Long Commutes Bad for You


Via Planetizen:

From the Austin American-Statesman:

Besides taking time away from family, a long commute can be harmful to your health. Researchers have found that hours spent behind the wheel raise blood pressure and cause workers to get sick and stay home more often. Commuters have lower thresholds for frustration at work, suffer more headaches and chest pains, and more often display negative moods at home in the evenings.

“You tell someone they need to exercise or go to physical therapy, but how can they? They leave at 5 a.m. and get home at 7 or 8 p.m. at night,” said Robert Squillante, an orthopedic surgeon in Fredericksburg, Va., who has treated patients for back pain and other commuting-related problems.

Constant road vibrations and sitting in the same position for a long time are bad for the neck and spine, he said, and put special pressure on the bottom disc in the lower back, the one most likely to deteriorate over the years.


37 responses to “Long Commutes Bad for You”

  1. The New Yorker article is interesting in that they don’t measure commute by how far it is but by how long it takes. I think that is correct, but of course that means if you make it faster for people to get somewhere some people will choose to travel there from even further away. Which is the fundamental problem with our devotion to adding road capacity to ease congestion.

  2. ” Besides taking time away from family, a long commute can be harmful to your health. Researchers have found that hours spent behind the wheel raise blood pressure and cause workers to get sick and stay home more often.” Quantifying the first two lines; long commutes are more about the time they take rather than the distance traveled.

    Therefore, one conclusion that can be reached is: Investing in and building more highway infrastructure to meet increased demand that also reduces both congestion and travel times can be viewed as healthy to commuters..

  3. Terry wrote: Investing in and building more highway infrastructure to meet increased demand that also reduces both congestion and travel times can be viewed as healthy to commuters.

    Terry –

    I agree with the desired outcome implied in your statement.

    I think the point of disagreement among a number of people comes from skepticism about whether such goals of simultaneously reducing congestion and travel times are readily achievable simply by adding lane capacity.

    Research tends to indicate that people will tolerate a certain amount of commute time, with distance being only a secondary factor. Thus, increasing road capacity facilitates people living further out making longer-distance trips, but (even though it can be argued there are benefits to further-apart origin-destination commutes being served) because more people are able to achieve a commute within the tolerable time limits, the roadway capacity quickly fills up and the same level of net congestion returns, making life nearly or as difficult for the people who live close-in.

    This is why much of the debate centers around the issue of local (especially central) communities being concerned that roadway expansion will degrade their community for the benefit of longer-distance commuters.

    Much of the opposition to the CRC big bridge proposal stems from people concerned that an existing bottleneck over the river will be shifted south into populated areas in a freeway corridor that is expensive or impractical to upgrade without further harming the local community.

    These are the factors which influence catch-phrases such as “you can’t build your way out of congestion”. Such statements don’t capture the full complexity of what is going on (you can always build yourself more capacity, and more people can use that capacity, but the level of congestion experienced by each individual commuter won’t go away for long) but they do get at the sentiment of why major roadway projects face growing opposition these days.

    – Bob R.

  4. So a long commute is bad for your health, eh?

    Guess I better buy a car. Travel time from my home to work via private automobile: 25 minutes.

    By TriMet local bus (because no express service is offered at my time of commute nor to my home stop): 45 minutes (plus 10 minutes of “waiting” time to work, and up to 30 minutes of “waiting time” going home).

    By TriMet express bus (when it was offered): 35 minutes (plus appropriate waiting time, likely up to 10 minutes each way)

    As for the back injuries, well TriMet has some ergonomically designed seats that are better for one’s back. Problem is, they’re only installed in the 2500-2800 series busses (the newest ones). My particular trip tends to rate the 1400s or the 1700/1800s – the oldest buses in the fleet.

    Another reason to drive, I guess…it’s better for my health.

  5. some foolish notions here, in years past I did and could take long trips, have crossed they country 19 times, the trick is to get out and stretch the TB at east every other rest area is a good rule.. right now I drive three blocks to the park and ride [Willow Creek] then max to town… I still enjoy long rides to the beach, to California and my monthly trip to Ft. Lewis, take a break at about every 60 to 70 miles..

  6. Ya see… the point is, regardless of mode, is to not live further than 5-10 minutes away from where you work.

    But that leaves people with a lot of choices to make, most don’t make wise decisions and end up with the problems anyway (long commutes for instance).

    So the study found something out that is obvious. Will people do something about it? Nope. As long as costs, REAL COSTS, are not associated with transportation and it’s all subsidized, encouraged, forced, engineered, etc. onto the populace then we will continue to sprawl, many will increase trip times etc.

    My point. Forget the mode, forget the models, forget all that mess, it’s useless. What people need to do is pay for their service. If they pay, they’ll make smarter decisions.

    Only today is the cost of ownership, fuel, capitol cost, etc, starting to directly impact commuters the way it did 50-150 years ago. The reason we built smarter up until about 50-60 years ago was because people more directly realized the actual costs of transport and made decisions accordingly.

    …ala they lived closer in, in more compact conditions, applied better architecture and city design, and it all came from individuals not some big ole’ hand of the urban/suburban planner. Freedom of choice and decision on market conditions built our cities. It could be done again, but not until the cost factor is brought back into play DIRECTLY against the people causing the costs to be incurred.

  7. I find the ability to stand up, stretch, sleep, and generally move around a bit on the bus, MAX, streetcar, and Amtrak is really beneficial to coping with long rides – which you can’t do in a car.

  8. ^^^ Not true. Doing any physical on your way to work is better than just sitting in a car while pushing pedals.

    Ie, if you ride the bus, somehow you get to the bus. Then somehow you get from the bus to your job.

    I’ll give you a hint: see those little things attached to the ends of your legs?

    Obviously walking and bicycling would top the commuting methods that have the most health effects.

  9. Only today is the cost of ownership, fuel, capitol cost, etc, starting to directly impact commuters the way it did 50-150 years ago. The reason we built smarter up until about 50-60 years ago was because people more directly realized the actual costs of transport and made decisions accordingly.

    Uh, this is an over-simplification.

    Most of the “knowledge” jobs that Portland is proud of didn’t even exist 10 years ago, much less 20 or 30 years ago. The Silicon Forest of the 1970s was Tektronix, and that was it. Intel didn’t exist in 1970 in Oregon. Nike was a tiny company. Most companies didn’t have “I.T.” departments; those that did just had a few people for the mainframe system (which was a small number of people, instead of half of the Portland Metro area claiming that they are “webmasters”.)

    Call Centers didn’t exist, except for AT&T’s operators. Take my job for example: my job wouldn’t exist in the form it does today, 20 years ago. I’d be located in some local office, such as Astoria or Lincoln City, or Corvallis, Albany, Medford, Hood River…who knows where. Of the 200 people I work with, maybe 10 of those jobs would physically be in Portland.

    As we have entered the age of “centralization”, we now have a large number of jobs located in the large cities; of course only so many people can live in one area – thus we have the spread out suburb effect.

    With more people come more job opportunities; however not necessarily in the central city. My wife and I work 10 miles apart; yes that is a decision we have to make, but the alternative to what some propose (live by your work) would result in either a drastic pay cut (due to a lack of similar jobs for one of us, in the area of the other’s work) and/or drastically increased housing prices. So we are in the situation we are in.

    So for someone to state that we need to consider the costs – you bet I do. I would rather, from a financial standpoint, only have to own one car. But from a time standpoint (including spending time with my family) the bus (the option for which I have right now) is very costly.

    Can I move closer? Well we’re looking, and so far we have come up with a lot of options which don’t offer the same livability (another Portland buzzword) – poor quality housing (condition of the housing unit is poor), crime/location concerns, lack of opportunities for my son (i.e. nearby parks and play areas), safety concerns (nearby highways). Plus we have to consider access to transit, which has eliminated about half of the potential locations.

  10. Adron:

    I agree with your first point – that ideally, it is best ot live close to one’s job, (friends/relatives, shopping, schools, etc).

    Clearly this is impossible today given the high costs of say, living near downtown Portland, at least when examined in the same breath as identifying how most people want to live.

    There is absolutely no question that, in real dollar terms, transportation in this country has never, ever been cheaper than it is today. There really is no disputing this fact but I would love for someone to post a link to a credible examination of transportation economic history that disputes this if they feel otherwise.

    Characterizing the past as being ‘smarter’ or ‘better’ is a) not necessarily true, b) not relevant in making policy decisions today – times have changed.

    In fact, the ‘past’ was an era of relatively poor mobility and transportation choices when compared with today.

    I hear ya – it’s frustrating that we all don’t want to live in a little utopia (I would, though).

    It’s just too bad that the overwhelming number of people really just don’t give a shit about anything else except themselves.

    Now that is the real problem.

  11. Smart businesses will begin the move away from Portland to suburban sites. That is where a majority of the working public want to live and I am basing that on where they are building family type housing.

    As long as the plan is to not provide reasonable/ affordable housing options, young families will continue to move to the suburbs.

    Belleview Washington is that example where it now has approximately equal employment opportunities to those who commute into Seattle.

    This should happen here, employers, move away from Portland. You can get close to where your workers live and help save the environment.

  12. I used to ride Trimet to work, but found it annoying to be on a crowed bus with someone nearby wearing a headset and listening to the local station, or whatever so high I could hear it a number of seats away and usually sloshing a cup of coffee around.
    Personally I found the homeless and kids to be less of a problem.
    Now I drive and it is relaxing. That is mainly because transit doesn’t go near my job location, but I do pay a hell of a lot in Trimet taxes.
    MW

  13. “This should happen here, employers, move away from Portland. You can get close to where your workers live and help save the environment.”

    Bull.

    So you move from central Portland to Hillsboro. Then your employees from the East side have 3x the commute.

    So you move from central Portland to Lake Oswego. Then your employees from Clark County have 3x the commute.

    The problem is not where the businesses are located, but rather the fact that Suburban development is extremely highly subsidized. It is probably, in fact, more highly subsidized than places like South Waterfront. The big difference being that we don’t have one line item to point at for the Suburbs where we do have one for SoWa.

    So that people can have their “private playgrounds and parks” – otherwise called yards – that kids largely ignore anyway, they move out to the suburbs. Then they need two cars because there is no transit and both people work in different directions. So they have twice as many trips, and need bigger roads. So bigger roads get built, and the suburbs get unappealing as they get crowded, and then people move farther out. Thus a never ending cycle.

    What if, every time a house is built, they had to pay the FULL and REAL cost of roads, sewers, fire and police service, and schools? I mean not just for their individual property but for the distance around them that they impact? It would drive the cost of housing in the suburbs up dramatically. As it is, the infrastructure cannot handle the massive growth.

    So when we consider transportation options, we need to look at why people live where they do, and what are the costs.

    I could see some sort of “commute tax” that would maybe work. Perhaps taxing people based on the distance between their workplace and their home. Or something.

    Heck, I don’t have the answers. I simply know that one of the benefits of putting offices downtown or at least in the central city is that it is the closest location to people who live on either side of town. You move to one side of town and you lose the people from the other side of town. That is kind of why the central cities exist anymore… They are in the middle. (Usually).

  14. How is suburban life, quote, extremely highly subsidized, compared to SoWa/Pearl District?

    I don’t receive any property tax break from where I live; in fact if anything I am subsidizing TriMet more for its poor transit service in Tualatin than what is offered in other parts of the metro region (namely, Portland, which built a Streetcar system on its own and then demanded TriMet pay a portion of the operating costs, even though Streetcar is not part of TriMet’s network).

    I pay my share of taxes for police and fire services (why should I be sorry that Tualatin’s crime rate is lower, and why should I be sorry that Tualatin doesn’t need an extensive array of fire services, such as a dedicated hazmat team and trucks that can reach 40 stories when the tallest building in town is only four stories?) We have numerous parks in our city; why should I be sorry that Tualatin chose not to own golf courses, swimming pools, or even a race track?

    As for those “private parks”, property taxes are assessed on a yard too; there is no such thing as “front and back yard property tax exemption”. If you own more land you pay more. On the other hand, does a grassy yard require police/fire protection any more than the house that is surrounded by the yard? To water a lawn takes water; and we pay for that water consumption, so the idea that someone who chooses to live in the ‘burbs is extremely highly subsidized doesn’t pan out.

    As for the commute tax – it already exists; you pay more for gas. If you want to create a whole separate tax, you might as well kiss employers goodbye.

    My company is one such example – few of our customers actually are in Portland; and our employees come from all over the Portland area as my building is downtown; our corporate headquarters is in the Lloyd Center. Does anyone reasonably expect that all of the employees should live in the downtown core?

    On the other hand, the majority of our customers (and our revenues) is in Utah and Wyoming. Instill a commute tax, and you can kiss “goodbye” over 1,000 good paying jobs to Salt Lake City. Nike just moved a logistics center to Memphis; why is its corporate headquarters in Portland, instead of, say, Colorado Springs (where the Olympic Team training center is)? Intel could just as easily move more manufacturing jobs offshore, then why is there anything in Portland?

    On the other hand, there is zero effort to make close-in housing affordable and desirable for most. There is nothing wrong with wanting to live in a single-family home and there is nothing wrong with wanting to have children. This is NOT China, where housing decisions are based solely upon the convenience of the government. If someone wants to tell me that I should have to live in the Pearl or SoWa, then show me Homer Williams offering me a two bedroom condo for less than $900 a month without fear of being evicted due to his desire to sell off and make a quick buck (in deference to the hundreds of manufactured homeowners who have had to abandon their homes).

    Don’t hold your breath, it ain’t gonna happen.

  15. JK: People are missing an important point about density and commute time:

    Commute times go UP as density goes up – there is a strong positive correlation between density and commute time. The distances are short, but the heavy congestion that is always associated with density makes the time long.

    Erik Halstead On the other hand, there is zero effort to make close-in housing affordable and desirable for most. There is nothing wrong with wanting to live in a single-family home and there is nothing wrong with wanting to have children.
    JK: There is actually an effort to make housing expensive so that high density will be economically viable. (Denisty is more expensive than single family hosing, so it is only economically viable when land prices skyrocket, or heavy subsidies are give to the developer class.)

    Erik Halstead This is NOT China, where housing decisions are based solely upon the convenience of the government.
    JK: Metro disagrees.

    Erik Halstead If someone wants to tell me that I should have to live in the Pearl or SoWa, then show me Homer Williams offering me a two bedroom condo for less than $900 a month..
    JK: I suspect that part of the idea is to raise housing prices all over the Portland area to the point that minorities are driven out.

    Thanks
    JK

  16. JK said “There is actually an effort to make housing expensive so that high density will be economically viable.”

    He is absolutely correct. This past weekend I had a candid conversation with some Canadians from the Vancouver area; you all know, that city north of the border that many people here in Portland praise the transport structure of and want to pattern density after. This conversation (only) however was not the gilded tour those who visited Vancouver a few months ago received. As an example; in Vancouver, the median home price on the eastside is about $650,000.00, more than double the median price in Portland. On the westside, the median home price is closer to one million. Remember too, that British Columbia has their own version of land use policies. They draw a line around farm land rather than cities.

  17. Well, if Portland would commit to using the funds for mass transit, freeways, and local road improvements I’d bet they could get support for a builder’s fee.

    Some cities in the US charge by the square footage of the lot, or the building, or the number of housing units. I’m sure there’s some formula that could provide more money to shorten commutes.

  18. Erik Halstead said:

    “If someone wants to tell me that I should have to live in the Pearl or SoWa, then show me Homer Williams offering me a two bedroom condo for less than $900 a month…”

    http://www.thesitka.com/index-Plans.html

    note: it wasn’t developed by Homer.

    On the other hand, there have been a number of smaller projects that offer reasonable prices – affordability – to people in close-in developments. The most affordable units actually tend to be in low-rise 5-story buildings. High rises cost much more to build.

    The Benson Tower was also originally slated to be chock full of affordable condos (non-subsidized), but then the principal investor died in an airplane crash.

  19. The Sitka Apartments has income restrictions; for which I am well above the restriction. So I don’t qualify to live there.

    I guess (my wife and) I could voluntarily quit my job and live off of welfare, so that the government could subsidize my existance – give me free food, free daycare, free transportation, next-to-free housing…

  20. Zachary writes: “There is absolutely no question that, in real dollar terms, transportation in this country has never, ever been cheaper than it is today. There really is no disputing this fact but I would love for someone to post a link to a credible examination of transportation economic history that disputes this if they feel otherwise.”
    While I do not have a link to this I do have a notation from a BLS study that reads, “with the decline of choices consumers have seen transportation costs rise from 10% of income in the 1930s to 20% in recent years and with low income groups actually paying as much of 40%”

  21. Michael:

    Please check page 2 of the following:
    http://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-34.pdf

    I didn’t necessarly mean transport as a percentage of income (though the census figures bear that out except during the depression/wars), as much as dollar expenditure per mile traveled. I’m not exactly what Adron meant by his comment but since he implied commuting costs (and the average commute has increased in length in miles over time), I inferred that it was on a cost per mile basis.

    Check this link for VMT over the years:
    http://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-41.pdf

    Clearly, if VMT has rise, and the cost of transport as a % of income has dropped, then there is no questions that the cost per mile traveled has dropped. With more efficient vehicles available, and the cost to own generally much lower (interest rates, repairs, etc), and the overall cost to produce vehicles lower, I think it’s fair to say that the cost of transport, on a per mile basis has never been lower.

    I also would argue that on a historical basis over the history of human transport – things hav never ever been chepaer for the level of personal mobility we see today.

    Now – if you want to talk about externalities – Co2 emissions, noise, water pollution, healthh costs associated with travel, etc…well – that would not be a happy conversation for anyone. Gulp!

  22. Bob R: I think the point of disagreement among a number of people comes from skepticism about whether such goals of simultaneously reducing congestion and travel times are readily achievable simply by adding lane capacity.

    Bob T:

    They are, because congestion is not just commute
    length as some imply, and lane mileage per vehicle
    is what determines congestion rates in most cases.
    A 40-mile ride home without much of any bumper-to-bumper time is far preferable to a ten mile ride in stop-n-go traffic.

    Besides, when arterial and expressway or other highway lanes are added, safety rises elsewhere because cars are taken off of residential streets
    which people use as alternate routes to avoid
    congestion. Using such streets as alternate routes leads to pedestrians (especially kids) getting hit.

    Bob Tiernan

  23. Let’s get that second deck on 43 thru Dunthorpe with a big tri-level interchange in downtown Lake Oswego to help out the West Linn commute. Add the Oak Grove-Kruse Woods expressway through the LO Hunt Club, and we can begin to solve the commute problems in Clackamas county.

  24. Bob T wrote: A 40-mile ride home without much of any bumper-to-bumper time is far preferable to a ten mile ride in stop-n-go traffic.

    Do you have opinion polling data to back that up?

    Speaking only for myself, I prefer a short distance commute, especially if the times are comparable.

    When I lived in Corvallis, a number of people regularly commuted to Albany (about 10 miles). On the primary route, depending on the origin/destination, there was often stop & go traffic at peak hours. However, I never heard anyone exclaim that they’d rather commute to Salem via freeway.

    At that time, our company had a client in Newport which required a frequent mid-day “commute” between Corvallis and Newport on rural Highway 20. I could usually do it in less than an hour, but I’d still rather have gone to Albany in “stop & go” traffic.

    Looking at the numbers, at an average speed of 60mph, the 40 mile commute would take 40 minutes.

    For a 10 mile “stop & go” commute to take 40 minutes, the average speed would have to be 15mph, or spending two-thirds the time at 22.5mph and one-third the time at zero.

    – Bob R.

  25. Clearly, if VMT has rise, and the cost of transport as a % of income has dropped, then there is no questions that the cost per mile traveled has dropped.

    No, that does not follow. At least not logically. If income has increased faster than VMT there has not necessarily been any reduction in cost per mile. In fact, I believe the cost per mile allowance for tax purposes has gone up faster than the rate of inflation. So, at least for those who drive, the cost per mile has gone up.

  26. In addition, I’d like to see highway 26 expanded to 16 lanes from West 185th through Gresham. Bore some more holes through the West Hills, cut a big trench through downtown and the rest of Portland, and BAM – we should have traffic congestion solved.

    Highways only cost about $5 million/lane mile, so it shouldn’t cost much. Probably cheaper than the streetcar.

  27. That is a very valid point Ross.

    But the situation we have seen in the US is that VMT has increased much faster than real income, all at the same time that the cost of transport has decreased as a % of that income…

    But honestly it really doesn’t make a difference in the big scheme of things. The demand for personal transport is so high that there will be a supply of it in one form or another for a long time to come.

  28. VR: Suburban development….is probably, in fact, more highly subsidized than places like South Waterfront. The big difference being that we don’t have one line item to point at for the Suburbs where we do have one for SoWa.

    Bob T: It would require one massive and impossible-to-hush conspiracy to have such a massive subsidy arrangement without a single item to point to.

    Bob Tiernan

  29. Lenny Anderson Says:

    Let’s get that second deck on 43 thru Dunthorpe with a big tri-level interchange in downtown Lake Oswego to help out the West Linn commute. Add the Oak Grove-Kruse Woods expressway through the LO Hunt Club, and we can begin to solve the commute problems in Clackamas county.
    JK: Great! Go for it! Let me know how to help the campaign.

    Thanks
    JK

  30. Hawthorne the hidden costs of suburban development they note are pretty eye opening.
    JK: How do they compare to the $100,000(and still increasing) per unit DIRECT subsidy to the 5000 high density living units in the SoWhat?

    Note that this is the direct subsidy only, not counting all those indirect costs that people like to conjer up for things that they don’t like.

    Thanks
    JK

  31. Local cities (and in some cases) counties are responsible for providing development services to growing areas.

    Portland doesn’t have anywhere to grow, it is nearly landlocked (to the north by the Columbia River/Washington state line/Vancouver, to the east by Gresham, to the southeast by Happy Valley, Damascus, Milwaukie and Clackamas, to the south by Lake Oswego, to the southwest by Tigard, and to the west by Beaverton. To the northwest there is Forest Park, a mountain range, and a very small strip of land along the west bank of the Columbia River, and Sauvie Island.)

    Portland doesn’t provide development services to the cities that can grow, such as Forest Grove, Cornelius, Tualatin, Wilsonville and Oregon City. In most cities, developers are responsible for installing neighborhood streets and infrastructure; however certain collector/arterial streets might be constructed by the city.

    I agree that large developments should have to pay for any improvements that are required such as schools, additional police/fire protection, and so on – but most of the transportation “subsidy” is already paid for by the developers.

    However in Portland, the city has given millions in outright subsidies to redevelop industrial areas for high density housing (and luxury housing at that), have installed expensive transit systems (namely the Streetcar), new streets (at city expense, not developer expense), and on top of that have then given tax breaks and tax deferrals.

    Unlike the new neighborhood in Tualatin that doesn’t require anyone outside of Tualatin to pay for – Portland’s Streetcar is subsidized by TriMet, the regional transportation agency. That directly translates to less transit dollars for Tualatin – but a new subdivision in Tualatin that requires ongoing street maintenance doesn’t siphon dollars off from Portland. Fair?

    ODOT has had to spend money to rebuild the north end of Oregon 43 where it merges with I-5 for SoWa. Who pays? I do.

    Tualatin has two freeway interchanges, one of which primarily does not serve Tualatin (and was upgraded using development dollars). The second interchange which serves nearly the entire city has not been upgraded in years despite new development. Is it fair that SoWa, a “transit-oriented development”, has next-to-new freeway access; whereas Tualatin, an “anti-transit suburb” of 25,000 residents, filters nearly every car through a single interchange?

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