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Has the Love Affair With Driving Gotten Stuck in Traffic? (washingtonpost.com)
America's love affair with the automobile and those dreams of roaring off on open highways are on the wane as the nation grapples with too much stop-and-go traffic and too many hours spent behind the steering wheel. From a report: Those findings are contained in a report to be released Thursday by Arity, a technology research spinoff created two years ago by Allstate Insurance. Arity underscored the growing disillusionment by using an illustration: Americans, on average, spend more time in their cars -- mostly driving to and from work -- than they receive in vacation time. Arity researchers said most people average 321 hours in the car each year and get 120 hours of vacation [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; an alternative source was not immediately available.]. "To me, that really crystallizes the issue," said Lisa Jillson, who leads Arity's research and design department. "I get a certain amount of vacation time, and I spend almost three times that in my car just getting back and forth to a job."
Her research showed a notable difference between millennials and baby boomers. Unhappiness with driving becomes more pronounced, with 59 percent of millennials saying they'd "rather spend time doing more productive tasks than driving," while only 45 percent of baby boomers make that same statement.
Her research showed a notable difference between millennials and baby boomers. Unhappiness with driving becomes more pronounced, with 59 percent of millennials saying they'd "rather spend time doing more productive tasks than driving," while only 45 percent of baby boomers make that same statement.
Sounds pretty damn easy for you. But when advancement can only be had by changing jobs every 2-3 years, trying to move with every job means paying rent forever. Unless you think anyone can work anywhere they want? Otherwise most of us schmucks have to go to where the job is.
Easy to say when single.
When I was a bachelor, I would rent within walking distance of my employer, even though it was in the suburbs and it involved me cutting through some business parks. Then I got married and my wife got a job. Then my employer moved. Then we had kids and had to think about school districts. We moved to a place that is a 5 mile commute (in heavy traffic) for her and a 10 mile commute for me (in light to moderate traffic) with a decent school system. But either of us could get fired tomorrow and our commute could change, and we wouldn't be able to move without uprooting our kids and selling our home.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Sadly, as good as public transport can be for a lot of reasons, it's not much fun either and in many cases won't save you any time.
I can't do anything else while I'm driving. I can do all sorts of stuff (work, relax, etc.) while on public transit.
I don't respond to AC's.
I didn't have one in high school. By the time I did it was an expensive nuisance and constant source of stress mostly used to get me to work.
That said if I had one in high school (along with the increase in social standing that comes with one) my opinion would probably be very different.
Meanwhile I drive home against traffic each day and it's terrifying to me how bad things are. Traffic will be backed up several miles on surface streets. Freeways are at least a half mile. Meanwhile all those cars are spewing toxins and we're wasting gas and getting into wars we can't afford to feed our hungry engines.
Why do we live like this?
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we spent a few hundred on a sensor that only trips if a car pulls up. Your city's being cheap. The sensors work and work well. They're not even that expensive.
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I'd tell you but then you'd want to move here which would just make our traffic load worse. Sorry.
Sadly, for some reason, a lot of people, particularly the younger ones, don't think of a car as something that can be 'fun' or 'exciting'...it is merely a commodity, or necessary evil to get from A->B.
Not me...I've owned nothing but 2 seat sports cars all my life...I worked and saved before HS so I could get one in HS, and have saved and traded up since then (kinda like I did with my stereo)....
I too love to hit the gas and down/up shift on stretches of road when no one is around.
But sadly, not as many people appreciate that anymore.
Hell, it is getting nigh impossible to find a new car with a manual transmission anymore.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
... because I'm not. I've been commuting by bicycle for the last 20 years. It's like being on vacation while getting to work -- the best part of my day! It's a bit over 20 miles (33 km) each way so I'm on the bike for about two hours/day. What's great is that I get two hours of workout in per day for essentially one hour of time (it takes 30 minutes to drive each way). The thing most motorist don't understand is riding a bike is often faster than driving. On surface streets, it's almost always faster to ride a bike during commute hours. On average, cars go about 13 mph (21 kph) in cities, which is a very easy speed to ride a bike. Yeah, I live in California, but I've commuted year 'round in Michigan too, so there...
It was 1.5 hours from my house to the shop in Calle Ocho. Through the worst of miami. 2nd gear crawling most of the time.
Then I got a better job, closer to home. I actually get to enjoy my car now. I floor the first 3 gears then lazy-shift up the last 3. Nice, flowing traffic -- fast, mind you, but easy.
There's those who love to drive, and those who hate driving and hate cars. Guess who there's more of. Yeah. This is why cars are maybe 5% of the cars out there, and the rest are lumbering land-cows called "SUVs" and "Crossovers."
And of those 5%, maybe 1% of those are sports car. What the hell happened? What's with all the land cows?
Leave the driving to those who love cars. The rest of you, for all that is holy, get your self-driving podmobiles already!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Actually the 60's -90's you got one job and stayed with it until you died.
You might only work for 2-3 companies your entire life.
Millineials basically have to get a new job every 5 years with a new employer as employers do not give out wage increases otherwise. Why do you think wage growth has basically been negative for the last 15 years compared to inflation?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
America has written it's laws like everyone is born with a SUV strapped to their ass.
If you make our transportation systems safer for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and scooterists, it will cut down traffic, and reduce our dependence on oil.
Scooters, motorcycles, and mopeds help reduce traffic in other countries.
(Some scooters get 92MPG, many motorcycles get 64MPG.)
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
There's a few big differences between then and now:
1. Both parents work now, so it's much harder to find a place that's close for both
2. People change jobs every 2-3 years, instead of staying at one company for decades
3. Houses have become much more expensive, together with the associated transaction costs
In the '60s, there was usually just one job to consider per family. In the '70s, there was one primary job and a secondary job that was fairly easy to replace or even do without for a bit. That made things a lot easier logistically.
I grew up through those years, and you are wrong...at least from my experience, and all of my friends i grew up with along the way (and along the moves).
We didn't really settle in one place for a LONG period of time, till I was starting about 6th grade or so.
I myself moved for schooling and jobs for most of my younger years...till about age 35 or so....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Lower your expectations: buy used cars, don't renovate your damn kitchen and toilet every 2.5 years to keep up with the Joneses (20 or 30 year old appliances work fine), don't switch phones/laptops/iPads every year, buy a small house with a small yard, or better yet, a 2-family where some other schmoe pays your mortgage.
Then you won't need a second income or to job-jump to "advance" every 2-3 years.
Driving is the means, not the end. The love affair was not with the automobile, but with getting out and exploring new places.
It has been shown that it's nearly impossible to build enough roadway in high traffic areas because as soon as you add more roadway it gets filled to capacity *immediately*.
You do know there's a whole generation in between Boomers and Millennials right? A lot of Boomers are retired now, so if this research is being done on commuters, the people you are calling "Baby Boomers" are probably Generation X.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
"Our study shows average_vacation_time average_commute_time".
How is this significant? Does anyone commuting think like this? I just view commuting as part of a typical work day.
It should come to no ones surprise that my vacation_days my_work_days.
It is an interesting point...
I used to hate driving. But after saying, "Y'know, if I'm going to spend an hour-and-a-half a day in my car, five days per week, I'm going to get a car that I don't mind being in." So I went and bought a nice car. And I didn't hate driving anymore.
There are plenty of people who look at a car as a necessary evil--"I just need something that will get me from Point A to Point B." They buy that and then they complain that it isn't comfortable to drive for two hours. Well, maybe you should have included that in your requirements.
When I drive, I prefer to post things on Slashd{#`%${%&`+'${`%&NO CARRIER
#DeleteFacebook
What the fuck are you arguing against? Somebody said move to your job rather than care about the improvement of roads and transportation. The other person said that's not a practical solution for huge swaths of people when there's two jobs and kids. Your point is, apparently, "Yes, you're right, it's not a solution, stop whining about it."
Like somebody saying, "Hey this could make things better" and your answer is "My perceived experience with this inconvenience means you shouldn't be interested in whether the conditions dealing with it deteriorate or improve." You're a dumbfuck, cayenne8. Every fucking day.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I agree with you 100%. I'm actively trying to move from the US to Europe primarily for this reason.
I lived in Europe for almost 10 years, but not for this reason. Public transit in Germany, where I lived, actually sucks. Don't get me wrong, it's great compared to the U.S., but that's not saying much. Trains were way overpriced, almost always overfilled, and often cancelled. Local transit was a bus service that took almost an hour to go from work to home, even though a direct route would be 10 km, because the only bus took a very circuitous route to where I lived. I started riding a bike to work instead, but that's not always possible in the Winter. After five years of public transit I had had enough. I would have bought a second car for commuting to work, but my job didn't pay enough to afford both a home and a second car, so I left instead and returned to the U.S.
You know what happens when a city stops growing? It stagnates and dies. Cities plan for growth, and when it stops happening, bad things happen to the plans based on growth. Governments can grow quite easily, but shrinking is very hard, and often behind the curve creating a death spiral for the city. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it is ugly.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Except new developments, new jobs, and new residents mean more tax revenue. Local governments all want that and they don't want to spend it on infrastructure. They want to spend it on nice offices, pay raises, pensions, parks, signs, chambers of commerce, and anything except roads, schools, police, fire, or water services.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
There is some truth to that. As you build more capacity, traffic in that spot gets worse, but traffic *in general* gets better. The traffic on the main throughfare gets worse, but the traffic on the side streets and alternate routes improves. The key is to expand multiple roads and not just the one.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
No, it's not because I'm suburban.
My job is suburban. Even so, for a while when I was single I lived in the city before I got tired of the commute and high rent.
My kids simply cannot use the public education system in the city, so it's a non-starter there. I'd have to pay for private school.
My wife actually works in the city, which is why here commute is so hellish.
Our compromise is that we live in a first-ring suburb with excellent bus and train access. We can be downtown in 20 minutes on public transit, which ironically is better downtown access than when I lived in Manhattan. The schools aren't the absolute best, but they are good enough if you stay on top of your kids, and you don't need to worry about testing into a magnet school. We've had the same cars for 10 years and we've maybe driven 110,000 miles between the two of them... we're not exactly captives to the automobile.
Anyway my point is we did think ahead, spent a lot of time planning out where we are in relation to our jobs and weighing factors like access to the city and schools. But I'm not single, so I sit in traffic.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Actually the 60's -90's you got one job and stayed with it until you died.
This is a myth. Average job tenure is higher today that it was in the past.
Sure, there were some people that had jobs for life (and still are today), but that was not common, especially if you were female or non-white.
The "golden age" of jobs for a lifetime never existed.
Why do you think wage growth has basically been negative for the last 15 years compared to inflation?
It hasn't. Median wages, corrected for inflation, are higher than 15 years ago.
Median household income has gone up less, because of a decline in workforce participation, but even that has not been negative.
No need to argue, we have data!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Cities plan for growth, and when it stops happening, bad things happen
Ponzi planned for growth.
Many perfectly viable businesses have upper limits on growth and seem to succeed without it. My dentist, for one example.
Have gnu, will travel.
2 People work in most households so divide that wage by 2
I saw my dad support us during the 60-70s easily with blue collar work and mom get a part time job when the 80s S&L bust impacted the mortgage.
She never stopped working after that
A manual-gearbox used to perform better, get better gas mileage cost less and be more reliable. All of this has changed with modern automatic transmissions. About the only reason left for manual is the "fun factor," which is only really fun in long stretches of empty road, stuck in traffic it just adds to the stress
Yup, and that's why one of my coworkers bitched every day about his awful commute from San Francisco to San Jose, because his wife was the one who made the most money. But he still did the commute, he wasn't just going to quit and stay at home because you don't just give up that extra $160K/year because the commute is long.
Haha, the old Slashdot standard of mistaking possible with practical or even desirable.
I figure a job change has to be really good to make the transaction costs of moving worthwhile, moving an entire family could cost upwards of $20,000 when you factor in market-necessary home improvements, selling costs, buying costs, moving costs, and any changes necessary to live in the new house (everything from fixing what's broken to furniture that fits the new house). Moving more than 3 times probably nullifies the financial gain from more lucrative positions.
In fact, I'd even argue that economics suggests that frequent moving isn't that common, mostly because homes are generally oriented towards ownership and not rental. If frequent moving was economically desirable, we'd have a different economic structure around housing oriented towards longer term leases and rentals vs ownership, and probably an entirely different housing model than single family homes.
While it's true there's a lot of rental out there, it's generally occupied by either childless old people, very young people or low-income families. Family housing generally isn't rental, and even if you wanted it your selection would be pretty tough because 3-4 BR, 1500 sq ft rentals are really uncommon. It's 1-2 BR and smaller sq footage.
Moving a lot for a job is like chasing a mirage, it's all energy spent and little actually gained. It's best to min-max housing location, likely employment centers, commutes, schools, and then stay put. There's so much more to choosing your residence than commute -- access to shops, restaurants, recreation, etc.