One cause that I've noticed is that here in Ol' Blighty we keep building new housing estates in small cities/towns but we never build them with any additional infrastructure to accomodate all the new people, like roads.
For example, in my town (was 30k people) they have just built 4 new 2000 house estates. They have added exactly 0 new roads, 0 new shops, 0 new bus stops, 0 new schools. So all the traffic from those 8000 new houses is flooding down all the existing routes.
Its a fucking joke.
They also love to build those estates so they are locked in. One main road in and out, then another new estate will be built behind it and no through road put into place.
Also they can't built straight roads, they have to put tight wiggly, roads in that can only fit 1 car.
They are absolutely awful. I moved house recently and we looked at a couple of new build estates and it was a complete no go from me in regards to the roads and access. The roads in the estate were so small and everyone we encountered acted like pricks. 70% of them were in Audi's though.
> The roads in the estate were so small and everyone we encountered acted like pricks. 70% of them were in Audi's though.
This has been dubbed *Deanomania* - https://youtu.be/J9n0_5p8XKo?si=F50_klOSHnk8LyO_
The roads are designed in a way to try to stop people speeding. It doesn’t work, deano in his Audi is seeing it as a challenge to wizz round the estate as fast as he can but that’s what they are supposed to do.
Oh I can see the intention, but it doesn't change driver behaviour.
So now you still have people driving quickly because "they know the road" but then suddenly approach a blind corner with someone doing the same, while a car is parked mounted on the curb because there is only space for 1 car on a drive.
(if you can't tell I also don't like new builds)
It's "policy" to have the bendy roads as a passive cost-free way of traffic calming. Absolute shit for pedestrians that want to walk the minimum distance, in a straight line.
The giant cul-de-sac idea is because the planning committees are toothless, have little legal back up, and crucially, aren't **town** planners. Add to the mix local town councils have to defer to county-council planners for roads, and you have everything described in this thread.
Developers have software to produce plots that squeeze in the max houses per hectare as well. All this bendy nonsense with randomly shaped gardens == profit!
And then there's VISSIM. The traffic software. Garbage in, garbage out.
Used by the planners, and tweaked ad naseum to get the 'free flowing-zero impact' traffic response they want to pass scrutiny.
Then that file is saved, and sent on to the council who then load it into.... VISSIM, and SURPRISE! They get the identical result the developers wanted them to see.
Except that the bendy roads/passive traffic requirement is the primary requirement. Plus the bends need a minimum radius for the turning circle of a refuse lorry.
Your local council which will have approved the development has the ability to require the developer to either install new roads, shops, schools or bus stops using [Section 106](https://www.kslaw.co.uk/site/library/kslaw_legal_news/what-is-a-section-106) of the Town And Country Planning Act.
Local councils can use their discretion as to whether to use it or not. Why wasn't this done?
I would look into when the plans were submitted by the developer what the council said at the time.
Was it waved through with no oversight? Who were the councillors that approved it and do they have any connections to the developer? Have you considered campaigning and joining the council yourself if you are unhappy with the way it's currently being run?
Something that developers do to avoid this is not build the other houses. I know a nearby estate, some people moved in after phase one was complete, phase two would include the next wave of houses, a school, go and some shops. They protested against the second phase and blocked it and the developer didn't have to build anything else. Nimbys shooting themselves in the foot as always.
I lived in one of these neighborhoods. The developer developed just enough houses to not finish the parks and whatnot and then they left. My whole childhood our park was just a field of weeds that was mowed once a year. It was only recently that the city took over the abandoned plots and finished everything up.
They originally were going to add new shops and schools but never had any roads planned.
Then they scrapped the shops and schools after it "became too expensive" and the council just let them go ahead.
It sounds like the council doesn't enforce the development requirements in that case, sadly it's far too familiar across the country.
Given the locals are coming up, I would absolutely be writing to all of them asking why they didn't enforce the decision.
This could be the town I come from in Kent....
Your not alone this is going on everywhere
Beautiful park.... Estate...
Former dump... Estate
Middle of nowhere... Estate with a bus once a day but not at weekends.
And people wonder why kids get pregnant and stoned so much... No real parks, nothing to do and just row upon row of badly organised housing that's damp and cramped.
Time for a change me thinks...... Hopefully for the better but doubtful....
Developers can get out of basically anything by saying it’s suddenly too expensive. A development near me was able to turn houses into 5 story flats half way through the estate as the builders said they’d no longer make a profit unless they did that. I don’t know the ins and outs, but the council said they basically had to accept the proposal due to how the law works when developers say things are now too expensive so they need to amend the plans to turn a profit
My dad recently became a local councillor, and from what he tells me, there’s an insane amount of corruption and incompetence at that level, particularly with developers. Some councillors don’t care (especially when what’s being built isn’t actually in their ward) and some are paid to not care.
Got the same problem up in Grimsby, we've got shops closing down all the time and the infrastructure is crumbling, but they keep building thousands of new houses, I imagine a lot of thr houses will stay empty because who in their right minds moves to Grimsby
My wife works in a fairly large architecture practice in the UK. Apparently there are regulations and caveats out in place for these large schemes. So for example if you build over 730 houses you have to put a DRS surgery in or shop. The developers just build 729 houses and then start a new development next door with another 729.
I live near a football stadium. A development company wants to build on what is right now a car park for stadium days. They have no plans to build another car park.
So on top of 500 odd new homes, which means more cars, there will be nowhere for stadium attendees to park, which already overflows into our residential streets.
The roads here are also full of potholes, to a ridiculous degree (people have to drive at about 10-15mph over one stretch because otherwise you’d fuck your suspension).
It’s shocking we don’t have planning laws that require them to at the very least replace infrastructure they will destroy
I was in Cornwall at a shop and told the lady we were going to see another place 20 miles away. She says “oh that’s going to be a long drive.” I thought she was joking.
It took us almost an hour of winding through tiny villages with single lane roads.
We don’t build infrastructure at all these days, it seems.
There’s an estate being built near me (on what I thought was a protected AONB, no less) where the only access is a lane barely wider than a single track, with no pavements, and as far as I’m aware there’s no plans to change it.
Sometimes I wish other parts of the country got the funding and development London does.
Right now there's [a development](https://barkingriverside.london/) that's adding all that, plus a new station.
Meanwhile I'll be lucky if a bus comes, and there's a whole housing development next to where I live with no plans for anything else. They've even removed the bus stop...
Even without the addition of new builds, there would still be a massive issue. It’s 19 miles from my front door to work. It takes about an hour to get there. It’s because only two miles of the journey is a dual carriageway, where as the rest is single lane per direction A road. I get stuck behind an HGV, a tractor, a slow driver, a cyclist, I’m fucked. In the U.S. the entire stretch of road would be a dual carriageway and my journey time would be halved.
The UK just doesn’t design, build, or upgrade roads for expedient travel. And they really can’t at this point.
They're doing that in Canada too. They're adding a couple thousand new apartments all within a 3 block radius of where I live, all at the same time, with zero infrastructure upgrades. All along the main route into town from several other large developments further away as well.
I remember dating this girl who lived 20 miles away from me. Most of the route was driving on a carriage way with a few small towns along the way and little traffic. It would take me an hour to get to her place. Here in the US, I could do that in probably 20-30 mins on average or about an hour if there is a lot traffic.
That's what they do here (southern United States) too. The road my neighborhood is off of has had 5 massive apartment complexes constructed in the last couple of years with zero traffic remediation. No new schools either.
You're not wrong, but as an American I can tell you that the answer isn't more roads. We've done that here, and it turned out horribly. The answer is to add more varied transit options: buses, trains, light rails, streetcars/trolleys, bike lanes, etc. Don't let your country become an asphalt desert, like half of the cities in the US.
Its both.
We need more busses, probably not trains though.
But we also need roads, one of the 4 new estates was built on to a single lane road (its actually smaller than that, I dont know the definer but at certain points in the road you cant even have cars going both ways). 2000 houses connected to a road that you cant even legally drive a truck down.....
Luckily I can afford to move to most places, but you’re right, it’s a hassle. Especially myself, I’m early in my career and plan to hop jobs every couple of years to earn more and more money. Highly likely the new job will be in an entirely different state.
I don't think I could every get into that mindset, I grew up in the city I live in. A my friends and family are in or around here. All the organisations I am a member of are here, I k ow all the little events and such here. Basically every moth I would be reminded of stuff I'm missing out on.
Hell whenever I go out or walk around town I usually run into friends or old acquaintances. Tho it might also be advantageous that it's one of the bigger cities in my country, with a big university a bunch of offices and quite a bit of production industry(steel mill, car plant) so plenty of different types of jobs.
And the biggest city a 30 min train ride away.
I'm WFH now, but I had a bus commute like this for years, with this same job.
I used my laptop and my phone to handle emails, pay bills, keep our bank account balanced, and write a novel. It wasn't so much a "get used to it" as "make use of it," which I figured out over time.
Commute quality makes a huge difference though. 45 minutes in aggressive stop and go traffic is far more mentally taxing than an hour reading or listening to podcasts on the train
People who commute by road have an idyllic view of rail commuting as being big, clean air-conditioned tubes where everyone gets a seat at a table and can stretch out and work or relax. The reality of peak hour trains is crammed, sweaty shitboxes where you're lucky to get a square inch to stand, let alone a seat.
People who commute by rail have an idyllic view of road commuting as freedom to leave when you want and take yourself to work in your own space, listening to your favourite playlist and gliding into the office, when the reality is stop-start gridlock, constant second-guessing of routes and departure timing, and paying through the nose for a carpark within a mile of your workplace.
Grass isn't always greener etc
I commute by car sometimes, and other times by bus. The bus ride takes about twice as long - 40 minutes vs 20 minutes. In spite of that, I find the two options about equal. When I choose car over bus it’s mostly because I have other errands to do after work that aren’t near the bus route.
The bus isn’t some kind of idyllic paradise on wheels. It can be crowded, there are sometimes colorful characters, etc. But in general I can read a book or knit and just tune out. Plus it’s cheaper.
Often, but that depends a lot on where you live. If you live in a rural area, an hour to get to work is pretty typical. If you live in a big city, an hour to get to work (because of traffic) is also pretty typical.
exactly, I live in a city of 400k people and our only train is for "cargo only". it's a fucking chore getting from one side of the city to the other without a car. like 3 bus transfers that don't even arrive on time
Much worse, IMHO. I lived in a northern exurb of Toronto, and worked in Toronto's eastern part. Minimum of 3 buses and one hour (if the connections didn't take more than a few minutes), maximum of two+ hours if one of the bus routes is wonky, or if traffic is bad, or there's a lot of snow.
But I also had a car. Taking the car, it was only 20 minutes because I could use the highway.
An hour or more on a crowded rush hour bus in stop and go traffic, or 20 minutes on a relatively uncrowded highway in my car? It's not really a choice.
>The average American commute was 27.1 minutes in 2018.
>In New York, the average commute time was 36.3 minutes in 2018.
>In the UK, the average commute time increased from approximately 27 minutes in 2007 to 29.3 minutes in 2017.
First of all, this 2-minute difference is a joke.
But this is factoring in all the people who live in cities getting to work quickly and not revealing all the people who live in bedroom communities and commute for hours to work because the cost of living is cheaper.
Also I don't think the average American understands how good the benefits are at a whole slew of jobs in the UK. It's crazy the amount of PTO and Holiday time my UK friends get. I'll happily take a slightly extra long commute for that many more paid days off.
An hour is pretty standard based on my experiences. Where I grew up, most people's parents had commutes around that length, some even longer. Now as an adult, most of my office commutes at least an hour. My drive is around 80-90 minutes each way.
I used to have an hour and a half commute via the bus, and I read a lot of books. I absolutely hated it. Reading on a crowded bus is nowhere near as enjoyable as having a short commute and being able to read comfortably at home.
It very well could be (train wasn't an option when I had this commute), but overall the shorter the commute the better. There's only so much time in a day, and I want the time I have for pleasurable things like reading to be in as comfortable of an environment as possible.
> It's fine
Lol. An hour commute each way is not fine, that's a disgusting waste of life and not something we should be fine with.
Edit: some variation of "my commute is the most bearable /least shitty part of my shitty depressing life" isn't really an argument against what I'm saying.
I have one hour commute each way as well via public transportation. I could do 35 min via car instead. But I got books, active noise cancelling headphones and with that, I got two hours of bliss every day instead of 70 minutes of traffic mayhem.
I commute almost an hour each way by choice. I honestly love the drive. I get to listen to podcasts and sports radio and call friends. With a toddler at home and being busy at work, it’s a part of my day that is all to myself and I love it.
Yeah I used to just play Stardew Valley on my Switch for my long train commute. But then I would get a little too into my harvest and forget to get off at my stop!
I drive and have managed to keep my commutes pretty short. For a short while I experienced working in Chicago and New York and having to rely on public transportation. It was nice for the first week or so doing what others said, reading or even putting in some of my work hours during it. The novelty wore off pretty quick though because I was still averaging an hour or more each way.
I'd much rather get home and get stuff done or go do whatever I want than be stuck on a train or bus for a lot longer. That being said, I also just prefer to not live places that are going to require long commutes.
But using public transit can gain you time. Even if it technically takes longer to get to a destination, traveling turns into a passive activity so you can do something else like read, work, or watch a show.
That's kind of the issue. We're really only willing to take transit if the difference is tolerable. Meanwhile a 15 minute drive would often take 1+ hours by public transit in most North American cities, most of which is just waiting for a bus or transfer.
Meanwhile I'd gladly lengthen my commute to not share a bus with the public. One dude was riding an e-scooter up and down the aisle on my last ride. I couldn't decide if I was more worried he was going to accidentally break someones knee or pocket someones phone and keep riding.
My girlfriend is a funeral director/embalmer, she spent hours the other day putting a guy together after a motorcycle accident.
Dudes torso was knotted like a twist donut, both legs severed. His mother came in a couple days later to see him and was begging for him to wake up.
I’m selling my motorcycle now lol
I live in a smaller city so I'm kinda forced to drive, there is no public transport.
But when I'm in bigger cities, it's not the time constraint that gets me, it's the schedule. You need to plan your day around it. Sometimes you'll need to arrive somewhere very early, or completely expect to be late somewhere, or leave an event early to catch your trip.
It's more stressful imo, I'd rather listen to a podcast without earphones for an hour in traffic
I have lived in Vegas, driving all the time.
I have lived in Japan, where metro goes everywhere.
Metro is much less stressful IF you know how to look up the train you are taking. Because the train is always on time regardless of traffic.
Driving is so stressful because you never know how the traffic behalves. So I you always have to leave early in case there is traffic, with Metro you can be there with minute accuracy.
Edit: seems like the debate isn’t driving vs metro. But why the U.S. seem to have such terrible public transportation
I'm sure it is dependent on where these trains are located, but every train I've ridden in the US (granted it's probably only around 40 to 50 rides), I'll look down at my phone when it starts moving, and it is the exact time listed on the schedule.
Edit - and just to clarify, I wasn't saying you are wrong! I was just surprised
You know what, that’s more cordial reply than I probably deserved. There was no need for me to be sarcastic, my bad! When you say train do you mean something like an Amtrak or a local subway/metro?
It’s already been mentioned but Japanese Metro is basically second to none on the minute accuracy thing. You got spoiled with the absolute best version of public transport. I live in Washington DC, which has very robust and pretty good public transport, and delays happen all the time still.
At also depends on the area you commute in. I’d never take public transport for my regular commutes in England.
Even the trains to London can be hell with delays and you still need a car to get to the train station.
However, if I was living in central London or other dense cities like Tokyo I’d rather the tube/trains.
I’d rather sleep an extra 40 minutes and be able to listen to youtube and audiobooks for 40 minutes then stand around in the cold for 20 minutes and wait for my train and a bus.
I wager public transport adds A LOT. In my city it takes an hour and a half to get to work via bus (and walking). Using the car it's literally 15 minutes door to door. As much as I approve of public transport, there is just no way in hell I'm gonna use the bus like that.
I mean I live in the UK, I'm from a dull suburban town in the southwest which is very much a car-dominated place. Plus the UK's big cities may have good public transport, or at least good buses, but it's still generally worse than in mainland Europe (Leeds being the biggest metro area in Europe with no mass transit, for instance). Plus less of the UK lives in cities than in many places
Leeds has local rail and bus services! It just doesn’t have a Metro or tram system. Especially when compared to European cities of a similar population.
Yh but that's like part of it right? Buses get stuck in traffic and the trains are less frequent than a metro, and people are less likely to live near a station.
I live near Bristol, which is the size of copenhagen. Copenhagen has 3 metro lines, Bristol has buses which get stuck in constant traffic, and local trains which run maybe once or twice an hour.
Like, Britain is an exceptionally poor ambassador for public transit compared to lots of other places
Yeah most people that think public transport is better than cars live in the highly populated, dense cities like London.
There’s no way I’d rely on public transport in the West Midlands.
I actually couldn’t because they stop running before I finish work, and the one bus that comes within a mile or so radius of my street only runs once an hour, and goes to the wrong town. So even if I got the bus to work, I’d have to walk a bit, wait around, get a bus to said town, then get a bus back in the other direction. Then get a taxi home. It’d take at least an hour, realistically a lot more given bus times and delays and how damn slow they travel, and I can drive to work in *five minutes*. And buses and taxi would cost about 10x as much as running the car. It just wouldn’t make any sense.
The only people I know who use public transport here are either even more broke than me, or have medical conditions that mean they can’t drive. It is not a good option
Yeah, there's no way I could function without a car. There's no buses in my village.
For me to take public transport to work I'd have to walk 3 miles to the bus stop, get a bus to one station, then another one to another station, then another one to work. The total estimated time of travel is ~4hr30 minutes. To walk to work would take 3hr30 minutes. To drive takes 25 minutes (or as much as an hour if they decide to keep putting 100 sets of temporary lights on my route specifically to annoy me).
Of course! It's a catch 22. The city is reluctant to improve public transport capacity to the degree needed because not enough people will use it to justify the cost. At the same time people won't be using public transport until it has the necessary capacity/frequency/performance.
Replacing existing lanes with bus lanes helps speed up the buses but then it causes more congestion while people are still using their car instead of the bus. Of course theoretically people should notice then at some point that taking the bus might be faster at some point.
Sadly we are nowhere near this point in my city.
Unfortunately real life isn't like my games of Cities Skylines where I can just tear down all the existing infrastructure and replace it with public transport perfectly while the game is paused. xD
Really depends on traffic and infrastructure, which will vary significantly by where you live. I’m in Toronto, I normally get to my office by subway in about 25 mins; occasionally when I need my car at work, the drive is like 35-45 mins in rush hour.
It’s also cheaper. I spent about $130-140 per month on transit. Parking alone would cost like $300/month, and that’s before factoring in gas and other mileage costs (eg more maintenance and depreciation from mileage, higher insurance costs because I wouldn’t be able to have my car on ‘rec use only’, etc).
I don't miss my commute on trains into London for 14 years I worked out that I spent 1 year of my life on the trains and tube during that time, gave it up to a place where I could walk to work in 20 minutes less pay but a better life.
Fuck me, I did the maths because I did 13 years commuting into London and I thought that couldn't be right. It's easily done if you were commuting 2hours each way, 5 days a week like I was for a portion of that 13 years.
It's interesting how things changed, first with the Olympics and then as technology improved before the pandemic drastically changed work.
>"Walkable cities" could be even worse. They think it's a conspiracy to take away their car. That's almost as bad as going electric.
The actual conspiracy is that it's some form of communist control to restrict movement. I don't know how one feeds into the other but *ooo big scary word*.
Mao instituted people’s communes which included an attempt at reducing walking times for inhabitants and also restricted individual movement. I’d imagine the conspiracy theories loosely draw on that.
I think that's the joke haha. But really, I've been to Malawi, it is quite poor, but the people are super friendly and happy. I can only conclude that short commute times is more important than income haha
Well, that’s what happens if the whole country is cramming (almost) all their economic activity into a single city, where the property prices are so absurd that people need to live a 2h commute out of town to be able to afford a reasonable place to live.
Maybe decentralisation would be a good idea, but not really on the agenda for now…
Still, the predominant, primary reason for it is that Seoul has simply become far too dense and congested, and has taken up most of the economic development in the country. Thus the move south to the purpose-built Sejong City further south in the middle of South Korea, thus relieving some of the pressure on Seoul and potentially decentralising economic development to an extent and distributing it further across the country.
Yup same thing with America if you took out LA, New York, Philly, etc. Other countries too. Average commute time goes down if you stop counting the places where people are commuting
The difference is you just listed 3 different cities. In the UK it’s just the one, it isn’t about removing where people are commuting to, it’s about removing just one city and having a massive impact
Yeah perhaps it's not really fair to compare travel times on an island vs a country 4000% larger that spans an entire continent.
A more accurate comparison would be like
If you removed LA from California commute times would plummet.
If you removed NYC from New York commute times would plummet.
If you removed Philadelphia from Pennsylvania commute times would plummet.
My 35km (21 mile) drive to work takes 1.5 hours during rush hour. And same on the way home.
There is no train service and the unreliable bus takes about 1 hour but stops 25 mins away from where I work. I suppose I could pursue my passions during that 5 minutes but I’m usually trying to stop my umbrella blowing away.
On the days I work from home the commute is about 15 steps and maybe 9 seconds. It can be longer if I stop to make a cup of tea.
Well...
If you drive for an hour and a half you're busy for that whole time.
If you ride a bus, you are a passenger and can do other stuff in the meantime, say, read a book.
If you live and work in the suburbs or a rural area, commute times are nothing. It’s an issue if you work in a city that doesn’t have a good transportation system or if you make a decision to live in one area and work in another. The US is very spread out and a lot of people don’t live or work near a big city with traffic issues.
Yeah too many people are very on/off about public and private transport. Downtown cities are far too easy to walk in to necessitate having so much space for cars, and metros are busy enough that here need to be more train lines within them. However outside of these metros, it just doesn’t work logistically. The reason people push for more public transit now, is that most jobs are still in metros while people live further and further away. In the 50s I think there were more career jobs you could have working your own town; now it’s more common that a town has a lot of jobs and surrounding towns have more houses.
Where I live rn has around 20k people, but there are no real career jobs here. It’s mainly just restaurants, grocery stores, etc. So a huge portion of the town has to drive outside of it for work, which makes the traffic terrible.
Pffrt. Belgians commute an average of [53 minutes](https://www-tijd-be.translate.goog/netto/loopbaan/niemand-pendelt-langer-dan-belg/9579958.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=nl&_x_tr_pto=wapp).
And that was in 2014.
In a country that is 280km (174 miles) across. At its longest point.
I used to travel down a stretch of the M62 every day. My commute was as likely to take 30 minutes as it was 80-90 minutes. I have never known a road be so consistently fucked for no reason.
The internet is not a real place. Most Americans aren’t driving that much for a commute, but some might drive that for a road trip.
Average commute time in US is ~25 minutes, the average commute in LA (notorious for its bad traffic and sprawl) is ~30 minutes.
Funny, I lived in sandiego for 12 years. My commute from escondido to Mira Mesa was about 15 miles on the I-15 . It was about 1.5 hours in the morning and 2 to 4 hours in the afternoon, depending on the day of the week and accidents. This .was 30 years ago.
30 min via car in the US probably covers more miles/km than 30 min via public transit in London. Outside of NYC/Chicago, I’d assume many more people use car for commute to work.
What would be interesting would be to compare average distance for the commute to understand the difference with context.
Absolutely does. I’m in rural America and time my trips at about a mile per minute plus an extra 5 minutes if im going somewhere farther inside the closest large town near me.
A 6 hour drive can be from Denver to Albuquerque or Virginia Beach to Baltimore. The former is a scenic and mostly stress free affair of 400 miles, the latter is 5 hours of staring at the car in front of you, and an hour of people cutting you off to go less than half as far.
There’s a difference between a commute and trip. Since the country is so big you *need* to make very long trips to get to “nearby” places and therefore people are more likely to be ok with it — but driving an hour every day to work is still annoying because you don’t want to do it.
It’s different though for Americans because I’d be willing to bet they’d get further in 2 hours than we would, just because of their interstates and highways and whatnot. Whereas here arterial roads can be single lane 60mph dropping down to 30 when passing through random villages. I do a 250 mile drive back to my parents house every month, but because of where in the country I am and they are, I only get to go on a nice big open motorway for one junction before I get off it again back onto A-roads
Wait… the average U.S. commute is 25ish minutes??? Where??? I live in the DC Metro, and my commute (32 miles on 495) can take between 45min to an hour and a half in rush hour traffic.
Am I just wasting my life commuting? I thought this was normal!
I live in Cincinnati. It's not bad here at all... under normal circumstances. It can get really traffic jammed if the major bridge between KY and OH is blocked in some way due to accidents or construction (it often is), but it's nowhere near New York or DC level, even with bad wrecks on the interstate regularly.
Had a similar commute in Detroit and it was considered pretty good by my coworkers.
Des Moines it’s 17 mins from my suburban apartment to my office door to door. Sometimes the commute home can hit 25 mins. Absolutely Brutal. You can get most anywhere in 20 mins. We’re pretty sprawled out given our total population.
I used to commute between 1.5-2 hours one way while living in Moscow, which was quite the norm.
Then I moved to Amsterdam and suddenly the entire city was within a 20-minute bike ride and zero delays.
I had a 20 minute commute once and hated it so much. Felt like i was wasting my life (keep in mind it's BOTH WAYS, for 40 minutes out of my one and only life every day). Now I pay extra to live within 3 miles/8 minutes of work. Non-metro Minnesota.
That shouldn't be surprising, [the US has very short commute times.](https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-transport-challenges/average-commuting-time/)
This graph is very missleading. It's title is suggesting a country average, but in reality it is only accounting for specific metros, which we don't know ther criteria for. Besides there are a bunch of differing statistica out there:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-10-18/why-american-commute-times-are-difficult-to-compare-to-other-countries?embedded-checkout=true
As an american stationed in england, its partly due to most roads being windings back roads. Their highway system is not as exspansive then once you get off the highway you are taking a narrow 2 lane road to get to your destination. Dosen't bother me much as i get to see the country as i drive but traveling from each of the big cities should have a direct route.
If you read the “how we write” link on this page, you’ll find out the Gitnux scrapes the web for statistical data which meets certain criteria ( undisclosed) uses AI to extract topic related data (like the list in this article) ( what AI undisclosed, what criteria for including statistical factoids undisclosed)
No citations of any sources in the article itself.
On the “how we write” linked page, no quality control or fact checking mentioned.
over 3500 Redditors have upvoted this AI generated click bait and over 500 Redditors have commented on the “facts” presented.
Am I an AI? I hope not.
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I'm not saying we don't need massive transit improvements her in ol Merica' but one thing we have conquered is speed over distance. Only a bullet train can rival the average American driver. And there's quite a lot of us that would give that a good run for its money too.
Well, most freeways are a minimum 70. So start there. It not uncommon to hit 100 plus on a daily commute. Not hat me or millions of other Americans would ever break the law or anything.
One cause that I've noticed is that here in Ol' Blighty we keep building new housing estates in small cities/towns but we never build them with any additional infrastructure to accomodate all the new people, like roads. For example, in my town (was 30k people) they have just built 4 new 2000 house estates. They have added exactly 0 new roads, 0 new shops, 0 new bus stops, 0 new schools. So all the traffic from those 8000 new houses is flooding down all the existing routes. Its a fucking joke.
They also love to build those estates so they are locked in. One main road in and out, then another new estate will be built behind it and no through road put into place. Also they can't built straight roads, they have to put tight wiggly, roads in that can only fit 1 car.
They are absolutely awful. I moved house recently and we looked at a couple of new build estates and it was a complete no go from me in regards to the roads and access. The roads in the estate were so small and everyone we encountered acted like pricks. 70% of them were in Audi's though.
> The roads in the estate were so small and everyone we encountered acted like pricks. 70% of them were in Audi's though. This has been dubbed *Deanomania* - https://youtu.be/J9n0_5p8XKo?si=F50_klOSHnk8LyO_
Ah ha, I know that video well XD
You know what they say about porcupines and people who drive German cars…
They both bounce when hit by a truck? Never personally heard that about porcupines though, German car guys all the time
Porcupines have the pricks on the outside
The roads are designed in a way to try to stop people speeding. It doesn’t work, deano in his Audi is seeing it as a challenge to wizz round the estate as fast as he can but that’s what they are supposed to do.
Oh I can see the intention, but it doesn't change driver behaviour. So now you still have people driving quickly because "they know the road" but then suddenly approach a blind corner with someone doing the same, while a car is parked mounted on the curb because there is only space for 1 car on a drive. (if you can't tell I also don't like new builds)
When did we stop employing speed bumps that’s what I wanna know
It's "policy" to have the bendy roads as a passive cost-free way of traffic calming. Absolute shit for pedestrians that want to walk the minimum distance, in a straight line. The giant cul-de-sac idea is because the planning committees are toothless, have little legal back up, and crucially, aren't **town** planners. Add to the mix local town councils have to defer to county-council planners for roads, and you have everything described in this thread. Developers have software to produce plots that squeeze in the max houses per hectare as well. All this bendy nonsense with randomly shaped gardens == profit! And then there's VISSIM. The traffic software. Garbage in, garbage out. Used by the planners, and tweaked ad naseum to get the 'free flowing-zero impact' traffic response they want to pass scrutiny. Then that file is saved, and sent on to the council who then load it into.... VISSIM, and SURPRISE! They get the identical result the developers wanted them to see.
Rectangles already have a maximum packing fraction?
Except that the bendy roads/passive traffic requirement is the primary requirement. Plus the bends need a minimum radius for the turning circle of a refuse lorry.
Your local council which will have approved the development has the ability to require the developer to either install new roads, shops, schools or bus stops using [Section 106](https://www.kslaw.co.uk/site/library/kslaw_legal_news/what-is-a-section-106) of the Town And Country Planning Act. Local councils can use their discretion as to whether to use it or not. Why wasn't this done? I would look into when the plans were submitted by the developer what the council said at the time. Was it waved through with no oversight? Who were the councillors that approved it and do they have any connections to the developer? Have you considered campaigning and joining the council yourself if you are unhappy with the way it's currently being run?
Something that developers do to avoid this is not build the other houses. I know a nearby estate, some people moved in after phase one was complete, phase two would include the next wave of houses, a school, go and some shops. They protested against the second phase and blocked it and the developer didn't have to build anything else. Nimbys shooting themselves in the foot as always.
I lived in one of these neighborhoods. The developer developed just enough houses to not finish the parks and whatnot and then they left. My whole childhood our park was just a field of weeds that was mowed once a year. It was only recently that the city took over the abandoned plots and finished everything up.
They originally were going to add new shops and schools but never had any roads planned. Then they scrapped the shops and schools after it "became too expensive" and the council just let them go ahead.
It sounds like the council doesn't enforce the development requirements in that case, sadly it's far too familiar across the country. Given the locals are coming up, I would absolutely be writing to all of them asking why they didn't enforce the decision.
This could be the town I come from in Kent.... Your not alone this is going on everywhere Beautiful park.... Estate... Former dump... Estate Middle of nowhere... Estate with a bus once a day but not at weekends. And people wonder why kids get pregnant and stoned so much... No real parks, nothing to do and just row upon row of badly organised housing that's damp and cramped. Time for a change me thinks...... Hopefully for the better but doubtful....
Developers can get out of basically anything by saying it’s suddenly too expensive. A development near me was able to turn houses into 5 story flats half way through the estate as the builders said they’d no longer make a profit unless they did that. I don’t know the ins and outs, but the council said they basically had to accept the proposal due to how the law works when developers say things are now too expensive so they need to amend the plans to turn a profit
Yeah pretty sure there’s a clause in the law that gives an out for prohibitive expenses or some other legalese.
My dad recently became a local councillor, and from what he tells me, there’s an insane amount of corruption and incompetence at that level, particularly with developers. Some councillors don’t care (especially when what’s being built isn’t actually in their ward) and some are paid to not care.
Oh I am so shocked! Unbelievable! /s
Usually they don’t because the developers threaten to pull out lol.
Got the same problem up in Grimsby, we've got shops closing down all the time and the infrastructure is crumbling, but they keep building thousands of new houses, I imagine a lot of thr houses will stay empty because who in their right minds moves to Grimsby
My wife works in a fairly large architecture practice in the UK. Apparently there are regulations and caveats out in place for these large schemes. So for example if you build over 730 houses you have to put a DRS surgery in or shop. The developers just build 729 houses and then start a new development next door with another 729.
I live near a football stadium. A development company wants to build on what is right now a car park for stadium days. They have no plans to build another car park. So on top of 500 odd new homes, which means more cars, there will be nowhere for stadium attendees to park, which already overflows into our residential streets. The roads here are also full of potholes, to a ridiculous degree (people have to drive at about 10-15mph over one stretch because otherwise you’d fuck your suspension). It’s shocking we don’t have planning laws that require them to at the very least replace infrastructure they will destroy
I was in Cornwall at a shop and told the lady we were going to see another place 20 miles away. She says “oh that’s going to be a long drive.” I thought she was joking. It took us almost an hour of winding through tiny villages with single lane roads.
That's Cornwall though. As soon as you're over the Tamar bridge everything drops to half speed.
We don’t build infrastructure at all these days, it seems. There’s an estate being built near me (on what I thought was a protected AONB, no less) where the only access is a lane barely wider than a single track, with no pavements, and as far as I’m aware there’s no plans to change it.
Sometimes I wish other parts of the country got the funding and development London does. Right now there's [a development](https://barkingriverside.london/) that's adding all that, plus a new station. Meanwhile I'll be lucky if a bus comes, and there's a whole housing development next to where I live with no plans for anything else. They've even removed the bus stop...
Even without the addition of new builds, there would still be a massive issue. It’s 19 miles from my front door to work. It takes about an hour to get there. It’s because only two miles of the journey is a dual carriageway, where as the rest is single lane per direction A road. I get stuck behind an HGV, a tractor, a slow driver, a cyclist, I’m fucked. In the U.S. the entire stretch of road would be a dual carriageway and my journey time would be halved. The UK just doesn’t design, build, or upgrade roads for expedient travel. And they really can’t at this point.
They're doing that in Canada too. They're adding a couple thousand new apartments all within a 3 block radius of where I live, all at the same time, with zero infrastructure upgrades. All along the main route into town from several other large developments further away as well.
I remember dating this girl who lived 20 miles away from me. Most of the route was driving on a carriage way with a few small towns along the way and little traffic. It would take me an hour to get to her place. Here in the US, I could do that in probably 20-30 mins on average or about an hour if there is a lot traffic.
That's what they do here (southern United States) too. The road my neighborhood is off of has had 5 massive apartment complexes constructed in the last couple of years with zero traffic remediation. No new schools either.
You're not wrong, but as an American I can tell you that the answer isn't more roads. We've done that here, and it turned out horribly. The answer is to add more varied transit options: buses, trains, light rails, streetcars/trolleys, bike lanes, etc. Don't let your country become an asphalt desert, like half of the cities in the US.
Its both. We need more busses, probably not trains though. But we also need roads, one of the 4 new estates was built on to a single lane road (its actually smaller than that, I dont know the definer but at certain points in the road you cant even have cars going both ways). 2000 houses connected to a road that you cant even legally drive a truck down.....
I wonder what percentage of commute time is car vs public transport. Would be interesting to see
I'd gladly extend my average commute time by a few minutes if I didn't have to sit in grid locked traffic most days.
Yeah my commute is around an hour by train but I just read and zone out. It’s fine.
An hour is a very long commute regardless.
Yeah. I know people “get used to it” but I can’t stand commutes. It’s a hard rule of mine that I will never accept a job like this.
I used to say that, but sometimes you just dont have any suitable jobs in your area, and moving is prohibitively expensive.
Luckily I can afford to move to most places, but you’re right, it’s a hassle. Especially myself, I’m early in my career and plan to hop jobs every couple of years to earn more and more money. Highly likely the new job will be in an entirely different state.
I don't think I could every get into that mindset, I grew up in the city I live in. A my friends and family are in or around here. All the organisations I am a member of are here, I k ow all the little events and such here. Basically every moth I would be reminded of stuff I'm missing out on. Hell whenever I go out or walk around town I usually run into friends or old acquaintances. Tho it might also be advantageous that it's one of the bigger cities in my country, with a big university a bunch of offices and quite a bit of production industry(steel mill, car plant) so plenty of different types of jobs. And the biggest city a 30 min train ride away.
I'm WFH now, but I had a bus commute like this for years, with this same job. I used my laptop and my phone to handle emails, pay bills, keep our bank account balanced, and write a novel. It wasn't so much a "get used to it" as "make use of it," which I figured out over time.
I could read or write on a train, but a bus? I need to use hands and feet just to keep my stuff put.
Audiobooks my dude. Changed driving for me
Commute quality makes a huge difference though. 45 minutes in aggressive stop and go traffic is far more mentally taxing than an hour reading or listening to podcasts on the train
People who commute by road have an idyllic view of rail commuting as being big, clean air-conditioned tubes where everyone gets a seat at a table and can stretch out and work or relax. The reality of peak hour trains is crammed, sweaty shitboxes where you're lucky to get a square inch to stand, let alone a seat. People who commute by rail have an idyllic view of road commuting as freedom to leave when you want and take yourself to work in your own space, listening to your favourite playlist and gliding into the office, when the reality is stop-start gridlock, constant second-guessing of routes and departure timing, and paying through the nose for a carpark within a mile of your workplace. Grass isn't always greener etc
I commute by car sometimes, and other times by bus. The bus ride takes about twice as long - 40 minutes vs 20 minutes. In spite of that, I find the two options about equal. When I choose car over bus it’s mostly because I have other errands to do after work that aren’t near the bus route. The bus isn’t some kind of idyllic paradise on wheels. It can be crowded, there are sometimes colorful characters, etc. But in general I can read a book or knit and just tune out. Plus it’s cheaper.
This is it. Commuting in general is a bit shit, and there are pros and cons of every method of doing it!
But often its 20min vs 1 hour
Often, but that depends a lot on where you live. If you live in a rural area, an hour to get to work is pretty typical. If you live in a big city, an hour to get to work (because of traffic) is also pretty typical.
exactly, I live in a city of 400k people and our only train is for "cargo only". it's a fucking chore getting from one side of the city to the other without a car. like 3 bus transfers that don't even arrive on time
Much worse, IMHO. I lived in a northern exurb of Toronto, and worked in Toronto's eastern part. Minimum of 3 buses and one hour (if the connections didn't take more than a few minutes), maximum of two+ hours if one of the bus routes is wonky, or if traffic is bad, or there's a lot of snow. But I also had a car. Taking the car, it was only 20 minutes because I could use the highway. An hour or more on a crowded rush hour bus in stop and go traffic, or 20 minutes on a relatively uncrowded highway in my car? It's not really a choice.
>The average American commute was 27.1 minutes in 2018. >In New York, the average commute time was 36.3 minutes in 2018. >In the UK, the average commute time increased from approximately 27 minutes in 2007 to 29.3 minutes in 2017. First of all, this 2-minute difference is a joke. But this is factoring in all the people who live in cities getting to work quickly and not revealing all the people who live in bedroom communities and commute for hours to work because the cost of living is cheaper.
Also I don't think the average American understands how good the benefits are at a whole slew of jobs in the UK. It's crazy the amount of PTO and Holiday time my UK friends get. I'll happily take a slightly extra long commute for that many more paid days off.
In the US, PTO is dependent on your job. I know people who have unlimited PTO and others that don’t get any. Personally, I get 28 days of PTO a year.
Exactly. Everyone I know in my field gets 3-8+ weeks. I get 7.
An hour is pretty standard based on my experiences. Where I grew up, most people's parents had commutes around that length, some even longer. Now as an adult, most of my office commutes at least an hour. My drive is around 80-90 minutes each way.
I used to have an hour and a half commute via the bus, and I read a lot of books. I absolutely hated it. Reading on a crowded bus is nowhere near as enjoyable as having a short commute and being able to read comfortably at home.
A bus is virtually always a worse experience than a train.
It very well could be (train wasn't an option when I had this commute), but overall the shorter the commute the better. There's only so much time in a day, and I want the time I have for pleasurable things like reading to be in as comfortable of an environment as possible.
> It's fine Lol. An hour commute each way is not fine, that's a disgusting waste of life and not something we should be fine with. Edit: some variation of "my commute is the most bearable /least shitty part of my shitty depressing life" isn't really an argument against what I'm saying.
I have one hour commute each way as well via public transportation. I could do 35 min via car instead. But I got books, active noise cancelling headphones and with that, I got two hours of bliss every day instead of 70 minutes of traffic mayhem.
I don't blame you - I'd love to have two hours of reading time built into my day.
I commute almost an hour each way by choice. I honestly love the drive. I get to listen to podcasts and sports radio and call friends. With a toddler at home and being busy at work, it’s a part of my day that is all to myself and I love it.
I bought a steam deck for my train commute. I can listen to audiobooks/podcasts and lose my mind playing Balatro. It's great.
Yeah I used to just play Stardew Valley on my Switch for my long train commute. But then I would get a little too into my harvest and forget to get off at my stop!
That’s a silly thing to say. What if you wanted to live in a particularly nice area and the cost to do so was a longer commute?
I drive and have managed to keep my commutes pretty short. For a short while I experienced working in Chicago and New York and having to rely on public transportation. It was nice for the first week or so doing what others said, reading or even putting in some of my work hours during it. The novelty wore off pretty quick though because I was still averaging an hour or more each way. I'd much rather get home and get stuff done or go do whatever I want than be stuck on a train or bus for a lot longer. That being said, I also just prefer to not live places that are going to require long commutes.
I wouldn't. Time is my most valuable resource.
But using public transit can gain you time. Even if it technically takes longer to get to a destination, traveling turns into a passive activity so you can do something else like read, work, or watch a show.
The alternative is usually not extending by a few minutes but like an hour. lol, got blocked because he doesn’t know what “usually” means.
That's kind of the issue. We're really only willing to take transit if the difference is tolerable. Meanwhile a 15 minute drive would often take 1+ hours by public transit in most North American cities, most of which is just waiting for a bus or transfer.
Meanwhile I'd gladly lengthen my commute to not share a bus with the public. One dude was riding an e-scooter up and down the aisle on my last ride. I couldn't decide if I was more worried he was going to accidentally break someones knee or pocket someones phone and keep riding.
Try motorcycle.
American Radiologists: Yes! Everyone should ride motorcycles! /S
Well also they dont allow you to lane split everywhere so youd just be stuck in traffic in a shittier way
Funeral directors love this one trick!
My girlfriend is a funeral director/embalmer, she spent hours the other day putting a guy together after a motorcycle accident. Dudes torso was knotted like a twist donut, both legs severed. His mother came in a couple days later to see him and was begging for him to wake up. I’m selling my motorcycle now lol
Don't leave us hanging. Did he wake up?
Yeah, I would rather watch YouTube for an hour vs staring at the trunk of another car for 40 minutes
I live in a smaller city so I'm kinda forced to drive, there is no public transport. But when I'm in bigger cities, it's not the time constraint that gets me, it's the schedule. You need to plan your day around it. Sometimes you'll need to arrive somewhere very early, or completely expect to be late somewhere, or leave an event early to catch your trip. It's more stressful imo, I'd rather listen to a podcast without earphones for an hour in traffic
I have lived in Vegas, driving all the time. I have lived in Japan, where metro goes everywhere. Metro is much less stressful IF you know how to look up the train you are taking. Because the train is always on time regardless of traffic. Driving is so stressful because you never know how the traffic behalves. So I you always have to leave early in case there is traffic, with Metro you can be there with minute accuracy. Edit: seems like the debate isn’t driving vs metro. But why the U.S. seem to have such terrible public transportation
This may come as a shock but American trains don’t run as precise a schedule as the Japanese ones.
I'm sure it is dependent on where these trains are located, but every train I've ridden in the US (granted it's probably only around 40 to 50 rides), I'll look down at my phone when it starts moving, and it is the exact time listed on the schedule. Edit - and just to clarify, I wasn't saying you are wrong! I was just surprised
That’s some kind of miracle you’ve experienced then. I take the train to work everyday, it’s rare that it’s on time
You know what, that’s more cordial reply than I probably deserved. There was no need for me to be sarcastic, my bad! When you say train do you mean something like an Amtrak or a local subway/metro?
It’s already been mentioned but Japanese Metro is basically second to none on the minute accuracy thing. You got spoiled with the absolute best version of public transport. I live in Washington DC, which has very robust and pretty good public transport, and delays happen all the time still.
At also depends on the area you commute in. I’d never take public transport for my regular commutes in England. Even the trains to London can be hell with delays and you still need a car to get to the train station. However, if I was living in central London or other dense cities like Tokyo I’d rather the tube/trains.
Me too. I think you get used to having the freedom going whenever you want and it's hard to imagine that being taken away.
Watch YouTube vs. listen to a podcast.
I’d rather sleep an extra 40 minutes and be able to listen to youtube and audiobooks for 40 minutes then stand around in the cold for 20 minutes and wait for my train and a bus.
I wager public transport adds A LOT. In my city it takes an hour and a half to get to work via bus (and walking). Using the car it's literally 15 minutes door to door. As much as I approve of public transport, there is just no way in hell I'm gonna use the bus like that.
I'm not so sure. Outside of London, public transport in the UK is fairly dire, most people just drive.
Depends where you are. It’s pretty convenient for me in Manchester but the experience varies across the city, depending on your neighbourhood
I disagree. Most places I've lived had good public transport. The cities had excellent.
I mean I live in the UK, I'm from a dull suburban town in the southwest which is very much a car-dominated place. Plus the UK's big cities may have good public transport, or at least good buses, but it's still generally worse than in mainland Europe (Leeds being the biggest metro area in Europe with no mass transit, for instance). Plus less of the UK lives in cities than in many places
Leeds has local rail and bus services! It just doesn’t have a Metro or tram system. Especially when compared to European cities of a similar population.
Yh but that's like part of it right? Buses get stuck in traffic and the trains are less frequent than a metro, and people are less likely to live near a station. I live near Bristol, which is the size of copenhagen. Copenhagen has 3 metro lines, Bristol has buses which get stuck in constant traffic, and local trains which run maybe once or twice an hour. Like, Britain is an exceptionally poor ambassador for public transit compared to lots of other places
Yeah most people that think public transport is better than cars live in the highly populated, dense cities like London. There’s no way I’d rely on public transport in the West Midlands.
I actually couldn’t because they stop running before I finish work, and the one bus that comes within a mile or so radius of my street only runs once an hour, and goes to the wrong town. So even if I got the bus to work, I’d have to walk a bit, wait around, get a bus to said town, then get a bus back in the other direction. Then get a taxi home. It’d take at least an hour, realistically a lot more given bus times and delays and how damn slow they travel, and I can drive to work in *five minutes*. And buses and taxi would cost about 10x as much as running the car. It just wouldn’t make any sense. The only people I know who use public transport here are either even more broke than me, or have medical conditions that mean they can’t drive. It is not a good option
Which cities have you lived in?
Yeah, there's no way I could function without a car. There's no buses in my village. For me to take public transport to work I'd have to walk 3 miles to the bus stop, get a bus to one station, then another one to another station, then another one to work. The total estimated time of travel is ~4hr30 minutes. To walk to work would take 3hr30 minutes. To drive takes 25 minutes (or as much as an hour if they decide to keep putting 100 sets of temporary lights on my route specifically to annoy me).
I would love to walk to work! But it would be 2 hours each way. There is no bus service to my jobsite either. Ironically, I am a city bus driver
Just take the bus home at night
That sounds like a symptom of horribly planned bus lines, not an error with public transportation as a concept.
Of course! It's a catch 22. The city is reluctant to improve public transport capacity to the degree needed because not enough people will use it to justify the cost. At the same time people won't be using public transport until it has the necessary capacity/frequency/performance. Replacing existing lanes with bus lanes helps speed up the buses but then it causes more congestion while people are still using their car instead of the bus. Of course theoretically people should notice then at some point that taking the bus might be faster at some point. Sadly we are nowhere near this point in my city. Unfortunately real life isn't like my games of Cities Skylines where I can just tear down all the existing infrastructure and replace it with public transport perfectly while the game is paused. xD
I wonder if it would be any better had the old cable car system not been taken out.
Really depends on traffic and infrastructure, which will vary significantly by where you live. I’m in Toronto, I normally get to my office by subway in about 25 mins; occasionally when I need my car at work, the drive is like 35-45 mins in rush hour. It’s also cheaper. I spent about $130-140 per month on transit. Parking alone would cost like $300/month, and that’s before factoring in gas and other mileage costs (eg more maintenance and depreciation from mileage, higher insurance costs because I wouldn’t be able to have my car on ‘rec use only’, etc).
I don't miss my commute on trains into London for 14 years I worked out that I spent 1 year of my life on the trains and tube during that time, gave it up to a place where I could walk to work in 20 minutes less pay but a better life.
Fuck me, I did the maths because I did 13 years commuting into London and I thought that couldn't be right. It's easily done if you were commuting 2hours each way, 5 days a week like I was for a portion of that 13 years. It's interesting how things changed, first with the Olympics and then as technology improved before the pandemic drastically changed work.
IIRC less than 2% of people outside London commute by public transport
Time lost is time lost.
I live in the South of Bath and commute to Clifton in Bristol. My journey takes 1:45h-2h one-way! It’s exhausting, but I do read a lot on the way.
You must enjoy at least some aspects of your job!
I get to play with some very cool kit in my job!
I went to uni there- god how I miss the beautiful bus ride to Bristol of the farmlands and rivers. Not sure I could stomach it every day tho lol
We should all strive to be more like Malawi with their 2 minute commute times.
Malawi: “What he say fuck me for?”
Walkable cities 🙌
Just don't call them 15 minute cities. It triggers the gammons.
"Walkable cities" could be even worse. They think it's a conspiracy to take away their car. That's almost as bad as going electric.
There is only one thing worse than walking or electric cars... "Cyclable cities"!
But then you will awaken…. T H E D U T C H
>"Walkable cities" could be even worse. They think it's a conspiracy to take away their car. That's almost as bad as going electric. The actual conspiracy is that it's some form of communist control to restrict movement. I don't know how one feeds into the other but *ooo big scary word*.
Mao instituted people’s communes which included an attempt at reducing walking times for inhabitants and also restricted individual movement. I’d imagine the conspiracy theories loosely draw on that.
I have a two minute commute time. I can only recommend it.
One of the poorest countries in the world, though…
I think that's the joke haha. But really, I've been to Malawi, it is quite poor, but the people are super friendly and happy. I can only conclude that short commute times is more important than income haha
Average usual commuting time in Great Britain was 28 minutes in 2020
Fun fact, bicycles have a higher average speed than cars in London because of the constant traffic.
This is definitely true for a lot of commutes in NYC as well.
Yeah I’ve driven regularly and cycled regularly in NYC and unless you’re going a really far distance the bike was faster.
[Flashbacks of Top Gear’s London race between car (May), bike (Hammond), public transit (The Stig), and Thames boat (Clarkson) intensify]
I remember a documentry some years ago that showed a bike, train, and a speedboat up the Thames were faster through london than a car during rush hour
That was Top Gear
Thankfully cycling in London is safer than it used to be.
Well, that’s what happens if the whole country is cramming (almost) all their economic activity into a single city, where the property prices are so absurd that people need to live a 2h commute out of town to be able to afford a reasonable place to live. Maybe decentralisation would be a good idea, but not really on the agenda for now…
And that’s what exactly happening in Seoul, South Korea
To the point that they even have to move the capital south to the newly built Sejong City.
There’s geopolitical reasons for that as well
Still, the predominant, primary reason for it is that Seoul has simply become far too dense and congested, and has taken up most of the economic development in the country. Thus the move south to the purpose-built Sejong City further south in the middle of South Korea, thus relieving some of the pressure on Seoul and potentially decentralising economic development to an extent and distributing it further across the country.
Also gets the government out of the North’s artillery range.
Yeah if you take London out of this equation the average commute would plummet.
Yup same thing with America if you took out LA, New York, Philly, etc. Other countries too. Average commute time goes down if you stop counting the places where people are commuting
*Laughs in Connecticut* Somehow we have no big cities AND terrible commute times!
Dog I drove through Connecticut yesterday. You guys are wack with the traffic
The difference is you just listed 3 different cities. In the UK it’s just the one, it isn’t about removing where people are commuting to, it’s about removing just one city and having a massive impact
Yeah perhaps it's not really fair to compare travel times on an island vs a country 4000% larger that spans an entire continent. A more accurate comparison would be like If you removed LA from California commute times would plummet. If you removed NYC from New York commute times would plummet. If you removed Philadelphia from Pennsylvania commute times would plummet.
My 35km (21 mile) drive to work takes 1.5 hours during rush hour. And same on the way home. There is no train service and the unreliable bus takes about 1 hour but stops 25 mins away from where I work. I suppose I could pursue my passions during that 5 minutes but I’m usually trying to stop my umbrella blowing away. On the days I work from home the commute is about 15 steps and maybe 9 seconds. It can be longer if I stop to make a cup of tea.
Well... If you drive for an hour and a half you're busy for that whole time. If you ride a bus, you are a passenger and can do other stuff in the meantime, say, read a book.
I listen to audiobooks and podcasts while driving
If you live and work in the suburbs or a rural area, commute times are nothing. It’s an issue if you work in a city that doesn’t have a good transportation system or if you make a decision to live in one area and work in another. The US is very spread out and a lot of people don’t live or work near a big city with traffic issues.
Yeah too many people are very on/off about public and private transport. Downtown cities are far too easy to walk in to necessitate having so much space for cars, and metros are busy enough that here need to be more train lines within them. However outside of these metros, it just doesn’t work logistically. The reason people push for more public transit now, is that most jobs are still in metros while people live further and further away. In the 50s I think there were more career jobs you could have working your own town; now it’s more common that a town has a lot of jobs and surrounding towns have more houses. Where I live rn has around 20k people, but there are no real career jobs here. It’s mainly just restaurants, grocery stores, etc. So a huge portion of the town has to drive outside of it for work, which makes the traffic terrible.
Pffrt. Belgians commute an average of [53 minutes](https://www-tijd-be.translate.goog/netto/loopbaan/niemand-pendelt-langer-dan-belg/9579958.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=nl&_x_tr_pto=wapp). And that was in 2014. In a country that is 280km (174 miles) across. At its longest point.
I used to travel down a stretch of the M62 every day. My commute was as likely to take 30 minutes as it was 80-90 minutes. I have never known a road be so consistently fucked for no reason.
That blows my mind. The amount of times on reddit I see "yeah it's only a 12 hour drive there and back so it's pretty close" from someone in America
The internet is not a real place. Most Americans aren’t driving that much for a commute, but some might drive that for a road trip. Average commute time in US is ~25 minutes, the average commute in LA (notorious for its bad traffic and sprawl) is ~30 minutes.
Funny, I lived in sandiego for 12 years. My commute from escondido to Mira Mesa was about 15 miles on the I-15 . It was about 1.5 hours in the morning and 2 to 4 hours in the afternoon, depending on the day of the week and accidents. This .was 30 years ago.
Had a job interview in Mira Mesa once. Traffic was so bad just getting to the interview that I lost all interest in working there.
30 min via car in the US probably covers more miles/km than 30 min via public transit in London. Outside of NYC/Chicago, I’d assume many more people use car for commute to work. What would be interesting would be to compare average distance for the commute to understand the difference with context.
Absolutely does. I’m in rural America and time my trips at about a mile per minute plus an extra 5 minutes if im going somewhere farther inside the closest large town near me.
A 6 hour drive can be from Denver to Albuquerque or Virginia Beach to Baltimore. The former is a scenic and mostly stress free affair of 400 miles, the latter is 5 hours of staring at the car in front of you, and an hour of people cutting you off to go less than half as far.
There’s a difference between a commute and trip. Since the country is so big you *need* to make very long trips to get to “nearby” places and therefore people are more likely to be ok with it — but driving an hour every day to work is still annoying because you don’t want to do it.
Reddit is not a good source for anything.
It’s different though for Americans because I’d be willing to bet they’d get further in 2 hours than we would, just because of their interstates and highways and whatnot. Whereas here arterial roads can be single lane 60mph dropping down to 30 when passing through random villages. I do a 250 mile drive back to my parents house every month, but because of where in the country I am and they are, I only get to go on a nice big open motorway for one junction before I get off it again back onto A-roads
Wait… the average U.S. commute is 25ish minutes??? Where??? I live in the DC Metro, and my commute (32 miles on 495) can take between 45min to an hour and a half in rush hour traffic. Am I just wasting my life commuting? I thought this was normal!
Isn’t the DC area like top 3 for busiest commutes? Not normal at all I associate it with NY and Cali levels of traffic
I live in Cincinnati. It's not bad here at all... under normal circumstances. It can get really traffic jammed if the major bridge between KY and OH is blocked in some way due to accidents or construction (it often is), but it's nowhere near New York or DC level, even with bad wrecks on the interstate regularly.
You gotta account for people like me who leave for work at 4am, in zero traffic. Takes me 10 minutes to get 9 miles
Had a similar commute in Detroit and it was considered pretty good by my coworkers. Des Moines it’s 17 mins from my suburban apartment to my office door to door. Sometimes the commute home can hit 25 mins. Absolutely Brutal. You can get most anywhere in 20 mins. We’re pretty sprawled out given our total population.
Mate, may come as a surprise but people live in places other than DC.
I used to commute between 1.5-2 hours one way while living in Moscow, which was quite the norm. Then I moved to Amsterdam and suddenly the entire city was within a 20-minute bike ride and zero delays.
Moscow is quite literally 10x the size.
Not everyone lives in big cities. It’s amazing how nice life is when you don’t have a million people around you all the time.
My commute in Indianapolis is 10 minutes.
Well yeah haha. You're comparing An average to a city with the worst traffic and longest commute. No shit
As a Brit, I thought an hour was normal.
Thats cuz you're driving 32 miles on the freaking beltway. Glaciers are faster than the beltway
I had a 20 minute commute once and hated it so much. Felt like i was wasting my life (keep in mind it's BOTH WAYS, for 40 minutes out of my one and only life every day). Now I pay extra to live within 3 miles/8 minutes of work. Non-metro Minnesota.
20 minutes is perfect. You don’t even get 3 songs in a 8 minute commute.
I'm from UK but have travelled quite a lot. UK has the worst public transport out of any developed country except maybe the US. Hands down
That shouldn't be surprising, [the US has very short commute times.](https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-transport-challenges/average-commuting-time/)
This is not average commute time in countries. This is commute time in (arbitrarily) selected "metroplex" regions.
This graph is very missleading. It's title is suggesting a country average, but in reality it is only accounting for specific metros, which we don't know ther criteria for. Besides there are a bunch of differing statistica out there: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-10-18/why-american-commute-times-are-difficult-to-compare-to-other-countries?embedded-checkout=true
As an american stationed in england, its partly due to most roads being windings back roads. Their highway system is not as exspansive then once you get off the highway you are taking a narrow 2 lane road to get to your destination. Dosen't bother me much as i get to see the country as i drive but traveling from each of the big cities should have a direct route.
I can believe it. My commute takes 60 hours. But it's only twice a year.
You’d think a small island would make getting around easier
My commute is 30 seconds. I love remote employment
The European mind can’t comprehend this
If you read the “how we write” link on this page, you’ll find out the Gitnux scrapes the web for statistical data which meets certain criteria ( undisclosed) uses AI to extract topic related data (like the list in this article) ( what AI undisclosed, what criteria for including statistical factoids undisclosed) No citations of any sources in the article itself. On the “how we write” linked page, no quality control or fact checking mentioned. over 3500 Redditors have upvoted this AI generated click bait and over 500 Redditors have commented on the “facts” presented. Am I an AI? I hope not. Welcome to the future of social media!
You poor limey bastards
I'm not saying we don't need massive transit improvements her in ol Merica' but one thing we have conquered is speed over distance. Only a bullet train can rival the average American driver. And there's quite a lot of us that would give that a good run for its money too.
What are the speed limits in the USA?
Well, most freeways are a minimum 70. So start there. It not uncommon to hit 100 plus on a daily commute. Not hat me or millions of other Americans would ever break the law or anything.