How long do you commute each day?
I guess that it depends on whether you
are prepared to live near where you work, and move houses when you change
jobs. If like most people, you don't want (or can't) to just keep moving home
every few years, then over a period of time your daily commute may vary, but
the OECD average is reported as 40 minutes per day, which strikes me as
rather low.
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| Commuting - A world wide curse. |
I work in a big city centre office, where even the 'locals'
spend about 30 minutes each way to get door to door, thus making the lowest
commute I could find at around 50 minutes a day, and the average about an hour
and 10 minutes (but with many more facing something over an hour and a half a
day). This begs the question of how they obtained the figure of 40 minutes which
as you can see, is the total average commute time for the UK (just 20 minutes,
door to door each way).
Me? Well I am an extreme commuter, I face a
daily trek, door to door, of 1hr 35 minutes each way (made possible by train
station just 10 minutes drive from my house, and an office just 10 minutes walk
from the train station), which I may add I share with around twenty other
daily commuters from my small town rail station.
So why do I do it?
Well the pay I get in the city office is about 25 - 30% higher for full time
employment than in the local employers who might want me, but I don't want to
move back to the city .... quality of life reasons. I also have to be honest
and admit that as long as the train isn't delayed more than 10 minutes, I
have got used to the journey and barely notice it - just read a book or a paper
and your nearly there.
Still, when I looked at these figures I was made
to realise that I am spending a lot of time (
and money), on travelling costs, just
to get the money to afford to be able to commute, and whether that's sufficient justification for the loss
of life time .... maybe I have let the work/life balance tilter too much in one
direction?
