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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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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 need to argue, we have data!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Gas tax comes nowhere near to paying for the cost of building and maintaining our streets and roads.
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.
Actually, you can thank General Motors for the love of cars.
Because back in the early 20th century, public transit in North America was actually.... extremely good. In any town or city, bit or small, you could get around using public transit. between horse drawn carriages to street cars it was a completely normal way to travel. Not just New York, or San Francisco, but any twon in any state.
Of course, the Model T brought cars into the mix, but not by much - they were relatively finicky things and you still had to contend with a lot of pedestrian traffic everywhere.
What replaced the street car was buses, which were considered high tech and advanced (since they didn't require rails). This did lead to the failure of many streetcar companies, since people flocked the novel bus that could go more places (and did) over the street car.
General Motors came along and basically decided to buy out all the failing street car companies. They didn't replace them, just bought them up, shut them down and left it as things were. Advertised the heck out of cars giving freedom (we're still talking early 20th century here) and there you go. After the second world war, the car became the status symbol and everyone bought into it, the interstate system was developed and so on. Plus, cities spread out into suburbs designed for cars and you end up with what we have today.
Hard to imagine, but at one time, the USA had a better public transportation system than Europe. Even today it still doesn't quite match what we had back then.
American car culture was literally developed from advertising - just like how weddings were transformed by a few De Beers ads insisting you must have a diamond ring.