The True Cost of Commuting • Hacker News Board

Re: The True Cost of Commuting

#81

Post by Bud » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 9:24 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #64

cletus wrote: post #27

The problems with long commutes all revolve around home ownership. People want big houses on big yards. Most can't afford that close to work, which means they make the economic choice to trade the commute time for that "dream". That's fine but the problem is that government subsidizes that dream to a ridiculous degree. Urban sprawl has a huge cost in infrastructure, largely borne by the taxpayer. Low-density urban sp…

There are a couple of places in the US where there is enough population density to make mass transit work. Unfortunately no one wants to spend the money to improve it. Train and bus travel is painfully slow. Commuter rail travel, for example, averages about 30-40 mph, at best. If that doubled, people could commute from "great distances", or simply live 40 miles from a major city and have a 30 minute commute. Is the p…

It's false that "no one wants to spend the money to improve it", as proven by the voting for recent ballot initiatives to fund high-speed rail and BART expansions in California, to cite just one example.

A LOT of people would MUCH rather have large amounts of public dollars spent to improve transit than to, for instance, fund wars, bail out bankers, etc.

Re: The True Cost of Commuting

#82

Post by alnayyir » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 9:26 PM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #37

barrkel wrote: post #23

I work from home, but I still "commute" to get a fresh breakfast every morning - by scooter. It is such a joy to ride a scooter in London traffic that I deliberately go to much farther shops just to extend the amount of time I'm zooming past the traffic... Quite frugal on fuel (I get about 70 MPG, but I ride a fast 300cc scooter and don't have a light throttle hand), and I can do most regular maintenance (oil & filte…

Aren't you worried about the higher likelihood of death (4x) and injury (6x) on motorcycles?

To be applicable, you'd have to be as dumb as the average rider.

Re: The True Cost of Commuting

#83

Post by wallacrw » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 9:28 PM UTC

This is why we need the ability to fund biking infrastructure around the country ourselves...governments are too risk averse and short-term-focused to build this infrastructure by the time it's needed. CivicSponsor.org allows the people to fund it directly, circumventing the entire government process with more control and transparency.

Re: The True Cost of Commuting

#84

Post by boredguy8 » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 9:30 PM UTC

checker wrote: post #70

melling wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a couple of places in the US where there is enough population density to make mass transit work. Unfortunately no one wants to spend the money to improve it. Train and bus travel is painfully slow. Commuter rail travel, for example, averages about 30-40 mph, at best. If that doubled, people could commute from "great distances", or simply live 40 miles from a major city and have a 30 minute commute. Is the p…

I commuted 27 miles (straight line) via commuter rail and it took me 1.5 hours each way. Rent was free (I lived at my parents) but it was tough. I was surprised by how long it took, and by the number of service interruptions that made the trip even longer! I am now happily working 1.2 miles from home.

I live 1.4 miles from home, and walking to and from work is one of the best choices I ever made for my physical and mental well-being. If you don't walk to work and can, I highly recommend trying it.

Re: The True Cost of Commuting

#85

Post by jseliger » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 9:31 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #27

The problems with long commutes all revolve around home ownership. People want big houses on big yards. Most can't afford that close to work, which means they make the economic choice to trade the commute time for that "dream". That's fine but the problem is that government subsidizes that dream to a ridiculous degree. Urban sprawl has a huge cost in infrastructure, largely borne by the taxpayer. Low-density urban sp…

They also revolve around people who fail to understand trade-offs and opportunity costs. This never became clearer to me than after I read "The Soul of a Commuter" in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_... . I actually just submitted it to HN as a regular article; it seems germane to this discussion, and as far as I can tell no one else has offered a point.

Most interesting to me: the long discussion of the research showing the negative effects of commuting.

Re: The True Cost of Commuting

#86

Post by rbranson » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 9:31 PM UTC

Lest we not forget the number one killer of otherwise healthy people in the US -- the automobile accident. Curiously, drops in accident fatality rates[1] correlate with spikes in unemployment[2]. I'll let you draw the conclusion there.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in... [2] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html

Re: The True Cost of Commuting

#87

Post by vacri » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 9:36 PM UTC

His numbers are absolute nonsense - $125k over 10 years is only possible if you were spending your wage commuting - it's far more than just the $19/day travel costs he cites.

If you go from a 60 minute commute to a 0 minute commute, you don't suddenly get 2 hours of extra pay per day.

It's like saying "You don't get paid for that hour of chores you do every day - which means if you stop doing chores, you'll get more money!"

Re: The True Cost of Commuting

#88

Post by msellout » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 9:42 PM UTC

abalashov wrote: post #77

stouset wrote: post #68

It's amazing how many excuses people manage to come up with for how it's impossible for them to follow this kind of advice. Turns out, it's impossible up until the point that you just shut up and start doing it. Sweating is only a problem for most of you because you're unhealthy and overweight. You're overweight because you get no exercise. It's okay: I was too. Then I started cycling to work and lost 50lb. Now sweat…

Sweating is only a problem for most of you because you're unhealthy and overweight I don't know about that; body chemistries are very different. But more importantly, it sounds like you live in a place with reasonably cool, dry air. Some of us don't have that privilege. It's good advice, don't get me wrong. I myself lead a largely carless life in -- of all places, rather improbably -- downtown Atlanta, and walk about…

Sweat is not the only problem with Atlanta summers. It's the smog that keeps me indoors.

Re: The True Cost of Commuting

#89

Post by bdunbar » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 9:47 PM UTC

rbranson wrote: post #80

bdunbar wrote: post #2

In an earlier life, I lived in the Dallas area. Moving to be near work sounds great, but it would not have been practical. - I lived there for nine years. My average tenure was 18 months for each employer: Laid-off, right-sized, down-sized. Finding a new house for each new employer would have been costly. - One employer was way the heck out by the airport. There were no houses within biking distance. Or not ones I co…

Many employers are able to get away with their location decisions because as the original article states, most people do not prioritize commute mode & duration when they make major life decisions such as where to work and where to live. People have slowly grown accustomed to spending an hour a day in the car, mandatory, so the bar is very low here. Further, government subsidization of sprawl and predatory suburban to…

Employers should locate in sustainable, dense, transit-friendly neighborhoods

They should, I guess.

* Rent is going to be steep in a place like that. I worked for a concern that took space in a very nice office building. Wood paneling! We had a walled lawn with trees outside. Offices, not cubes. Rent was far more than the generic building across the street.

It was great until we had to cut costs when the economy tanked. I prefer the cheap space, beige cubes and a job as opposed to laying folks off.

* Not all employers can do that. Your average dense transit-friendly neighborhood is not going to take kindly to an electronics concern opening up 100,000 sq/ft of manufacturing space, for example.

Re: The True Cost of Commuting

#90

Post by languagehacker » Mon, Oct 10, 2011, 9:48 PM UTC

It's kind of funny this guy is couching his arguments in how much they could be saving on some house they should buy. It can be argued a house is a bad investment, too. And driving around in a used Kia means a lot less pleasure and comfort derived from doing your weekly trips to the store and what not. There's a degree of enjoyment you can get out of life that you can't necessarily quantify in terms of how it affects your mortgage.