Hidden Costs of Commuting

How Commuting Hurts Us

In 2012 the average American spent about 25 minutes commuting to work every day each way. Some lucky Americans can get to work in 5 to 10 minutes, while others have to spend upwards of an hour commuting each way. Often we write off our commutes as something that does not matter and will not affect our quality of life, but this simply is not the case.

This map shows most of southern New England commute times. Lighter colors represent shorter commutes and tend to cover areas of cities while more suburban areas tend to be shaded by darker colors. Living further from the city center has a strong relationship with increased commute times.

Does Commuting Really Matter?

Yes. Let's do the math. If you are an "average" commuter you will spend 50 minutes per day moving from place to place. This may not sound bad on it's own, but if you extrapolate this over a typical 50 working week per year 40 year career, you have wasted 347 days commuting to and from work, the equivalent of almost an entire year. 

Long commutes also correlate with higher health risks. An article from The New York Times showed that longer commutes correlate with high blood pressure, obesity and cardiovascular disease. And interestingly enough, in Manhattan where people have some of the shortest and most active commutes, the average person weighs 7 pounds less than the average American. 

Just Think

Sometimes it is not possible to eliminate a long commute, but we often have more choice in our lives than we realize. Rather than ignoring the effect of a commute on your own personal well being, I ask that before making a decision about where to work or live, you at least consider how you will feel about spending so much time commuting every day. 

Why Do Commuters Choose Cars?

Driving Through Traffic: The Car Effect

Everyone that I know hates driving in traffic. Most people claim that they wish that there were ways to avoid traffic, but everyday we get into our cars and drive the same familiar clogged routes to and from work. It may seem that this is the only option, but in many cases this is not true. A study has recently uncovered the "car effect" which shows that people tend to take cars over public transit even when it is less efficient and more expensive to do so. 

This chart may at first seem difficult to understand, but it is the result of a car vs. metro decision study. The graph oh the left shows the percentage of commuters who chose a car each day. The two lines through the graph represent different levels of traffic. Traffic becomes "annoying" at the lower line and "unbearable" at the upper dotted line, depending on how many people are in their cars. The chart on the left shows the cost each day of taking the car vs. taking the metro. In general, cars were more expensive due to traffic gas costs.

Applying this to Boston

I am not familiar with the public transportation options available in all cities across the country, but I can speak to Boston. If you ever need to get into the city at rush hour, you will notice that no matter what highway you are on, I-90, I-93, I-95 or I-495, you will be stuck in traffic unless you leave your house before 6 A.M. Here is a map so you can visualize the structure of the highways in and around the city. As you can see, only I-90 and I-93 even head directly into the city, but all four of the routes that I mentioned are extremely congested.

The second map that I have added is a map of current traffic in the city; by now rush hour is over and you will see that there is still extreme congestion. Without traffic it would take me 45 minutes to get downtown, but if I were to leave at 7:30 it would take me until 9:00.

So why do Boston commuters put up with this rush every day? They don't need to. The reason that I wanted to focus on Boston is that the city has an impressive network of subway stops and commuter rail stations. This following map shows the entire commuter rail and subway network together; you will see that the stops listed stretch even beyond I-495 all the way to Worcester and Providence, typically accepted as the furthest typical daily commute locations.

Coming to and from Boston, commuters in almost any town have the option of taking the train to and from work. A recent study on Boston indicated that a 1% decrease in road traffic would lead to an 18% decrease in traffic congestion time in the city. This is huge, if there were just a 1% increase in train traffic, commutes for those who did choose to drive would become much more manageable. Not to mention that when you choose to take a train, you will usually save money; no need to worry about tolls, gas or parking costs in the city. Some people even can start their day early and work on the train. To me, this seems like the perfect solution.

End of the Exurbs

Bedroom Communities are Becoming Extinct

The last economic recession has exaggerated many already occurring trends within American society. As the real estate bubble collapsed and incomes fell, homeownership fell from Americans priority lists. For the first time, housing sizes started to decline and foreclosure rates ticked up. The insatiable search for cheap land far from cities upon which to build affluent communities came to a crashing halt. Suddenly and poignantly, exurbs fell apart.

This is a screen shot from Google Maps. This is a suburban development north of Atlanta. During the recession some houses were built and people moved in, but the community was never finished. The people who do live here need to drive upwards of one hour to reach downtown Atlanta. Scenes like this litter the country. 

People began to realize that it was not sustainable to live further and further from cities. Highways became increasingly congested and commutes lengthened. Suddenly it was no longer appealing to drive for two hours each day just to get to and from work. For this reason, three years after the end of the recession, these areas still remain unfinished. The American Dream has changed and far flung communities have fallen apart. Rather than being a part of a thriving commuter town, many who have remained in the furthest suburbs have found themselves living in quiet ghost towns. 

Here are some other pictures of communities that have been stopped dead in their tracks. These photos are screen shots from Google Maps of exurban Phoenix and Las Vegas.