This map shows the average commuting time from home to work in Europe.
(Author: Maps.interlude, Link to image information and dfferent resolutions )
It might be surprising that, in spite of wildly different traffic systems and large differences in the use share of cars, these times are so similar.
An explanation is given in the wikipedia article on Marchetti’s Constant. Basically, the time spent commuting is mostly an anthropological constant, and is largely independent of means of transport and culture.
In other words, if we use faster means of transport, we almost automatically commute larger distances - regardless whether this improves our quality of life or not.
This relationship should probably be central in modern traffic planning, but it is often not considered. (There is an interesting article in German by the traffic scientist Rudolf Pfleiderer, titled “Das Phänomen Verkehr”, which describes in more detail the relationships between traffic, speed, and distance - perhaps somebody knows a good English article?)
Those must be metric minutes.
If Turkey is a European country, then France is an island in the pacific ocean.
Ha, losers. My commute is more than double that of Latvia!
Median would be much more interesting
The distribution generally looks like this - skewed left.
So, the median is smaller than the mean, many people commute below the average time, and very few much more.
The general discussion about traffic policies tends to focus on the minority of people which commute much more than the average.
With 200 million workers in the EU, that’s 200 million hours of unpaid, wasted time each work day.
Imagine how much shareholder value could be generated if we turned that into unpaid work time!-Friedrich Merz
I think 50% of commute time should be time paid by companies. This would not only save fossil energy and worker’s time for their family, but also foster work from home, reduce suburban sprawl and improve probably a lot of other undesirable trends.
It’s one of Meta’s main resources. Remove the commute time and engagement will drop.
I have a commute of 1 hour, and I love it.
It’s a bicycle route on agricultural roads through fields and meadows, along a river.
And it keeps me fit even though I’m too lazy to exercise regularly.
But yeah, commuting by car is a no-go for me.
That’s always been the number one priority when looking for jobs and apartments.That sounds wonderful. And awful. Weather pending
Clearly you’re not lazy because you are exercising regularly by using the bike.
I deliberately put myself into a situation where I’m forced to.
I don’t own a car, and with public transport I’d have to leave 10 minutes earlier.
So with my morning routine planned to the minute to maximize snoozing time, I only have the choice between taking the bicycle and being late for work.Sounds like you’re efficient, not lazy.
I do similar - 14 kilometers by bike, a good part along a motorway, a park, and a river. What motivates me is that I count it as daily excercise which I just need to stay healthy. And if the weather is shit, crusty ice or thunderstorms predicted, I happen to use the commuter train (which is a tad slower for the door-to-door connection).
But my “ideal” commute time is around half an hour.
Yeah, 80km a week here isn’t too bad and only takes me 20-25 mins each way. The last 200m is shared with cars though which sucks as they take up all the space and slow everything down. Sometimes wonder if it would be faster to get off and walk for that last bit.
The actual link the the image is: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Average_one-way_commuting_time_from_home_to_work.jpg So:
Thanks!
They’ve really got me pegged here in the UK, my commute is a two way fifteen minute walk to get to my desk at home.
How big is your house that it takes 7.5 mins to get to the desk?
For me, it’s a distance of 10m but my cats make sure it takes fifteen minutes.
I can picture someone standing in front of their chair, waiting for the cat to get up and leave.
Well, first of all the cat is purring on my lap during breakfast so I can’t even get up from my chair.
Then when I start walking, she gets in front of me and blocks my path if I dare choose any direction that doesn’t lead to the cupboard with her treats.
And then she yells at me to sit down in the armchair so she can have her after-treats nap on my lap while I scritch her behind the ears.Sometimes I can’t get to my work desk for hours.
Walking my kid to school lmao
Ah makes sense haha
Wow, you nailed it! I’m happy that your kid gets extra dad or mom time!
I could have probably gotten a bigger place if I was willing to get a car, but we have enough space and all of us can walk to work or the train pretty easily. Keeps us from getting too fat.
Keeps us from getting too fat.
Great insight. Few people are probably aware of that, but cars actually make ill. Most illnesses in our modern world are circulatory diseases and overweight caused by lack of any mild exercise, and cars cause to no small part that lack of exercise, because their comfort of avoiding any modest physical effort is kinda addictive. Not using a car is, after not smoking, one of the best things that you can do to keep you healthy and allow your loved ones to enjoy your presence more time to be around.
It’s still an uphill battle. When we went car-free, we lost about 4 kilo by accident, but over the years it’s coming back. I try to feed us salads. Life’s too short to do everything perfectly, you know?
Maybe the previous poster is just really really slow
Depends on where you start… in bed?
I’m guessing this is almost double what it was 50 years ago?
No. The human commuting time is constant, probably since thousands of years.
Read the article on Marchetti’s constant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant
… and this, folks, is why individual cars don’t save time
Thousands of years?
A “constant” budget?
Why do average commute times differ that much around the world then?Eg USA
I would say a culture’s commute times are sticky, they change little over longer periods of time.
(The linked article was in context of city planning, that’s when they want to see results sooner rather than later.)Well, US-Americans use almost exclusively cars, and we know well that cars are inefficient, especially in densely populated areas.
One aspect that also causes these distortions is that Americans cannot freely chose the most efficient means of transport for a specific journey, but are bound to using cars because of political influences. You could say that Americans are less free than other people, in this respect.
(And that’s an anomaly, not the cultural norm for humans).
So not 1000s of years & USA doesn’t fall within the “constant commute budget” (“is an anomaly”) bcs it has 10pp more cars compared to EU?
(Also I wasn’t saying USA is an outlier, I was saying even it has vastly divergent “constant commute time budgets” depending on location, so it’s def not a constant. If anything an upper/max tolerance.)
(Even the top countries in this list don’t have the commute times of USA average.)
I’m just saying that the “Marchetti’s constant” is a figurative idea meant to not be taken as a whole, but merely a consideration for mid-term behaviour changes in context city planning/changes.
Only a fraction of the ppl would commute if not necessary (but it acts like a time budget depending on the need to work at specific places vs wanting or having to live in a certain zone).No. The human commuting time is constant, probably since thousands of years.
This is what I’m questioning.
It’s not even constant now or in any moment of humanity with commutes.Am I missing something that you were trying to say?
Eg of how the not-constant changes:
Anyone got any insight on what the hell Latvia is doing? Not only are they doing the worst, their two genrally-comparable neighbours are actually doing better than most
Crap road planning and deterioratng public transit and bridges - also increased car ownership makng commutes worse.
Does it affect Windows boot time for homeoffice?
Well, Windows 11 boot times certainly didn’t get any shorter, and my work laptop’s fan is making so much noise that i am thinking in sharing my asthma meds with the poor thing. Glad that my home Debian boots in five seconds or so! :-)
You’re turning your computer off?
Why would you ever keep the work PC on? Not only for it consume power, but turning it on in the morning is a very easy 10 minutes of paid work time each day.
Well, it wouldn’t be my power and I’d probably use it to run some video encoding over night. But personally I only have one laptop for work and private use, so that stays on all the time.
Also 10 minutes is wild, mine takes between 1-2 minutes.
Interestingly if you compare this to US states the variance is much higher.
The question is: From the majority of people with short commutes, who needs really a car for such low distances?
well some people will be driving for 25 minutes, that’s already quite the distance. and public transport isn’t an option for everyone living in rural areas
well some people will be driving for 25 minutes, that’s already quite the distance.
Depends on the environment. In cities, the typical average speed of cars is around 35 km/h. So, you can travel a distance of about 15 kilometers in that time, which won’t be much more than in a fast commuter train, or a subway. (In fact, I go about 14 kilometers by bike, and it’s usually faster door-to-door than the commuter train).
i bike 20km every single day, i know it’s doable :)
I have about 60 minute commute, but a car would make it 120 minutes, so fuck that shit. I spend commute as office hours, so my time commuting without working is practically 15 minutes. So do I have a long or short commute?
So do I have a long or short commute?
I’d say you have a smart commute.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “short”. It takes me 40 minutes by car to get to work if there’s traffic, 30 by motorbike or car with no traffic, 60 by bicycle and I’d need a shower when I arrive. Public transport would be over 60 minutes because of inconvenient line changes.
I used to cycle to work irregularly when I was nearer, but it wasn’t great: my city used to be a bike-first city, but nowadays there’s too many cars and the infrastructure hasn’t kept up, bikes used to go on the road, and now it’s not possible, bicycle lanes have been added but they’ve done a poor job, with frequent crossings and slow-downs.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “short”. It takes me 40 minutes by car to get to work if there’s traffic,
The point of the article with the Marchetti constant is: You probably don’t go that far because you absolutely, objectively need to. Instead, you probably go that far because you have half an hour time to commute (which is the time budget of most people), and can use a car. The fact that you use a car probably causes you to go a farther distance.
Proof: People who voluntarily don’t use cars see much less need to commute such distances.
I guess my constant would be a little lower then, this is the longest commute I’ve ever had and it’s supposed to be temporary, moreover I have remote work days on contract.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “short”.
With “short” I mean no longer than the averages shown in the map. With an average time <= 30 minutes and an average car speed of ~ 35 km/h in cities, this translates to about 18 kilometers of distance.
Of course, there are people which commute longer or farther. But as the map shows, they are the exception - not the norm.
What happened to Latvia?
This probably also tells if you live far from the workplace, you may just as well relocate either willingly by yourself or be made by your work to.
If you live far from the workplace, you probably can’t afford to relocate closer.
Who on Earth would allow their workplace to decide where they live? Let alone be forced to?
Most people? Ever heard of migrants risking their lives crossing the sea on shitty boats to find better prospects?
