I can certainly say my mental health is better without a commute
this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Years ago I learned that it's vastly better for my mental health to take a route that's 25% longer but has significantly less traffic.
Nowadays my commute is non-existant.
I take "the back way." It takes about five minutes longer (38 mins vs 33 mins) but I see more wild animals than cars. Most of it is along a lakeshore. I also get about 20% higher fuel economy going 45-60 vs 70.
I took a route 3 times as long with 0 traffic instead the shorter one, both were the same time. Even the gas was almost the same.
When we moved from the city to the middle of nowhere, our commute went from 8 km to 22 km each way. It still took about 20 minutes. But "rush hour" was the occasional herd of deer or elk instead of a bunch of drivers who were either too aggressive or too passive. A "traffic jam" was one vehicle, ours, waiting for a piece of farm equipment to move out of the way a few times a year instead of the weekly transformation from roadway to parking lot.
Even when I switched over to driving school bus, I could count on one hand the number of other vehicles I interacted with each week.
It's impossible to express how much that improved our mental states.
Riding a bicycle 33 miles each way in 1.5-2 hours made a massive improvement in my life over the same trip taking 45 min to 1 hr in a car. I did that one for a year before getting a closer job with a 6 mile commute each way. I haven't needed a DL in 14 years, but that is SoCal weather too. Rain is no problem, but I won't ride in sparkys.
I am extremely skeptical of the claim that you were able to maintain a speed of 17-22 mph for 1.5-2 hours straight twice a day every single work day for an entire year. At the very least, this is not a solution that most people are capable of without a long period of intensive training.
Electric bikes make that a breeze. I have all but replaced my car with an E-bike. I'm looking into a cargo E-bike, cause that would allow me to sell my cars. Sure I may need a car once or twice a year at that point, but I can rent a cab or a car as needed. That by itself will save me about $6000 a year on insurance, not to mention the fact that I have solar panels, so I don't pay for my electric fuel either.
Sure, but when someone says "riding a bicycle" they aren't usually referring to an e-bike but rather a bicycle driven by their own power, or at least that is not how that phrase is generally understood.
Mine changed from wfh to forced rto for me. I just started up my antidepressants again 😓
I changed my employer when that happened. "Work from anywhere" is in the contract.
Sorry to hear
Commuting in a CAR. Is more accurate to say.
Driving yourself probably compounds it but commuting in general sucks.
I used to take the train to work, it would drop me right outside my building. It saved me money, miles on my car, helped me avoid traffic but it still sucked.
It was lost time, there were people who would smoke, do drugs, play loud music from their phones on speaker. There were usually seats available but your better off standing because you never know what’s in/on the seats. Anytime there was an event that let out at the stadium around the time I got off work meant either missing several trains in a row because they were too full.
Better organized and maintained mass transit can reduce it but I think any commute needs the destination to be worth the time/hassle and, for me, work doesn’t make the cut.
I bike to work most days and it can be nice. I bike through a little wooded area. It would be a whole lot nicer if it wasn't for all the cars. I used to bike through a park to work with fewer cars and it was actually just pleasant (even though it ended at work).
I think the two big problems here are cars and work.
Where do you live? Is it somewhere with below zero temperatures and snow during long parts of the year?
I’m pretty sure commuting by bike wouldn’t be any more enjoyable here.
I live in the Netherlands, but the Fins would like to have a word with you.
Yeah, because the experience trying to bike to work through snow and cold is the same between Finland and the United States.
I’m sure the Fins are able to manage it but I’m guess there infrastructure is far superior to support it.
Yeah, that's why the US is collapsing.
Ok.
Carpooling with work mates is really fun, it would be a lot better if we would have had a train or bus though. Tough luck in the US.
Commuting is tax on your time.
I was a little worried this would be "Commuting is bad for your mental health.....so just live at work!". I may be getting a little cynical in my old age.
That is a lot of the reasons I try to ride the motor bike as much as possible. At least then you don't feel like you are part of traffic as much. It is making winter harder. The 4am commute is a little too cold even on warm days.
Rush hour traffic is seeing people at their worst, day in and day out. If I ever get to a point where I don't have to commute, my opinion of people in general would go way up.
Massive Study Finds a Link Between Commuting And Poor Mental Health
Misread "commuting" as "computing" and thought I was in [email protected] or something.