Time · 2.7

The commute, counted properly

The commute, counted properly. What is actually the case, and how it compares with what is repeated.

For a practical software perspective on this topic, Monitask's practical guide provides a concise companion guide.

Commuting is time spent for work, at the worker's expense, and it is counted as working time almost nowhere.

The exception worth knowing

For workers with no fixed place of work, the Court of Justice of the European Union held in 2015 that travel between home and the first and last customers of the day is working time. The reasoning was that such workers are at their employer's disposal during it.

That covers a substantial population of engineers, carers, installers and inspectors, and it does not cover anybody with a fixed workplace.

The regularity that keeps appearing

Across cities, centuries and modes of transport, average daily travel time clusters around an hour. The observation is usually credited to work in the nineteen-nineties and it holds surprisingly well across very different settings.

Its interpretation is disputed. The strong version says the budget is fixed and faster transport therefore produces longer distances rather than shorter journeys. The weak version says it is an average of distributions with very different shapes and should not be treated as a constant. Both are defensible and the regularity itself is not.

What it costs

Money, directly, and unevenly: the share of income spent on getting to work is largest for the lowest paid, who are also least able to live near the work.

Time, which is unpaid. An hour each way is a quarter added to a working day and it does not appear in any hours series.

And a set of associations with reported wellbeing that are consistent in direction and modest in size, and are correlational rather than established as causal.

What remote work did to it

Removed it for part of the desk-based minority on part of their days. Aggregate figures for average commuting time fell and then partly recovered, and almost all of the movement sits inside the same group that every other change described on this site sits inside.

The trade nobody records

Housing cost against travel time. Somebody takes a longer commute for a cheaper home, and the saving and the cost are recorded in different places: one in the household budget, the other nowhere at all.

Which is why comparisons of the cost of living between cities that ignore travel time are comparing part of the arrangement.

What would change if it were counted

Weekly hours figures would rise substantially and unevenly, and the gap between occupations would widen, because commuting time correlates with the jobs that already have the least flexibility.

Nobody proposes counting it, and the thought experiment is useful anyway: it makes visible that the standard working week describes the part of the arrangement that is paid.

The employer-side arrangements

Season ticket loans, cycle schemes, shuttle buses in industrial areas, and parking, which is a substantial subsidy that is rarely described as one. Each shifts part of the cost back, and each is distributed unequally.

Where an employer provides transport for shift workers whose shifts start before public transport runs, that is a direct response to a cost the roster created, and it is comparatively rare.

What to ask about a job

How long the journey is at the times you would actually be travelling, which is not the same as the map's estimate, and what happens to it when the service is disrupted.

For shift workers the second question is the important one, because a journey that works at eight in the morning may not exist at five.

The four-day week and the commute

A compressed week removes a fifth of the commuting, which for a long commute is a substantial benefit and is rarely counted among the effects of the arrangement.

It also lengthens the days that remain, which for somebody with a long journey produces days that are very long indeed. Both effects are real and they point in opposite directions.

The journey that is not to an office

Travel between jobs during the day, which for home carers, engineers and inspectors can be several hours. Whether it is paid, and at what rate, is one of the more consequential unresolved questions in those occupations and it affects a large number of low-paid workers.

The one worth checking before accepting a job

Do the journey once, at the hour you would actually be doing it. A route that takes thirty-five minutes on a map at eleven in the morning can take ninety at eight, and nobody discovers this until the second week.

For broader context, consult US Census commuting data.