Australia's worst car commutes show our transport system is feeling the squeeze of bulging cities

Updated

Some journeys take hours. But not everyone thinks that's such a bad thing.

For some, long drives to and from work make them want to tear their hair out.

"The worst thing about my commute is the stress.

"Not knowing what is going to happen on the roads, like an accident or a break down."

Adam Rosewarne, a 26-year-old finance systems analyst, has perhaps Australia's worst car commute.

The biggest problem? How unpredictable it is.

Adam can spend anywhere from 50 minutes to 1 hour and 40 minutes in the car, according to Google estimates of a month of his commutes.

His trip, slicing Sydney in two from Grays Point in the south to Macquarie Park in the north-west, highlights how bad commutes can be when their duration is hard to predict.

"If there's an accident or breakdown it can blow my one-way commute for up to two hours."

Adam likes his job, but its location has proven problematic.

The route to work takes in both the peak hour traffic coming into Sydney, as well as the commuters travelling out from inner Sydney to Macquarie Park.

Although his employer gives him flexibility about his arrival time, he still catches some of the morning peak.

"Yeah it drives me crazy sometimes, it happens in cycles.

"You're OK with it for a bit, unhappy with it, upset with it … it can be a slow burn."

Adam is one of almost 2,000 Australians who volunteered their car commute as the country's worst when the ABC put the call out earlier this year.

The ABC ran them through the Google Maps API each work day for a month across April and May to find out how long that day's trip would take, factoring in the traffic detected in real time.

This is what Adam's trips look like.

The following 12 commutes are about as painful as Adam's. Each is unpredictable, with an average duration of at least an hour.

They highlight long, far, and slow commutes taken by Australians in order to get to work. And they underline the symptoms of a transport system feeling the squeeze of Australia's bulging cities.

Leaving the car behind

All these long commutes have adverse health impacts on drivers.

Adjunct Professor Trevor Shilton, the Heart Foundation's spokesperson for physical activity, said there was a causal link between how people get to work and one's body-mass index — a key measure of obesity.

"If you have a long commute or you are in a sit-down job, it is important you find ways to stand and move about throughout the day," he said.

"Walk to eat lunch, stand up while answering the phone, walk to talk to work-mates and, when possible, leave the car at home."

He said people who take public transport get an average of 41 minutes of incidental exercise during their commute, versus eight minutes for those people who travel by car.

Adam has caught public transport in the past, but the additional time it took made him stick with the car.

Driving is also more attractive to him because he's been given some leeway by his bosses about when he can arrive.

It turns out that is vital for making his trip bearable.

A study from Melbourne University published last year linked people in situations like Adam's — those commuting for more than six hours per week — to negative mental health outcomes.

Report author Allison Milner described the direct effect of long commutes on mental health as only "small".

However, her research discovered those without control over how or when they did their work were particularly impacted.

"We would argue that a lack of ability to exercise control over work activities goes hand in hand with longer commute times," she said.

"These people are less likely to be able to pick what time they travel and may have less ability to negotiate working from home."

More than 30 minutes

Unpredictable commutes like Adam's create stress and can be difficult to plan around, and the sheer duration of others has pained policymakers — and drivers — for years.

'Marchetti's constant' is the phenomenon, named after Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti, that shows people typically aren't prepared to travel more than 30 minutes to get to work.

In 2013, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers studied phone records and found that Marchetti's constant applied to people living in places as diverse as the Ivory Coast, Boston and Portugal.

This 30-minute travel budget has been used by planners to design cities, and it gained prominence in Australia when former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull promoted the idea of "30-minute cities" ahead of the 2016 election.

But it also highlights the transport tension building in Australia's suburbs.

The average weekly commuting time for full-time workers in Australia's largest cities increased by almost 20 per cent from 2002 to 2011. In Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, the average time spent getting to work is at or above 30 minutes per day.

Put simply, many of Australia's commuters are at their limits.

What's it like having one of Australia's worst commutes? The ABC went back and asked some of those with extremely long trips.

It turns out, their commutes weren't all bad.

This is Adam's commute.

It's quite a long journey in comparison to the rest of the people we surveyed, but it's particularly slow, with an average speed of less than 35 kilometres per hour (kph).

Nathan, another reader, spends about as much time as Adam on the road travelling from Fitzroy in Melbourne to Mount Helen near Ballarat — but travels more than twice as fast as Adam.

He said the time on the road was a necessary sacrifice to get his foot out of the door and into his industry.

But once he's in the car he can actually enjoy himself with "lots of time to enjoy podcasts, or just the radio, while watching traffic gridlocked in the other direction".

Nick spends even longer in the car than Adam and Nathan travelling from Loxford, near Maitland, to Parramatta in Sydney's west.

His trip typically takes two hours, but he averages more than 70kph and is comfortable doing it.

"It's amazing what you get used to — having made this journey for years I no longer mind it," he said.

Long, fast commutes like Nick's or Nathan's are the exception, however.

Road conditions including congestion, terrain, speed limits and other factors mean hundreds of the reader commutes studied by the ABC have an average a speed of less than 30kph, particularly in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.

Take a look for yourself.

Congestion is caused primarily by population growth, according to Terry Lee-Williams, a strategic transport adviser for Arup.

"Where congestion increases to the point that the road network has very limited spare capacity it becomes brittle, so that any otherwise small incident generates significant disruption," he said.

"To make traffic flow better we need a roughly 5 to 7 per cent decrease in peak traffic hours.

"That is incredibly hard to achieve, as the existing public transport services are under incredible strain, and squeezing more in is difficult."

Can it be busted?

The Government has made it clear that it wants to "bust" congestion.

The Coalition in recent years has delivered increased funding for rail projects, however far more continues to be spent on roads.

Even the nation's most famous rail project, Melbourne's $5 billion airport link, will receive only $250 million in funding in the next four years.

It might seem logical that more and wider roads would alleviate congestion, but longer-term effects are more complicated, according to Mr Lee-Williams.

"Building more roads to major destinations does not lead to reduced congestion," he said.

"The repressed demand to drive is satisfied, the road fills up and you are back to square one minus several billion dollars."

Congestion charging — where drivers are charged for using their car during peak hour or on busy roads — has long been seen as one way to better use the road network's available capacity.

And it's not a solution that would please everyone. Adam describes himself as "definitely not a morning person", so he doesn't consider getting on the road even earlier an option.

But even if he did, the Government says this reform for passenger vehicles will take a decade or more.

So commutes aren't going to change radically any time soon.

Making the most of it

David Bissell, a geographer at Melbourne University, interviewed 53 Australian commuters for a new book called Transit Life.

His research found that although many viewed their commute as negative, people had adapted to make the most of it.

Despite commuting's reputation as 'wasted time', Dr Bissell found some even enjoyed it.

While there was greater opportunity for those using public transport to catch up on emails or read a book, many drivers still relished the opportunity to share the drive with radio talkback callers, podcasts or simply their own thoughts.

"There is a media element, things like podcasts, even drivetime radio — which we might think of as quite a dated format — was really significant to a lot of commuters in cities," he said.

"It's not just about traffic updates, it's about being part of a community of drivers travelling through a city."

Looking for a drive-time podcast? Try these Less than 20 minutes The Signal — ABC

TED Talks Daily — TED

Mindfully — ABC

Planet Money — NPR

Fierce Girls — ABC

20-30 minutes Trace — ABC

The Daily — The New York Times

Pop Culture Happy Hour — NPR

The Party Room — ABC

Bowraville — The Australian

30-45 minutes Embedded — NPR

Heavyweight — Gimlet

Stuff You Should Know — HowStuffWorks

Revisionist History — Malcolm Gladwell/Panoply

Hamish & Andy — PodcastOne Australia

45-60 minutes Conversations — ABC

No Filter — Mia Freedman

Caliphate — NY Times

This American Life — WBEZ

RadioLab — WNYC

More than 1 hour The Moth — Atlantic Public Media

Armchair Expert — Dax Sheppard

The Teacher's Pet — The Australian

WILOSOPHY — Wil Anderson



The Minimalists Podcast — The Minimalists



Would life be better without a daily commute?

Dr Bissell also said time shared on commutes — between parent and child or among co-workers — became an important social "occasion".

And for many, a commute provided an important "transition time", a space to process the day's events.

Through these aspects, Dr Bissell's book asks whether our lives would actually be better without commuting.

"Yes — people are adapting and they're changing, and they're making situations work for them."

"But ultimately they actually might be quite unliveable and unsustainable in the long run."

Adam is young and just starting out in his career, and recognises that he probably can't keep up his current commute forever.

Even now, the thought of moving closer to work does cross his mind.

But he grew up in the Sutherland Shire, known for its beaches and proud local culture.

"It's hard not to think about it, but you move away from all the things you live for as well.

"It's almost an eternal conflict."

Adam still lives at home with his parents and sibling while he saves for a place of his own.

He's almost saved enough, but even when he does move out he doesn't want to leave the area.

"I want to live where my friends and family are.

"I'd be more inclined to change jobs than move."

Topics: transport, industry, business-economics-and-finance, federal-government, government-and-politics, social-policy, community-and-society, australia

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