And productivty drops for most people after 6 hours of working.
I do wonder if the limit varies between personally operated transport (walking, bike, car) and public transport (bus, tram, train).
A 1 hour bus journey is much more relaxing than a 1 hour drive.
My dad commuted 2.5 hours each way my entire childhood. All through the 90’s. It wasn’t until DSL got to my parent’s area in the 2010s and I was out of college that he could work a hybrid schedule. I couldn’t do it. I work 30min away, hybrid 2/5 of the time. It’s still more time than I want to soend in the car.
My limit is 30 min, anything more than that is a fucking road trip, not a commute.
same. and even that is better paid well, because that increases my work time from 40 to 45 hours per week.
I personally hit a wall at 41 minutes of in-car travel time for a daily commute. I’ve timed it. Every second after that feels like a whole level of abnormal waiting, a kind of cold torture or injustice that you must wade through to to your destination. It’s not a healthy headspace at all. I’ve naturally sought out shorter commutes after this revelation, and yeah, the 30 minute estimate seems right.
I used to have about an hour long commute, and I kinda enjoyed it. I had shit to do at work, and shit to do at home, so being in the car for a while really let me calm down and center myself most of the time.
Imagine you had 2hours more every day so you could work through the todo at home and enjoy the rest of your time at home or anywhere else that is neither your work nor your car.
Valid point, but I guess after working in a greenhouse for a season I learned to appreciate having time to sit still in AC. My old Crown Vic wasn’t such a bad place to be (cost an arm and leg in gas and oil, so that was a definite downside).
I get it, but I just can’t get to that place mentally in stop-and-go-bumper-to-bumper traffic for that long. Not even half that long. If that was a nice 50mph cruise the whole time, sure.
Traffic jams make driving infinitely worse. It requires so much more attention.
About 73 for me most of the way. An hour of bumper to bumper, or commuting on a bus would probably make it worse.
Luckily I now do 2 days in the office but I have a drive commute of around 90 mins each way and maybe 75 mins in school holidays. For around 9 months without a cat I was taking the tram and train with a walk either end which took around 120-150 mins each way
I could not tolerate that full time but I’ve no doubt many people do.
Sounds legit, I turned down multiple higher roles in my last company after doing a test commute to the more remote office. It was consistently 90-120 minutes each way. That would end up with me be away at work for 12-13 hours each day for 8 hours of paid work.
Had a similar experience. Job wanted me but I’m not spending 2 hours commuting.
This was before remote work was a common thing.
I don’t think people who made this law ever lived in Toronto. I used to do a 90 minute commute each way, 2 hours easy during afternoon rush.
My company closed its Scarborough location, they opened a new plant in Hamilton. I was going to commute to the new plant. Everyone, including upper management told me how stupid that was. We have to run our logistics during the night because the truck drivers refused to drive in traffic during the day. Truck drivers… How bad is the traffic if truck drivers are refusing
Looks at Toronto and 3 hour commutes…
This is totally bullshit, the Starbucks CEO hardly minds his 2-3ish hr commute from CA to Seattle by private jet.
If the poors weren’t so stupid and lazy they’d buy jets for a more comfortable commute too. /s
I wonder how this looks for people with flexible commuting methods. I can bike to work (45 mins each way) or take the train with some walking (40 mins), or take the metro to the train with very little walking (50 mins). The fact that it’s sometimes exercise helps break it up, and I don’t much mind it
Imagine having a choice for how you get to your destination
(this comment made by the American gang)
Yup, it was a big factor in where we wanted to go outside of the US. I can’t imagine going back to car life again
Would you like to commute in a car, or in a pickup truck?
To me, two hours of my life I’m not getting back looks like two hours of my life I’m not getting back. Happy to do that for the exercise or something some of the time, but regularly it’s a very high cost.
Yeah, when I lived in the US I had ~15 mins to work at ~30 home and I loathed it. I bike probably 85-90% of the time so I really just see it as my cardio time and appreciate it
I have diabetic retinopathy and about 10 years ago, I saw enough blind spots that I stopped driving. My company accommodated me by letting me work from home. We already had another employee who was doing that for vision issues, it was simple to do.
Because we were successful, they replaced our desktops with laptops at refresh time and started letting everyone work from home 1 day a week. Then when Covid hit, they just told everyone to bring their laptops home and WFH full time. The CEO talked about return-to-office for a year or two but decided to make it optional.
It’s an amazing benefit. It gave me back about 90 minutes every day, and my dog doesn’t have to be crated during the day. I can sleep later and have access to my own kitchen for lunch. Theres a reason that average tenure in my department is around 20 years.
I know a guy that’s doing at least once a week, probably more, commute from DC to New York City. To be a product guy at a like 5 person company. As if you really need to be in a shared office to move jira tickets, ask eng again “How’s that feature coming?”, and so on. The CEO is a crazy person.
The CEO is also making the front end developer guy who lives in Connecticut come into the office 2-3 times a week. So he can work on his web page, the one with the code stored on github.
I hate all this “return to office” stuff. I don’t care about management’s feelings or real estate investments, and I don’t care about people who hate their family and can’t focus at home. Making people commute is a pay cut and a blow against labor.
My department just got called in for an RTO with zero warning, with 3 days in person for a ~160 person department.
There are ~20 desks available. Do the math.
This next week is going to be a disaster for their coked up idea of good business practices.
Please update us if you can, that sounds like a delicious level of schadenfreude.
Yeah. Antiwork will eat it up.
@[email protected] Do it.
I wanna see the chaos too!
Someone should get a fog machine so visibility in the packed office drops to zero, and hand out free vuvuzelas at the entrance.
Marchetti intended the constant to be 1 hour round trip, so a half-hour commute one-way. It’s an important distinction, since here in Atlanta the exurban commuter is clocking in at 1.5 hours or more into the city, well outside of what is considered tolerable. Multiply that by a million and you get some irritated people.
Also in the greater Atlanta and can confirm. My job thankfully has me work from home as much as I can (I also travel a lot, which requires getting a vehicle from the office). But it’s still a nightmare every time I do have to go in.
I still don’t think that this could be called a constant when you’ve got folks like myself who live in a major city, 8 miles away from our workplaces, and still see 2 hour total commutes per day.
We should strip the inheritance if anyone who is related to folks who demolished the streetcar system.
Is housing that expensive in Atlanta?
Its traffic is notoriously bad, so you don’t have to live far away to deal with a long commute.
23 miles door to door for me. Can take as little as a half hour (zero traffic)… Or as much as an hour 20. And good luck predicting exactly how bad it will be at any given day/time!
that was my experience when I lived in Minneapolis. when there was zero traffic and in the summer, you could get from any place in town to any other place in between 15-20 minutes. snarled traffic was rare because there were so many additional terrestrial roads to take the burnt.
Contrast that with living in Philly, and we have a highway (676) that is so jammed all the time that the exits are measured on signage in fractions.
That’s disgusting, and I now feel bad for Atlanta.
Oh don’t feel bad for us. It’s also hotter than hell with 115% humidity every day for 7-9 months!
also they’re surrounded by fuckin repedoclicans
We have a lot of sprawl here and the reasons are many. Just like Dallas and LA, we have a ton of road infrastructure and zoning laws that eat up a lot of land. We also don’t have any natural barriers, like an ocean or a mountain range, to limit our expansion. Just to keep building and add another lane. Thanks for asking.
the funny thing is, every city is always just one more lane away from solving their traffic problems.
Yeah, the metro area (albeit unofficially) effectively takes up most of the eastern and northeastern sections of the state. It is a truly huge suburban sprawl.
Anything beyond 45 minutes is a schlep and there better be something good for me losing an hour and a half or more of day in transit. Especially a car where I can’t even read or relax.
Especially a car where I can’t even read or relax.
I don’t commute anymore, but spent close to 20 years with an hour commute each way. Audio books are the only way I can tolerate traffic.
I have that right now, 45-55 (depending on the traffic) to work by car. It’s a pain but I can’t really pick the worksite myself. Could change companies though but many have the same issue
