Commuting
I read an interesting article in the New Yorker on commuting. It was in the travel issue, which was interesting because commuting to work is a kind of travel most of us do, but it isn't often discussed. The author identified about five people with officially "extreme commutes" of an hour or more each way. He met them at work and drove home with them to see what it was like. One was in New York City (she lives in rural Pennsylvania, it's more than three hours each way), and the rest were in Atlanta, which the author said is one of the worst cities in the country because other ones are bounded by an ocean or something but Atlanta is free to sprawl in all directions.
He reported some sociologist who described the triangle made by three points: where you live, where you work and where you shop. The smaller the sides of this triangle, the happier people tend to be, and the longer the sides, the more socially isolated they are. It made me feel very happy about my work and house - my walk to work is very short, and I live right across the street from a grocery store and it will be very hard to ever not do so in the future. But I've also done a long commute, 1 1/2 hours each way for three years, so I could identify with the people in the story too.
He also said that commutes baffle economists because they dimish the overall value of a job, which people can realise, but they still don't do anything to fix it. Economists would predict that if the overall value of a job is diminished the employee would quit and do something else, which they do for other kinds of decreased value. But commutes seem to be more like smoking, or saving money - everyone knows the right thing to do, but no one has the willpower or gumption to do anything about it.
The people in his story did end up at some pretty nice places once they got home. So you could sort of see the attraction. But they had no lives and poor health, in service of those places (get up at 4:30 every morning, don't get home until 8:45 at night). What a strange world we live in.
Years ago I met a man at a philosophy conference who worked at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and one of the projects he had his students do was to design a city where everyone could walk to work. What would that kind of world be like?
He reported some sociologist who described the triangle made by three points: where you live, where you work and where you shop. The smaller the sides of this triangle, the happier people tend to be, and the longer the sides, the more socially isolated they are. It made me feel very happy about my work and house - my walk to work is very short, and I live right across the street from a grocery store and it will be very hard to ever not do so in the future. But I've also done a long commute, 1 1/2 hours each way for three years, so I could identify with the people in the story too.
He also said that commutes baffle economists because they dimish the overall value of a job, which people can realise, but they still don't do anything to fix it. Economists would predict that if the overall value of a job is diminished the employee would quit and do something else, which they do for other kinds of decreased value. But commutes seem to be more like smoking, or saving money - everyone knows the right thing to do, but no one has the willpower or gumption to do anything about it.
The people in his story did end up at some pretty nice places once they got home. So you could sort of see the attraction. But they had no lives and poor health, in service of those places (get up at 4:30 every morning, don't get home until 8:45 at night). What a strange world we live in.
Years ago I met a man at a philosophy conference who worked at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and one of the projects he had his students do was to design a city where everyone could walk to work. What would that kind of world be like?
posted by Ellen at 12:05 am
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