
Why It’s So Hard to Change People’s Commuting Behavior - apress
https://hbr.org/2019/12/why-its-so-hard-to-change-peoples-commuting-behavior
======
munificent
For the past seven years, I've lived 1.6 miles from work. My route to work
almost perfectly follows a bike trail. Despite that, I drove almost every
single day. Largely because it meant another ten minutes of free time in the
morning, and getting home a little earlier every evening.

Then where I work enacted a plan where we pay any day that we park at the
office, and get a bonus any day we take alternate transit. The plan is
designed to be revenue neutral for the company while incentivizing people to
not drive and park.

I bike every single day now. In fact, I'd probably _keep_ biking if they
stopped the plan because I'm used to it now and really like it. But it was _so
hard_ to change my commuting habit.

I feel like the drive to work is a point in the day where humans have absolute
minimal executive function and willpower. By the time I'm heading out the
door, I don't want to be thinking strategically or trying to make the world
better or anything. I just want to get the fuck to work and use my brainpower
there.

~~~
epx
The car is an extension of your home, and driving to work (or to run some
errand) is sometimes the only moment you have for yourself, alone, where you
can listen your favorite music in high volume and "thinking loudly". If you
are married with kids and work at home these moments are necessary.

I wish I had a cottage in the woods to have these "alone" moments with more
quality, but didn't get there yet.

~~~
eVeechu7
I can sympathise, but I get a bit of this on the bike with the headphones on
too.

~~~
peatmoss
I don’t like the headphones because of safety / perception of safety, but back
when I commuted by bike, I joked about doing “bike therapy.” The experience of
being alone with myself, my thoughts, my breath, and my pedal cadence was a
very calming thing.

------
herodotus
Vancouver added a train service from downtown to the Airport and Richmond that
was ready for the 2010 Winter Olympics. It was almost instantly running close
to capacity (and still is). Along with a reasonably good choice of where the
line would run, and where the stops would be, the city embarked on a rezoning
project that would allow the space near the line to become medium (or in one
case) high density. I am not saying it is a perfect system, but all it took to
change peoples commuting behaviour was the availability of a good alternative
to cars.

There is more than just initial design, however: there are many design
elements that add to its drawing power. These include accessibility, good "way
finding" signs, frequency of trains (every 3 minutes in busy times), safety on
platforms, and (for me anyway), signs that accurately show arrival times of
the next three trains.

Of course, there is still the problem of making the system useful for people
who are not close enough to walk to a stop, the answer being good feeder bus
service and car parks. In this respect, Vancouver has been less successful.
For example, only a few bus stops have electronic signs showing the arrival
times of the next bus, and bus frequency on all but the major routes is too
low.

My point is that good overall design is the almost certainly the most
effective way to change people's commuting behaviour.

~~~
baybal2
That's because Vancouver is a relatively small, and dense city, and has a lot
of people with countries where people think of good public transport as
something taken.

It's important to make public transport good enough for people to use it. When
public transport is an inferior option to owning a car, people would not use
it.

I think what urban planners in the West miss is that public transport scales
non-linearly.

The bigger the city, the more you gain from owning a car. For a public
transport to be viable in a megacity, the network needs to be like much, much,
better than in a smaller city.

When planners miss that, you get both terrible car traffic, and terrible
public transport

~~~
beatgammit
I live near Salt Lake City and the train infrastructure that exists is well
used and pretty well thought out, and we have a pretty big car culture here.
Salt Lake City isn't a very big city in terms of population, and it spans a
pretty big, flat area, yet the transit system is popular.

My extended family lives near Seattle, which has _more_ dense population and
higher motivation to use public transport (lots of environmentally conscious
people), yet I think most would agree that the train system is inferior to
Utah's. I think this is because:

\- commuter rail doesn't link up very well with the light rail line (airport)
\- commuter rail only runs morning and afternoon

The Trax (light rail) and Frontrunner (commuter) lines, however, are very well
connected and both run all day. My main frustration is that the Frontrunner
line doesn't run on Sundays, but it has a far more flexible schedule than the
Seattle line. If you live anywhere along the Frontrunner/Trax system, you can
rely on it to get you to the airport, work, or shopping, provided you don't
need to travel late at night.

That being said, I think Seattle's total transit system is better than SLC's,
but I think that's because there's less of a stigma against riding the bus in
Seattle as well as a higher budget (Utahns are very fiscally conservative).

I think SLC has done a fantastic job of building a transit system that works
for tourists and locals alike. Seattle built two separate systems that works
okay for each, but doesn't work together very well. Drivers like flexibility,
but the Seattle train system isn't flexible.

So, in order to convince people to commute differently, that system needs to
be useful for far more than just commuting. I don't want to rely on a commuter
rail line of I'll occasionally need to stay late, which would cause me to miss
the last train. I also don't want to rely on a system that's inconvenient to
work into other plans, like going to the airport at lunch time or doing some
shopping on the way home.

~~~
bobthepanda
The main issue with the Seattle commuter rail, Sounder, is that the host
railroad is not keen on giving more slots to run trains, so the schedule isn't
very useful.

The issue with the station is that the Union Station office complex and
historical building are in the way of proper wayfinding, so that the path
between the commuter rail and the light rail looks more like an out-of-the-way
alley than an actual path you're supposed to take.

------
nradov
The authors missed some important causes about why commuters prefer to drive
personal vehicles. If they were going straight from home to work and back
again then carpooling or public transit would often be fine. But real workers
often need to make extra stops at schools, child care, stores, gyms, club
meetings, etc. Making driving harder and more expensive for those workers only
serves to punish them without offering any practical alternatives.

~~~
btrettel
Cycling also can go directly to specific locations, yet cycling is rare. For
the particular case you described, the extra time (in most cases), the lack of
cargo capacity, and the inability to take more than one person might explain
this. And I don't underestimate the stigma against cyclists or how much work
people believe cycling is.

~~~
rayiner
Cycling is rare because Americans live too far away from things to cycle
anywhere. I’m about to do some last minute Christmas shopping. It’ll take me
1:10 minutes to get to Target by bus. It’ll take me 8 minutes driving. Cycling
would be 18 minutes, but that’s just the first stop. (Also, I’d have to carry
a bunch of stuff back on a bike, and it’s very cold and icy outside.) Biking
to work or even the closest train station would be a multi-hour trip.

Biking is for childless yuppies and people in third world countries. It’s
inconvenient, inflexible, and uncomfortable. We have cars in the first world
and they make life immeasurably better. To the extent pollution is a problem,
we can and already are addressing those problems with electric vehicles.

~~~
btrettel
Cycling takes some planning, but so does driving (think parking, maintenance,
and fueling). As a cyclist you'd change your habits to consolidate and avoid
trips. And for more difficult (and rarer) trips, there's nothing wrong with
taking a car.

As for the comfort, I find the short discomfort spent in cold weather is well
worth the more long term comfort of being in better shape. But to each their
own.

And I'm not convinced that electric vehicles alone will necessarily solve the
pollution problem. I find most people are blind to the issues with the
chemicals involved in the production of batteries and solar panels, but I'm
hopeful those issues will be resolved with future technologies. (Until
recently I worked in a lab that does fire safety tests on batteries, though I
was not involved in that project. But it became much harder for me to ignore
those problems even only on the sidelines.)

~~~
kqr
Electric personal cars also have exactly the same problems as gasoline cars
when it comes to congestion, they are just as deadly to pedestrians, they also
spend 98% of their time unused, etc.

------
johngalt
The individual person changing their commute doesn't capture the benefits of
the change. If I take the bus, it takes one car off the road for everyone
else, but it also makes my commute longer.

Additionally, human beings aren't perfectly rational. Driving a car
individually is like fast food, even if it were bad for you in real terms,
people would still use it because it's easy and convenient. This is also
behind the success of ride-sharing and food delivery apps. They put
convenience front and center.

IMHO, the way to change commuting behavior is to place an extreme bias on the
right of way of mass transit methods. People will take the bus, if the bus
doesn't have to wait in traffic. Then improve convenience with an app like
interface that maps out transfers. Make it so taking a bus is as easy as
taking an Uber/lyft.

Then don't bother trying to change the habits of people who have already been
commuting for a decade, instead try to accommodate the growing non-driving
younger segment of the population. Make it so the college student doesn't have
to buy that car to begin with, and their habits will stay with them as an
adult.

~~~
toyg
_> Make it so the college student doesn't have to buy that car to begin with,
and their habits will stay with them as an adult. _

This would also help revitalise small shops, which have been decimated by the
combination of malls and internet shopping. Two birds with one stone. Sadly,
all the moneyed interests are aligned against this model.

 _> People will take the bus, if the bus doesn't have to wait in traffic._

And if it's easy to hop on and off, and pay fees that are not extortionate. In
the UK, just the other day, I took a bus to travel a path that I often do in a
minicab or uber; it cost £ 2.90, where a minicab would have charged me £ 4.50.
The difference in annoyance (walking to the stop, waiting in the cold,
fumbling with wallet and cash, enduring nausea-inducing vibrations, figuring
out the right time to call for the right stop, walking again in the cold...)
was simply not worth the saving. I was actually annoyed by how such a basic
service could be so expensive for casual use... yeah, I know the answer:
casuals actually subsidize regulars, who get discounted fares and RFID cards.
But that raises the barrier to adoption, which is Bad.

~~~
eMSF
>walking to the stop, waiting in the cold, fumbling with wallet and cash,
enduring nausea-inducing vibrations, figuring out the right time to call for
the right stop, walking again in the cold...

Wait: does the weather never get cold again if there's no fare, or are you
actually implying that taking a bus isn't as comfortable as driving your own
car, even if "transit" is done "right"? I could swear that's not the usual
message to see in "transit" related HN threads.

Anyway, I have to admit that were I asked how to reduce airport-related
emissions, I might not have turned my eyes on employees cars first. Or perhaps
even second.

------
AtlasBarfed
I tried to read this article but it is tone deaf, infantile, and moronic. And
I'm a very ardent environmentalist.

Fundamentally it blames the victim.

Carpooling won't work because even if people go to work at the same time (by
some miracle no one is sidetracked in the process), getting home is even more
unreliable given different workloads, so someone might get stranded. What to
do then if you're in the burbs? Eat a 100$ taxi that might be a significant
chunk of the take home pay they earned that day? Take an even longer time on
things like busses that they haven't navigated before?

Biking is great until there is rain, snow, cold, and it exposes the rider to a
far greater risk of catastrophic injury, and the downside of getting a flat is
a lot worse than in a car since changing the innertube is often about a 50%
chance of actually solving the problem if there are splinters or a bad
outertube.

As for the victim blaming, companies should be obligated to providing
comprehensive transit networks, or contribute to the existing transit
networks. If the company is the usual adult daycare cubefarm office junk, then
a company should be obligated to providing telecommuting options for parttime
at least, and several office centers (especially in downtowns near transit
nexuses).

Yes Americans suck. But they also are overworked, underserved by
infrastructure, and given little options by businesses and governments.

~~~
legulere
The points you mention against biking to work in my opinion as someone that
bikes to work don’t hold. The only problems are too big distances and cultural
acceptance which would also lead to more infrastructure like showers at work.

~~~
heretoo
Living in Melbourne, Australia, the real risk of catastrophic injury keeps me
from cycling. The chance of being "doored" is very real, and the likelyhood of
getting hit by a moving car is also very real. Most of my colleagues that
cycle have been involved in these accidents.

The city has bike lanes, which suddenly disappear, or require crossing moving
traffic, just to go straight ahead, because the bike lane has now moved one
car lane to the right.

Along with a lack of training of drivers with regards to sharing the road with
bikes, I wouldn't ever recommend that someone cycles in this city, even though
many do.

It would need the concerted effort from the entire population, similar to the
Dutch population in the 70's or whenever they changed their bike road rules.

See: [https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/safety-and-road-
rules/cyclis...](https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/safety-and-road-
rules/cyclist-safety/car-doors-and-bike-riders)

It mentions 771 "doorings" over a 5 year period. The number is probably much
higher, since many wouldn't get reported.

------
monksy
The amount of immaturity, and inexperience in carrying out this activism is
incredibly irritating and insulting towards those who were subjected to it.

In the article they claimed that they either tried to survey the employees and
tried to influence their behavior.

Problem I have with the survey: They're trying to collect data, but try to
influence them at the same time towards an outcome that they're looking for.

Additionally: They tried to push their policy about how they feel towards cars
and completely ignored the needs and reasons why the people behaved as they
did. It sounds like the wants of the "participants" of the change were in
agreement. But it sounds like the implementation was a complete disaster. (Yet
it never explains how they went from 100 participants to 3 in 3 months) They
came up with excuses about why it was the employees fault for not changing how
they wanted them to.

------
scrooched_moose
The biggest issue I've seen with public transportation is it almost always
works on some varient of a hub and spoke system. If you don't

a) Live downtown and commute to a suburb, or

b) Live in a suburb and commute downtown

it's basically useless.

I live SE from downtown and work due south of downtown. To bus to work, I'd
have to take a 30 minute bus downtown, then a 45 minute bus back out to work.
My drive is only 25 minutes.

Until they dramatically expand the bus lines, my only option is to either move
or pursue a job that matches our transportation system.

~~~
Merrill
More metro areas should have mass transit along the ring highways connecting
the edge cities and close in suburbs. Airports and commuter rail stations are
also often along the ring highways or on short stubs off them.

There is no reason to focus business in the urban core, rather than in office
parks and industrial areas around the periphery. People who want to live in
the urban core can reverse commute to jobs on the ring.

~~~
smileysteve
> There is no reason to focus business in the urban core,

Given your example, effective land use via parking is one.

In a spoke and hub transit model; if people go to the hub, they can use
central transit to get there; If they go to the outer wheel, unless the place
is on the spoke itself, then additional last mile transportation is required.

------
Merrill
Having commuted by car and by train, I think train commuting is more
stressful. First is the stress of getting ready on time, driving to the
station, finding a parking spot and getting on board the right train. Second,
arriving at the station and then making the connection to light rail (my case)
or to subway or bus (your mileage may vary) and then walking to your
destination. This compares unfavorably with leaving your garage and driving to
the company parking lot.

I have also carpooled. This is also a hassle depending on your regularity and
the regularity of those in the carpool. Missing turns due to travel, sickness,
vacations, etc. means setting up swaps with other drivers. It also is a hassle
if you need to work late or get in early. Not all carpool members are
agreeable. I once carpooled with a person who held conversations with people
in the back seat - the problem was that he couldn't talk to them without
looking back at them - fairly hair-raising.

~~~
pirocks
I realize that the entire world is not like London, but the idea of driving to
a train, and trying to get a specific train is alien to me. If you want a
train just take the first one to your destination? And why drive to the train
when you can bus/cycle/walk? Where are you going to park your car anyway?

~~~
Can_Not
> And why drive to the train when you can bus/cycle/walk?

I think most of us don't have time for 2 hour (both ways) daily bike rides
while carrying a laptop.

~~~
ip26
You live twenty to thirty miles from the train station? That's a miserable
commute.

------
300bps
Not fully on topic but one commuting behavior I changed about eighteen months
ago has been resoundingly helpful.

I stopped driving like a jackass.

I used to accelerate rapidly at every green light and decelerate rapidly at
every red light.

I stopped doing both of these things. I went from an average of getting 267
miles per tank of gas to 322, an over 20% increase.

Instead of wondering why my tires and brakes lasted half as long as everyone
else they now last longer than average.

The amazing thing is I get to my destinations just as quickly. I always used
to wonder how the ETA was still accurate on Waze even when I drove at full
speed. All I was doing was racing to the next red light.

I’m embarrassed writing this because I drove so stupidly for so long. If it
helps anyone else, here is my stupidity for all to see.

~~~
arethuza
I did something similar about 10 years ago after getting a speeding ticket -
drive within the speed limit and don't be aggressive. I found it made a _huge_
difference: less fuel used, less wear and tear on car and far less stressful.
I also noticed that I didn't seem to get anywhere that much slower...

------
melling
“Make the full cost of driving salient for employees”

Give them the stick!!

Seriously, why don’t we simply improve mass transit so more people want to
take it?

Even in NYC where it’s the best in America, it can still be painful. Try
commuting from Brooklyn to NJ, or 4 miles to the east side of Manhattan from
NJ.

25 years ago I lived 50 miles from Manhattan and the best an express train
could do was 65 minutes to the city. I even wrote a letter to MetroNorth.

We’re about to enter the third decade of the 21st Century. How about trains
that go 125 mph?

Where are the maglevs?

China, of course:

[https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-driverless-
maglev-t...](https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-driverless-maglev-
trains/index.html)

~~~
bluGill
To answer your first question: why can't we improve it. We don't know how to
do that. A lot of money has been spent building "better" transit systems that
nobody took. We would be equally as effective if we just paid the people
building those systems to dig a hole and fill it back in, if we had them dig
in their backyard we could have saved all the pollution of their commute to
the job site.

NYC is hurt because their costs to build something are typically 7 times what
it would cost to build the same thing in Spain. (health care, cost of living,
and harder soils should make NYC 1.25x harder than Spain, every other
explanation of why this is I've seen doesn't stand when examined closer) Until
NYC can get their costs under control they it doesn't make sense to build much
more mass transit, roads are a better value.

As for maglevs: they are a cute boondoggle, but not worth the expense. China
isn't building them anymore because the cost isn't worth it. You can build
150mph trains without it for much less. This will probably change, but the
reality is it isn't worth spending your own city/countries' money on it. The
US could build maglev if we wanted, but it is a much better idea to just
update and fix what we have already (Amtrak is historically incompetent, there
are hopeful signs that might change but I'll wait to pass judgement on those
signs for 20 years - there were signs 20 years ago that didn't amount to
anything)

Even if we solve the above, inertia is a hard problem. I have a car, the roads
take me where I want to go, when I want to go, very quickly (except in
congestion cases). It is very hard for mass transit to compete with that.

Transit often doesn't get people where they want to go - political issues
(like your NJ to Brooklyn) mean transit doesn't cross borders the road does.
Often even if it does your costs go up even though the trip was short (that is
your 4 mile trip is twice as much as a 20 mile trip if you hadn't crossed that
border).

Cars go when you want to go. Many transit systems run so rarely that you have
to check the bus schedule before going anywhere. People who drive don't
realize how critical this is because it never occurs to them that running late
isn't arriving 2 minutes after the meeting starts, but a full hour.

Quick is important. I'm trying to get someplace, not take a tour of the
neighborhood (that was neat the first time, after that it is boring). Every
time the bus stops to let someone else on/off that is robbing me of a couple
minutes of my time, this can be acceptable if it is a quick stop - but if the
bus has to spend several minutes going down a cul-de-sac it is unacceptable
(note that a cul-de-sac where the end is still walking distance to the stop
isn't bad, it is only when it is long enough that the bus would need to turn
down it to get people that it is bad).

This last is why transit advocates spend more time talking about zoning than
transit - most suburbs in the US are dense enough that transit could be useful
for not much cost (that is less than the cost of all the freeways we build).
However the street design means there is no way to run useful buses.

~~~
Tempest1981
I saw that Spain-vs-NYC article too -- 7x cheaper.

We need a tech battle to drive down the cost of infrastructure projects. Just
like Amazon did with e-commerce... ruthless efficiency.

~~~
bluGill
Problem is it doesn't seem to be a tech problem. The tech side in NYC seems to
be similar costs. Something is eating the money, but everything someone has
suggested doesn't seem to be it.

------
5555624
>Make the full cost of driving salient for employees

The problem that I usually see when someone brings up this idea is that the
employee's "cost" is ignored. I used to live in the Washington, D.C. area,
where I could walk or take the bus to the subway. One way, the total time was
30 minutes longer than driving. Between the cost of the subway and my time, it
was cheaper to drive.

For 18 years, I commuted year-round by bike, rather than drive. It took as
long as the bus-subway combination from my last apartment. While it took more
time, I did not have to pay for gas and my maintenance costs were minimal.

~~~
samatman
To some reasonable limit, it's appropriate to budget time on a bike as 'free'.

Most people don't get as much exercise as they should; time spent biking
should be considered as saving free time one would otherwise spend getting
exercise.

~~~
nrp
You could even call it a negative cost for the potential savings on health
care from getting regular cardio exercise! Give employees a discount on health
insurance costs if they bike or walk to work.

------
hateful
> Commuting alone by car is not just bad for the environment (24% of global
> energy-related CO2 emissions come from transportation)

I'm all for doing what's right for the environment, but I can't stand tricky
uses of statistics.

That statistic has almost nothing to do with the proceeding statement.

This is also a great of example of trying to blame environmental issues on
individuals (see: recycling).

~~~
boxfire
Yeah what percent of that 24 percent is actually commuters? I have no idea but
I'd wager single digits. I honestly stopped right at the start of the article
because reading this told me this was an agenda piece likely the outcome of a
risk management firm's press stash.

------
2ion
Because I need to isolate myself from a crowd that goes on public transport
sick, coughes down my neck and sneezes into my face, doesn't wash properly and
doesn't have train manners (NO phone calls, NO food, NO party, NO litter, NO
loud conversations, NO music I can hear from your cans). If I don't protect
myself, I'll get sick and irritated. Public transport is dirty and littered.

On metros here, there is no 1st class coach I could pay for to get some
distance, quiet and respectable company.

So the personal car it is. Unless you fix people, I will use all my privilege
to keep myself comfortable.

~~~
youeseh
I find the concept of a morgue on rails (no phone calls, no "loud"
conversations...) pretty amazing. How'd we arrive to the point where we expect
people to not be social in public places?

~~~
choeger
By letting people behave antisocial. In public transport, you _cannot_ tell
the noisy stranger to lower their volume because you risk being punched or
worse. What is considered normal behavior in a typical subway is not
considered acceptable where I grew up.

~~~
shortandsweet
Well I guess you didn't grow up near the subway. It's a lot better now than it
was.

------
analog31
>>>> The nudges that we tried would likely have been more successful if
employees had to bear the full costs of their commuting decisions.

Employees already voluntarily _increase_ those costs if they can, by buying
more expensive and less efficient vehicles.

The only thing I've read that makes sense is for people to live closer to
things, and that's hard to make happen overnight. For instance, as a bicycle
commuter, I'm aware that many if not most of my colleagues live many miles
from work. Thus the debate about transportation mode is practically moot.

~~~
btrettel
> For instance, as a bicycle commuter, I'm aware that many if not most of my
> colleagues live many miles from work. Thus the debate about transportation
> mode is practically moot.

Yes, as a cyclist myself I've had people tell me "Cycling is impossible in my
case because of the distance." But what they've actually done is optimize for
driving, which makes cycling inconvenient. If they optimized for cycling then
driving might be inconvenient! If someone wants to make an intervention here
they need to catch people at a particular time (i.e., moving) rather than
random times.

~~~
maxsilver
> But what they've actually done is optimize for driving, which makes cycling
> inconvenient

Did they optimize for driving, or optimize for affordability?

At every place I've ever worked, "optimize for cycling" has actually meant
"optimize for being a millionaire". The housing near work is _literally_ 250%
more expensive than regular housing, and most people can't afford that.

And even if you do optimize for cycling, at some point you'll have to get a
new job that wrecks this plan. Do you force your family to move every 2-3
years, everytime you get a new job, so you can continue to live cycling-
distance to it? If you have a spouse, which of the two of you gets to live
cycling-distance to work?

~~~
btrettel
In my experience going car-free and moving closer can easily be cheaper. At my
previous apartment (Austin, TX) I paid maybe $200 more per month in rent to
live within a few miles of my work. The savings from not having a car
definitely exceeded that in my case.

As for the remainder, you're making a number of assumptions that don't apply
in many cases. I'm not arguing that cycling is good for everyone, just that
often optimizing for driving means making cycling more difficult.

First off, not everyone has a family. I don't, so this criticism doesn't apply
to me at all.

I know one cyclist who has moved his family for every job he gets. When he
gets a new job, so far they've been so far away that moving was necessary even
if he drove, though. (Not actually sure he cycled before he moved to Austin,
now that I think about it, but still.)

I also know at least two cyclists who have lived in the same place for long
periods of time. In one case I don't believe their spouse works, and in the
other case I believe their spouse might drive.

~~~
damnyou
The point remains that driving provides the most flexibility and choice for
families and everything else is a downgrade. As you yourself pointed out, for
one spouse to bike the other one may have to drive.

Bike advocates tend to be disproportionately single, white and male, and for
those reasons they tend to underweight that flexibility.

------
aga98mtl
I think the approach of blaming the individuals is wrong. It's society's fault
that it is preferable to take your car. In places where there is successful
public transit( NYC, Paris) you see high-density residential building within a
walkable distance to a mass transit station. All the ground floors in the
buildings around the station are retail business or offices. This makes it
easy and convenient for people to use public transit and shop for food.
Contrast this with your average american city where there is nothing
interesting around mass transit within walking distance and very few
residential options.

To fix public transit in America we need to build high density residential
building around existing stations with shops on the ground floor. Then it will
be rational to use public transit.

------
arkades
Oddly, the article seemed to overlook the most obvious elements of why it’s
hard to shift that behavior:

Driving around picking people up consumes precious morning time. In exchange,
one sacrifices their bespoke commuting routine.

That is, instead of getting to work in 40 minutes of listening to RPG podcasts
with the window open in winter, I get there in an hour and fifteen while
engaging in small talk and compromising on climate control.

People don’t just forego carpooling because the costs Of driving are
externalized; they forego carpooling because carpooling carries significant
personal costs.

Is there a reason these analysts couldn’t bother to include the element of
“people don’t carpool because it sucks”?

~~~
hcurtiss
Carpooling is also difficult for those who have irregular work schedules. Many
people cannot leave at the same time every day. That also makes mass transit
difficult. If your schedule doesn’t line up with the bus or train, it adds
significant time while you wait for the next.

------
NPMaxwell
"Nudging is particularly effective at shaping one-off behaviors, such as
getting flu shots, but it hasn’t yet been shown to be as reliably effective at
changing decisions that require daily actions," Makes sense: daily actions
have emerged from extensive exposure to competing nudges that continue and
have culminated in producing the current behavior. When you add your one
nudge, it may get some attention as something novel, but then it will be
overwhelmed.

------
massysett
"First, employees didn’t have to bear the full financial cost of car
commuting"

They don't bear the full financial cost of transit commuting either, since
transit is heavily subsidized.

Here is where someone will say "but roads are subsidized." Of course they are.
However, those who drive their own vehicles bear the full cost of the capital
asset they use (that is, the car). Transit systems recover only a portion of
their operating cost - and NONE of their capital cost - from fares.

Despite the big operating cost, capital cost, and opportunity cost of driving
(that is, while driving one has to drive, but while commuting on transit,
someone can sometimes do something else like read) people still like to drive.
The reason is that for many people driving is a far superior mode of
transportation. You couldn't pay them to take transit.

------
pledess
Strong incentives against SOV employees can be a subtle form of
discrimination. For example, age discrimination: a person raising their family
in the suburbs (where Single Occupancy Vehicle may be the only option) is
likely to be older than your average new hire. Also, unfortunately, not all
categories of persons feel equally safe on public transportation. In many
parts of the country, saying that your company is concerned about commuting
behavior is like saying "unmarried white males are a great fit here."

------
robbiemitchell
This is a surprisingly limited study for HBR.

\- They sent direct mail and pamphlets, each of which has terrible conversion
rates in general. Why not email or SMS?

\- What was the signup/enrollment like? Was it easy and something that could
be done from a phone without a login/password setup, or did it involve mailing
forms to some random office with an unclear timeline?

\- Did they assess why people didn’t enroll?

If you want people to engage in something new, make it ridiculously easy.

~~~
bluGill
The send many letters, got 100 people to sign up, and 3 were car pooling a
month latter. That 3 out of 100 number is the most important thing. 100 people
who self selected as willing to car pool but only 3 were actually able to pull
it off. Understanding the reason of those other 97 is completely missing: they
should have abandoned all efforts increase car pooling until they got about 60
more people who self selected into a car pool. (60 is a somewhat random
number, the point for some who are interested it is impossible to fix whatever
reason there can't, but for many it should be). If you can't get people
interested in something to do it you need to figure our why first.

------
dredmorbius
After the global climate, and before adolescent social habits, the biggest
impact of the automobile has been on built environments.

A frequent auto-apologist has again reiterated in this thread that alternative
commuting, particularly by bicycle, simply doesn't work for most Americans
simply on account of the geography of most American cities.

 _Where do you think that geography came from?!!!_

When "transport" meant "walking", or for the very lucky, horse-drawn, or
beginning around the 1880s, electrically-powered street-cars, cities were a
mile or so across -- about the distance a person could walk in 20-30 minutes.

With 30 minutes of expressway travel now being about 30 miles, you end up with
cities 30-60 miles across, particularly if they co-evolved with the
automobile. This is no accident.

Activities and services which might have been co-located, or closely-located,
aren't: housing, work, factories, offices, schools, parks, shopping,
entertainment.

I've commuted, variously, by bicycle, boat, bus, train, and far more often
then I'd care to admit, by car. When living in cities with post-1930s layouts,
the latter is virtually almost necessary. Even in cities whose downtown cores
were laid out in the 19th century, late-20th and early-21st century patterns
prefer offices, shops, and other activities spread widely across the
landscape, with poor bike accessibility.

The best cycling options have been relatively compact, fairly flat, and dense
areas (with a few exceptions). Under such circumstances, _and with cycling
highly encouraged by design_ , cycling is not only _possibly_ but vastly the
suprior option.

Transit-based commuting is an option where high densities and high service
levels support it. Even then, there are very few US urban regions in which
this is truly an option, and there, most usually only within the urban core.
New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston make up most of those.

An allergy to density, aversion to new construction, a preference for sprawl,
racist legacies concerning both land-use and transit, and grossly misguided
attempts to inflate real estate assets rather than maximise regional and
national common weal, are other factors with large contributions to this
problem.

Mail-based commuter incentives are like trying to ignite a bonfire in an
iceberg. The conditions are absolutely inimicable to the goals.

------
uberduber
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the electric scooter rental services. For a
while they did make traffic in Santa Monica and surrounding areas better. It
went from horrific to less horrific but no one talked about that.

My boyfriend works 1 mile from work and he took them almost everyday in the
beginning. When the cities all cracked down and required a licensing fee for
each one, the numbers were drastically reduced and they were no longer
consistently available within a 2-3 minute walk. So back in the car he went.
We've looked into buying one but right now they're too expensive, heavy, and
unreliable to own. It's so much easier to just leave it when you arrive and
not worry about maintenance.

~~~
rvanlaar
I'm genuinely curious, but why: \- not get a (electric) bike? \- not walk?

~~~
uberduber
An electric bike is too heavy and bulky, there's nowhere to store it in the
house. Also a pain to store in the office which is upstairs. We can't leave it
outside due to the homeless, they'll steal or vandalize or defecate on it.

There's a bunch of reasons, but mostly he just really hates walking. It's
boring, too slow and too hot outside much of the year which causes the whole
sweatiness problem.

------
bartread
I used to mostly cycle to work when I only lived a couple of miles from the
office.

Nowadays I mostly motorcycle or occasionally drive the 11-ish miles. Door to
door it generally takes 20 - 25 minutes for the former, and 30 for the latter
if you pick your time.

Taking the bus is at least an hour even if it's on time because it has so many
stops and involves walks at both ends. I just don't have that kind of time to
waste. It also doesn't run late into the evening and, which makes it next to
impossible to work late when I need to, or to do anything after work.

It's too dangerous to cycle.

So, no, unless and until better alternatives are available I won't be changing
the way I commute.

~~~
specialist
In your area, is motorcycling safer than bicycling?

I ask because I'm curious about the electric bikes, and maybe mopeds. Does
keeping up with the flow of traffic improve safety? Being louder? Just the
bulk of the motorcycle? Proper gear (eg helmet, armored clothes)?

~~~
bartread
Yeah, definitely. I mean, in town cycling is mostly fine because there are
cycle paths all over the place. There are also cycle routes running out of
town for a few miles, sometimes further depending on where you are.

The problem where I live is that there is no dedicated cycle route so I'm
sharing a two lane A-road that's potholed to fsck, with heavy traffic in both
directions, plenty of commercial and agricultural traffic, and everybody
trying to pass you. Worse, when traffic is lighter it turns into the kind of
road where quite a few people want to hoon along it at 80mph.

The motorcycle wins here primarily because you can always keep up with the
flow of traffic so you're not going to get side-swiped by an articulated lorry
or farm tractor towing a trailer of turnips as it tries to pass you. And
you're not going to get killed because you hit a pothole at the side of the
road, fell off your bike and got run over.

------
choeger
So the solution is to not offer parking space for employees? I wonder how the
author came to the conclusion that a parking lot costs "1000nds of $/a" for an
airport. Space is essentially the main requirement for that business, so I
wonder what the tarmac costs.

And even if this was true, did not one consider that this might already be
part of hiring people? "Look, we cannot offer you that many vacation days, but
you'll get free parking, so you'll save half an hour every day in commute."

------
dpflan
One proposal from the authors is to “Make driving harder, and make other forms
of commuting easier”. Is sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a highway
convenient or a cost of convenience (e.g. direct transport to your
destination)? I would say that traffic makes driving much harder, physically
(extending the time seated) and emotionally (stress, “road rage”).

But yes, creating a new habit like better commuting is hard and hard to do
with just a 1-week intervention.

------
jdavis703
I commute 80 miles every day by a combination of train and bike. When I get
into my suburban office I have to lock my bike up in the far end of the
parking garage. It’s the part that’s always empty, or has someone paranoid
about their car getting scratched. There’s really easy things we could be
doing to encourage sustainable transportation, like putting the bike racks
near the front door.

------
kazinator
It's hard to change people's commuting behavior because they've explored the
options and optimized it according to their priorities. Its hard to convince
people to "de-optimize" once they believe they have optimized.

For instance, they would rather sit through traffic for forty minutes, then be
on some combination of buses and trains for eighty minutes, because time is an
important optimization parameter. A bicycle might get them there in thirty
minutes, but it's not for everyone, and particularly not for everyone in all
weather. Effort and comfort are optimization parameters for many people.

Traffic and tense situations have their stress, but so does waiting for some
bus, and being passed by when it comes because it is too full to pick up any
more passengers.

Cycling is dangerous, and tense situations that can occur when cycling in
traffic are way more nerve-frazzling than ones that occur in driving, on a
more regular basis.

------
kiliantics
It all comes down to money in the end. Because of the cheap prices of gasoline
and parking, there is usually no financial incentive to take public transit.
Even in NYC, which probably has the cheapest, widest coverage of transit, you
still have to pay about $3 each way. But you can drive and park for less than
that for most commute distances. (Not counting car maintenance, insurance, and
other "fixed costs" of driving of course.)

Cycling is a good exception to this, but there is almost no culture supporting
the use of bikes (or scooters etc.) and very little planned infrastructure,
which leads to extreme hostility from drivers and ultimately to injury and
death (just about 30 cyclists this year alone in NYC). City governments are at
fault and should be brought to account for this. However, most media attention
uses language that implicitly (or sometimes even explicitly) blames the
actions of pedestrians and cyclists when they are victims of car violence,
rather than the drivers or the design of the city. Even when drivers are
themselves blamed, it is assumed that tragic events are only caused by rare
incidents involving "bad" drivers, rather than a pervasive culture and
systemic organisation that allows for these tragic events to continue
unhindered.

There needs to be a strong social backlash against almost any form of personal
use of heavy machinery equipped with combustion engines, that is not
absolutely necessary, within regions where there are many unprotected people
on foot/bike/etc. And this must be directed at governments and other
institutions that have the power to but are currently unwilling to create such
necessary change. Blaming individuals will not get us there and will only lead
to further entrenched "culture war". This is the strategy that was used in the
Netherlands which, prior to the 80s, had a very similar commuting landscape to
the US but now has massive bicycle and public transit use.

~~~
boring_twenties
> But you can drive and park for less than that for most commute distances.

Uh no. Parking in Manhattan is like $500 a month.

------
ckrailo
This is why, when possible, it's best to push the cost and timing of commuting
onto the person or company requiring the commute. Some professions classify
commuting time as working time, but not all (nor is there a legal requirement
for it).

For a lot of companies, there's really no need for long-term fixed colocation,
but the economy allows for it since they don't have to account for most of the
externalities and 3rd+ degree costs associated with new buildings in
ecosystems, construction long-term impacts, or even something as simple for
the carbon output of making concrete, all the while reaping the rewards of
employees working extra for free in a tightly-controlled environment. And when
they inevitably move, there's no legal requirement to pay employees for
relocation either. Additional corporate costs anywhere in this ecosystem would
probably result in dramatic changes and even more work-from-home
opportunities.

Innovative remote-first companies are using the savings to only temporarily
colocate their employees in interesting and rewarding ways for all (like all-
hands meetups), plus reaping the benefits of naturally-increased written
communications, creating a win-win situation for all from what I can tell.

Put another way... the logistics/efficiencies/costs of everything is very
different for those involved when individuals have to transport groceries to
home (via cars, public transit, assistants, etc) vs a company like Amazon that
connects warehousing, grocers, and delivery. Big box stores full of employees
without a shred of product knowledge make less sense if people are no longer
commuting by personal transport for basic goods because it's cheaper and
easier to tap into a delivery network for the same thing. The years when oil
was super expensive, economists noted how much less people were shopping
(before online shopping was ubiquitous).

It's already been uneconomical for a while now for most businesses to host the
same bits their employees flip and/or related software in the same place as
the employees (doesn't matter if you're writing software or ticking order-
completed boxes after attaching printed shipping labels). The world is
inherently more decentralized today than decades prior.

------
citizenpaul
I'd imagine that already being bought into a car is part of the problem. If
you already own a car you have significant monetary investment that you will
never get back. Double so if you car is in well maintained order. At the very
least you probably have 6 months of car insurance that you will be stuck
paying. Now you are looking at minimum 6 months return on your commute before
you even start saving money. Basically you are taking on a huge probably year
long inconvenience for a small cost savings that won't even start showing up
until the first year is over. Meanwhile you have that car is sitting around
beckoning you to go back to its convenience.

Perhaps if insurance companies would get on board full it could help along
with some sort of broker service to help quickly offload the car would help.

------
esotericn
You don't convince people to commute differently.

If that's your goal, you instead "convince them" to live in different places
and work at different jobs. The commute follows from that.

People don't 'choose' to get the train in to their office block in London.
They use it because they deliberately chose their home and job within those
constraints.

If they live a few miles from the station, they might cycle or drive to the
station and go from there. This is again dictated by their home situation,
it's not a choice in the immediate sense.

Next time I end up in London I'm thinking of renting a flat within walking (or
10 minute cycle) distance of wherever I end up working. The commute was
essentially dictated when I made that decision.

If I sign a 12 month lease or buy a place further out then I'd have decided a
different commute for myself, at that time, for the next ~year.

------
ummonk
Carpooling takes significantly longer than driving individually, due to the
need to coordinate trips. Likewise, using public transportation usually takes
significantly longer than driving. I don't think charging employees for
parking would change their behaviors (it certainly didn't change mine when I
had to pay for my own parking spot in SF for $300 a month - I still found it
beneficial to save an hour each day in commuting by driving instead of taking
the train).

Outside of highly built up areas (where things are within walking distance or
it is economically feasible to have fast frequent public transportation
between high density housing and high density office space), driving is simply
a better option.

------
silasdb
I don't know how it works in other parts of the world, but where I live
(Brazil) people afford cars to avoid bad quality public transportation (packed
and expensive buses and trains). Not to say alternative modes have zero
incentive from both government and companies. But I also see another reason:
having a car gives you status. Many of my colleagues live very near from work
(20, 15 or even 10 minutes walking) but they insist going to work using their
cars because they don't see someone on their position could be seen arriving
by foot or sharing public transportation with ordinary workers...

------
perl4ever
You want less of something, tax it.

Trains, buses, bicycles, etc. are not or should not be goals in themselves.
Using fossil fuel for manufacturing and not vehicle fuel is not the goal in
itself. Less CO2 (or other pollution/resource use) is the goal, so tax all
fossil fuel and let markets figure out what is efficient.

And if you think expensive gas is harsh on the poor, address that separately a
la basic income proposals.

This all is quite impractical, so people will just go on searching for the
keys they dropped in the sewer under the lamppost where they can see.

------
rurcliped
When thinking about whether a company is environmentally responsible, I'd look
for something like "We have regular independent audits of our business
processes to ensure that any job that can be performed from home effectively
is always performed from home. We regularly assess each manager's ability to
lead remote teams, and address all deficiencies, even if this means
terminating employment."

------
boyadjian
Very good article. I presently live at less than one kilometer from my job, so
I go by feet to work in a quarter. And guess what ? I have never been so
productive. When I arrive at work in the morning, I am not stressed. When I go
back home in the afternoon, I have time do personal projects at home. The
strikes of the Paris region ? Not my problem ! I am ready for the big
collapse.

------
Forge36
The bus route near me is a 15 minute walk, the bus comes once an hour. When I
lived downtown it was 30 minutes, then an hour long commute.

Driving today takes me 12 minutes, 16 if I time it poorly with the rush.

By bike is 30 minutes and I typically do it for a week once a year (I didn't
this year as I carpooled). Once I'm there I need to shower, however I cannot
leave anything (no lockers).

------
nitwit005
> But how can organizations encourage their employees to commute differently?

Instead of expecting the employees to fix things themselves, why not hire some
busses and pick the employees up?

It is expensive to do so, but nicer commutes often correlate strongly with
lower turnover. There is a reason Facebook, Google, and the like pay for it.

------
jeena
I have luck, commuting by train takes exactly 1 hour door to door, 8 mins
walking to and from the train. Train goe every 30 mins and I havr flexible
hours.

If I want to go by car it's at least 1,5 hours,longer during rush hour, for
the 80km. And it's also much more expensive, especially parking in the city
center.

------
jokoon
France now has blablalines, a carpooling service extension of blablacar.

Basically it's designed to carpool small distances where the driver can pick
up passengers on his way to work. It might be a little bit difficult to set up
for users, but there is a lot of potential to save money with this.

------
gok
I'm surprised how little is written about employer-operated mass transit. The
shuttles that Google, Apple etc run in the SFBA are great.

~~~
zootam
does this actually count as mass transit?

i am not surprised its hardly mentioned, as it is only useful to a tiny
percentage of the population of 1 region.

as a case study, it boils down to being a nice benefit of working at one of a
select few large, highly successful companies.

can this service be replicated effectively anywhere else? by anyone else? even
by the same company in a different region? my initial answer to all of the
above questions is no.

~~~
gok
Yes, for example, Amazon and Microsoft have replicated the service in Seattle.
Austin employers like Cirrus Logic run shuttles.

I only bring it up because the original article is explicitly about how an
_employer_ can encourage employees to stop driving to work.

------
WalterBright
My commuting behavior was car only because every alternative took twice as
long.

------
yohannparis
Great article.

As I pointed out in another comment: End all subsidies to all transportation
modes.

Simple, all roads need tolls, all parking should reflect land values usage,
end fuel and public transportation subsidies, taxes pollution.

Then people will find the economical and ecological to travel.

------
LeroyJenkins
Bus is the lowest form of commute. Specially in winter, when most of
population is infected with highly contagious diseases. The best one,and
hardest to maintain is bike: shower requirementbat work, various weather
conditions.

------
sys_64738
Rather than try to put in barriers for driving, make it faster and easier to
drive. Build bigger highways and make more parking available to employees. The
biggest polluters are not the cars but the petroleum companies who pollute the
atmosphere. Want to save the environment then stop with daft plastic straws
banning as that might be the low hanging fruit but it ain't the core problem.

~~~
zootam
>but it ain't the core problem

What do you consider to be the core problem?

I think the root cause is expensive housing.

Increasing throughput on the highways often only lets more people get to the
same bottleneck in the same time. To actually alleviate that problem, the
throughput of any bottlenecks would need to increase as well. Usually, that's
in a highly desirable and expensive area.

Destroying much of the highly desirable and expensive area and covering it
with highways and parking lots is one way to solve the problem, but is
obviously a terrible idea.

