and your partner to find employment in the same part of a city. So one of you will probably have to make a sacrifice. I would be very interested in how remote work figures into all of this. Does the interaction with humans outweigh the benefits of being able to roll out of bed and be at the office?
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
  > Does the interaction with humans outweigh the benefits of being able to roll out of bed and be at the office? Depends on the personality of the person and the health of the rest of their social life.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- joejerryronnie 7y ago
  > Does the interaction with humans outweigh the benefits of being able to roll out of bed and be at the office? I wonder if this harrowing 911 call sheds some light on this question: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/i-work-from-home https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/i-work-from-hom...
  - perspicace 7y ago
    I don’t consider working hours proper human interaction. It’s professional interaction. Working from home is not recommended for every personality type.
  - geotad134 7y ago
    Holy hell what did I just read
oftenwrong 7y ago
Abstract: >People spend a lot of time commuting and often find it a burden. According to economics, the burden of commuting is chosen when compensated either on the labor or on the housing market so that individuals’ utility is equalized. However, in a direct test of this strong notion of equilibrium, we find that people with longer commuting time report systematically lower subjective well-being. Additional empirical analyses do not find institutional explanations of the empirical results that commuters systematically incur losses. We discuss several possibilities of an extended model of human behavior able to explain this ‘commuting paradox’.
San993 7y ago
Thanks
bluGill 7y ago
It has been noted that most people consider a commute about 30 minutes or least each way every day normal. Transport mode doesn't matter: primitive villages walk that long to their various fields or whatever. As we add faster modes of transport people move farther out to maintain that time.
- magduf 7y ago
  >As we add faster modes of transport people move farther out to maintain that time. Exactly, which is why widening highways to alleviate congestion is a waste of time and money. More people will just move farther out, canceling out all the savings had by adding the extra lanes.
  - lalaland1125 7y ago
    The time savings get cancelled out, but that's an incorrectly narrow view of things. Everyone who moved farther away concretely benefits in terms of bigger and/or cheaper accomodations. There is still a net benefit, just not in commute time.
    - marssaxman 7y ago
      > Everyone who moved farther away concretely benefits in terms of bigger and/or cheaper accomodations. The rest of us suffer, in terms of increased environmental impact and ongoing infrastructure maintenance cost. We should not subsidize this behavior.
      - lalaland1125 7y ago
        Nope, even the people who don't move benefit from reduced housing costs as people moving away frees up space.
        magduf 7y ago
        Wrong. If you want more space, you need to build more densely. All this does is drive up housing prices farther away, encouraging people to move even farther away. The whole thing is completely unsustainable.
hirako2000 7y ago
I'm always surprised seeing so many people accepting to commute. The time waste, the money waste, the environmental waste. I guess they got sold on the idea they can listen to a podcast on the way to the office... It's important to think about what we do. Even if we are taken by the storm of life. Pause, and think about what you are accepting to put yourself through.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Or they are not willing to accept the loss of income stability from living in a place with lower commute times, which also end up having fewer opportunities to earn income. Plus once a spouse also needs to work, both people's income streams and future stability of the income streams have to be managed. Due to increased volatility and concentration of places with sufficient income earning (and increasing) possibilities, this manifests itself as cities with lengthy commutes for all except the luckiest. Edit: Also compounding this is that school quality is roughly a measurement of the income earning abilities or wealth of the children's parents. It's known to everyone that sending your child to a school with children who have lower income parents results in lower chances of success for your child. If you want to mitigate this, then your options are to send the child to a private school, which are very expensive in cities, or move sufficiently far away so that you are geographically too far from the children with lower income parents and so the public schools' children end up having parents that have similar earning potentials.
- macdamaniac 7y ago
  Counterargument: in SF I'm always surprised by the number of people who choose to live in areas they dislike (ex: the Tenderloin), paying astronomical rent, and never being near green space, just for the sake of their commute. I pay the price of a 1-hour commute each way every day, but I live in the Sunset right by Golden Gate Park (imo one of the best urban parks in the country), and every night when I get home I have the peace of the trees, while still technically being in the city and having plenty of walkable restaurants, groceries, and services. I also get 850 square feet for the same price that many in worse areas of the city pay for 350, and on the weekends I'm already right by the park and the beach. Additionally my wife and I both feel safe walking around at night and frequently go for walks after dinner, and when we lived closer to downtown we couldn't really do that. In my experience people (myself included) tend to mostly deal with what's near them when thinking about spending their free time. That means for folks living _in_ the city they rarely end up experiencing the parks and never get away from the crowds that create such a feeling of anonymity. I didn't even know what I was missing out on until I made the move, and despite my frustrations with my commute I wouldn't trade it back and neither would my wife.
Apoa 7y ago
I live in NYC so perhaps I can give some perspective on why we put up with this. My commute is ~40 minutes from Brooklyn central, and relatively painfree. I work in Midtown. A lot of my friends commute 1 - 2 hours from South Brooklyn, and one co-worker is commuting from outside of Queens(!). A lot of jobs that pay decently aren't located in the outer boroughs. We could move closer to the city but we simply don't make enough and/or don't have the skills to make enough. Rents, especially near train stops are reaching 2 - 3k easily. Also, many jobs are still on the fence about letting more staff work remotely, although tech is changing this. Thus, we put up with crowds, delays and smelly train cars. I hope this brings a bit more light into things.
- grvdrm 7y ago
  I also live in NYC (Manhattan, specifically), and I read through this with my own lens: married, with a kid, another on the way. I live 13 blocks from my office. Some things that cause me grief: 1. NYC's city income tax on top of federal and state tax 2. The competitive public school system that disadvantages many and doesn't appeal to my parental administration efforts either 3. The pay-or-wait-for everything kid-related -- 2s or 3s programs that ask for astronomical amounts of money 4. Swampy summer urban heat island 5. AIR quality that probably isn't as good as it could be. If you ever walk on Madison Ave. during morning or evening rush hour, you've inhaled the avenue-wide plume of diesel smoke that saturates the air In some suburbs things flip in the other direction: 1. Public schools that are supported by high property taxes 2. Rather large fees for relatively shorter commutes --hundreds of dollars per month to commute 40 minutes to/from Grand Central or Penn 3. Lower income tax burden I'm looking at houses in the suburbs now, and what's difficult to quantify is the level of happiness associated with gaining things like fresh air, extra space, a yard for kids to play and keep themselves busy, closer proximity to family (both sides), and etc. I think there's lots of folks who positively and negatively value similar things and happily eat the commute time up (as me time, or personal time) in exchange for the some of the benefits I mentioned.
crazygringo 7y ago
> Contrary to the prediction of equilibrium location theory, we find a large negative effect of commuting time on people’s satisfaction with life. People who commute 23 minutes (one way), which is the average commuting time in Germany, would have to earn 19 percent more per month on average in order to be fully compensated. When I worked in Manhattan, I spent the extra $1,000/mo. to live within a couple blocks of work, rather than a 45-min commute away off in Brooklyn like most people I knew. It's expensive to live next to work. But here's the thing: I always felt guilty about it. That it was "unnecessary" money to spend, even though I had it. That it was irresponsible. However, I knew from (painful) experience it was still the rational thing to do. Once you subtract time spent sleeping, at work, and "maintenance" (shower, tidying, etc.) you really only have maybe 5 hours a day of personal time max. If you commute 45 min each way... that's only 3.5 hours. And when you factor in that you need a couple hours to relax, eat dinner, etc. -- that's the difference between having time left over for a rewarding hobby or not, which qualitatively changes your life in a fundamental way, and keeps you sane at work. Whether it's going to the gym regularly, reading books, doing yoga or dance, whatever it is. But it's still so hard to mentally justify paying such a premium for your own leisure time. It's really easy to tell yourself, no -- I'll save money, commute, and I'll still manage to find the time, it'll be enough... because you're optimistic you can have it all. But you can't. You'll lose your hobby or sleep or your happiness.
- minblaster 7y ago
  I normally don’t like the time = money idea (not all hours are equally valuable), but for a commute it makes sense. You paid about 40 bucks to get back 1.5 prime hours of your life, plus the mental stress.
- derg 7y ago
  Yep. I found a more expensive place closer to work that didn't necessitate me taking public transit regularly (though it is always an option if I need it) so I walk to and from work, and while the walk is about half an hour each way, it's always done on my own time. Throwing on some music or a podcast helps me unwind while the exercise does its thing to clear my head. I also save 100+ bucks a month on a transit pass too, though my rent increase is not as bad as 1000+ a month, I feel in your case it is definitely worthwhile.
EADGBE 7y ago
I suppose my mindset could change later; but I live a rather hectic and noisy life with small children (as I'm sure a lot can relate). Having a 40 minute commute entirely to myself to listen to anything I want to (or silence) is almost a sanity check for me.
olliej 7y ago
I just returned to a two hour commute instead of a 20 minute commute because of stress induced by the 20 minute commute job. Is it ideal? No, is it worth it? Yes.
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
Right now, in the US, in many cities, we have minimum parking laws, that say you need X number of parking slots per commercial space or per work area, within some maximum distance of a couple thousand feet or less. And, yet there's absolutely no minimum living space/apartments/residentials to speak of. This is completely backwards. We should have minimum living space requirements within every work place. If you want to regulate things, regulate it well: No places to live, then no places to work. If there were 1 place to live within 500 ft for every 1 job, then we wouldn't have this situation where most of the population has to commute 2 hours every day polluting the planet with overly long commutes that could be 10 or 20 times closer. Imagine the reduction in c02 if people were traveling 20 times fewer miles every day.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Which was some of the thinking behind the classic attempts at "company towns". On the one hand, yes reducing commutes is a public good, but directly or indirectly connecting your housing to the company you work for has it's own problems (including just the basic problem that your whole life shouldn't have to revolve around where you work). As with most things, you have to be careful what you incentivize.
  - helen___keller 7y ago
    "company town" is a small town phenomenon. Superstar metros are the ones that need regulation that promotes building of housing units.
    - WorldMaker 7y ago
      Just because we most associate the "company town" era most with (relatively) small towns (and that wasn't always true, both Detroit and Chicago, as two wildly different examples, have been accused of being company towns in different ways and at different times), doesn't mean it isn't an applicable comparison even to "superstar metros". The "Google bus" issue in SF certainly didn't make SF a company town, but it did raise the specter of how willing a large enough company can be to routing around a city's infrastructure rather than work with it, stratifying public transit services in complicated ways that caused a lot of real grief for non-Google employees, just as non-employees in many a company town would have had mobility issues.
bullen 7y ago
It's not a paradox, they aren't paying the full price for energy. Soon they will!
jly 7y ago
The transportation mode is critical for a commute. The time spent commuting can be mitigated somewhat if you are active in the process. As an example, I live relatively close to my office in the suburbs, and most days I walk ~50 minutes each way for my commute. I could drive it in 10-15, but my family has reduced from 2 to 1 cars this way (owning a car is expensive and a massive headache). I also spend far less time at the gym because I walk many miles per day just commuting, plus I feel fresher when I get to work. I can definitely say I am much more satisfied with this arrangement than if I was driving for the same duration. The major negative is less time at home with the family, which I admit is a challenge but one I've been willing to put up with for the other advantages.
anotheryou 7y ago
Just the number of minutes is a very coarse measure. Important for me are seating and no changes in public transport and by bike the route is important.
wufufufu 7y ago
Didn't fully understand the statistical analyses tables in the paper because college statistics was a long time ago, but to me it seems like other variables had way more effect on life satisfaction than commuting time. To me those charts imply that having a partner (or being married) and having an education improve your satisfaction way more than adding subtracting 60 minutes to your commute. If we're able to weight correlations of different life parameters with life satisfaction, where is the "how cost-effectively to maximize your satisfaction according to statistics" guide? All my coworkers commute 40+ minutes to have a larger house for their family and a slower pace of life than in the city. This seems like pretty biased against commuting. Is it because everyone here is salty about having to commute to SF or Silicon Valley because rent is prohibitively expensive?
davidwitt415 7y ago
I wonder how the equation would change if flex/remote options were available, eg. telecommuting 1-2 days/week. Imo the 5 days a week commuting grind is much more debilitating that 3-4 times a week. Going meta, the inertial insistence on 'butts in the seat 5 days a week' needs to be disrupted. I know there are more startups and young companies these days that understand flex and telecommuting, however, this needs to flow into the large mass of old school companies somehow.
VladimirIvanov 7y ago
I'm definitely in no commute camp. My office is less than a 5 minute walk away from my apartment. It's literally a distance of two blocks. I'm in apartment right now for lunch cooking myself a meal.
joeax 7y ago
I've been working remote for 8 years and so my commute is 0 mins. But in my experience companies that allow remote work have caught on to this commute time==money dynamic and have adjusted their offered compensation accordingly. More than once have I had or heard the conversation that "well, you have the perk of no commute + living in a lower cost area, so based on that the compensation target for you is X - Y", where Y is $10-20k less. The question I wrestle with: is it fair? 1. For living in a lower cost area, no. If I live in SF I benefit/pay a premium for living in a nicer area. That should have nothing to do with compensation (unless they are located in SF and need me close by). 2. For not having a commute, maybe. I think it is fair for a company to pay a premium to have someone onsite. But that premium should be the same whether I walk 5 mins to work or drive 50 miles.
- DoingIsLearning 7y ago
  I think it's a mistake to frame this with respect to 'fairness'. If you were another company instead of an individual you would not be having this discussion with your employer. Would they try to bring the price of IT equipment down, with the argument of a shorter delivery route, if they were doing business with a retail business close by their office? For HR the best outcome is to get the best people possible for the lowest price possible. The best outcome for you as an employee is to get the maximum compensation + benefits + bonuses for the least amount of your time/effort. For the archetype factory employee, their value grows linearly with time spent working. For a knowledge worker the output of a small team of 10/20 people could generate orders of magnitude more, the time spent is not relevant what matters is the value adding output. So if you want to think in terms of fairness don't frame it in terms of the 40 hours a week, frame it in terms of the profit generated or money saved as a direct result of your output.
  - BeetleB 7y ago
    > frame it in terms of the profit generated or money saved as a direct result of your output. As I pointed out here[1] this is hard to do and no company does this. If you can find a way to quantify your value to the company, that's great. 90+% of the cases I've seen where people do it, they're making wild assumptions that no employer would buy, though. > Would they try to bring the price of IT equipment down, with the argument of a shorter delivery route, if they were doing business with a retail business close by their office? No, but they would bring the price down if they could buy it cheaper from a competitor. If you live in a low COL area, they could try to argue that they can find other employees in your area for whom they could pay less than what you demand, and those people would still get paid more than the average in that area. There's a reason outsourced employees in other countries don't get paid as much as they do in the US. Do not expect that you can change that dynamic easily. Of course, if you can demonstrate that it'll be hard for them to find a remote worker with your (perhaps rare) skills, then your argument would be more appealing to them. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685035
m3kw9 7y ago
Looks like once air taxi or commutes proliferates, down town residential house prices will plummet
Bubbadoo 7y ago
I commuted for almost 20 years in the NY Metro area. My journey, on one of the least reliable mass transit lines, took 4 hours from my day... if it was on time. I was well-paid and lived in a nice home, in a great neighborhood. The real problem with this commute is it takes over your life. During the work week, there is no me time, no time for fun or hobbies. I would sandwich in workouts and some downtime to unwind daily, but I was deeply sleep-deprived. Sure, I slept on the train and meditated, but the lack of reliable transportation on a daily basis really retarded any progress on those fronts. And that impaired my ability to fully enjoy my family, actively participate in my kids' upbringing and to genuinely enjoy life. I kind of had it all, yet, that darn commute raised my stress levels so high, it was ruining every aspect of life. I drank more than I wanted, and endured marital discord. Moral of the story is look at your commute as the top factor determining your quality of life. Think well and hard about that extra 30-60-90 minutes because it means a bigger house and backyard.
- bluesroo 7y ago
  I've been doing the same for only 4 months and I can feel a lot of similar feelings beginning to set in. I have no idea how you managed it for so long!
obruchez 7y ago
Another data point: I know somebody who has a long commute (at least 2 hours a day), but commute by train and is allowed by his employer to work during his commute. He also works from home one day per week. Which sounds like an excellent compromise: he's not socially isolated by remote working; his commute time is included in his working hours; he can afford a nice home in a less expensive place.

140 points by ptd 7y ago

Not all commutes are equal. Self driving will change many aspects. You will be able to do recreational stuff while in the car.

sokoloff 7y ago
That's already available today on trains and airplanes. I don't find that time particularly useful for recreation or for working.
shakezula 7y ago
Mass transit also plays a huge role. An hour on the train is vastly different than an hour in the car.
Jagat 7y ago
I was quite bullish on self driving cars about 5-6 years ago. As time passed by, and venture funding and media optimism seems to be drying out in silicon valley, I've been increasingly thinking level 5 is not going to happen in the next 20-30 years without significant legislative changes (e.g., dedicated roads or some other means of lowering the entropy for self-driving cars).
michaelgrosner2 7y ago
That is absolutely wrong. I take a train for ~50mins and walk ~10mins. I used to just do the ~10min walk. Work/Life was so much better when I just did the walk. Sure I can read and listen to podcasts and play phone games, but what I'd really like to be doing is be with my wife and son, or really just not in transit.
- findmyway 7y ago
  Train is a public environment. Train and self driving is totally different things.
- Grangar 7y ago
  I'll offer a contrast. For me 10 minutes wasn't enough because it made me feel like I lived at work. Now that I travel 45 mins the increased physical distance results in mental distance as well and feels incredibly liberating.
bluGill 7y ago
Self driving will let you do things you can do while sitting down in traffic. Since I get carsick that means stare out the window. Basically, if you can't do it on the bus you can't do it in a self driving car either. With the bus you can talk to a stranger (which can be good or bad...). A self driving car if anything makes congestion worse: people will send their car back home for free parking thus using much more road space.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  > "Since I get carsick that means stare out the window." Judging by the number of people staring into their smartphones on the bus every time I ride, only a negligible minority of people would have that disadvantage.

ptd 7y ago

From the paper: An individual with a 60 minute commute has to earn 40 per cent more money to be equally satisfied with life as an individual who can walk to the office. I found this very interesting, given the fact that I know a lot of people who work in major cities but live outside the city for financial purposes. Might make more sense to bite the bullet and pay high rent to live next to your workplace. This is complicated for couples though, because it is hard for you and your partner to find employment in the same part of a city. So one of you will probably have to make a sacrifice. I would be very interested in how remote work figures into all of this. Does the interaction with humans outweigh the benefits of being able to roll out of bed and be at the office?

mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
> Does the interaction with humans outweigh the benefits of being able to roll out of bed and be at the office? Depends on the personality of the person and the health of the rest of their social life.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
joejerryronnie 7y ago
> Does the interaction with humans outweigh the benefits of being able to roll out of bed and be at the office? I wonder if this harrowing 911 call sheds some light on this question: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/i-work-from-home https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/i-work-from-hom...
- perspicace 7y ago
  I don’t consider working hours proper human interaction. It’s professional interaction. Working from home is not recommended for every personality type.
- geotad134 7y ago
  Holy hell what did I just read

oftenwrong 7y ago

Abstract: >People spend a lot of time commuting and often find it a burden. According to economics, the burden of commuting is chosen when compensated either on the labor or on the housing market so that individuals’ utility is equalized. However, in a direct test of this strong notion of equilibrium, we find that people with longer commuting time report systematically lower subjective well-being. Additional empirical analyses do not find institutional explanations of the empirical results that commuters systematically incur losses. We discuss several possibilities of an extended model of human behavior able to explain this ‘commuting paradox’.

San993 7y ago

Thanks

bluGill 7y ago

It has been noted that most people consider a commute about 30 minutes or least each way every day normal. Transport mode doesn't matter: primitive villages walk that long to their various fields or whatever. As we add faster modes of transport people move farther out to maintain that time.

magduf 7y ago
>As we add faster modes of transport people move farther out to maintain that time. Exactly, which is why widening highways to alleviate congestion is a waste of time and money. More people will just move farther out, canceling out all the savings had by adding the extra lanes.
- lalaland1125 7y ago
  The time savings get cancelled out, but that's an incorrectly narrow view of things. Everyone who moved farther away concretely benefits in terms of bigger and/or cheaper accomodations. There is still a net benefit, just not in commute time.
  - marssaxman 7y ago
    > Everyone who moved farther away concretely benefits in terms of bigger and/or cheaper accomodations. The rest of us suffer, in terms of increased environmental impact and ongoing infrastructure maintenance cost. We should not subsidize this behavior.
    - lalaland1125 7y ago
      Nope, even the people who don't move benefit from reduced housing costs as people moving away frees up space.
      - magduf 7y ago
        Wrong. If you want more space, you need to build more densely. All this does is drive up housing prices farther away, encouraging people to move even farther away. The whole thing is completely unsustainable.

hirako2000 7y ago

I'm always surprised seeing so many people accepting to commute. The time waste, the money waste, the environmental waste. I guess they got sold on the idea they can listen to a podcast on the way to the office... It's important to think about what we do. Even if we are taken by the storm of life. Pause, and think about what you are accepting to put yourself through.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
Or they are not willing to accept the loss of income stability from living in a place with lower commute times, which also end up having fewer opportunities to earn income. Plus once a spouse also needs to work, both people's income streams and future stability of the income streams have to be managed. Due to increased volatility and concentration of places with sufficient income earning (and increasing) possibilities, this manifests itself as cities with lengthy commutes for all except the luckiest. Edit: Also compounding this is that school quality is roughly a measurement of the income earning abilities or wealth of the children's parents. It's known to everyone that sending your child to a school with children who have lower income parents results in lower chances of success for your child. If you want to mitigate this, then your options are to send the child to a private school, which are very expensive in cities, or move sufficiently far away so that you are geographically too far from the children with lower income parents and so the public schools' children end up having parents that have similar earning potentials.
macdamaniac 7y ago
Counterargument: in SF I'm always surprised by the number of people who choose to live in areas they dislike (ex: the Tenderloin), paying astronomical rent, and never being near green space, just for the sake of their commute. I pay the price of a 1-hour commute each way every day, but I live in the Sunset right by Golden Gate Park (imo one of the best urban parks in the country), and every night when I get home I have the peace of the trees, while still technically being in the city and having plenty of walkable restaurants, groceries, and services. I also get 850 square feet for the same price that many in worse areas of the city pay for 350, and on the weekends I'm already right by the park and the beach. Additionally my wife and I both feel safe walking around at night and frequently go for walks after dinner, and when we lived closer to downtown we couldn't really do that. In my experience people (myself included) tend to mostly deal with what's near them when thinking about spending their free time. That means for folks living _in_ the city they rarely end up experiencing the parks and never get away from the crowds that create such a feeling of anonymity. I didn't even know what I was missing out on until I made the move, and despite my frustrations with my commute I wouldn't trade it back and neither would my wife.

Apoa 7y ago

I live in NYC so perhaps I can give some perspective on why we put up with this. My commute is ~40 minutes from Brooklyn central, and relatively painfree. I work in Midtown. A lot of my friends commute 1 - 2 hours from South Brooklyn, and one co-worker is commuting from outside of Queens(!). A lot of jobs that pay decently aren't located in the outer boroughs. We could move closer to the city but we simply don't make enough and/or don't have the skills to make enough. Rents, especially near train stops are reaching 2 - 3k easily. Also, many jobs are still on the fence about letting more staff work remotely, although tech is changing this. Thus, we put up with crowds, delays and smelly train cars. I hope this brings a bit more light into things.

grvdrm 7y ago
I also live in NYC (Manhattan, specifically), and I read through this with my own lens: married, with a kid, another on the way. I live 13 blocks from my office. Some things that cause me grief: 1. NYC's city income tax on top of federal and state tax 2. The competitive public school system that disadvantages many and doesn't appeal to my parental administration efforts either 3. The pay-or-wait-for everything kid-related -- 2s or 3s programs that ask for astronomical amounts of money 4. Swampy summer urban heat island 5. AIR quality that probably isn't as good as it could be. If you ever walk on Madison Ave. during morning or evening rush hour, you've inhaled the avenue-wide plume of diesel smoke that saturates the air In some suburbs things flip in the other direction: 1. Public schools that are supported by high property taxes 2. Rather large fees for relatively shorter commutes --hundreds of dollars per month to commute 40 minutes to/from Grand Central or Penn 3. Lower income tax burden I'm looking at houses in the suburbs now, and what's difficult to quantify is the level of happiness associated with gaining things like fresh air, extra space, a yard for kids to play and keep themselves busy, closer proximity to family (both sides), and etc. I think there's lots of folks who positively and negatively value similar things and happily eat the commute time up (as me time, or personal time) in exchange for the some of the benefits I mentioned.

crazygringo 7y ago

> Contrary to the prediction of equilibrium location theory, we find a large negative effect of commuting time on people’s satisfaction with life. People who commute 23 minutes (one way), which is the average commuting time in Germany, would have to earn 19 percent more per month on average in order to be fully compensated. When I worked in Manhattan, I spent the extra $1,000/mo. to live within a couple blocks of work, rather than a 45-min commute away off in Brooklyn like most people I knew. It's expensive to live next to work. But here's the thing: I always felt guilty about it. That it was "unnecessary" money to spend, even though I had it. That it was irresponsible. However, I knew from (painful) experience it was still the rational thing to do. Once you subtract time spent sleeping, at work, and "maintenance" (shower, tidying, etc.) you really only have maybe 5 hours a day of personal time max. If you commute 45 min each way... that's only 3.5 hours. And when you factor in that you need a couple hours to relax, eat dinner, etc. -- that's the difference between having time left over for a rewarding hobby or not, which qualitatively changes your life in a fundamental way, and keeps you sane at work. Whether it's going to the gym regularly, reading books, doing yoga or dance, whatever it is. But it's still so hard to mentally justify paying such a premium for your own leisure time. It's really easy to tell yourself, no -- I'll save money, commute, and I'll still manage to find the time, it'll be enough... because you're optimistic you can have it all. But you can't. You'll lose your hobby or sleep or your happiness.

minblaster 7y ago
I normally don’t like the time = money idea (not all hours are equally valuable), but for a commute it makes sense. You paid about 40 bucks to get back 1.5 prime hours of your life, plus the mental stress.
derg 7y ago
Yep. I found a more expensive place closer to work that didn't necessitate me taking public transit regularly (though it is always an option if I need it) so I walk to and from work, and while the walk is about half an hour each way, it's always done on my own time. Throwing on some music or a podcast helps me unwind while the exercise does its thing to clear my head. I also save 100+ bucks a month on a transit pass too, though my rent increase is not as bad as 1000+ a month, I feel in your case it is definitely worthwhile.

EADGBE 7y ago

I suppose my mindset could change later; but I live a rather hectic and noisy life with small children (as I'm sure a lot can relate). Having a 40 minute commute entirely to myself to listen to anything I want to (or silence) is almost a sanity check for me.

olliej 7y ago

I just returned to a two hour commute instead of a 20 minute commute because of stress induced by the 20 minute commute job. Is it ideal? No, is it worth it? Yes.

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

Right now, in the US, in many cities, we have minimum parking laws, that say you need X number of parking slots per commercial space or per work area, within some maximum distance of a couple thousand feet or less. And, yet there's absolutely no minimum living space/apartments/residentials to speak of. This is completely backwards. We should have minimum living space requirements within every work place. If you want to regulate things, regulate it well: No places to live, then no places to work. If there were 1 place to live within 500 ft for every 1 job, then we wouldn't have this situation where most of the population has to commute 2 hours every day polluting the planet with overly long commutes that could be 10 or 20 times closer. Imagine the reduction in c02 if people were traveling 20 times fewer miles every day.

WorldMaker 7y ago
Which was some of the thinking behind the classic attempts at "company towns". On the one hand, yes reducing commutes is a public good, but directly or indirectly connecting your housing to the company you work for has it's own problems (including just the basic problem that your whole life shouldn't have to revolve around where you work). As with most things, you have to be careful what you incentivize.
- helen___keller 7y ago
  "company town" is a small town phenomenon. Superstar metros are the ones that need regulation that promotes building of housing units.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    Just because we most associate the "company town" era most with (relatively) small towns (and that wasn't always true, both Detroit and Chicago, as two wildly different examples, have been accused of being company towns in different ways and at different times), doesn't mean it isn't an applicable comparison even to "superstar metros". The "Google bus" issue in SF certainly didn't make SF a company town, but it did raise the specter of how willing a large enough company can be to routing around a city's infrastructure rather than work with it, stratifying public transit services in complicated ways that caused a lot of real grief for non-Google employees, just as non-employees in many a company town would have had mobility issues.

bullen 7y ago

It's not a paradox, they aren't paying the full price for energy. Soon they will!

jly 7y ago

The transportation mode is critical for a commute. The time spent commuting can be mitigated somewhat if you are active in the process. As an example, I live relatively close to my office in the suburbs, and most days I walk ~50 minutes each way for my commute. I could drive it in 10-15, but my family has reduced from 2 to 1 cars this way (owning a car is expensive and a massive headache). I also spend far less time at the gym because I walk many miles per day just commuting, plus I feel fresher when I get to work. I can definitely say I am much more satisfied with this arrangement than if I was driving for the same duration. The major negative is less time at home with the family, which I admit is a challenge but one I've been willing to put up with for the other advantages.

anotheryou 7y ago

Just the number of minutes is a very coarse measure. Important for me are seating and no changes in public transport and by bike the route is important.

wufufufu 7y ago

Didn't fully understand the statistical analyses tables in the paper because college statistics was a long time ago, but to me it seems like other variables had way more effect on life satisfaction than commuting time. To me those charts imply that having a partner (or being married) and having an education improve your satisfaction way more than adding subtracting 60 minutes to your commute. If we're able to weight correlations of different life parameters with life satisfaction, where is the "how cost-effectively to maximize your satisfaction according to statistics" guide? All my coworkers commute 40+ minutes to have a larger house for their family and a slower pace of life than in the city. This seems like pretty biased against commuting. Is it because everyone here is salty about having to commute to SF or Silicon Valley because rent is prohibitively expensive?

davidwitt415 7y ago

I wonder how the equation would change if flex/remote options were available, eg. telecommuting 1-2 days/week. Imo the 5 days a week commuting grind is much more debilitating that 3-4 times a week. Going meta, the inertial insistence on 'butts in the seat 5 days a week' needs to be disrupted. I know there are more startups and young companies these days that understand flex and telecommuting, however, this needs to flow into the large mass of old school companies somehow.

VladimirIvanov 7y ago

I'm definitely in no commute camp. My office is less than a 5 minute walk away from my apartment. It's literally a distance of two blocks. I'm in apartment right now for lunch cooking myself a meal.

joeax 7y ago

I've been working remote for 8 years and so my commute is 0 mins. But in my experience companies that allow remote work have caught on to this commute time==money dynamic and have adjusted their offered compensation accordingly. More than once have I had or heard the conversation that "well, you have the perk of no commute + living in a lower cost area, so based on that the compensation target for you is X - Y", where Y is $10-20k less. The question I wrestle with: is it fair? 1. For living in a lower cost area, no. If I live in SF I benefit/pay a premium for living in a nicer area. That should have nothing to do with compensation (unless they are located in SF and need me close by). 2. For not having a commute, maybe. I think it is fair for a company to pay a premium to have someone onsite. But that premium should be the same whether I walk 5 mins to work or drive 50 miles.

DoingIsLearning 7y ago
I think it's a mistake to frame this with respect to 'fairness'. If you were another company instead of an individual you would not be having this discussion with your employer. Would they try to bring the price of IT equipment down, with the argument of a shorter delivery route, if they were doing business with a retail business close by their office? For HR the best outcome is to get the best people possible for the lowest price possible. The best outcome for you as an employee is to get the maximum compensation + benefits + bonuses for the least amount of your time/effort. For the archetype factory employee, their value grows linearly with time spent working. For a knowledge worker the output of a small team of 10/20 people could generate orders of magnitude more, the time spent is not relevant what matters is the value adding output. So if you want to think in terms of fairness don't frame it in terms of the 40 hours a week, frame it in terms of the profit generated or money saved as a direct result of your output.
- BeetleB 7y ago
  > frame it in terms of the profit generated or money saved as a direct result of your output. As I pointed out here[1] this is hard to do and no company does this. If you can find a way to quantify your value to the company, that's great. 90+% of the cases I've seen where people do it, they're making wild assumptions that no employer would buy, though. > Would they try to bring the price of IT equipment down, with the argument of a shorter delivery route, if they were doing business with a retail business close by their office? No, but they would bring the price down if they could buy it cheaper from a competitor. If you live in a low COL area, they could try to argue that they can find other employees in your area for whom they could pay less than what you demand, and those people would still get paid more than the average in that area. There's a reason outsourced employees in other countries don't get paid as much as they do in the US. Do not expect that you can change that dynamic easily. Of course, if you can demonstrate that it'll be hard for them to find a remote worker with your (perhaps rare) skills, then your argument would be more appealing to them. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685035

m3kw9 7y ago

Looks like once air taxi or commutes proliferates, down town residential house prices will plummet

Bubbadoo 7y ago

I commuted for almost 20 years in the NY Metro area. My journey, on one of the least reliable mass transit lines, took 4 hours from my day... if it was on time. I was well-paid and lived in a nice home, in a great neighborhood. The real problem with this commute is it takes over your life. During the work week, there is no me time, no time for fun or hobbies. I would sandwich in workouts and some downtime to unwind daily, but I was deeply sleep-deprived. Sure, I slept on the train and meditated, but the lack of reliable transportation on a daily basis really retarded any progress on those fronts. And that impaired my ability to fully enjoy my family, actively participate in my kids' upbringing and to genuinely enjoy life. I kind of had it all, yet, that darn commute raised my stress levels so high, it was ruining every aspect of life. I drank more than I wanted, and endured marital discord. Moral of the story is look at your commute as the top factor determining your quality of life. Think well and hard about that extra 30-60-90 minutes because it means a bigger house and backyard.

bluesroo 7y ago
I've been doing the same for only 4 months and I can feel a lot of similar feelings beginning to set in. I have no idea how you managed it for so long!

obruchez 7y ago

Another data point: I know somebody who has a long commute (at least 2 hours a day), but commute by train and is allowed by his employer to work during his commute. He also works from home one day per week. Which sounds like an excellent compromise: he's not socially isolated by remote working; his commute time is included in his working hours; he can afford a nice home in a less expensive place.