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February 15, 2006
Timing is Everything
One benefit of living in a compact neighborhood rather than a sprawling suburb: you don't spend as much time in your car. The following chart, derived from a national transportation survey, makes the point pretty clearly:
The bottom line: if you live in a compact place, you don't drive as much. Of course, the total amount of time that people spend getting from place to place doesn't vary much by neighborhood density. What changes is how people travel. If you live in a compact neighborhood, you're more likely to take a trip on foot or by transit. If you live in a sprawling one, you take virtually all your trips inside a car, truck, minivan, or SUV.
Obviously, if you like spending time in your car -- and some people definitely seem to view driving as quality private time -- then this information probably won't affect you one way or another. But if you don't really like driving, then this may give you a clue about how to cut your car time in half.
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I'll admit it - I'm one of those people who sees driving as quality private time. Any numbers on others like me? What's the best way to get folks like me to find non-driving modes of transportation equally relaxing?
Now the only caveat I have regarding driving and "me time" is that traffic jams do NOT count as "me time". In fact they're so stressful as to make me swear I'm done with driving altogether.
Posted by: Rachel | Feb 15, 2006 6:45:44 PM
Rachel -
Good questions. I suspect that a pretty substantial number of people enjoy their car time, given that so many of us spend so much time in our cars. That said, time spent in a commute tends to be just about the worst we spend all day (see, e.g., this post...
http://cascadiascorecard.typepad.com/blog/2004/12/tv_weak.html ), but even so we certainly spend a lot of our time commuting. And on top of that, some happiness research suggests that most of us don't do a particularly good job of predicting or understanding what really makes us happy. I certainly don't.
So some evidence suggests that lots of us enjoy at least some of the time we spend in cars -- you're certainly not alone -- but at the same time, much of our car time is kinda depressing.
On how to enjoy non-motorized modes -- I don't really have any advice. I like to walk, and am lucky enough to live in a place where I can walk for some errands. It's often the only exercise I'll get all day. And I even like riding the bus -- it's one of the few times that I share space with people outside my family and coworkers, so it reminds me that I really am part of a community. Plus I like people watching, reading, doing puzzles -- things that are easy enough to do on the bus, but hard to do in a car. I seem to be in the minority on this, though, so I'm not sure that I have any advice about how *you* can enjoy that time more.
Posted by: Clark Williams-Derry | Feb 16, 2006 12:52:41 PM
A friendly Typepad tip, for successfully connecting to the hyperlink that Clark mentions above:
Simply remove the ) and the ,
from the end of the URL
Posted by: Michelle Parker | Feb 16, 2006 4:04:12 PM
Thanks for the catch, Michelle! I think I fixed the link now.
Posted by: Clark Williams-Derry | Feb 16, 2006 4:42:25 PM
Rachel - have you tried the bus? You can pretty reliably count on being able to concentrate on whatever you want to do when you're riding the bus. At least I have a far higher confidence I'll be able to enjoy my time on the bus than I do with the crap shoot that are the Seattle area highways.
A book and some headphones are really all you need to recapture the time and there are a couple fantastic resources for getting around on the bus in Seattle and the northwest. http://www.mybus.org covers Seattle (and has an SMS service if you don't have WAP browsing) and there are nice LED times for a bunch of the stops around Vancouver. UW's ITS has a bunch of cool platforms where they're trying to improve this in Seattle: http://www.its.washington.edu/
You may pay for getting personal time on the bus with some inconvenience (getting to your stop/destination or missing an occassional bus/transfer) but for longer trips where I don't have loads of stuff to carry and where I have a little time flexibility, I almost always think it's worth it.
Posted by: Patrick Niemeyer | Feb 16, 2006 7:21:05 PM
The logic in this post is backwards: It's not really that if you don't want to drive, you should go find a dense place to live. If you don't want to drive, you should go find a place you don't need to drive. It'll happen that such places are usually (maybe always?) dense: density makes non-car modes more efficient relative to car modes and many people are willing to accept less private space in order to live somewhere they can walk, take the bus, etc.
But the two are not necessarily linked: a 30-story condo tower on an open field in Enumclaw might create a very dense living environment, but without walkability, transit, etc., the residents would still probably drive a lot.
Posted by: Steve Mooney | Feb 17, 2006 2:18:33 PM
Thanks Patrick and Clark...
I do enjoy the people watching aspect of bus riding and we do walk to the neighborhood grocery store, restaurants and movie store.
The bus often makes me feel queasy so reading a book is out of the question. It's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to light rail -- a much smoother ride than a bus!
I suspect part of the reason driving seems more practical is that I have a one year old (and all her stuff -- diapers, food, spare clothes) with me. Hopping onto a bus just isn't as easy as when it was just me!
Posted by: Rachel | Feb 17, 2006 2:50:29 PM
Steve -
Yep, that's technically correct. Absolutely. An apartment tower in the middle of nowhere would be pretty mucyh like a sprawling neighborhood, only vertical, not horizontal.
But looking at maps of walkability and density in King county (still in production), the correlation is striking -- really striking. So much so that, for practical purposes, they're fairly close to the same thing. (Or, at a minimum, density is a very effective proxy for walkability.)
I don't have maps of car-mileage v. density (car mileage being a different thing than walking, obviously), but the graphs & lots of other data make me believe that density is a great proxy for how much people have to drive. Of course, your mileage may vary -- if you live in a low-density suburb but can still walk to stores and services, and don't have to travel much in your car, you're probably doing ok.
Rachel-
Oy. A one-year-old. Drive, and don't feel guilty. I did travel with a toddler on the bus quite a bit -- it worked pretty well for about 6 months. But now that we have 2 kids -- and given that our younger daughter is a lot wigglier than her older sister -- we tend to drive rather than bus when we all travel together. If you can't read -- maybe try books on tape? Or you might just have to content yourself with waiting for light rail. Good luck!!
Posted by: Clark Williams-Derry | Feb 17, 2006 3:03:03 PM