Longer commute time is highly correlated with unhappiness. I think scientists even determined a number for how much more you would have to earn to compensate for extra commute hours.
Goodness is this true. Early in my career I worked some positions that were great career-wise, but terrible commute-wise. I simply didn't know what a difference a short commute made in quality of life. Over the years I went from a 2 hour commute down to a 20-30 minute commute and I couldn't really see going back. It really restricts that places I can look for work as I love where I live, but the tradeoff is worth not spending 2-5 hours a day stuck in my car doing really a bunch of nothing. There really is a limit to how much music and audiobooks you can tolerate day after day.
That will be nice, but it's still not a sufficient trade-off for duration in your day, unless your time spent in the autonomous car counts as part of your work day. I liked the idea of taking the train into the city instead of driving to my current job, partially because I had this fantasy about how I would be able to use my time on the train productively, as opposed to just driving.
But, the thing is, the train trip into the city is 1 hour, and the drive is 30 minutes. And the train schedule is dictated by people who work 8 hours in the office; taking an off-schedule train is a much worse proposition. So even though I gain the time on the train (which is probably not as valuable as I think it is) I still lose out on the rest of my life for having 1 hour less per day to spend completely electively.
So, yeah, I'd like it if my car drove me into work so I was free to do other things. But I would still value a 30 minute autonomous drive much more highly than a 1 hour autonomous drive.
I thought this, too, when I started a job in a city centre for the first time - great, I'll take the train, and get so much work done on my commute instead of driving!
No - it's impossible to work on a rattly, wobbly old train, standing up, or crushed into a seat with some guy's elbow digging into you. You can barely read a book or Kindle on there, let alone whip out a netbook and work. So it's just wasted time every day.
Pretty much. I've been experimenting with taking Amtrak from where I live in the east bay to the office in San Jose. The train is 2 hours each way, but it's like commuting on a cloud. I catch up on news or sleep in the morning, and finish my workday on the evening commute. it works because I can do 6 hours at the office and 2 productive hours on the train.
It does make for a very long day though. Between driving to my home station, taking the shuttle from the station to the office, the actual commute, etc, I'm up at 5:30am and get home at 6:45pm.
Connectivity is an issue too. Amtraks spotty wifi is fine for browsing -- queue up a bunch of tabs when the signal is good -- but it's terrible for anything else. Forget about ssh sessions or transferring large files or anything like that.
Over the last few years I've had jobs that had a 1 hour drive each way (which I hated), a 5 minute walk (which was too close) or a very pleasant 25 minute walk - which seems to be a sweet spot for me - allows me to listen to podcasts/audiobooks and have a gentle context switch to/from work.
Ah yes - I did have a job years ago where I had a 12 mile cycle to work (generally uphill and into the prevailing wind) and there was the opportunity to go for much longer offroad cycles in the Pentland Hills in the evening.
I know, in my case, there isn't a direct 1:1 correlation between hourly rate and hour of commute. The calculation for determining that calculation (at least in the context of the study) would be interesting.
