6 ms·

> but if you would ask people "would you prefer to have a supermarket 5 minutes away or one 20 kilometers away" I doubt anybody would say "no I want only things

by lucumo 3y ago

> but if you would ask people "would you prefer to have a supermarket 5 minutes away or one 20 kilometers away" I doubt anybody would say "no I want only things far to be forced to use a car". For most people it's not about the supermarket. Those are a dime a dozen and all the same. It's easy to provide those in sufficient amounts everywhere. Now try it with jobs. Not any job, but your job. Is it possible to have your job be 5 minutes from your home. How about in 5 years when your job is underpaid or unfulfilling? Is your next job also 5 minutes away? Or do you now have to move? And 5 years after that, when you're laid off? I find that loads of people start out enjoying the car-free experience. And then they get a job in the next town. And/or they get kids, so commute-time takes away from kids-time. Life becomes too busy to spend the extra 30 minutes commuting per day that public transport would cost. Between the trade-off bad job, no time, and car/public transport, the car quickly becomes the best solution. Even if you don't like driving.

immibis 3y ago
Sounds like moving should be made easier.
- ghaff 3y ago
  It's much easier if you rent an apartment and don't own much stuff--which is a trade-off itself.
- naasking 3y ago
  There's also questions around a partner. Can you only have relationships with people whos career is near your current employer?
  - immibis 3y ago
    Something something dense cities and good public transport. You can get from one side of Berlin to the other - not including suburbs - in half an hour and without needing to park.
    - naasking 3y ago
      It's certainly possible, but more difficult the larger the city. Actually my main concern would be transporting furniture, appliances and the cost of renovations and maintenance. Transport of large items is difficult without cars. Cost of renovations are often many fold higher for dense housing due to greater difficulties with waste disposal and higher transport costs.
- zbrozek 3y ago
  That would be great, but your forebears locked in a great prop 13 basis decades ago and it would be worth more than your raise to give it up. Or you're in faux social housing in the form of a rent controlled apartment and don't want to give up that subsidy. Or there simply aren't homes to move to that are closer because every municipality in the area has tried to build offices rather than homes since the 1970s. And thus the office park around your new job is itself so big as to require a car to traverse it.
bombcar 3y ago
This is the crux of the matter - when people worked at a company for life, they could build their life around it. If you know you’ll be commuting to The Factory for the next forty years, you can happily take the bus or train or whatever to it. You buy your house and put down roots. Now cities are larger and your job changes every five to seven years and either you move each time to be near enough, or you let your family stay where everyone they know is, and take the commute on the teeth. The solution is smaller cities; not larger ones, or going back to longer term employment.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago
  >> If you know you’ll be commuting to The Factory for the next forty years That was not the norm historically. Average job tenure is longer now that it was in the past. And the typical manufacturing facility lasted nowhere near forty years. The average lifespan of a factory is around 10 years. Most companies aren't around for forty years.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > That was not the norm historically. Average job tenure is longer now that it was in the past. Stats on that? The norm for most people used to be to work for the same company most of their career (if not all of it) and retire from there with a pension. Nowadays most people change jobs every couple years.
    - rufus_foreman 3y ago
      >> The norm for most people used to be to work for the same company most of their career (if not all of it) and retire from there with a pension Stats on that? That absolutely was not the norm. Again, most companies did not exist long enough for someone to work at one for their entire career. Median job tenure 40 years ago was around 4 years (BLS). A minority of private workers were covered by pensions at the highest point, and being covered by a pension plan did not mean you got a pension. A company might have required 30 years of service to get a pension. Work there 29 years and 11 months, get fired, no pension. Work somewhere ten years and then decide you hate it? Either work there another 20 years hating it or quit and lose your pension. Job hop for a raise every few years? No pension. Many pensions were not adjusted for inflation. Many pension plans went bankrupt. Pensions sucked. I know, I have one from the 90's. Worked there 7 years, that pension is going to pay me roughly the same monthly amount as I will be able to take from my last year's contributions to my 401K, even if those contributions make no investment returns before I retire. I have no idea how young people get these fantasy ideas about the past. And do you really want to work in the same place for 40 years? A 401K is better than a pension. A 401K, Roth IRA and HSA is immensely better than a pension.
addcommitpush 3y ago
Isn't the job thing _easier_ if you live in a denser town? If you have more jobs per km² you're less likely to need to move when you switch job.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Maybe yes maybe no. A lot of the jobs in a big city metro are out in the burbs. Until fairly recently, my company's only office in the area was a 45 minute drive from downtown. There are more tech jobs in the city proper than there were 15-20 years ago when there were approximately zero. But a lot of the jobs in the area are still spread around the suburbs and exurbs.
  - addcommitpush 3y ago
    I don't think proponents of the "car-free" or "15-minutes" cities have: - supermarkets are super close - everything else is super far (including workplaces) - you don't have a car in mind. I don't think that in London (the main example in the article) most jobs are a 45 minute drive from central London nor that most people drive to work.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      >nor that most people drive to work That's probably true in Boston as well. But that's because, if you work 45 minutes out of Boston--of which there are many companies along the Route 128 or 495 corridors--you probably don't live in Boston unless you're a die-hard urbanite willing to put in a long commute to your suburban job. (To be fair, a lot of the west coast companies that established Boston outposts are in town and local suburban companies increasingly have options for people to work in a city office (or remotely) if they want to.)
throw0101d 3y ago
> Is it possible to have your job be 5 minutes from your home. How about in 5 years when your job is underpaid or unfulfilling? Is your next job also 5 minutes away? Or do you now have to move? And 5 years after that, when you're laid off? Yes. Further, most people don't live 5 minutes away now, even in car-centric developments. The average commute time has been, for centuries, 30 minutes one-way: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti%27s_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti%27s_constant * https://archive.is/edypl https://archive.is/edypl / https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-29/the-commuting-principle-that-shaped-urban-history https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-29/the-commu... It's just that with increased speeds the distance has gotten longer in recent decades.
baq 3y ago
Yeah the problem is exactly the design of cities which make the car the best solution! The car is both the fastest and the most convenient if the roads are wide and the buildings are sprawled around. If you build the city tightly so it's easy to walk everywhere and everything is nearby, you a) don't need a car and more importantly b) there is no room for cars, this space is recovered for humans. Disclaimer: my household owns two cars.
- lucumo 3y ago
  I'm not talking about "everything". I'm talking about jobs. Your job. Is your job so generic that almost everybody in your country can do it? Because that's what you would need for this to be realistic. Everybody living so close to enough jobs of the exact type they desire. Not just a job title, but the industry, the size and type of company, the salary level, the type of people, and a bunch of other things. And even if it were realistic, you'd have more choice by widening the circle anyway. Get an even better job by driving a bit.
  - baq 3y ago
    You're so focused on driving I feel you're missing the point of designing the space so driving isn't necessary. Your axiom is 'work is far away'. But the point is it only happens if it's convenient to be far away. Design your city in a way it's convenient to be nearby and it'll be nearby. The problem is this design is completely at odds with private car ownership.
    - lucumo 3y ago
      > But the point is it only happens if it's convenient to be far away. No. The point is that "work" isn't a generic thing like "supermarket". A specific job is something that needs to fit your personality. If you're the type of person that really digs working for big tech, you aren't going to find a job you enjoy in some small town. You can probably find a job maintaining the website of the local bank, but are you really going to think that's a good outcome? Hell, for big tech the jobs aren't even commutable from anywhere if you are willing to commute by car. Or helicopter. But this problem goes for loads of people in loads of jobs. If you can commute further you have more choice. More choice gives you better odds at a job you like.
nytesky 3y ago
We lived car free life in our 20s before kids. Groceries were a total PITA, maybe if you order a lot of delivery it’s fine, but we cook every meal and needed at least a granny cart at least once a week. And small grocers nearby had terrible vegetables; there is a lot of variance in supermarket quality. Maybe in NYC they have it figured out, but the trade off is everything cost crazy money. I commuted by bus for this time to work, an hour each way and my hours were beholden to an infrequent bus schedule — it knee capped my career because I had to leave at hard cutoff and never could meet up for lunch or happy hour, and lost 10-15 hrs a week on a bus. Even subway is so-so, unless they run every 5 minutes and you live and work on top of statio can add up fast, and transferring lines adds a ton of time. Huge regret trying to live car free in an American city (not NYC).
- messe 3y ago
  Just for contrast. I'm living a car free life in my mid-late 20s at the moment in Denmark, and I rarely ever order delivery. Supermarkets are close enough (I actually live above one, but were that not there, there are still three others within a five minute walk), that I rarely do a "weekly" shop and just buy my groceries when needed, most of which are of decent to high quality. It's not really much of an inconvenience to keep a relatively well stocked kitchen without a car here. I'm really struggling to understand how a "granny cart" worth of groceries once a week is a chore? That's a couple of bags worth at most. Buses could be a bit more frequent here, but they're still good enough that I don't have a hard cut off for when I have to leave the office. I lose maybe 7-8 hours a week on my commute, which is time I'd spend reading anyway.
  - nytesky 3y ago
    Oh I think one big factor is it was a 1 mile walk in 32C degrees and swampy high humidity. It wasn’t a couple of bags, it was a cart of about 4 bags at least, including a gallon of milk, often including bags of flour, eggs, etc. https://www.amazon.com/LS-Folding-Shopping-Basket-Capacity/dp/B01K07MF8C/ref=asc_df_B01K07MF8C/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=241950654450&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11751146125161984154&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007536&hvtargid=pla-465948337831&psc=1&mcid=5df59d8e0be93189b8a8cc8b20caefc6 https://www.amazon.com/LS-Folding-Shopping-Basket-Capacity/d...
Angostura 3y ago
I’ve lived and worked in London all my life. Of all the ways I could get to work, driving has to be at the bottom of the list.
alkonaut 3y ago
> Between the trade-off bad job, no time, and car/public transport, the car quickly becomes the best solution If you beat public transport by using a car then there just isn't enough public transit or the city isn't dense enough (likely the former, due to the latter). If you live 3km from your job in London or NYC then at least during rush hour it's likely to be faster to use public transport than a car. > Life becomes too busy to spend the extra 30 minutes commuting per day that public transport would cost. This is again based on the premise that public transport costs time, rather than saves time or doesn't matter time wise. People who work in really dense cities but live far outside it so they need to drive from home are already likely to not drive all the way into the city center but rather drive to the edge of the city center, park there more cheaply, and take a train the last 10% of the way. The key is that that traffic in the city center is slower than public transport, including the wait times and walking required. Within some distance from the city center of a city that is dense enough and has enough public transport, this holds true. And it's in this area that private car traffic make little sense at all. But that doesn't mean people can't have cars. Or that suburban people won't drive. You might still want to drive somewhere on the weekend. Or you might need to drive to even reach the public transport.
- lucumo 3y ago
  IF you live in a city with enough density that public transport beats the car most of the time, and IF your job is in that same area too, then yes, going car-free can save time. But you need several hundreds of thousands people in the same-ish spot for both those assumptions to hold true for most people. And probably also some badly designed roads. I live in a town of 125k people, where I can reach any spot by bike or public transport in about 30 minutes. Perfectly commutable. It has a few jobs for people like me, but not enough for a decent amount of variety.
  - alkonaut 3y ago
    > I live in a town of 125k people, where I can reach any spot by bike or public transport in about 30 minutes. Perfectly commutable. It has a few jobs for people like me, but not enough for a decent amount of variety. Car-free center can work there too. But for 125k people it might just be a few blocks square in the middle. The math is pretty simple. If density is so low that there can't be stations every 5 minutes of walking, or so low that businesses like large detached grocery stores, gas stations, building material stores and so on could even think of being there, then it's 100% car territory. But one shouldn't let it become self-fulfilling. If city restaurants have parking then they need a lot of space, which lowers density, and they become unattractive to people who are walking. So a key ingredient for a car free city could be to ensure no establishments have parking lots within a specified distance of the city center. It's nearly impossible to combine parking lots with walkability.
jimbokun 3y ago
> Is it possible to have your job be 5 minutes from your home. If you live in a major city, yes. Mid size cities and smaller, this is much more difficult.
gorbachev 3y ago
> Between the trade-off bad job, no time, and car/public transport, the car quickly becomes the best solution. Even if you don't like driving. I quit a job of mine in the New York metro area, largely because I had to drive there. It was hell. Every time it rained the commute would be twice as long. One wonderful evening coming back home the usually 50 minute drive took 3 hours. Additionally the stress of having to deal with bumper to bumper traffic and the assholes and distracted drivers on the road was slowly killing me. I swore after that job to never drive to work again. At least on a bus/train I can usually read a book, twiddle with a laptop or something else that keeps me entertained/relaxed.

by lucumo 3y ago

immibis 3y ago

Sounds like moving should be made easier.

ghaff 3y ago
It's much easier if you rent an apartment and don't own much stuff--which is a trade-off itself.
naasking 3y ago
There's also questions around a partner. Can you only have relationships with people whos career is near your current employer?
- immibis 3y ago
  Something something dense cities and good public transport. You can get from one side of Berlin to the other - not including suburbs - in half an hour and without needing to park.
  - naasking 3y ago
    It's certainly possible, but more difficult the larger the city. Actually my main concern would be transporting furniture, appliances and the cost of renovations and maintenance. Transport of large items is difficult without cars. Cost of renovations are often many fold higher for dense housing due to greater difficulties with waste disposal and higher transport costs.
zbrozek 3y ago
That would be great, but your forebears locked in a great prop 13 basis decades ago and it would be worth more than your raise to give it up. Or you're in faux social housing in the form of a rent controlled apartment and don't want to give up that subsidy. Or there simply aren't homes to move to that are closer because every municipality in the area has tried to build offices rather than homes since the 1970s. And thus the office park around your new job is itself so big as to require a car to traverse it.

bombcar 3y ago

This is the crux of the matter - when people worked at a company for life, they could build their life around it. If you know you’ll be commuting to The Factory for the next forty years, you can happily take the bus or train or whatever to it. You buy your house and put down roots. Now cities are larger and your job changes every five to seven years and either you move each time to be near enough, or you let your family stay where everyone they know is, and take the commute on the teeth. The solution is smaller cities; not larger ones, or going back to longer term employment.

rufus_foreman 3y ago
>> If you know you’ll be commuting to The Factory for the next forty years That was not the norm historically. Average job tenure is longer now that it was in the past. And the typical manufacturing facility lasted nowhere near forty years. The average lifespan of a factory is around 10 years. Most companies aren't around for forty years.
- jjav 3y ago
  > That was not the norm historically. Average job tenure is longer now that it was in the past. Stats on that? The norm for most people used to be to work for the same company most of their career (if not all of it) and retire from there with a pension. Nowadays most people change jobs every couple years.
  - rufus_foreman 3y ago
    >> The norm for most people used to be to work for the same company most of their career (if not all of it) and retire from there with a pension Stats on that? That absolutely was not the norm. Again, most companies did not exist long enough for someone to work at one for their entire career. Median job tenure 40 years ago was around 4 years (BLS). A minority of private workers were covered by pensions at the highest point, and being covered by a pension plan did not mean you got a pension. A company might have required 30 years of service to get a pension. Work there 29 years and 11 months, get fired, no pension. Work somewhere ten years and then decide you hate it? Either work there another 20 years hating it or quit and lose your pension. Job hop for a raise every few years? No pension. Many pensions were not adjusted for inflation. Many pension plans went bankrupt. Pensions sucked. I know, I have one from the 90's. Worked there 7 years, that pension is going to pay me roughly the same monthly amount as I will be able to take from my last year's contributions to my 401K, even if those contributions make no investment returns before I retire. I have no idea how young people get these fantasy ideas about the past. And do you really want to work in the same place for 40 years? A 401K is better than a pension. A 401K, Roth IRA and HSA is immensely better than a pension.

addcommitpush 3y ago

Isn't the job thing _easier_ if you live in a denser town? If you have more jobs per km² you're less likely to need to move when you switch job.

ghaff 3y ago
Maybe yes maybe no. A lot of the jobs in a big city metro are out in the burbs. Until fairly recently, my company's only office in the area was a 45 minute drive from downtown. There are more tech jobs in the city proper than there were 15-20 years ago when there were approximately zero. But a lot of the jobs in the area are still spread around the suburbs and exurbs.
- addcommitpush 3y ago
  I don't think proponents of the "car-free" or "15-minutes" cities have: - supermarkets are super close - everything else is super far (including workplaces) - you don't have a car in mind. I don't think that in London (the main example in the article) most jobs are a 45 minute drive from central London nor that most people drive to work.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    >nor that most people drive to work That's probably true in Boston as well. But that's because, if you work 45 minutes out of Boston--of which there are many companies along the Route 128 or 495 corridors--you probably don't live in Boston unless you're a die-hard urbanite willing to put in a long commute to your suburban job. (To be fair, a lot of the west coast companies that established Boston outposts are in town and local suburban companies increasingly have options for people to work in a city office (or remotely) if they want to.)

throw0101d 3y ago

> Is it possible to have your job be 5 minutes from your home. How about in 5 years when your job is underpaid or unfulfilling? Is your next job also 5 minutes away? Or do you now have to move? And 5 years after that, when you're laid off? Yes. Further, most people don't live 5 minutes away now, even in car-centric developments. The average commute time has been, for centuries, 30 minutes one-way: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti%27s_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti%27s_constant * https://archive.is/edypl https://archive.is/edypl / https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-29/the-commuting-principle-that-shaped-urban-history https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-29/the-commu... It's just that with increased speeds the distance has gotten longer in recent decades.

baq 3y ago

Yeah the problem is exactly the design of cities which make the car the best solution! The car is both the fastest and the most convenient if the roads are wide and the buildings are sprawled around. If you build the city tightly so it's easy to walk everywhere and everything is nearby, you a) don't need a car and more importantly b) there is no room for cars, this space is recovered for humans. Disclaimer: my household owns two cars.

lucumo 3y ago
I'm not talking about "everything". I'm talking about jobs. Your job. Is your job so generic that almost everybody in your country can do it? Because that's what you would need for this to be realistic. Everybody living so close to enough jobs of the exact type they desire. Not just a job title, but the industry, the size and type of company, the salary level, the type of people, and a bunch of other things. And even if it were realistic, you'd have more choice by widening the circle anyway. Get an even better job by driving a bit.
- baq 3y ago
  You're so focused on driving I feel you're missing the point of designing the space so driving isn't necessary. Your axiom is 'work is far away'. But the point is it only happens if it's convenient to be far away. Design your city in a way it's convenient to be nearby and it'll be nearby. The problem is this design is completely at odds with private car ownership.
  - lucumo 3y ago
    > But the point is it only happens if it's convenient to be far away. No. The point is that "work" isn't a generic thing like "supermarket". A specific job is something that needs to fit your personality. If you're the type of person that really digs working for big tech, you aren't going to find a job you enjoy in some small town. You can probably find a job maintaining the website of the local bank, but are you really going to think that's a good outcome? Hell, for big tech the jobs aren't even commutable from anywhere if you are willing to commute by car. Or helicopter. But this problem goes for loads of people in loads of jobs. If you can commute further you have more choice. More choice gives you better odds at a job you like.

nytesky 3y ago

We lived car free life in our 20s before kids. Groceries were a total PITA, maybe if you order a lot of delivery it’s fine, but we cook every meal and needed at least a granny cart at least once a week. And small grocers nearby had terrible vegetables; there is a lot of variance in supermarket quality. Maybe in NYC they have it figured out, but the trade off is everything cost crazy money. I commuted by bus for this time to work, an hour each way and my hours were beholden to an infrequent bus schedule — it knee capped my career because I had to leave at hard cutoff and never could meet up for lunch or happy hour, and lost 10-15 hrs a week on a bus. Even subway is so-so, unless they run every 5 minutes and you live and work on top of statio can add up fast, and transferring lines adds a ton of time. Huge regret trying to live car free in an American city (not NYC).

messe 3y ago
Just for contrast. I'm living a car free life in my mid-late 20s at the moment in Denmark, and I rarely ever order delivery. Supermarkets are close enough (I actually live above one, but were that not there, there are still three others within a five minute walk), that I rarely do a "weekly" shop and just buy my groceries when needed, most of which are of decent to high quality. It's not really much of an inconvenience to keep a relatively well stocked kitchen without a car here. I'm really struggling to understand how a "granny cart" worth of groceries once a week is a chore? That's a couple of bags worth at most. Buses could be a bit more frequent here, but they're still good enough that I don't have a hard cut off for when I have to leave the office. I lose maybe 7-8 hours a week on my commute, which is time I'd spend reading anyway.
- nytesky 3y ago
  Oh I think one big factor is it was a 1 mile walk in 32C degrees and swampy high humidity. It wasn’t a couple of bags, it was a cart of about 4 bags at least, including a gallon of milk, often including bags of flour, eggs, etc. https://www.amazon.com/LS-Folding-Shopping-Basket-Capacity/dp/B01K07MF8C/ref=asc_df_B01K07MF8C/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=241950654450&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11751146125161984154&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007536&hvtargid=pla-465948337831&psc=1&mcid=5df59d8e0be93189b8a8cc8b20caefc6 https://www.amazon.com/LS-Folding-Shopping-Basket-Capacity/d...

Angostura 3y ago

I’ve lived and worked in London all my life. Of all the ways I could get to work, driving has to be at the bottom of the list.

alkonaut 3y ago

> Between the trade-off bad job, no time, and car/public transport, the car quickly becomes the best solution If you beat public transport by using a car then there just isn't enough public transit or the city isn't dense enough (likely the former, due to the latter). If you live 3km from your job in London or NYC then at least during rush hour it's likely to be faster to use public transport than a car. > Life becomes too busy to spend the extra 30 minutes commuting per day that public transport would cost. This is again based on the premise that public transport costs time, rather than saves time or doesn't matter time wise. People who work in really dense cities but live far outside it so they need to drive from home are already likely to not drive all the way into the city center but rather drive to the edge of the city center, park there more cheaply, and take a train the last 10% of the way. The key is that that traffic in the city center is slower than public transport, including the wait times and walking required. Within some distance from the city center of a city that is dense enough and has enough public transport, this holds true. And it's in this area that private car traffic make little sense at all. But that doesn't mean people can't have cars. Or that suburban people won't drive. You might still want to drive somewhere on the weekend. Or you might need to drive to even reach the public transport.

lucumo 3y ago
IF you live in a city with enough density that public transport beats the car most of the time, and IF your job is in that same area too, then yes, going car-free can save time. But you need several hundreds of thousands people in the same-ish spot for both those assumptions to hold true for most people. And probably also some badly designed roads. I live in a town of 125k people, where I can reach any spot by bike or public transport in about 30 minutes. Perfectly commutable. It has a few jobs for people like me, but not enough for a decent amount of variety.
- alkonaut 3y ago
  > I live in a town of 125k people, where I can reach any spot by bike or public transport in about 30 minutes. Perfectly commutable. It has a few jobs for people like me, but not enough for a decent amount of variety. Car-free center can work there too. But for 125k people it might just be a few blocks square in the middle. The math is pretty simple. If density is so low that there can't be stations every 5 minutes of walking, or so low that businesses like large detached grocery stores, gas stations, building material stores and so on could even think of being there, then it's 100% car territory. But one shouldn't let it become self-fulfilling. If city restaurants have parking then they need a lot of space, which lowers density, and they become unattractive to people who are walking. So a key ingredient for a car free city could be to ensure no establishments have parking lots within a specified distance of the city center. It's nearly impossible to combine parking lots with walkability.

jimbokun 3y ago

> Is it possible to have your job be 5 minutes from your home. If you live in a major city, yes. Mid size cities and smaller, this is much more difficult.

gorbachev 3y ago

> Between the trade-off bad job, no time, and car/public transport, the car quickly becomes the best solution. Even if you don't like driving. I quit a job of mine in the New York metro area, largely because I had to drive there. It was hell. Every time it rained the commute would be twice as long. One wonderful evening coming back home the usually 50 minute drive took 3 hours. Additionally the stress of having to deal with bumper to bumper traffic and the assholes and distracted drivers on the road was slowly killing me. I swore after that job to never drive to work again. At least on a bus/train I can usually read a book, twiddle with a laptop or something else that keeps me entertained/relaxed.