Eps 1: Commuting is lacking community
Research from around the world is leading psychologists to conclude that the heightened stress that commuting puts on individuals and their families can easily overshadow the work and home gains they might realize.
Several studies have shown that long-distance commuters suffer from psychosomatic disorders at a much higher rate than people with short trips to work.
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Finally, the report stresses the importance of improving public transport and calls for an increase in the number of super-commuters on the region's most expensive subways. The report concludes that the growth of the share of "super commuters" is likely to continue, as more households are displaced from expensive cities and inner cities without major investment in public transport.
In 2016, the US Census Bureau found that the average commuter took more than 26 minutes to get to work, an increase of 1.5 minutes from 2015.
That number may sound like less than much - after all, 26 minutes is enough time to finish a podcast - but some historians argue that a half-hour commute since caveman days is optimal. Since the Census began in 1980, the average American has covered more than 1.5 minutes a day than in 1990. Driving distances longer than 45 minutes have increased by 12 percent over that period, and 90-minute commutes are 64 percent more common than in 1990, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
According to a recent study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), not only do we have less time for ourselves, but we are also in a terrible mental state.
Interestingly, 37 per cent of people with significant work commitments are more likely to have financial worries. Blough and Allen are part of a growing national problem of commuters who rely largely on public transportation - buses, trains, and other forms of public transportation - for economic reasons. The problem is so-called "extreme commuters," like Bloug, who spend 90 minutes or more by bus or train because skyrocketing housing costs in the Washington region and other metropolitan areas mean they cannot afford to live closer to their workplace. Gas and transit prices are likely to play a major role, but interestingly, they are not the only factors.
It also sweeps hourly - wage workers who may have had difficulty finding affordable housing and spend a disproportionate amount of time travelling to and from work on broken and unreliable transit systems.
Nationwide, 3.1 million workers commuted for supercommuters in 2015, up from 2.5 million in 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2016, that number rose to 4 million, and the number of super-commuters rose to 1.2 million - a 1,000 percent increase from the previous year.
Joe Cortright of the City Observatory has criticized this obsession, pointing out that the growth of super-commuters over the past decade is largely due to economic growth, and the number of commuters involved in this grim daily ritual by car has remained largely the same. Many of these "super commuter" stories are also about people who take highly skilled jobs in cities without uprooting their families. There's the chief medical officer commuting from his Manhattan home to neighboring Boston, or a chief operating officer flying to Toronto or Vancouver every week. They are determined to move their jobs out of the city without uprooting their families.
The railroad has no idea what will manifest itself in the congestion at the stops, Ugay told Rappler, but pointed out that the volume is likely to be much higher than in the past due to lower commuter numbers and public transport. He predicted that waiting times outside stations will be about two to three hours, in addition to the usual two to three hours waiting time inside the station.
In response to the risk of infection, Ugay said many commuters had begun switching to active modes of transport such as cycling and walking. One might assume that less healthy people are more likely to continue to commute actively, which creates a zero trend compared to passive and active modes of transport. They start with a higher percentage of people with low blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and heart disease.
The financial security required to travel long distances by car instead of public transport and the choice of place of residence are linked to good health in a way that was not fully taken into account in the analysis. However, a stressful life situation in which one feels it necessary, such as a job loss or divorce, is not associated with negative health consequences, which means that there is no reverse cause. The assessment of commuter time may have been influenced by the mood of respondents. Negative moods can be responsible for the exaggeration of commute time by dependent misclassifications, which leads to increased association estimates.