By Brandon, Section Reviews Posted on Tue Apr 25, 2006 at 11:35:14 AM PST
Brandon Hansen published a study on OmniNerd.com statistically analyzing a year of commute data in Houston, TX. His goal was to quantify the significance of certain variables (e.g., departure time, school sessions, the day of the week, etc.) in an effort to determine whether or not the commuter can do anything to reduce their time behind the wheel.
Traffic is the bane of the commuter's existence, and the problem is documented to be getting worse, not better. People spend 100 hours a year on their morning commute, which is really put into perspective when you consider a typical year's supply of vacation is just 80 hours in the United States. Time spent wouldn't be as big of a deal if most of it wasn't wasted in traffic jams. The average commuter uses 15,000 miles and 1,000 gallons of gas each year and collectively U.S. commuters waste 1.6 million hours and 800 million gallons of gas in traffic jams every. Traffic may even affect your blood pressure and your personality.
Perhaps the worst problem with the whole issue is the complaining to action ratio. While strategies are devised around the coffee-pot at work by individual commuters everywhere, studies show that commuters are using mass transit systems less, not more. A recent published on OmniNerd.com shows that varying departure times by as little as half an hour could save a commute significant time behind the wheel. However, the results also show that until communities as a whole decide to actually reduce traffic (rather than avoiding it) by taking cars off the roads via carpooling or improved mass transit systems, traffic is only going to continue to get worse.
Bookmark this story with del.icio.us
Digg this story
Furl this item
Have you Reddit?